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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2010
Despite a recent expansion of interest in the social history of death, there has been little scholarly examination of the impact of the Protestant Reformation on perceptions of and discourses about hell. Scholars who have addressed the issue tend to conclude that Protestant and Catholic hells differed little from each other in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods. This article undertakes a comparative analysis of printed English-language sources, and finds significant disparities on questions such as the location of hell and the nature of hell-fire. It argues that such divergences were polemically driven, but none the less contributed to the so-called ‘decline of hell’.
1 A. Pettegree (ed.), The reformation of the parishes, Manchester 1993; S. C. Karant-Nunn, The reformation of ritual, London 1997; C. H. Parker, The reformation of community, Cambridge 1998; J. L. Korner, The reformation of the image, London 2004; R. K. Rittgers, The reformation of the keys, Cambridge 2005.
2 C. Koslofsky, The reformation of the dead, Basingstoke 2000. For a broad overview see P. Marshall, ‘Leaving the world’, in P. Matheson (ed.), Reformation Christianity, Minneapolis 2007, 168–88. For developments in England see P. Marshall, Beliefs and the dead in Reformation England, Oxford 2002.
3 See R. Turner, V., ‘Descendit ad inferos: medieval views on Christ's descent into hell and the salvation of the ancient just’, Journal of the History of Ideas xxvii (1966), 173–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 C. McDannell and B. Lang, Heaven: a history, New Haven–London 1990; J. B. Russell, A history of heaven: the singing silence, Princeton, NJ 1997.
5 D. P. Walker, The decline of hell, London 1964. See also P. C. Almond, Heaven and hell in Enlightenment England, Cambridge 1994.
6 Darwell Stone, The faith of an English Catholic, London 1926. Online at http://anglicanhistory.org/england/stone/faith/14.html.
7 C. A. Patrides, ‘“A horror beyond our expression”: the dimensions of hell’, in his Premises and motifs in Renaissance thought and literature, Princeton 1982, 182–99 at p. 184.
8 J. Delumeau, Sin and fear: the emergence of a western guilt culture 13th–18th centuries, trans. E. Nicholson, New York 1990, 505–22, quotations at pp. 506, 512.
9 C. M. Eire, N., ‘The good side of hell: infernal meditations in early modern Spain’, Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques xxvi (2000), 286–310Google Scholar, quotation at p. 307.
10 Delumeau, Sin and fear, 505–6.
11 Thomas Phillips, The booke of lamentations, or Geenologia a treatise of hell, London 1639 (RSTC 19878.5), 10.
12 D. Oldridge, The devil in early modern England, Stroud 2000, 66–8; P. C. Almond, Demonic possession and exorcism in early modern England, Cambridge 2004, 181.
13 Henry Greenwood, Tormenting Tophet: or a terrible description of hel, London 1615 (RSTC 12336), 17, 60, 63; [Samuel Rowlands?], Hels torments, and heavens glorie, London 1601 (RSTC 13048.5), C6v, D3v–5v; Robert Bolton, The foure last things, London 1632 (RSTC 3242), 100; Arthur Dent, The plaine mans path-way to heauen, London 1601 (RSTC 6626.5), 390; Phillips, Booke of lamentations, 32, 33–5; Luis de la Puente, Meditations upon the mysteries of our holy faith, trans. John Heigham, St Omer 1619 (RSTC 20486), i. 143; Robert Persons, The Christian directory, St Omer 1607 (RSTC 19354.5), 236; cf. J. de Voragine, The golden legend, trans. W. Ryan, Princeton 1993, ii. 280; P. Sheingorn, ‘“Who can open the doors of his face?” The iconography of hell mouth’, in C. Davidson and T. Seiler (eds), The iconography of hell, Kalamazoo 1992, 2–3; Lollard sermons, ed. G. Cigman (EETS ccxciv, 1989), 231. Descriptions of hell in popular ballads and chapbooks could be even more strikingly atavistic: T. Watt, Cheap print and popular piety, 1550–1640, Cambridge 1991, 110–12, 171, 238–9, 312; M. Spufford, Small books and pleasant histories, London 1981, 200–7; Oldridge, Devil in early modern England, 66–7.
14 Delumeau, Sin and fear, 505–6; Thomas à Kempis, The imitation of Christ, trans. B. I. Knott, London 1963, 76.
15 Edmund Bunny, A booke of Christian exercise appertaining to resolution … by R. P. perused, and accompanied now with a treatise tending to pacification, London 1584 (RSTC 19355), ch. xi; Luis de Granada, The sinners guyde, trans. Francis Meres, London 1598 (RSTC 16918), 104; cf. B. Gregory, ‘The “True and Zealouse Service of God”: Robert Parson, Edmund Bunny, and The first book of the Christian exercise’, this Journal xlv (1994), 244–68. On Protestant translations of Catholic works in general see H. C. White, English devotional literature [prose], 1600–1640, Madison 1931, 98–115.
16 Bernard of Clairvaux, Querela, sive, dialogus animae et corporis damnati … The dialogue betwixt the soule and the body of the damned man, trans. William Crashaw, London 1613 (RSTC 1908.5), epistle dedicatory.
17 Lewis Bayly, The practise of pietie directing a Christian how to walke that he may please God, London 1613 (RSTC 1602), 125–6.
18 Dent, Plaine mans path-way, 392; John Denison, A three-fold resolution, verie necessarie to saluation: describing earths vanity, hels horror, heauens felicitie, London 1608 (RSTC 6596), 426. For more of the same see Martin Day, A monument of mortalitie, London 1621 (RSTC 6427.5), 68–9; Thomas Tuke, A discourse of death, bodily, ghostly, and eternall, London 1613 (RSTC 24307), 99; Samuel Gardiner, The devotions of the dying man, London 1627 (RSTC 11574), 336–7; Delumeau, Sin and fear, 519; Almond, Heaven and hell, 81–7.
19 Robert Bellarmine, Of the eternal felicity of the saints, trans. Thomas Everard, St Omer 1638 (RSTC 1841), 419; Jean Pierre Camus, A draught of eternitie, trans. Miles Carr, Douai 1632 (RSTC 4552), 151–2; Nicholas Caussin, The holy court in three tomes, trans. Sir T[homas] H[awkins], Rouen 1634 (RSTC 4874), iii. 178–9.
20 Greenwood, Tormenting Tophet, 20; Camus, Draught of eternitie, 117. For further explicit discussion of the deterrent value of hell see Rowlands, Hels torments, B1v; Denison, A three-fold resolution, 431; Dent, Plaine mans path-way, 393; Richard Greenham, The workes of the reuerend and faithfull seruant af Iesus Christ M. Richard Greenham, London 1612 (RSTC 12318), 695; Thomas Wilson, A commentarie vpon the most diuine Epistle of S. Paul to the Romanes, London 1614 (RSTC 25791), 559; and Robert Bellarmine, The art of dying well, trans. Edward Coffin, St Omer 1622 (RSTC 1839), 210. For a similar linkage of hell to the themes of salvation and redemption in Spanish sources see Eire, ‘Good side of hell’.
21 Thomas Lupton, A dreame of the diuell and Diues, London 1589 (RSTC 16947.5), D6v.
22 George Hakewill, An ansvvere to a treatise vvritten by Dr Carier, London 1616 (RSTC 12610), 266; William Tyndale, An answer to Sir Thomas More's dialogue, ed. H. Walter, Cambridge 1850, 28.
23 A. Walsham, Providence in early modern England, Oxford 1999, 16.
24 Disley, Emma, ‘Degrees of glory: Protestant doctrine and the concept of rewards hereafter’, JTS xlii (1991), 82–5Google Scholar. See also Tuke, Discourse of death, 102, and de la Puente, Meditations, i. 143.
25 This contrasts with the impression given by works such as P. Camporesi, The fear of hell: images of damnation and salvation in early modern Europe, trans. L. Byatt, Cambridge 1990.
26 On catechisms see I. Green, The Christian's ABC: catechisms and catechizing in England c. 1530–1740, Oxford 1996, 316–19, 342–5; Laurence Vaux, A catechism of Christian doctrine, ed. T. G. Law (Chetham Society ns iv, 1885), 13; and Eire, ‘Good side of hell’, 305, 306–7 (on hell's limited place in continental Counter-Reformation preaching). Delumeau concedes (Sin and fear, 519), that even among Puritans hell was not the preferred theme for sermons.
27 Bellarmine, Of the eternal felicity of the saints, 410.
28 W. A. Dyrness, Reformed theology and visual culture: the Protestant imagination from Calvin to Edwards, Cambridge 2004, 138–40; Richard Bernard, Contemplative pictures with wholesome precepts, London 1610 (RSTC 1934), epistle dedicatory, 107–29 (quotation at p. 115).
29 See Eire, ‘Good side of hell’, 292–8, and Camporesi, Fear of hell, 56–7.
30 Watt, Cheap print, ch. iv; Walsham, Providence, 250–66.
31 Oldridge, Devil in early modern England, 67; Rowlands, Hels torments, B1r; post-Reformation editions of the Shepherds kalendar (RSTC 22415–23); Watt, Cheap print, 194, 202, 205–9; C. W. Cary, ‘“It circumscribes us here”: hell on the Renaissance stage’, in C. Davidson and T. H. Seiler (eds), The iconography of hell, Kalamazoo 1992, 195.
32 Augustine, The city of God, trans. M. Dodds, New York 1950, 735.
33 Mark ix. 43–8. See also Isaiah lxvi. 24; Luke iii. 17; Jude i. 7; Revelation xiv. 10–11; xxi. 8.
34 For the almost universal adoption and retention of this two-fold scheme see Patrides, ‘Dimensions of hell’, 185–7. Almond's suggestion (Heaven and hell, 93–4), that Protestants applied the poena sensus only to the resurrected body after the Last Judgement, while Catholics envisaged both types of punishment for the disembodied soul in its ‘intermediate state’, does not seem to hold up for the pre-Civil War period.
35 W. Addis and T. Arnold, A Catholic dictionary, rev. T. B. Scannell and P. E. Hallett, 15th edn, London 1954, 389.
36 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, New York 1947, suppl. q. 97 (online at www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/home.html). Aquinas argued that the property of giving light did not belong to the essential nature of fire, noting, for example, how its brightness could be obscured by thick smoke. See also J. Steadman, M., ‘Milton and patristic tradition: the quality of hell-fire’, Anglia lxxvi (1958), 116–28Google Scholar.
37 Persons, Christian directory, 236.
38 Caussin, The holy court, iii. 175.
39 Bellarmine, Art of dying well, 206; Eternal felicity of the saints, 424–5, 429–30.
40 de la Puente, Meditations, i. 136.
41 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian religion, trans. H. Beveridge, Grand Rapids 1989, i. 146–7. See also John Calvin, Harmony of the Gospels, ed. T. Torrance, Edinburgh 1972, ii. 275.
42 Compare Dent, Plaine mans path-way, and Phillips, Booke of lamentations, 41, with Camus, Draught of eternitie, 136; Philip Howard, A foure-fould meditation, of the foure last things, London 1606 (RSTC 13868.7), stanza 67; de la Puente, Meditations, i. 137; and Bellarmine, Eternal felicity of the saints, 432–3.
43 William Perkins, An exposition of the symbole or creed of the Apostles, Cambridge 1595 (RSTC 19703), 392.
44 Tuke, A discourse of death, 100.
45 John Rogers, A discourse of Christian watchfulnesse, London 1620 (RSTC 21185), 334.
46 Thomas Wilson, A Christian dictionarie opening the signification of the chiefe words dispersed generally through Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, London 1612 (RSTC 25786), 224.
47 Henry Jacob, A treatise of the sufferings and victory of Christ, London 1598 (RSTC 14340), 81, 87–8.
48 Phillips, Booke of lamentations, 20.
49 Greenwood, Tormenting Tophet, 53–62, quotation at p. 54.
50 Andrew Willet, A Catholicon, that is, a generall preservative or remedie against the pseudocatholike religion, Cambridge 1602 (RSTC 25673), 40; John Smith, An exposition of the Creed, London 1632 (RSTC 22801), 467; Thomas Bilson, The survey of Christs sufferings for mans redemption, London 1604 (RSTC 3070), 40, 46 (and at p. 47 unusually suggesting the possibility of material brimstone); Phillips, Booke of lamentations, 31. See also [Richard Parkes], A briefe answere unto certain obiections and reasons against the descension of Christ into hell, Oxford 1604 (RSTC 19296), 8.
51 John Brereley [James Anderton], Sainct Austines religion, n. p. 1620 (RSTC 3608), 161.
52 Perkins, Exposition of the creed, 392; Tuke, Discourse of death, 101; Greenwood, Tormenting Tophet, 59; Phillips, Booke of lamentations, 31.
53 Smith, Exposition of the creed, 467. Though, for examples of more literalist approaches, see Abraham Fleming, The footepath of faith, leading the highwaie to heauen, London 1581 (RSTC 11039), 141–2, and John Moore, A mappe of mans mortalitie, London 1617 (RSTC 18057), 63.
54 Camus, Draught of eternitie, 128; Persons, Christian directory, 229–3 (though with the qualification, ‘whether it be underground or no’); Bellarmine, Art of dying well, 205–6, and Eternal felicity of the saints, 424 (quotation); de la Puente, Meditations, i. 136; Eire, ‘Good side of hell’, 288–9.
55 de la Puente, Meditations, i. 139; Bellarmine, Art of dying well, 207. Persons (Christian directory, 238) also emphasises ‘the most severe straitness therof’.
56 Camporesi, Fear of hell, 62. Camporesi (ch. v at p. 69) regards an emphasis on congestion and restriction as characteristic of the ‘Baroque hell’, which he contrasts with the ‘wide spaces’ of the medieval hell.
57 Andrew Willet, Synopsis papismi, London 1592 (RSTC 25696), 607–9.
58 Tuke, Discourse of death, 102.
59 Christopher Carlile, A discourse concerning two divine positions, London 1582 (RSTC 4654), 105v–107r; Jacob, Sufferings of Christ, 146; Andrew Willet, Loidoromastix, London 1607 (RSTC 25693), 25–6.
60 Hugh Broughton, Declaration of generall corruption of religion … wrought by D. Bilson, London 1603 (RSTC 3855), unpaginated.
61 Bilson, Survey of Christs sufferings, 619; Adam Hill, The defence of the article: Christ descended into hell, London 1592 (RSTC 13466), 10, 62; Richard Parkes, The second booke containing a reioynder to a reply, in An apologie: of three testimonies of holy Scripture, London 1607 (RSTC 19295), 4; John Higgins, An answer to Master William Perkins, Oxford 1602 (RSTC 13442), 19–20, 21–2; Phillips, Booke of lamentations, 14–21.
62 Carlile, Two divine positions, 105v; Pierre Viret, The Christian disputations, trans. J. Brooke, London 1579 (RSTC 24776), 28v; Jacob, Sufferings of Christ, 153; William Perkins, A golden chaine, Cambridge 1600 (RSTC 19646), 373; John Donne, Essays in divinity, ed. E. M. Simpson, Oxford 1952, 36; James Ussher, ‘An answer to a challenge by a Jesuit in Ireland’, in The whole works of the most rev. James Ussher, Dublin 1829–64, iii. 378.
63 John Donne, Sermons, ed. E. M. Simpson and G. R. Potter, Berkeley–Los Angeles 1953–62, vii. 137.
64 Gardiner, Devotions of the dying man, 332.
65 John Radford, A directorie teaching the way to truth, England, secret press 1605 (RSTC 20602), 460; Richard Smith, A conference of the Catholike and Protestante doctrine, Douai 1631 (RSTC 22810), 510.
66 Arguably, Patrides, ‘Dimensions of hell’, 193–9, makes too much of this in asserting the genealogy of the concept of ‘inner hell’.
67 Howard, Foure-fould meditation, stanzas 78–9; Camus, Draught of eternitie, 132; de la Puente, Meditations, i. 146; Bellarmine, Eternal felicity of the saints, 422–3; Bolton, Foure last things, 95–6; Patrides, ‘Dimensions of hell’, 193–4. George Benson, A sermon preached at Paules Crosse the seauenth of May, M.DC.IX., London 1609 (RSTC 1886), 54, was unusual in suggesting that the poena sensus were more to be dreaded than the poena damni.
68 Jeremias Drexel, The considerations of Drexelius vpon eternitie, trans. Ralph Winterton, London 1632 (RSTC 7235), 29. See also de la Puente, Meditations, i. 139. The ‘ubiquitarian’ views of the sixteenth-century Swabian Protestant, Johannes Brenz (1499–1570), that the damned roamed around carrying their torment with them, did not catch on in Reformed English circles in this period: L. Paine, The hierarchy of hell, London 1972, 21.
69 A. C. Southern, English recusant prose, 1559–1582, London 1950, 255.
70 This is an argument pursued at greater length in detail in P. Marshall, ‘“The map of God's word”: geographies of the afterlife in Tudor and early Stuart England’, in B. Gordon and P. Marshall (eds), The place of the dead: death and remembrance in late medieval and early modern Europe, Cambridge 2000, 110–30.
71 Aquinas, Summa theologica, appendix ii, q. 1, a. 2.
72 Walker, Decline of hell, 29–30.
73 Gregory Martin, A discouerie of the manifold corruptions of the Holy Scriptures by the heretikes of our daies, Rheims 1582 (RSTC 17503), 108–9. For Protestant insistence on the inability of the dead to have any awareness of the circumstances of the living see Marshall, Beliefs and the dead, 210–15.
74 See D. Wallace, D., ‘Puritan and Anglican: the interpretation of Christ's descent into hell in Elizabethan theology’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte lxix (1978), 248–87Google Scholar, though the interpretation here is coloured by a rather anachronistic attempt to isolate a distinctly ‘Anglican’ theology. For an illuminating discussion of contemporary continental debates see D. V. Bagchi, ‘Dissent over the descent: Christ's Descensus ad inferos in Reformation controversy’, Studies in Church History, forthcoming.
75 Higgins, Answere to Perkins, 7. Bilson's Survey of Christs sufferings, A1v, attacks those that ‘outface Christes Descent to Hell with phrases and figures, when it is plainly professed in the Creed’.
76 Viret, Christian disputations, 290r; Carlile, Discourse concerning two divine positions, 137v; Jacob, Sufferings of Christ, 122–3; Pierre Du Moulin, The waters of Siloe, trans. I. B., Oxford 1612 (RSTC 7343), 32; Andrew Willet, Limbo-mastix, London 1604 (RSTC 25692), 55.
77 See W. Palmer, G., ‘The burden of proof: J. H. Hexter and Christopher Hill’, Journal of British Studies xix (1979), 122–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
78 Delumeau, Sin and fear, 556; Walker, Decline of hell, passim.
79 There is a parallel here with some recent work suggesting that the decline of traditional views of the supernatural and witchcraft in late seventeenth-century England was not so much a consequence of scientific rationalism as polemically-driven, reflecting the desire of Anglican controversialists to discredit the partisan propaganda of sectaries: I. Bostridge, Witchcraft and its transformations, c. 1650–c. 1750, Oxford 1997; J. Crawford, Marvellous Protestantism: monstrous births in Post-Reformation England, Baltimore–London 2005.
