Abstract
By the time the English Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy in 1534, the Henrician common lawyer Christopher St. German had been engaged for several years in efforts to limit the independent authority of the church in order to curtail what he felt were clerical abuses. In a series of works exploring the nature of English law and lay-clerical relations in England, St. German argued that all matters touching on rights of property or privileges were located within the ‘temporal’ sphere of jurisdiction, and consequently he greatly expanded the province of civil law at the expense of canon law. Following the promulgation of the act of supremacy, St. German continued to support the empowerment of the civil authorities over many ecclesiastical affairs by defining and defending the authority of the king in parliament as head of the English church.1
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References
For an overview of St. German’s role in the 1530s, see J. A. Guy, Christopher St. German on Chancery and Statute ( London: Selden Society, 1985 ).
St. German noted that laws formulated by the Crown in Parliament were valid only if “nat agaynste the lawe of God” and in Hooker’s eyes valid human laws “must be made… without… contradiction unto any positive law in scripture.” An Answere to a Letter, G6; cp. Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical) Politie, III.9.2; 1:237.28. Hooker was even willing to concede the central point of the presbyterians if scripture were against him: “if indeed there have bene at any time a Church-politie so set downe, the change whereof the sacred scripture doth forbid, surely for men to alter those laws which God for perpetuitie hath established, were presumption most intollerable.” Laws, 1II.11.1; 1:247.4–8. The importance of assurance in matters of faith and of the related issue of convincing tender consciences of the legitimacy of church laws in Hooker’s work has been noted. See Egil Grislis, “The Assurance of Faith According to Richard Hooker,” in Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community, 237–249; M.E.C. Perrott, “Richard Hooker and the Problem of Authority in the Elizabethan Church,” JEH, 49. 1 (1998), 29–60.
Christopher St. German, An Answere to a Letter (London: Thomas Godfray, 1535 ), G4v-G5v. Also available in a modem reprint in the series The Early English Experience, no. 566 ( New York: De Capo Press, 1973 ).
Christopher St. German, A Treatise concernynge the Division between the Spirytualitie and the Temporaltie (London: Robert Redman, 1532 or 1533), C5; hereafter cited as Division. Also available in a modern edition as an appendix in The Complete Works of Sir Thomas More,vol.9 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 177–212. The quotation is from the latter edition, 192.
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Eppley, D. (2003). Richard Hooker and Christopher St. German: Biblical Hermeneutics and Princely Power. In: Kirby, W.J.T. (eds) Richard Hooker and the English Reformation. Studies in Early Modern Religious Reforms, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0319-2_17
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