Book-Burning and the Banning of Books and Authors in England, 1526 - 1558: A Sixteenth-Century Fire-Library

My project draws on the disciplines of literary history, history, and religious studies, with the field of book history at their nexus, to examine books and authors designated as heretical (and sometimes seditious) by England’s clergy, monarchs, and Privy Councils between the years 1526 and 1558. My analysis is supported by my Appendix of Banned Books and Authors, which lists specific book titles, unspecified books, and specific authors that were prohibited in legal documents produced by Convocation, a meeting of England’s clergy, and by Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and their councils. I argue that England’s clergy, monarchs, and Privy Councils largely conceptualized heresy and sedition as an infection that threatened the health of the body politic by threatening their authority. Chapter 2 argues that, after Henry VIII was named the Supreme Head of the Church in 1534 and well into Mary’s reign, all legislation related to the banning of books and authors moved from clerical canons to royal proclamations, making the line between books banned for heresy and for sedition porous. In Chapter 3, I argue that designations of heresy and sedition were contingent; while there are some small similarities between the books and authors banned, each monarch produced their own lists in response to their specific contexts. Analysis of the prohibited books and authors highlight that England’s clergy, monarchs, and councils were primarily concerned with scholarly books accessible only to an educated elite. Chapter 4 investigates the social geographies of one prohibited text and its textual supports, William Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christen Man, and argues that such a study can fill in gaps in contemporary records of the lives of banned books. Chapter 5 contends that the symbolic act of punishment in the heresy trial, exhumation, and burning of the corpses of continental reformers Martin Bucer and Paul Fagius and books in Cambridge in 1557 emphasizes the importance England’s universities held for authorities. I suggest that the legal documents that list prohibited books and authors might have been directed at the universities, institutions that all three monarchs saw as integral when shaping state and ecclesiastical policy.

Department dc:contributor.department

Religion, Study of

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Klaiber-Noble, Laura Elizabeth

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Klassen, Pamela
• Galbraith, David

• Book History
• Book-Burning
• Heresy
• Reformation History
• Sixteenth-century England

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1807/150335

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/150335