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KEY Commentary Side Textual Bibliographic Scriptural
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But assone as the generacion of them that
saw the miracles
of god were deed / they fell to Idolatrie immediatly
as thou seist in the bible. And god when he had delyuered them
in to captiuite for to chastise their wekednesse / stered them
vpp a prophete euer moare / to call them vn to his testament
agayne. And so he did wellnye an hundred tymes / I suppose /
yer Christ came / for they neuer
bode any space in the right faith. And agenst the comynge of
Christ the scribes / Phareses / Caiphas / Anna / and the elders
/ were crepte vpp in to the sete of Moses / Aaron and the holy
prophetes and patriarkes and succeded them linially and had the
scripture of god but euen in captiuite / to make marchaundice of
it and to abvse it vn to their awne glorie & profitt. And
though they kepte the people from outward Idolatrie of
worshepynge of images with the hethen: yet they brought them in
to a worse inward Idolatrie of a false fayth
& trust in their awne dedes and in vayne
tradicions of their awne
faynynge. And they had put out the significacions
of all the ceremonies and sacramentes of the olde testament and
taught the people to
beleue in the workes selfe / and had corrupte the
scripture with false gloses. As thou maist se in the gospell /
how Christ warneth his disciples to be warre of the leuen of
the phareses which was their false
doctrine and gloses. And in a nother place he
rebuked the scribes
and the phareses sayenge: wo be to them / because
they had taken awaye the keye of knowlege and had shutt vpp the
kingdome of
heven and neyther wold entre in them selues ner
sofre them that wolde. How had they shutt it vpp? verely with
their tradicions and false gloses whych
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90/9
the testament . . .
bloude. Cf. Heb. 10.29, 13–20.
90/12
maide of kent.
Prudently, More never mentions the Maid of Kent in Dialogue or Confutation. Here and in
Obedience (T4), Tyndale refers to
this politically dangerous case. After a cure in 1526 attributed to
Mary, Elizabeth
Barton became a Benedictine nun in Canterbury. Her pious
visions turned political when she declared that Henry VIII
would die seven months after he married Anne Boleyn. Fisher believed her
revelations, but More counselled her not to meddle in public
affairs. See Ep. 192, To Elizabeth Barton,
Chelsea, Tuesday <1533?> (More, Correspondence 464–66). For his connection with
Barton, Fisher was fined 300 pounds, one year's revenue from his
diocese, but More's caution won him exemption from penalty.
See Alan Neame, The Holy Maid of Kent: The Life of
Elizabeth Barton, 1506–1534 (London:
Hodder and Stoughton, 1971). Barton was executed, together with five
priests,
on 20 April 1534, the day that the guildsmen
of London were called upon to take the oath of
succession. Cf. Richard Rex, "The Execution of
the Holy Maid of Kent," Historical Research 64
(1991) 216–20, esp. 219. Three days earlier, Fisher and More had gone to
the Tower because they refused to take the oath which implicitly
rejected papal authority.
In her trances, locutions and fasts the Maid of Kent showed some of the
characteristics of hysteria. Cf. Nicholas P.
Sanos, "Witchcraft in Histories of Psychiatry," Psychological Bulletin 85 (1978) 417–39; rpt. in
Articles on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology 3.212. In her defense, see
Diane Watt, "Reconstructing the Word: the Political
Prophecies of Elizabeth Barton (1506–1534),"
Renaissance Quarterly 50.1 (Spring 1997)
136–63.
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