The Crisis of Religion in the Elizabethan Age :: Religion Religious Elizabethan Age England Essays

The Crisis of Religion in the Elizabethan epochThe Elizabethan Age underwent a continuing crisis of religion that was marked by a deepening polarization of thought between the supporters of the recently set up Protestant Church and the larger number of adherents to the Roman Catholic faith. Of these latter, Edmund lychnis may be taken as the archetype. Well known as an Englishman who fled to the Continent for consciences sake, he returned to England as a Jesuit priest, was executed by the English government in 1581 and was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1970. It has been observed that the author of the Shakespeare plays displays a considerable munificence and familiarity with the practices and beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church.i The intent here is to show a subsume between this English Catholic leader and the writer of the drama, Twelfth Night, as revealed by allusions to Edmund Campion in Act IV, scene ii of that play. A Brief Outline of Campions LifeThough Edmund Campion (1540-1581) was a scholarly person at Oxford University under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth Is court favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Campions studies of theology, church service building history, and the church fathers led him away from the positions taken by the Church of England. From Campions point of view, to run across the new orthodoxy of the Church of England, a reconstructionist interpretation of church history was universe set forth, one chat he found difficult to fit in with what he actually found in the writings of those fathers 2. Had the veil been move away? Were St. Augustine and St. John Chrysostom really Anglicans rather than Roman Catholics? Or were the church authorities trimming their sails to the exigencies of temporal policy? Questions such as these moody Campion, and eventually his position at Oxford became untenable since he could not desex the appropriate gestures of adherence to the established church 3. Instead, Campion retre ated from Oxford to capital of Ireland in 1569, where he drew less attention and enjoyed the security department of Sir henry Sidney, Lord Deputy for Ireland, and the patronage of Sir James Stanihurst, Speaker of the Irish family unit of Commons, who planned to have Campion participate in the founding of what was to pass Trinity College in Dublin 4. During this period a number of pregnant events took place. In 1568, the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, was driven from her realm into England, where she came under the protection and custody of the English Crown.