HOOKER, RICHARD. - Protestant theologian and jurist, b. at Heavitree, near Exeter (England) in 1554, d. at Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury, on 2 Nov. 1600. Of a poor family, he was able, with the help of the bishop of Salisbury, Jewell, to attend the University of Oxford, where in 1578 he taught Hebrew and was ordained an Anglican minister in 1581. The following year he contracted a marriage which, however, was not happy because of his wife's character.
Appointed by the archbishop of York "Master of the Temple," in that office he came into contact with his colleague Walter Travers, who however professed Calvinist doctrines: both of them preached in the same church. Travers attacked H. on many points (cf. A supplication made to the privy council by master Walter Travers). To rebut his adversary and explain his own doctrines, H. wrote the famous The laws of ecclesiastical polity. The work consists of eight books. The first four were printed in 1594; the fifth in 1597; the other three were lost, and this loss is attributed by some to H.'s widow; some drafts and notes of them nevertheless survived, which were published for the first time around the middle of the 17th century. The work was written principally against the Puritans who, in H.'s time, not wishing to remain in the State Church, kept their gaze continually fixed on Geneva and on Calvin, and claimed to purify the Anglican Church by dragging it toward the form of government and the doctrines of the Calvinists. It marked out the path that the "Caroline divines," or Caroline theologians of the 17th century, were later to follow; it is therefore no wonder that Anglicans hold H. and his work in such great esteem. This work has had many editions. The best is that of J. Keble (1836, revised in 1888 under the editorship of R. W. Church and F. Paget; of book V, ed. R. Bayne of 1922; of book VIII, ed. R. A. Honk of 1931).
Bibliography5 works
Camillo Crivelli