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KEY Commentary Side Textual Bibliographic Scriptural
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in to a church for to praye and there found a
vayle hangynge before the dore and an image
paynted theron / as it had bene of christ or some saint.
For the bisshope was so moued
therwith / because saith Saint Hierom / that it
was contrary to the
scripture / that he cutte it and counseled to
bury some dede therin and sent a nother cloth to hange in
the sted. And aftirward when
they ware crepte in a litle and litle: there was no
worshepynge of them / at the least waye generally vntyll the
tyme of S. Gregory.
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contrary to the
scripture. For prohibition of graven images , cf.
Exod. 20.4–5, Deut. 5.8–10.
s. Hierome ...
in the sted. Actually the narrative is by the protagonist
himself, the heresy-hunting bishop Epiphanius, whose letter to Bishop
John of Jerusalem Jerome translated from
Greek into Latin. Cf. Jerome, Ep. 51 (AD 394) Par. 9 (PL 22.526–27; CSEL
54.411; 2NPNF 6.88–89). (JW)
S. Gregory.
Gregory the Great (pope, 590–604) sent forty Benedictine monks under
Augustine of Canterbury to evangelize the Anglo-Saxon invaders of
Britain (597). Gregory's Pastoral Rule (AD 590)
(PL 77.13–128; 2NPNF 12.1–72) was translated into Old English (AD 901).
See King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's
Pastoral Care, ed. Henry Sweet, EETS 45, 50 (London, 1871). In Gregory's Dialogues
(AD 593–94) (PL 77.149–430; FOTC 39), the pope and his deacon Peter offer a model for Anthony and his nephew
Vincent in More's Dialogue of Comfort (1534–35).
See O'Donnell, "Three Dialogues of Comfort." Unio
Dissidentium contains thirteen passages (2%) from Gregory: from
his exegesis of Ezekiel (CCL 142), Job (CCL 143, 143 A, 143 B), and the
Canticle (CCL 144). For an illustration of the Four Latin Fathers with
Gregory 's papal tiara scraped out, cf. Duffy (Plate 33).
In the second edition of Dialogue Concerning
Heresies (May 1531), More added a long passage to Bk. 4, Ch. 2
on Gregory's defense of images (CWM 6/1.355/28–359/31, 6/2.557). For
other long additions to More's Dialogue, cf. 79/9n on images and 201/29n on faith. For the
role of Stephen Vaughan in sending a partial manuscript of
Tyndale's Answer to Cromwell, cf. Daniell 209–17.
Vaughan 's daughter was later a Marian exile and the author of
the first known sonnet-sequence in English (1560): "A Paraphrase upon
the 51. Psalme of David." See The Collected Works of
Anne Vaughan
Lock, ed. Susan M. Felch, MRTS 185
(Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1999)
62–71.
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In so moch that when Cirenus the bisshope of Masilia offended
with the supersticiousnesse of the people burnt
them / Saynt Gregory
wrote that he shuld not destroy the images /
but teach only that the people shuld not worshepe them. But
when it was so ferre come that the people worsheped them
with a false faith (as we now know no nother vse) and were
no longer memorials only / then the bisshopes
of grece and the emproure gathered them to
gether / to prouide
a remedye agenst that misheue and concluded
that they shuld be put doune for the abuse / thinkynge it
so most expedient / hauinge for them / first the ensample
of God whom a man maye boldely folowe / which commaunded in
the beginnynge of all his preceptes / that there shuld be
no image vsed to worshepe or pray before / not for the
image it selfe / but for the wekenesse of his people: and hauinge agayne before theyr eyes / that the people were fallen vn
to Idolatrie and imageseruinge by the reason of them.
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images. The
provincial council of Hieria, convened by Emperor Constantine
V, condemned the use of images in 754, the same year as the Donation of
Pepin. Nicea II, the seventh ecumenical council, decreed the
use of images in 787, making a distinction between worship
(latreian) of God and "honourable reverence
" (timetiken proskunesin) of the
saints (2NPNF 14.550). A succinct account of the controversy over
religious images is given by Hans-Georg Beck in Jedin and Dolan 3.26–36.
(JW)
In 1 John
(D6v) Tyndale affirms that general councils could correct the
clergy, but in Prelates (E6v—E8) he claims that
general councils appeal to tradition over Scripture. Below (213/17–19),
he protests that councils cannot define articles of faith against God's
word. He probably believes that Nicea II defended the veneration of
images contrary to the Second Commandment (Exod. 20.4–5) (NCE 7.327–29;
OER 2.303–306). In 1563, the year that the Council of Trent ended, the
Church of England declared in no. 21 of the Thirty-Nine Articles that
General Councils may err.
Cirenus . . .
worshepe them. More discusses Gregory the Great's teaching on
the proper use of images as found in his two letters to Serenus, Bishop
of Marseilles: Bk. 9, Ep. 105, n.d. (PL 77.1027–28; 2 NPNF 13.23); Bk.
11, Ep. 13, n.d., To Serenus (PL 77.1128–30; 2NPNF 13.53–54). Gregory is
much more admonitory of Serenus than Tyndale allows to
appear. In the Obedience (H6v), Tyndale praises
Gregory's reluctance to embrace the papal office when it was offered to
him, citing Bk. 8, Ep. 30, To Eulogius , n.d. (PL 77.933;
2NPNF 12.241). (JW)
people . . .
imageseruinge. Exod. 32.1–24.
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Now answere me / by what reason canst thou
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