26 September 1626 A.D. Lancelot Andrews Dies—Bishop of Chichester, Ely & Winchester; Overseer of Many Translators of King James Bible
26
September 1626 A.D. Lancelot
Andrews Dies—Bishop of Chichester, Ely & Winchester; Overseer of Many Translators of King James
Bible
Lancelot Andrewes
(1555 – 25 September 1626) was an English bishop and scholar, who held high
positions in the Church of England during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I.
During the latter's reign, Andrewes served successively as Bishop of Chichester, Ely and
Winchester and
oversaw the translation of the Authorized Version (or King James Version) of the Bible. In the Church of England he is commemorated on 25 September with a Lesser
Festival.
Contents
·
4 Legacy
·
6 Notes
Early life, education and ordination
Andrewes was born in 1555 near All Hallows, Barking, by the Tower of London, of
an ancient Suffolk family later domiciled at Chichester Hall, at Rawreth in Essex; his father, Thomas, was master of Trinity
House. Andrewes attended the Cooper's free school, Ratcliff,
in the parish of Stepney and
then the Merchant Taylors' School under Richard Mulcaster. In 1571 he entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge and graduated with a Bachelor
of Arts degree, proceeding to a Master of Arts degree in 1578.[1] His academic reputation spread so quickly that on the foundation in 1571
of Jesus College, Oxford he was named in the charter as one
of the founding scholars "without his
privity" (Isaacson, 1650); his connection with the college seems to have
been purely notional, however.[2] In 1576 he was elected fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge; in 1580 he took orders[3] and in 1581 was incorporated MA at Oxford. As catechist at his college he
read lectures on the Decalogue (published in 1630), which aroused great interest.
Once a year he would spend a month with his parents, and
during this vacation, he would find a master from whom he would learn a
language of which he had no previous knowledge. In this way, after a few years,
he acquired most of the modern languages of Europe.[4]
Andrewes was the brother of the scholar and cleric Roger
Andrewes who also served as a translator for the King James Version of the Bible.
During Elizabeth's reign
In 1588, following a period as chaplain to Henry Hastings, Earl of
Huntingdon, President of the North, he became vicar of St Giles, Cripplegate in the City of London, where he delivered striking sermons on the
temptation in the wilderness and the Lord's
Prayer. In a great sermon (during Easter
week) on 10 April 1588, he stoutly vindicated the Reformed
character of the Church of England against the claims of Roman
Catholicism and adduced John
Calvin as a new writer, with lavish praise and affection.
Through the influence of Francis Walsingham, Andrewes was appointed prebendary of St Pancras in St Paul's,
London, in 1589, and subsequently became Master of his own college of Pembroke,
as well as a chaplain of Archbishop John
Whitgift. From 1589 to 1609 he was prebendary of Southwell. On 4 March 1590, as a chaplain of Queen Elizabeth I, he preached before
her an outspoken sermon and, in October that year, gave his introductory
lecture at St Paul's, undertaking to comment on the first four chapters of the Book
of Genesis. These were later compiled as The Orphan Lectures
(1657).
Andrewes liked to move among the people, yet found time
to join a society of antiquaries, of which Walter
Raleigh, Sir
Philip Sidney, Burleigh, Arundel, the Herberts, Saville, Stow and Camden were members. Queen Elizabeth had not advanced him further on
account of his opposition to the alienation of ecclesiastical revenues. In 1598
he declined the bishoprics of Ely and
Salisbury,
because of the conditions attached. On 23 November 1600, he preached at Whitehall a controversial sermon on justification. In 1601 he was appointed dean of Westminster and
gave much attention to the school there.
During James I's reign
On the accession of James I, to
whom his somewhat pedantic style of preaching recommended him, Andrewes rose
into great favour. He assisted at James's coronation, and in 1604 took part in the Hampton
Court conference.
Andrewes' name is the first on the list of divines
appointed to compile the Authorized Version of the Bible. He headed the
"First Westminster Company" which took charge of the first books of
the Old Testament (Genesis to 2 Kings).
He acted, furthermore, as a sort of general editor for the project as well.
On 31 October 1605 his election as Bishop of Chichester was confirmed, he
was consecrated a bishop on 3 November, installed at Chichester Cathedral on 18 November[3] and made Lord High Almoner. Following the discovery of the Gunpowder
Plot Andrewes was asked to prepare a sermon to be presented
to the king in 1606 (Sermons Preached upon the V of November, in Lancelot
Andrewes, XCVI Sermons, 3rd. Edition (London,1635) pp. 889,890, 900-1008
). In this sermon Lancelot Andrewes justified the need to commemorate the
deliverance and defined the nature of celebrations. This sermon became the
foundation of celebrations which continue 400 years later.[5] In 1609 he published Tortura Torti, a learned work which grew out
of the Gunpowder Plot controversy and was written in answer to Bellarmine's Matthaeus Tortus, which attacked James I's book on the oath
of allegiance. After moving to Ely (1609),[3] he again controverted Bellarmine in the Responsio ad Apologiam.
In 1617 he accompanied James I to Scotland with a view to persuading the Scots that Episcopacy was preferable to Presbyterianism. He was made dean of the Chapel
Royal and translated to Winchester, a diocese that he administered with great success. Following his death in 1626 in Southwark, he was mourned alike by leaders in Church and state, and buried by the
high altar in St Mary Overie (now Southwark Cathedral, then in the Diocese of Winchester).
Legacy
Portrait of Bishop Andrewes
by Hollar
Two generations later, Richard
Crashaw caught up the universal sentiment, when in his lines
"Upon Bishop Andrewes' Picture before his Sermons" he exclaims:
This reverend shadow cast
that setting sun,
Whose glorious course
through our horizon run,
Left the dim face of this
dull hemisphere,
All one great eye, all
drown'd in one great teare.
Andrewes was a friend of Hugo
Grotius, and one of the foremost contemporary scholars, but is
chiefly remembered for his style of preaching. As a churchman he was typically Anglican, equally removed from the Puritan and the Roman positions. A good summary of his position is found in his First
Answer to Cardinal Perron, who had challenged James I's use of the title
"Catholic". His position in regard to the Eucharist is naturally more mature than that of the first reformers.
As to the Real Presence we are agreed; our controversy is
as to the mode of it. As to the mode we define nothing rashly, nor anxiously
investigate, any more than in the Incarnation of Christ we ask how the human is
united to the divine nature in One Person. There is a real change in the
elements—we allow ut panis iam consecratus non sit panis quem natura
formavit; sed, quem benedictio consecravit, et consecrando etiam immutavit.
(Responsio, p. 263).
Adoration is permitted, and the use of the terms
"sacrifice" and "altar" maintained as being consonant with
scripture and antiquity. Christ is "a sacrifice—so, to be slain; a
propitiatory sacrifice—so, to be eaten." (Sermons, vol. ii. p.
296).
By the same rules that the Passover was, by the same may
ours be termed a sacrifice. In rigour of speech, neither of them; for to speak
after the exact manner of divinity, there is but one only sacrifice, veri
nominis, that is Christ's death. And that sacrifice but once actually
performed at His death, but ever before represented in figure, from the
beginning; and ever since repeated in memory to the world's end. That only
absolute, all else relative to it, representative of it, operative by it ...
Hence it is that what names theirs carried, ours do the like, and the Fathers
make no scruple at it—no more need we.(Sermons, vol. ii. p. 300).
Andrewes preached regularly and submissively before King
James and his court on the anniversaries of the Gowrie
Conspiracy and the Gunpowder Plot. These sermons were used to
promulgate the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings.
His Life was written by Whyte (Edinburgh, 1896), M. Wood (New York, 1898), and Ottley
(Boston, 1894). His services to his church have been summed up thus: (1) he has
a keen sense of the proportion of the faith and maintains a clear distinction
between what is fundamental, needing ecclesiastical commands, and subsidiary,
needing only ecclesiastical guidance and suggestion; (2) as distinguished from
the earlier protesting standpoint, e.g. of the Thirty-nine Articles, he emphasized a positive and constructive statement of the Anglican
position.
His best-known work is the Manual of Private Devotions,
edited by Alexander Whyte
(1900), which has widespread appeal. Andrewes's other works occupy eight volumes
in the Library of Anglo-Catholic
Theology (1841–1854). Ninety-six of his sermons were published in
1631 by command of King Charles I.
Andrewes was considered, next to Ussher, to be the most learned churchman of his day, and enjoyed a great
reputation as an eloquent and impassioned preacher, but the stiffness and
artificiality of his style render his sermons unsuited to modern taste.
Nevertheless, there are passages of extraordinary beauty and profundity. His
doctrine was High Church,
and in his life he was humble, pious, and charitable. He continues to influence
religious thinkers to the present day, and was cited as an influence by T.
S. Eliot, among others. Eliot also borrowed, almost word for word
and without his usual acknowledgement, a passage from Andrewes' 1622 Christmas
Day sermon for the opening of his poem "The Journey of the Magi". In
his 1997 novel Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut suggested that Andrewes was "the
greatest writer in the English language," citing as proof the first few
verses of the 23rd Psalm. His translation work has also led him to appear as a
character in three plays dealing with the King
James Bible, Howard Brenton's Anne Boleyn
(2010), Jonathan Holmes' Into
Thy Hands (2011) and David Edgar's Written on the Heart (2011).
He has an academic cap named after him, known as the Bishop Andrewes cap, which is like a mortarboard but made of velvet,
floppy and has a tump or tuff instead of a tassel. This was in fact the ancient
version of the mortarboard before the top square was stiffened and the tump
replaced by a tassel and button. This cap is still used by Cambridge DDs and at
certain institutions as part of their academic
dress.
References
·
Frere,
Walter H. (1898) "Lancelot Andrewes as a Representative of Anglican
Principles: A Lecture Delivered at Holy Trinity, Chelsea, February 28,
1897" Church Historical Society, 44. London: Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge.
·
Higham,
Florence (1952) Lancelot Andrewes London: SCM Press
·
Isaacson,
Henry (1650). An Exact Narration of the Life and Death of the Late reverend
and learned Prelate, and painfull Divine Lancelot Andrewes, Late Bishop of
Winchester. Which may serve as a pattern of Piety and Charity to All Godly
Disposed Christians. London: John Stafford. (Full text transcribed by Marianne Dorman, 2005)
·
Ottley,
Robert L. (1894) Lancelot Andrewes. London: Methuen
·
Russell, Arthur T.
(1863) Memoirs of the Life and Works of Lancelot Andrewes, Lord Bishop of
Winchester. Cambridge: J. Palmer.
·
Welsby,
Paul. A. (1958). Lancelot Andrewes 1555-1626. London: Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge. (considered the foremost Andrewes biography)
·
This
article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary
of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons. Wikisource
Notes
2.
Jump up ^ Allen, Brigid (1998). "The Early History of Jesus
College, Oxford 1571 – 1603". Oxoniensia. LXIII: 116–7.
Retrieved 16 August 2010.
3.
^ Jump up to: a b c Persons:
Andrewes, Lancelot (1580 - 1609) in "CCEd, the Clergy of the Church of England
database" (Accessed online, 1 February
2014)
External
links
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Wikisource has
original works written by or about:
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Bishops:
Andrewes, Lancelot (Bishop of Chichester) in "CCEd, the Clergy of the Church of England
database" (Accessed online, 1 February 2014)
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Bishops:
Andrewes, Lancelot (Bishop of Ely) in "CCEd, the Clergy of the Church of England
database" (Accessed online, 1 February 2014)
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Bishops:
Andrewes, Lancelot (Bishop of Winchester) in "CCEd, the Clergy of the Church of England
database" (Accessed online, 1 February 2014)
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Academic offices
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Master of Pembroke
College, Cambridge
1589–1605 |
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Bishop of Chichester
1605–1609 |
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Bishop of Ely
1609–1619 |
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Bishop of Winchester
1618–1626 |
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