Religion Around John Donne by Eckhardt Joshua;

Author:Eckhardt, Joshua;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press

these

If on th═se things I durst not look, durst I

vpon his miserable mother cast my eye;

whoe was Gods partner here, & furnisht thus

half of that Sacrifice wch ransomd vs19

Readers in the Church of England may not have had any reason to disagree with the claim that Mary provided the human “half” of the “Sacrifice” that “ransomd vs.” But following a politicized endorsement of the immaculate conception, it could make them suspect that they were reading the work of a Catholic inclined to elevate Mary’s role in salvation—or at least of a convert to the national church who had written the poem before relinquishing his Catholicism.

Each of these four consecutive poems features the Virgin Mary. Whether by accident or by design, they combine to present Donne as affirming not only her intercessory role but also her immaculate conception. They show Donne endorsing not only her post-Reformation but also her Counter-Reformation role. And they show him reproaching the virgin queen for daring to occlude the Blessed Virgin. If Donne has ever looked to anyone like a resistant Catholic, he did in this manuscript. Indeed, in certain parts of the Bridgewater manuscript, Donne looks like Mirreus. Donne mocked Mirreus’s Catholicism in his satires earlier in the volume. But he mocked everyone else’s religious views in the poem too, without settling on any religious position. With the Bridgewater manuscript opened to its presentation of his religious poems, Donne appears to have embraced that Catholicism, without shrinking from its political implications.

Even though they rank as particularly early collectors of Donne’s works, who knew him personally, the Countess of Bridgewater and her family could easily have entertained the possibility that Donne had written Catholic verses during Elizabeth’s reign. After all, Donne had lost his service position with the countess’s father-in-law, Sir Thomas Egerton, during that time, partly because of his Catholic background. Donne eloped with Egerton’s niece, Anne More, so his new father-in-law, Sir George More, persuaded Egerton to dismiss him and jail him. Sir George must have refused to support the match, at least partly, because of Donne’s “social and economic status.” As Steven May has pointed out, “the husbands of Anne’s four sisters were (or became) knights.”20 But More’s refusal also had to do with religion. Donne began the process of informing More of the wedding by sending a letter via Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland. The earl, of course, did not want for “social and economic status.” Yet, in Dennis Flynn’s words, Northumberland “was a scion of executed Catholic traitors (as such regarded with suspicion by all who, like More, were fervent supporters of Tudor government and the established religion).”21 Northumberland thus emphasized Donne’s Catholic connections at just the time that Donne lost his professional connection to Egerton. Egerton’s descendants therefore could have recalled or recounted Donne as a Catholic, and perhaps even an audacious one. They therefore could have found it easy to imagine this Church of England divine once writing a sonnet that endorses an exclusively Catholic belief and reproaches the queen of England.

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