INGEGNO, ANDREA D'ALOGI D'ASSISI, DETTO

INGEGNO, ANDREA d'ALOGI d'ASSISI, known as. — An Umbrian painter whose personality remains not clearly defined; the reconstruction attempted by some scholars does not always seem to have very solid foundations, lacking works of certain attribution.

The catalogue of paintings assigned to A. Venturi to I. is based on documentary evidence and on Vasari’s words, who describes him as the best of Perugino’s pupils, deploring how an eye disease cut short his brilliant career. Documents record him as a painter from 1484 to 1490, when he collaborated with Perugino on the Orvieto cathedral; from 1501 to 1516 he instead held administrative positions in Assisi.

INGHILTERRA — Region, which together with Scotland and Wales constitutes the Island of Great Britain, and toponym used in a generic sense as a synonym for II. Here we deal with both the Island (Great Britain) and the United Kingdom (United Kingdom), which is formed, together with the former, by the north-eastern tip of nearby Ireland (the so-called “Northern Ireland”), along with the smaller islands (Anglesey, Wight) and archipelagos (Shetland, Orkney, Hebrides, Scottish Islands).

OUTLINE:

I. Geography

II. Civil history

III. Ecclesiastical history

IV. Literature

V. Archaeology and art

VI. School system.

I. GEOGRAPHY.

The island of Great Britain is, by surface area, the largest (224,220 sq km) in Europe and the eighth in the world (over 9 times the size of Sardinia), and stands out for its fortunate geographical position, at the centre of the continental hemisphere, interposed between Italy and the Atlantic and the North Sea — that is, between the sea and the eastern land of the most frequented ocean — and facing the outlets of the most important navigable rivers of Europe (Meuse-Rhine, Scheldt, Elbe, Seine). The well-articulated coastline, with gulfs, bays, firths and estuaries, allows the sea to penetrate so deeply into the land that no point is more than 120 km from the coast. The Solway Firth and the Cheviot Mountains separate Scotland, to the north, from England, to the south. The fragmentation of the relief into isolated groups separated by lowlands, characteristic of Great Britain, appears less pronounced than in Scotland, where long and relatively high mountain ridges (Ben Nevis, 1,343 m, in the Grampians) are separated by deep valleys (Glenmore). In England, on the other hand, while the north-western sector gives way to numerous but short mountain ranges (Pennines, Cambrians), in the south-eastern sector plains (lowlands) prevail, bounded by modest hill ranges (hills, downs), which rise on the Channel into the white chalk cliffs to which the island owes the classic name of Albion. The two sectors are delimited by a line running from the mouth of the Exe (on the Channel) through the Severn and the York plain to the mouth of the Tees, on the North Sea. The dominant character of very ancient worn-down reliefs, typical of the terrain, is related to the wealth of mineral deposits (especially iron and coal) that distinguish II.

The climate is typically maritime and temperate, with cool summers, mild winters, and modest temperature variations. The abundant humidity in every season results in frequent and copious precipitation (snow is scarce), an almost always overcast sky (fewer than 40 clear days a year on average), and dense fogs. The rivers, usually short, have a considerable flow and regular regime and constitute excellent navigation routes, extended and connected by numerous canals. The landscape stands out for the intense green of the vegetation, well preserved in the plains (meadows), much damaged in the mountains, where woodland is now reduced to small residual patches in the highest areas.

| Area in sq km | Population (1948 estimate in thousands) | Density per sq km |
|---------------|----------------------------------------|-------------------|
| England | 131,748 | 43,380 |
| Wales | 19,335 | 5,160 |
| Scotland | 78,740 | 1,348 |
| Northern Ireland | 13,566 | 49,888 |
| United Kingdom | 243,389 | 50 |
| Isle of Man | 572 | 95 |
| Channel Islands | 194 | 205 |
| Totals | 244,155 | 50,023 |

The population of the United Kingdom (50.5 million, of which 43.5 in Great Britain, 5.2 in Scotland and 1.4 in Northern Ireland), almost doubled in number over the last century, is very unevenly distributed. Four-fifths of it live in urban centres, and while in mining districts and near ports population densities are very high, the countryside is generally sparsely inhabited, except in some of the most fertile and productive areas. Overall, the density of both the United Kingdom (208 inhabitants per sq km) and Great Britain (194) is the highest in Europe when compared to regions of similar size. Of the 52 cities that have (1950) over 100,000 inhabitants, three each exceed one million (London and Birmingham in England, Glasgow in Scotland), four have over 500,000 (Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds, all in England) and 48 have over 100,000 (of which 41 in England, 3 in Scotland and 1 in Northern Ireland).

The economy of the United Kingdom has a markedly industrial and commercial character. While over two-thirds of the British population is engaged in industry, trade and transport, only a very small proportion (about 4%) is employed in agriculture.

Cereals (oats, wheat, barley) and food or industrial crops on one hand, and livestock products (sheep, cattle, horses, meat, dairy) on the other, attest to the highly advanced level of British rural activity, but without imports the metropolitan territory could satisfy domestic demand for no more than three months a year, perhaps; normally, from one-third to over two-thirds of these products are imported. Large estates and large farms prevail in agricultural holdings.

Fishing is of considerable importance, favoured both by the abundant resources of nearby seas (herring in the North Sea) and by the activity of island sailors (cod from the Newfoundland banks); forestry is insignificant.

The enormous development achieved in the United Kingdom by extractive industries and, consequently, by processing industries at the beginning of the last century is in clear relation to the abundance of resources that Britain possesses in coal (estimated at 200 billion tons) and iron ore, as well as to the fortunate location of these resources and the ease of transport in this, the only completely insular region of Europe. The coalfields are grouped around the Pennine Mountains and in Wales; production has averaged 200-250 million tons annually since 1910, of which about one-fifth is exported. As for iron, however, despite the considerable quantity of ore extracted (from 7 to 16 million tons annually), imports are necessary from abroad to supply the vast group of heavy industries (concentrated especially in Sheffield, Birmingham, and Glasgow), which, after textiles (with the cotton industry at the forefront, located essentially between Manchester and Liverpool and on the Clyde), form the basis of the British economy. Mechanical industries, widespread throughout the country, shipbuilding (Clyde), metallurgy (southern Wales), aluminum processing, chemical industries, etc., have also developed significantly. The post-war period is characterized by a rational modernization of all these activities, increasingly oriented toward the production of consumer goods that find a ready market largely within the national economy.

The needs arising from such an economic structure are met by an adequate development of trade, which benefits from an excellent banking system and, above all, from a merchant fleet that, before the Second World War, was the largest in the world (with its 18.5 million tons of tonnage, it is now surpassed by that of the U.S.A.). The United Kingdom has some of the busiest ports in Europe (London, Liverpool, Birkenhead, Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff, Newcastle, Hull, etc.), an excellent railway network (32,800 km), and an air transport system that ensures rapid connections with every part of the world. Finally, it should be noted that the United Kingdom constitutes the center of one of the largest and most populous political complexes on Earth, the British Commonwealth, distributed as follows:

| Area in millions of sq. km. | Population in millions of inhabitants |
|-----------------------------|---------------------------------------|
| Africa | 9.7 |
| Total | 28.9 | 120.8 |

The United Kingdom is a constitutional hereditary monarchy governed by a democratic government with a bicameral legislature (House of Lords, partly elective, and House of Commons). Distinct institutions exist for Northern Ireland (with its own Parliament and government), the Isle of Man (572 sq. km. and 51,000 inhabitants), and the Channel Islands (194 sq. km., 95,000 inhabitants). In Europe, Gibraltar and Malta (321 sq. km. with 280,000 inhabitants) depend on the United Kingdom. The capital of the United Kingdom is London, whose metropolitan district has 8.3 million inhabitants, of which 3.3 million constitute the so-called County of London, with the remainder forming the Outer Ring.

II. CIVIL HISTORY

I. MEDIEVAL HISTORY

The abandonment of the island by the Romans marked the beginning of the Teutonic invasions (Jutes, Angles, and Saxons). The Celtic populations withdrew into the western provinces and partly emigrated to Armorica. The Saxon tribes organized themselves into kingdoms: seven (the Heptarchy) in the 7th century, reduced to three in the 8th; and finally unified in the 9th century under the supremacy of Wessex. But already in the second half of the 8th century, the invasions of the Danes had begun. King Alfred of the Saxons halted their advance, ceding them the north-eastern territories but forcing them to recognize the sovereignty of Wessex. At the beginning of the 11th century, other Danish invaders penetrated the island, and the conquest was completed by Canute (1016-35). After his death, the throne returned to the Saxons with Edward the Confessor (1042-66), who, educated in Normandy, populated the higher ranks with Norman elements. In 1066, the Saxon Harold was elected king, but the Duke of Normandy, William, declared him a usurper and, landing in England, defeated the Saxons at Hastings, where Harold fell on the field. William succeeded in consolidating his conquest: although elements of feudalism had existed before the arrival of the Normans, it was only then that it became a political system, but William knew how to found a strong monarchy, limiting the power of the great feudal lords. At the death of his successor Henry I, the throne, after a period of anarchy, passed to the Angevin house of the Plantagenets with Henry II (1154-89). He further strengthened royal power, increasing the authority of the curia regis and establishing itinerant judges, who replaced private justice with royal justice in local courts. From this system arose the formation of the common law, in which various indigenous customs were fused; and for two centuries and more, the essential theme of English politics was the search for a balance between royal power and the rights of the lay and ecclesiastical aristocracy. In 1215, the barons imposed the Magna Carta on John Lackland, which at the time merely established the feudal concept of limiting monarchical absolutism but foreshadowed broader aspirations that became increasingly evident in subsequent revisions. A first hint of these developments occurred under Edward I (1272-1307), when representatives of the communities who later formed the House of Commons (lesser nobility and bourgeoisie) were also summoned—but only to decide on financial requests from the Crown. During these years, the conquest of Wales unified southern England, while from 1314 Scotland declared its independence.

In 1328, Edward III (1327-77), claiming the crown of France, initiated the Hundred Years' War. Despite their military victories, the English ultimately had to abandon France, retaining only Calais from 1453 onward. This failure later had fortunate consequences for England because, by forcing it to renounce territorial expansion, it oriented it toward a policy of maritime power; but the immediate effect was the disastrous civil war of the Two Roses, provoked by the rivalry between the houses of Lancaster and York. After a dark period of violence and usurpations, Henry Tudor, related to the Lancastrians, married Elizabeth of York, reconciling the factions and initiating a new dynasty.

England — 1) State boundaries; 2) ecclesiastical district boundaries; 3) railways.

In 1714, GEORGE I ascended the throne of Hanover. The mediocrity of the first sovereigns of the new dynasty favoured the transformation of the cabinet, hitherto composed of the king’s mere counsellors, into a true ministry answerable to Parliament, and one of its members, ROBERT WALPOLE, in effect assumed the functions of prime minister. Walpole adopted a policy of retrenchment, maintaining good relations with France and, during twenty years of peace, consolidated the dynasty and enriched the country.

Yet this enrichment gave rise to new expansionist ambitions. In 1739 England declared war on Spain and soon afterwards took part in the War of the Austrian Succession alongside Austria. After the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), which compelled the parties to restore their conquests, the English continued the struggle in India, defeating the French and preparing the foundation of a new empire. The increased power also led England to ally in 1756 with Frederick II of Prussia, which provoked France’s alliance with Austria. In the Seven Years’ War, the English minister WILLIAM PITT treated operations in Europe as a diversion and gave the greatest impetus to the colonial war, which, after the conclusion of the Bourbon Family Compact, extended even to Spanish dominions. The French reoccupied Minorca, but their fleets were shattered by the English. By the Peace of Paris (1763), France restored Minorca, ceded Canada, nearly all her Indian possessions, part of the Antilles and Senegal. Thus, by fighting or financing allies, England had successively overthrown Dutch and Spanish power, eliminated French hegemony and balanced Habsburg supremacy on the Continent.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, the great economic revolution produced by the introduction of machinery into factories took shape. This occurred in England before elsewhere, because the imbalance between the working population and the demand for goods was more pronounced there, and this precedence enabled it to triumph in the industrial rivalry among nations. Yet this victory gave rise to bitter social struggles. Workers, who saw in machinery a major cause of unemployment and in the employment of women and children a device to keep wages low, united in the first associations. Their weapon was the strike, which often flared into insurrectionary movements. The government intervened by authorising employers’ resistance leagues and even treating workers’ unions and agitation as political crimes. Industrialists promoted welfare schemes for workers, but the method was the philanthropic optimism of the time, and it was only in the following century that major social insurance laws would be enacted.

III. CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

The first period of the reign of GEORGE III (1760–1820) marked a halt in England’s fortunes. The revolt of the American colonies drew France and Spain into the conflict, ensuring victory for the insurgents. By the Peace of Versailles (1783), England recognised their independence, restored Senegal to France and Florida to Spain, but retained Canada. The French Revolution at first aroused sympathy among England’s more liberal citizens and was not unwelcome to politicians, since internal strife could only weaken the traditional adversary; but when the Convention revived the old hegemonic programme of the Bourbon monarchy and occupied Belgium, England intervened, and from that moment became the tireless organiser of coalitions against the French Republic and against the Napoleonic Empire. The British fleet broke off the Egyptian expedition with the victory of Aboukir (1798) and definitively secured command of the sea with that of Trafalgar (1805). Napoleon’s Continental System failed to break British resolve; though it seriously damaged their commerce, it inflicted no lesser harm on the nations of the Empire. The resistance that Spanish insurgents, with the aid of Wellington’s troops, opposed to the French marked the first decline of Napoleonic fortunes, which collapsed in the defeat inflicted upon him at Waterloo. At the Congress of Vienna, CASTLEREAGH’s support for TALLEYRAND preserved the continental balance, preventing further Russian expansion and securing Europe several decades of peace. As for the colonies, England would not even allow them to be discussed, and thus retained all the acquisitions made in the preceding twenty years.

After 1815, the predominance of the Conservatives, together with the repression of workers’ movements and the rise in the cost of living caused by the protective laws of the corn interest, provoked the spread of socialist ideas and popular agitation against the parliamentary privileges of the landed aristocracy; until ministers CANNING and PEEL initiated a new policy of reforms. In 1832 the franchise was enlarged, and in 1846 the free-trade campaign promoted by RICHARD COBDEN triumphed.

In 1837, VICTORIA ascended the throne. Her reign represented a vast increase in England’s wealth and power. In foreign relations, English rulers, whether Conservative or Liberal, consistently opposed any attempt to disturb the balance of power in Europe. They supported Austria to prevent a revival of French imperialism; they fought, even with arms, Russia’s Mediterranean expansionist aspirations. In the movements and wars of the Italian Risorgimento they remained indifferent and hostile so long as they feared the formation of small States gravitating within France’s orbit; but when, against Paris’s wishes, the prospect of a single kingdom emerged—whose extended coastline would make English friendship necessary—they gave substantial aid to the unification movement. Subsequently they backed the Triple Alliance against France and Russia. In the colonial sphere, the Victorian era saw the completion of the conquest of India, which became a colony in 1858 and an empire in 1877; Aden and New Zealand were acquired, Natal was annexed to the Cape Colony, and China was compelled to open its ports and cede Hong Kong. Yet alongside these territorial gains, a profound transformation of the colonial system took place: Canada in 1867 and Australia in 1900 became autonomous federal States under British sovereignty (Dominions), and this transformation later extended to most of England’s colonies.

At home, the electoral franchise was further enlarged in 1867 and 1884 (universal suffrage was not achieved until 1918). For many years Conservatives and Liberals alternated in power; but GLADSTONE’s proposal to grant Ireland home rule split the Liberals and led to the formation of the Unionist Party, led by JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, with an imperialist and protectionist programme. In opposition arose the Labour Party, the political expression of the Trade Unions. In 1906 Liberals and Labour won a great electoral victory. In 1911 laws were passed limiting the authority of the Upper House; from 1911 to 1914 a series of measures in favour of workers were enacted.

Until the death of Victoria (in 1901 Edward VII ascended the throne, followed by George V in 1910), England had abstained from any commitments with other powers; but when the hegemonic ambitions of Germany became apparent, and that nation began an arms race—including naval—and contested all the world’s markets with British goods, London concluded agreements with France and Russia, accelerated shipbuilding, and reorganized its army. In 1914 the German illusion of a neutral England was quickly dispelled. Intervention, fatally dictated by the traditional policy of opposing any continental hegemony, was hastened by the violation of Belgian neutrality, which enabled England to justify the defense of its interests with strong legal and moral grounds. At the peace conference in Versailles, the English representative Lloyd George, in agreement with Clemenceau, after accepting Wilson’s principles in theory, succeeded in practice in nullifying them. Thus England secured new extensive colonial acquisitions; but the absurd attempt to destroy Germany politically and economically, and the treatment meted out to Italy—which, in disregard of the treaties concluded, was treated more as an enemy than as an ally—were among the causes, not the only ones but certainly not the least important, that precipitated the two nations into the Fascist and Nazi adventure. In the interval between the two world wars, the British economy, after a period of severe industrial crisis, recovered brilliantly between 1931 and 1935. Yet four years later the new conflict broke out.

The Anglo-American victory did not resolve England’s essential political problems but aggravated them in many respects. Already in 1931, while Ireland gained full independence, the statute of the Commonwealth was modified: the British Parliament no longer had the right to legislate for the Dominions, and the prime ministers of the member states were no longer dependent on the English cabinet but directly on the sovereign. India is now no longer an empire but an independent republic within the Commonwealth like the others. And while the United States have stripped England of world supremacy in the economic, political, and military spheres, England must confront the difficult problem of reconciling its interests and duties as head of a community of states scattered across all continents with its interests and duties as a member of the European community, which can no longer be considered, as in the past, “near the continent but not part of it.”

In the parish, and monastic life retained a rigidly hermetic type without Benedictine influences. From the island, St Columba, in the mid-6th century, brought to Scotland the rites and monastic ideals of Ireland. At the end of the same century Gregory the Great sent to England a mission led by the Benedictine abbot Augustine, who succeeded in converting the population of Kent. And since London did not then welcome the Catholic missionaries, the seat of the restored Church was established at Canterbury, where it remained definitively. Christianity spread to Northumbria (7th century) when Bishop Paulinus converted King Edwin; it was suppressed when that kingdom was absorbed by Mercia, but soon afterward a mission from the Scottish monastery of Iona, led by Aidan, evangelized Northumbria, Mercia, and Essex anew. When Augustine summoned the Celtic bishops and asked them to celebrate Easter on the same date as the other Catholics, to administer Baptism according to the Roman rite, and to preach the faith to the Anglo-Saxon pagans (which the Celts had always refused to do, in hatred of the invaders), the bishops refused. For several years they maintained their intransigence, until Oswiu, king of Northumbria, convened a synod at the monastery of Whitby, where St Cuthbert and most of the Celtic prelates adhered to the Roman Church. From the moment of this unification, the Church offered the country a model of administrative reconstruction of the state and of social reorganization, rapidly eliminating the tribal regime. The king derived prestige from ecclesiastical recognition, while bishops and abbots became his advisors in matters of government. The definitive organization of the ecclesiastical hierarchy was the work of Gregory of Tarso and Abbot Adrian. With Gregory, archbishop of Canterbury from 669 to 690, the parochial system was perfected, and the bishops, with territorial jurisdiction, were placed under the primacy of Canterbury, as were the monks. Gregory and Adrian introduced Mediterranean civilization to England, bringing to Canterbury copies of Greek and Latin volumes and promoting the study of those languages. And the new culture spread through the island, producing the school of Bede and Jarrow or founding the library of York where Egbert, a pupil of Bede, was master to Alcuin. Thus preserved in England, this culture was able to return to the continent in the time of Charlemagne. In the 10th century the corruption of the monasteries provoked in England a reforming action, a reflection of the Cluniac movement. In this work of renewal distinguished themselves abbots and bishops, among whom were Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester, and above all St Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury, who for a long time was also the most authoritative advisor to the Crown.

The new Danish invasion did not harm the Church, because Canute suppressed paganism, benefited religious institutions, and allowed Anglo-Saxon prelates to retain their positions. Instead, a new influx of Latin elements began at the start of the 11th century. The French reform movement promoted by certain monasteries (such as that of Bec, whose priors were Lanfranc and Anselm) spread to England, while Edward the Confessor introduced a good number of Normans into the higher ecclesiastical hierarchies: Robert of Jumièges was appointed by him as primate of England. These substitutions were completed by the Norman conquest. But the effects of this conquest were not limited to a change of personnel. In England, as elsewhere, there was widespread complaint about a deep decline in the moral and intellectual standards of the clergy, who, through their ignorance and bad conduct, were no longer respected. Simony was rampant in episcopal elections. The reforming party, led by Hildebrand, which directed the policy of the Holy See from Rome, supported William’s claims because the Church had long been on excellent terms with the duchies of Normandy, and because the Saxon faction of the Earl of Wessex, Godwin—father of Harold—had illegally conferred the primacy upon Stigand, who had also maintained relations with the antipope. William committed himself to implementing the reform of the English Church according to the principles of Hildebrand and thus received for his expedition the papal blessing and the banner of the Holy See. In 1070, Lanfranc was appointed archbishop of Canterbury. When the archbishop of York contested his primacy, the matter was referred to the Pope, who deferred it to an English council. At Windsor in 1072, Lanfranc’s thesis was accepted, and he thus gained the necessary authority to carry out the reforming work. In a series of councils, the legislative independence of the Church was gradually affirmed: the king continued to convene and preside over the meetings, but from then on ecclesiastical matters were discussed only by clerics, and the measures approved became laws of the Church. As a consequence, in 1076, the ecclesiastical courts were separated from the secular ones: violators of canon law were subjected to episcopal sanctions, and ecclesiastical decrees were assured the support of temporal authorities. Between 1070 and 1076, other measures were approved: the monastic system was improved, cathedral chapters were reformed, and in many places regular clergy replaced canons. Thus, the tendency to subject the English Church to the Roman Curia, freeing it from any state interference, was taking shape. However, regarding the two fundamental principles of the reforming party—the celibacy of the clergy and the prohibition of lay investiture—while the papal decree forbidding the marriage of priests was accepted with the reservation that marriages previously contracted by parish priests were to be considered valid (since in the past such a prohibition had not been extended), William courteously but firmly refused to render feudal homage to the Pope. As for investitures, Lanfranc, while acknowledging the papal right to elect bishops, maintained that the English Crown possessed a special privilege in such appointments and sought its confirmation, which Gregory VII granted, albeit limited to William’s lifetime. Thus, the problem was deferred but not resolved. In conclusion, while it was recognized that every bishop should seek the pallium of recognition and that the Pope could invalidate an election, and even in administrative matters recourse was had to the Holy See and its opinion was held in high regard, the king maintained unchanged three of his decisions: that no powerful individual in England could be recognized nor letters received without the sovereign’s consent; that the acts of councils were not binding without royal sanction; and that no subject could be summoned in defiance of the king’s will. This policy of compromise yielded good results at the time thanks to Lanfranc’s conciliatory spirit and William’s energy, but it was the first origin of the religious struggles that agitated England for centuries.

William Rufus, the son of William, abused the powers inherited from his father in his dealings with the Church. When Lanfranc died (1089), he neglected to replace him and for five years appropriated the revenues of the see of Canterbury. Only when, gravely ill and believing himself at death’s door, he yielded to the pressure of prelates and barons and elected Anselm, prior of Bec—who vainly sought to refuse the appointment. Once recovered, William immediately found himself in bitter conflict with the prelate, a man of saintly modesty but inflexible firmness in defending the rights of the Church. When Anselm recognized Pope Urban II without the king’s consent, he was forced to leave England and take refuge in France, where he remained until the sovereign’s death. Since William had once again left the see of Canterbury vacant, Henry I, upon ascending the throne, granted a charter in which he pledged, among other things, never to leave ecclesiastical benefices vacant. Anselm was therefore recalled and resumed possession of his see. After long debates, the question of investitures was resolved by mutual agreement in 1106. The king recognized the Pope’s right to invest bishops with the crosier and ring, but the bishop so invested was required to render him homage as his feudal overlord. The choice of the person remained tacitly with the sovereign.

In the struggle that followed the death of HENRY I between the partisans of his daughter MATILDE and those of STEPHEN OF BLOIS, the Church exercised a beneficent arbitral function: the intervention of THEOBALD, archbishop of Canterbury, led to an agreement whereby STEPHEN adopted HENRY, MATILDE’s son, and declared him his heir. But with HENRY II another and more serious conflict broke out between royal power and the Church. To the new king, THEOBALD recommended one of his clerics, THOMAS BECKET, who was appointed chancellor and by his ability won the esteem and friendship of the sovereign. On the death of THEOBALD, HENRY II appointed him archbishop of Canterbury. Now the perfect minister became a perfect religious, who no longer considered himself a royal official but the representative of the Church and the Pope, ready to sacrifice every worldly good to his duties as prelate. The jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts, which the agreements stipulated by LANFRANC had limited to cases of conscience, had over time been extended, because accused persons preferred to submit to ecclesiastical jurisdiction, which did not include among its penalties either mutilation or death. Moreover, the Holy See claimed the right to call cases to Rome. HENRY demanded that a cleric found guilty be degraded and handed over to the secular arm. THOMAS opposed this, declaring that an individual could not be punished twice for the same crime. The king convened a council at Clarendon, where THOMAS was forced, under threat of death, to sign the Constitutions that upheld the royal thesis. Deeming himself not bound by a consent extorted by force, he took refuge at Vézelay, while ALEXANDER III declared him released from his engagement. Fearing that the Pope would launch an interdict, HENRY II met THOMAS in France and was reconciled with him. As soon as he arrived in England, THOMAS received papal letters deposing the bishops who had betrayed him. This act aroused the king’s anger, who considered violated the prohibition against corresponding with Rome without royal consent; and some knights, convinced they were carrying out a tacit order of the king, went to Canterbury, where they demanded that THOMAS absolve the bishops, and when he refused, they killed him.

The assassination provoked a violent reaction in England and at Rome. HENRY placated the Pope’s indignation by revoking the Constitutions of Clarendon and swearing to restore to Canterbury the goods he had confiscated. But since the crime had provoked a rebellion, in which the king’s wife and children also took part, he hurried to England, where, humbling himself before the martyr’s tomb, he made a public act of penitence. In the end the rebels yielded, and the question of the ecclesiastical courts was settled by reserving to the secular courts the crimes of treason. At the Council of Northampton (1176) the king renounced many of his claims, but the right of patronage over ecclesiastical benefices, elsewhere subject to canon law, remained here within the competence of royal authority.

The crusading movement did not in England, as in other countries, involve mass participation, because the Roman and Mediterranean civilization of which it was an expression had been accepted only partially and rather superficially by the English mentality. There were only individual departures, and among these the most famous was that of King RICHARD THE LIONHEART. During his absence the state was governed by the archbishop of Canterbury HUBERT WALTER, who ruled with great wisdom, preferring to rely on the middle classes of the towns and countryside. With JOHN SANS-TERRE a new dispute disturbed relations between the Crown and the Church. The right to elect the archbishop of Canterbury was contested among the monks of that abbey, the bishops, and the king. INNOCENT III, to whom the decision was referred, adopted a fourth course, nominating his own candidate, STEPHEN LANGTON, who had long resided in Rome. JOHN refused to recognize him. The Pope launched an interdict and a year later excommunicated the king and declared him deposed. JOHN had to yield, accept LANGTON, and recognize himself as a vassal of the Church. The archbishop was later the organizer of the barons’ movement that imposed upon the king the promulgation of the MAGNA CHARTA.

A new spirit entered the religious world with the missions of the mendicant orders. While parish priests were generally incapable of preaching, prelates were absorbed in their work as state officials, and monks were despised for their corruption, the Dominicans and above all the Franciscans, as those who did not withdraw to guard their faith but boldly confronted the world to purify and spread it, found a very wide following among the common people and poor students. Champions of a cultural rebirth, the Franciscans gave new life to the University of Oxford, flourishing under the guidance of Bishop ROBERT GROSSETESTE, who had among his collaborators ADAM OF MARSH and ROGER BACON (later the order produced for scholasticism JOHN DUNS SCOTUS and WILLIAM OF OCKHAM). Even the Franciscans and Dominicans gradually drifted away from the Rule, and in the fourteenth century they became two wealthy and powerful corporations, hated by the secular clergy as by the followers of WYCLIF, who saw in these friars their most formidable rivals. Until the end of the century they were still sustained by popular sympathy, but later the Protestant Reformation found them without friends.

II. FROM THE “REFORM” TO THE CATHOLIC RECOVERY

Henry III was lavish in his favours to the Church, but in England a feeling of hostility toward Rome began to spread, on account of the tithes demanded during the struggle with Frederick II and especially because of the ever-growing extension given by the Holy See to the use of provisors (Italian abbots to whom English benefices not yet vacant were assigned, and who, when such benefices fell vacant, continued to govern them through vicars and drew their revenues without leaving Italy). New clashes occurred between Crown and papacy in 1296, when Boniface VIII, with the bull *Clericis laicos*, forbade the clergy to pay taxes without papal consent. While Edward I ordered the sequestration of Church property, a split occurred within the English clergy: the regulars supported Rome, while the seculars of the parishes sided with the King. The dispute was settled, but it damaged the prestige of the Church. Even more severe blows were suffered by the Church in the course of the fourteenth century. As the formation of Parliament was taking shape, here, unlike what happened in the French *États Généraux*, no separate estate of the clergy was constituted. Some abbots and bishops sat in the Upper House, but as barons, and the great majority of secular and regular ecclesiastics remained outside Parliament, decisions regarding tithes being taken in the Convocations of Canterbury and York. Thus, in time, the lower clergy was unrepresented in the Commons. In this way the Church could more easily preserve its wealth and privileges, but it became isolated from the political life of the country and was more exposed to attacks when Protestantism began to spread. To restore its ancient prestige radical reforms would have been necessary, but the papacy was too poorly informed of its needs, and the direct dependence of monks on the Pope limited the freedom of action of the bishops. On the other hand, the high prelates were statesmen far more useful to the king than to the Church. This crisis unfortunately coincided with the Avignon papacy and the Hundred Years’ War. Among the English, the residence of the Holy See in France and its close ties with their enemy provoked a nationalistic reaction, and to many of them obedience to a universal authority began to appear irreconcilable with the particular interests of the country. An expression of this hostility was the Statute of Provisors, which forbade English subjects, and especially the clergy, to pay taxes or revenues of benefices outside the realm. Moreover, since the dispute over ecclesiastical courts kept resurfacing, in 1353 Edward III promulgated the Statute of Praemunire, which equated the recourse of an English subject to a foreign jurisdiction or his acceptance of it with treason.

The wretched conditions of the lower clergy explain the initial success of John Wyclif, with his preaching for a return to evangelical poverty. When he fell into heresy by denying Transubstantiation and the real presence in the Eucharist, and, having been condemned, repudiated the authority of the Pope, the King intervened and forced the masters of Oxford to disavow him. At first the knights and the Commons, who viewed the wealth of the Church with hostile eyes, disapproved of the King’s conduct, but after the Peasants’ Revolt, when the ruling classes realized that Wyclif’s followers threatened property no less than orthodoxy, Parliament passed the Statute *De haeretico comburendo* (1401), which was enforced with merciless rigour. It should be noted that the discontented, in this century and the next, intended to correct what they saw as errors in the Church but did not think of leaving II. For a long time the great majority of the English remained faithful to the Catholic faith.

Henry VIII began his reign by continuing the repression of heretics, and his refutation of Luther’s theses earned him from the Pope the title of *Defensor Fidei*. But after Rome refused to grant him a divorce from Catherine of Aragon and he had married Anne Boleyn anyway, he was excommunicated by the Pope. He then had Parliament pass the Act of Supremacy, which made the king the only supreme head of the English Church. Few prelates refused to adhere to the schism: among them was St. FISHER, JOHN (v.), who, like St. More (v.), preferred the scaffold to abjuration. If the ease with which the break with Rome was accepted can be attributed to that national passion which had already arisen in the fourteenth century, the attribution of supreme religious authority to the sovereign cannot be explained except by less objective motives, such as the desire for peace, indifference, and fear. It must also be considered that the lower clergy, which was extremely poor, did not object to becoming a body of state officials. Only the monks refused to swear the oath; and this allowed the government to decree the desired confiscation of monastic property, while a large number of friars were put to death. And the sale of these properties created a class of landowners who supported the king’s policy, because their new property depended on II. Having satisfied his personal ambition, Henry VIII believed he could preserve an English Catholicism that differed from the Roman only in being governed by the king instead of the pope, and in the Six Articles of the Statute of 1539 he confirmed the principal dogmas of the Church and prescribed clerical celibacy. He admitted no Protestant deviation and fought and put to death heretics without mercy. After Henry’s death, during the brief reign of Edward VI (1547–53) and the regency of the Duke of Somerset, Protestantism spread further and succeeded in having the laws against heretics repealed, the marriage of priests legalized, and the *Prayer Book* of the schismatic archbishop Cranmer published; this book was made obligatory for all English churches by a parliamentary “Act of Uniformity.”

The accession to the throne of Mary (1553), daughter of Henry VIII’s first wife, was greeted by Catholics as a liberation, for her ardent faith and unwavering fidelity to the Church were well known. At first she enjoyed the favour of the majority, weary of a regime that, under the pretext of correcting ecclesiastical rites, alternated confiscations and capital executions. Even her first measures, to restore the Mass and expel married priests, met with no obstacles. But Mary’s gravest error was her marriage to Philip II, king of Spain, which the Catholic bishop Gardiner vainly advised against. Although the marriage contract contained clauses guaranteeing the independence of English policy, the union aroused popular discontent and suspicion. Nevertheless, when Philip came to London he was well received; and the papal legate, Cardinal Pole, sent to consecrate the return of the Church to obedience to the Pope, was greeted with festive acclaim, also because the Pope had promised the purchasers of Church property that they would retain possession of II. But this Catholic restoration had no lasting effects, because in England there was lacking that revival of religious feeling which elsewhere ensured the success of the Counter-Reformation. And when Philip returned to Spain, Mary, left alone, against the advice even of the Spaniards who counselled prudence, reinstated the laws against heretics and began a merciless and bloody repression. Hundreds of Protestants were burned at the stake, and since many of them were common people, hatred of the Queen and the Spaniards spread among the masses, becoming more violent when England, in violation of the commitments made at the time of the marriage, was dragged by Philip II into the war against France and lost Calais. In her last days Mary found herself abandoned by all, for even Paul IV, then at odds with Spain, had taken sides against her.

With Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, there was a partial return to his policies. In 1559 Parliament approved the Act of Supremacy, which rejected the authority of the Pope (though the Queen refused to accept the title of Supreme Head of the Church), and the Act of Uniformity, which declared the *Prayer Book* the only legal form of worship. Elizabeth concerned herself with religion only insofar as it could serve as an instrument or obstacle to monarchical power. She therefore pursued a middle course, preventing attempts by the Lords to introduce amendments in a Catholic sense, ignoring the deliberations of the Canterbury Convocation which reaffirmed papal supremacy and Catholic doctrine, but making no concessions to Lutheranism. The Anglican confession, whose principles were set forth in the 39 Articles of 1563, retained the medieval organization, excluding any lay representation in ecclesiastical assemblies, but denied the Church’s freedom and supremacy over the State, whether the Church’s authority was founded, as in Rome, on the direct derivation of the priesthood from God, or drew its legitimacy from a religious democracy, according to the theories of Geneva.

In Scotland, French military occupation and the government of Mary of Guise, regent for the young Mary Stuart, who was married to the Dauphin of France, made the Catholic party unpopular, while the Protestants, led by John Knox, were able to pose as champions of national independence. The support of English arms, the death of Mary of Guise, and the evacuation of French troops allowed the Calvinists to prevail. But when Mary Stuart returned to Scotland, the discontent caused by the demagogic intransigence of the Presbyterians might have allowed her to win her battle against Knox, had she known, like Elizabeth, how to subordinate her personal passions to political interests. Her imprudence, however, ensured the triumph of the Presbyterians.

In Ireland, the violent imposition of Anglicanism, while failing to destroy Catholicism, dug an unbridgeable chasm between the Irish and the English. Monasteries, the only centers of education and culture, were suppressed without being replaced by schools and universities; ritual texts (the Bible and *Prayer Book*) were imposed in English. The island was invaded by British adventurers who treated it as a conquered land and a colony to be exploited, while they considered themselves as holders of a supremacy.

A bloody resumption of persecutions followed: even the provincial superior of the English Jesuits, Garnet, was executed on the unproven charge of having advised the Gunpowder Plot. Catholics were also deprived of civil rights, declared incapable of practicing law and medicine, etc.

Within the English Church, three branches now distinguished themselves: the High Church, which accepted the Tudor Ritual; the Presbyterians, who remained within the Anglican Church to reform it; and the Independents, who equally rejected the Anglican episcopate and the Presbyterian synod and wanted neither a State Church nor one of the English or Scottish type. James opposed both Presbyterians and Independents, many of whom emigrated to Holland and some to America.

Charles I relied on the High Church but did not conceal his sympathies for Catholics, sympathies strengthened by the Catholic queen Henrietta. The repressive laws were no longer enforced, and many, especially among the upper classes, returned to the religion of their fathers. But the political and religious struggles, in which the intervention of the Scottish Presbyterians and the revolt of the Independent Puritans under O. Cromwell led to the confrontation of the latter and the martyrdom of the King, had disastrous consequences for the Catholics who had loyally supported him throughout the civil war. Once Protector, Cromwell divided ecclesiastical benefices among Presbyterians and Independents, managing to reconcile the various Puritan sects; he allowed Anglicans to use the *Prayer Book* even if he did not officially permit it; he even showed a certain practical tolerance toward Catholics. But in Ireland he adopted the cruelest methods of repression: he could break its resistance, but not its faith. By expropriating Catholic landowners and completing the destruction of the lay nobility, he ensured that the Irish people had no leaders other than the persecuted priests, and inflamed their religious passion and national hatred all the more.

With the return of the Stuarts, Parliament reestablished the supremacy of the High Church, ordering the persecution of dissenters (Clarendon Code, 1661) and reinstating the obligation of the *Prayer Book* (Act of Uniformity, 1662). Charles II wished to favor Catholics, but in the early years he could not overcome Parliament’s resistance, which was equally hostile to Catholics and Puritans. After 1667, when the so-called “Cabal” ministry governed, Charles decided to seek the help of France: in 1670 the Treaty of Dover was concluded, by which the two powers agreed on the partition of the Netherlands and, in a secret article, the restoration of Catholicism in England. Once again an English sovereign made the mistake of seeking a solution to the religious problem through agreements with foreigners, so that British public opinion would never approve; without considering that Gallican “nationalism” was opposed even by the Holy See. Parliament’s reaction forced the King to break the alliance and accept in 1673 the Test Act, which excluded Catholics from all offices. In 1678 the anti-Catholics engineered the infamous plot of the Popish Plot of Titus Oates, which led other innocents to the scaffold. On his deathbed Charles II openly professed his Catholic faith.

With James II the last attempt at Catholic restoration took place. After suppressing a Puritan revolt, the King freed Catholics from the prohibitions of the Test Act, giving them civil and military positions and forming an army reinforced by contingents brought from Ireland. This policy was not entirely approved even by Catholics, who, realizing that to regain supremacy it would be necessary to resort to foreign arms and civil war, and that in any case England would suffer the hegemony of Louis XIV, which was beginning to worry even the Holy See, limited their aspirations to the achievement of full religious tolerance. But although the repercussions of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes made James’s actions increasingly difficult and dangerous, he persisted tenaciously, attacking the High Church, from which he took many benefices to bestow upon Catholics. In the struggle between the King and the Anglican Church both

The parties sought the support of the dissenters: one by defending their religious freedom and civil equality with a declaration of indulgence, the other by granting a tolerance sanctioned by a parliamentary decree. The dissenters, both because of their traditional preference for parliamentary power over royal power and out of fear of Catholic despotism, sided with the Church. When, after the birth of the king’s son, the monarch compelled the clergy to read the “Declaration of Indulgence” from the pulpits and had some bishops who protested tried for sedition, the jury acquitted them, and political leaders provoked the intervention of William of Orange. William III established a regime of relative tolerance, and while he confirmed the decrees excluding dissenters from state offices, he granted them freedom of worship, though he failed in his attempt to bring the more moderate elements back into the Anglican Church. The Catholics could achieve nothing similar, because their cause for a long time was identified with that of the Jacobite pretenders, who on several occasions preferred to renounce success rather than adhere to Anglicanism. In practice, however, English Catholics enjoyed a certain freedom of worship, and penal laws were not enforced against them except when Jacobite uprisings seemed more threatening. Ireland, on the other hand, continued to be ravaged, its industrial and commercial activities ruined, and thousands of its citizens forced to emigrate across the Atlantic.

III. THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL

In the second half of the eighteenth century, there began to manifest the deep spiritual unease of all those who, though repelled by the disintegrating individualism and the often hypocritical austerity of Puritanism, found no satisfaction for their religious aspirations in the cold rationalism of the Anglican Church, the state Church, the Church of an exclusively aristocratic class, which, with its political privileges and educational monopoly, was increasingly losing touch with the people. Attempts to reform Anglicanism from within had met with no success, as they had encountered an insurmountable barrier of vested interests. The movement of John Wesley, which at the outset had not aimed at schism, had ultimately created a new dissenting sect, the Methodists, who, seeing their most formidable rivals in the Catholics, became the most tenacious opponents of their emancipation.

The signal for a Catholic revival came from Ireland. After the internal struggles that bloodied the island in 1798, in 1800 its union with England was proclaimed. In approving this decree, the right of Catholics to elect and be elected to the English Parliament had been promised to the Irish; but the personal opposition of George III annulled the promise. This provoked the formation of a League of Irish Catholics, presided over by Daniel O’Connell. In England, too, many now recognized the justice of their cause, for the union had deprived the Irish of any representation. Yet the Catholics had determined opponents in the London cabinet, the most powerful of whom was the minister Peel. For several years, Ireland was threatened with a new civil war between the Catholic League and the Protestant Ulstermen. Finally, the minister Wellington, who was not personally hostile to Catholics, convinced the king of the necessity of averting further strife; and in 1829 the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed, restoring to Catholics all civil and political rights. The only remaining restriction was the requirement that the sovereign profess Anglicanism. In 1871, the monopoly on higher education was abolished, and universities were opened to students of any denomination.

Following the emancipation of Catholics came a strong religious revival. The Oxford Movement, which began in 1833, initially opposed Methodism and Catholicism, but many of its adherents ended by returning to the Roman Church, such as John Newman, who converted in 1845 and was made a cardinal in 1879. Another illustrious convert was Henry Manning, who was named a cardinal in 1875.

In England, the Pope reestablished the Catholic hierarchy in 1850, and in Scotland in 1878.

In 1895, Catholics were authorized by the Holy See to attend English universities. And the following year saw the issuance of Leo XIII’s bull Apostolicae curae, which definitively declared Anglican ordinations invalid (v.).

IV. LEGAL STATUS OF THE CHURCH

The state, no longer able to ignore the powerful influence that the growing Catholic population exerted on public opinion, felt the need to renew formal relations, even if not through a concordat, with the Holy See and with the highest Catholic hierarchies in England. This necessity, which became more urgent during and immediately after the First World War, led in 1914 to the sending of an extraordinary plenipotentiary minister to Rome.

In this new atmosphere, the Malines Conversations (v.) of 1921 between Cardinal Mercier and Lord Halifax became possible; although these talks were in themselves fruitless, they were significant and set a direction.

In 1927, the English Parliament passed the Catholic Relief Act. By this measure, all penal laws enacted up to that time against English Catholics were repealed, and at the same time full legal parity with other religious denominations was recognized, as well as the opportunity for Catholics to carry out their public activities under the protection of the common law applicable to all English citizens. Thus, English Catholic citizens were granted the possibility of holding the highest offices in the state legal system, such as the judiciary, legislature, and executive, with the exception of the most representative positions, for example, the Crown.

Then, in 1944, as a result of the conversion of the Minister of Education, R. A. Butler, Parliament passed the Education Act.

This measure, though not fully meeting the desires of Catholics, rewarded the strong and steadfast perseverance they had shown in bearing, with their own resources alone, the very considerable expenses necessary to maintain schools that would allow those Catholics who did not wish to pursue their studies within the national system—naturally pervaded by the Anglican spirit—to receive a sound and true education.

Through this measure, the English State guaranteed its contribution, amounting to 50%, toward the maintenance of expenses for schools controlled by Catholics.

Inge, E. This differs from the situation in Scotland, where the government covers all Scottish educational expenses.

However, by offering its support, the English government placed elementary schools under its control, not fully respecting the right of parents regarding the education to be given to their children and attempting to impose religious instruction in all schools through an "Agreed Syllabus" that was not entirely acceptable even to the Anglican Church.

Yet the pressure exerted by Catholics on English public opinion was not confined to the domestic sphere of the State; it was such that it compelled the government to regularize its diplomatic relations with the Holy See. The diplomatic representative who, with the rank of minister, represents the English nation to the Holy See, became a permanent one, and the Holy See, in turn, on 21 November 1938, sent an Apostolic Delegate to England.

Finally, as a particularly significant sign of the esteem in which the Catholic current within the English population is held in public opinion, it is worth noting not only the numerous visits made by heads of the English government to the Holy Father in recent decades—from the visit to His Holiness Pius XI by Chamberlain and Halifax, respectively Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, in 1938, to the private audience with His Holiness Pius XII, sought by a British parliamentary delegation composed of members from various parties (11 January 1949). On 3 May of the same year, there was an audience granted to Sir Stafford Cripps, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, accompanied by his wife, and the First Secretary of the British Legation to the Holy See; and, finally, on 11 May following, an audience with Princess Margaret, second daughter of George VI of Great Britain, accompanied by the representative of Italy to the Holy See.

On the occasion of the centenary of the restoration of the Hierarchy (1850–1950), English Catholics gathered around six cardinals, twelve archbishops, and forty-six bishops to commemorate the highly significant date with functions, conferences, and an exhibition that illustrated its value. Pius XII, in addition to sending a letter (16 December 1950) to the Archbishop of Westminster in which he expressed his satisfaction with the achievements: the greater esteem for Catholicism, the many churches built or restored to their original splendor, the schools and institutes opened and increasingly attended, the growth of the clergy, and the union of the flock with their shepherds—on 1 October, speaking by radio to the faithful gathered in Wembley Stadium, wished to remind them of the saints of the ancient English Church, the martyrs, and the entire host of priests and laity who kept the flickering flame of faith alive in the following period, and urged them to ever more effective work in all fields, marked by love and understanding (*L’Osservatore Romano*, 26 October and 1 November 1950).

Francesco Ercolani

V. ENGLISH MARTYRS

This term designates those English Catholics who suffered martyrdom during the persecutions unleashed under Henry VIII, Elizabeth, James I, Charles I, the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell, and Charles II, from 1535 (when the executions of J. Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and Cardinal, and of the Chancellor T. More took place) to 1681 (when the execution of O. Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, occurred). Their number is very large (even more so if those who perished in prisons are included); however, not all possess today the historical documentation necessary to prove their martyrdom, and thus not all have been inscribed in the list of those for whom the cause of beatification was promoted.

The history of this cause can be summarized as follows: a first group of 54 martyrs, led by J. Fisher and T. More—"who had died for the Catholic Faith and the Primacy of the Supreme Pontiff over the entire Church," from 1535 to 1583, and whose martyrdom had been formally depicted in fresco by Nicolò Circignani, by authority of Gregory XIII, in the church of S. Stefano al Celio, and again, with the same Pope’s permission, in the English church of the Most Holy Trinity in Rome, and then, in 1584, with papal privilege, engraved on a copper plate with an accompanying inscription—received confirmation of their cult from Leo XIII on 29 December 1886 (cf. *Acta Sanctae Sedis*, 19 [1886], pp. 347–350). Gregory XIII, indeed, between 1580 and 1585, had granted them certain privileges of public and ecclesiastical worship, particularly the use of their relics in the consecration of altars when relics of ancient martyrs could not be obtained. A second group of 9 martyrs, who suffered in the same period, likewise received confirmation of their cult from the same Pontiff on 13 May 1895 (cf. ibid., 27 [1894–1895], pp. 746–747). Benedict XV beatified Archbishop O. Plunkett on 25 May 1920 (*AAS*, 12 [1920], pp. 235–40). Pius XI beatified a further 136 on 15 December 1929 (*ibid.*, 22 [1930], pp. 38–39) and, separately, on 22 December 1929, the Jesuit J. Ogilvie, martyred in Scotland (*ibid.*, 22 [1930], pp. 40–42). The beatification process for another 116 Venerables is still ongoing.

Arranging the long series of all these martyrs according to the different periods of their martyrdom, the following numbers are recorded: 50 under Henry VIII (1535–44); 189 under Elizabeth (1570–1603); 27 under James I (1603–18); 24 under Charles I (1628–46); 2 during the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell (1651–54); 25 under Charles II (1678–81). It should be added that a further 44 were "delayed," pending further valid documentation, by the Sacred Congregation of Rites on 9 December 1886 (cf. *Acta Sanctae Sedis*, 19 [1886], pp. 460–64).

One further observation remains to be made, which is of the greatest importance: all these martyrs were condemned to death as “high traitors,” because the laws created by the persecutors, beginning with Henry VIII, imposed this infamous appellation—followed by the death penalty—upon those who denied to the king or his heirs the title and dignity of Supreme Head of the Church of England (cf. State’s Paper, 26, Henry VIII, cap. 13). This was a cunning attempt to substitute, before the people, a political motive for the religious one, to present as rebels against the authority and conspirators against the security of the State those who, in obedience to the precept of the Gospel and the voice of conscience, intended to obey God first and then the civil authority—inasmuch as the issue was not the kingdom of England or the succession to the throne, but the affirmation or denial of an unheard-of dogma of the faith: the spiritual primacy of the Supreme Pontiff over all the faithful, whatever nation they might belong to. Thus, rather than traitors, “the English martyrs—explicitly noted by Pius XI—may be defined as the Martyrs of Catholicism, indeed, more precisely, of the Catholic Church, of Romanity, of the papacy of this Church. The duel was waged between the rights of Caesar and the rights of God; and those martyrs died proclaiming the rights of Caesar, indeed professing respect for them: yet they were nobly unyielding when it was sought to subordinate those rights to the rights of God, which are identical with the rights of the Church, with the rights of the Vicar of Jesus Christ” (L’Osservatore Romano, 9–10 Dec. 1929, p. 1).

VI. ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANIZATION

At present the ecclesiastical circumscriptions consist of 6 metropolitan sees and 20 suffragan sees, distributed as follows: 1° BIRMINGHAM (29 Sept. 1850, metropolitan 28 Oct. 1911), with the suffragans: CLIFTON (29 Sept. 1850), PLYMOUTH (29 Sept. 1850), SHREWSBURY (29 Sept. 1850); 2° CARDIFF (originally Newport, 29 Sept. 1850; name changed and made metropolitan 7 Feb. 1916), with the suffragan MENEVIA (12 May 1898); 3° GLASGOW (6th cent., metropolitan 1492, vacant from 1603, restored as archbishopric 4 March 1878, metropolitan 25 May 1947), with the suffragans: MOTHERWELL (25 May 1947), PAISLEY (25 May 1947); 4° LIVERPOOL (29 Sept. 1850, metropolitan 28 Oct. 1911), with the suffragans: HEXHAM AND NEWCASTLE (the former: 678, without bishops from 861, restored 29 Sept. 1850, Newcastle added 23 May 1861); LANCASHIRE (22 Nov. 1924), LEEDS (22 Nov. 1924), MIDDLESBROUGH (20 Dec. 1878), SALFORD (29 Sept. 1850); 5° ST ANDREW AND EDINBURGH (10th cent., metropolitan 1472, vacant from 1571, restored 4 March 1878), with the suffragans: ABERNETHY (1125, vacant from 1577, restored 4 March 1878), ARGYLL AND THE ISLES (1200, vacant from 1579, restored 4 March 1878), DUNKELD (1115, vacant from 1586, restored 4 March 1878), GALLOWAY (4th cent., vacant from 1558, restored 4 March 1878); 6° WESTMINSTER (29 Sept. 1850), with the suffragans: BRENTWOOD (20 July 1917), NORTHAMPTON (29 Sept. 1850), NOTTINGHAM (29 Sept. 1850), PORTSMOUTH (19 May 1882), SOUTHWARK (29 Sept. 1850).

The foregoing list shows how, in England strictly so called, in consequence of an English law that forbade Catholic hierarchs to assume a territorial title held by an Anglican bishop, the Holy See, in re-establishing the hierarchy, had to avoid the ancient titles that existed at the time of the so-called “Reformation” and had been retained by the Anglican Church. In Scotland, on the other hand, the sees that were restored are almost all the ancient ones, suppressed during the period of the “Reformation.”

VII. CATHOLIC CULTURAL AND SOCIAL ACTIVITIES

As Catholicism came to include, alongside the few aristocratic and landed families and the mass of the working class, an ever-growing number of people from the middle classes and with positions of leadership, the need likewise grew for a Catholic press of its own, inspired by Catholic doctrine and capable of countering objections and prejudices that were slow and difficult to dispel. For wider diffusion among the faithful, the following weeklies have admirably served: The Universe, founded in 1860; The Catholic Times (1867); and The Catholic Herald (1884). To these may be linked the activity of the Catholic Trust Society, begun in 1884, which, well equipped, issues thousands upon thousands of booklets on doctrine, controversy, history, devotion, and apologetics (about two million booklets a year). For more learned readers, the periodical press is numerous: Dublin Review, a quarterly, Anglo-Irish (1836); The Tablet, a weekly (1840); The Month, founded in 1864, edited by the Jesuits; The Downside Review (1882), edited by the Benedictines; Blackfriars (1931), edited by the Dominicans; The Clergy Review (1931), edited by the secular clergy.

Eminent Catholics have not been lacking in the literary field, in addition to Cardinals Newman and Wiseman; for example: J. Lingard, J. E. E. D. Acton, G. K. Chesterton, H. Belloc, G. M. Hopkins, F. Thomson. Today at least 150 university chairs are held by Catholics.

In the field of social institutions, to limit ourselves to the most universal, there are to be noted, besides Catholic and Scout associations: hospitals, homes for abandoned or neglected children, for unmarried mothers, the handicapped, the incurably ill, the dying, the blind, and the deaf-mute, all under a general committee (Catholic Child Welfare Council), which represents the Catholic view within the National Council of Associated Children’s Homes, which includes similar general committees for Anglicans, Jews, etc.; the Catholic Social Guild (1909), which promotes parish and university study circles, trains speakers and apologists, and assists converts; the Catholic Evidence Guild, with open-air apologetic, philosophical, and theological preaching; the Catholic Young Christian Workers Society (1935), for men and women, assisting workers and launching the Catholic Workers Movement for the defense of the family and labor; the Sword of the Spirit (1940), to cooperate with parish priests and bishops in any work beneficial to the parish and diocese.

IV. LITERATURE.

The Anglo-Saxon conquest of England is traditionally dated to A.D. 449, which is also the official starting point of English literature. A more significant and better-documented event in English history and culture is the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity by Augustine and his monks (597). The first prominent literary figure is the Venerable Bede, in whose *Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum* (written, like all his works, in Latin) mention is made of the first Anglo-Saxon poet, Caedmon, a monk and inspired author of religious hymns, to whom only a few lines—translated into Latin by Bede—can be confidently attributed (Caedmon’s poetic activity dates between 660 and 670).

The most distinguished document of the poetry of this period is *Beowulf*, an epic poem of Scandinavian setting, probably composed around 740 by an unknown author. Its characteristics include a blend of Christian and pagan elements and, technically, alliterative verse and the habitual use of metaphor (kenning). The characters have an embryonically symbolic quality (the struggle between good, embodied by the hero, and evil, embodied by the monsters he fights), and this work already testifies to that predilection for allegory and didacticism that marks the Middle Ages in general and medieval English poetry in particular. More directly Christian in inspiration are the religious poems of Cynewulf (early 9th century) and others attributed to him but of doubtful authorship. None of these, however, possesses the poetic vigor and suggestive power of *Beowulf*. More original is an anonymous poem entitled *The Dream of the Rood*, the first of those “visions” of which other examples are not lacking in medieval English poetry.

The most notable document of Anglo-Saxon prose is the *Anglo-Saxon Chronicle*, a work begun by the greatest of the English kings of the period, Alfred the Great (849–901), and continued by his collaborators and successors, which traces the history from the Christian era to the mid-12th century.

After the Norman Conquest (1066), the linguistic structure of the country underwent such profound changes that a new language, Middle English, emerged—rich in French influences and far more flexible and adaptable than Old English. This did not, however, result in a subjugation of literature, which instead retained its original and indigenous character. The transformation of the English language was, in essence, a transformation of the French language.

The linguistic evolution was slow and uneven, giving rise to several dialects, one of which—the so-called East Midland—eventually prevailed, becoming the national language. It was during this period that a true national literature gradually matured (more slowly than in the Latin countries), reaching its peak in the full 14th century with Chaucer. A separate mention is owed, not only for its influence and popularity until the Reformation but also for its distinctive qualities of language and style, to the mystical literature in prose and verse of the 13th and 14th centuries.

The anonymous *Ancrene Rivale* (early 13th century), Rolle’s *The Form of Living*, Hilton’s *The Ladder of Perfection* and *Treatise of Mixed Life*, and the anonymous *The Cloud of Unknowing* bear witness to the remarkable progress made during this period in English prose. Less can be said of the prose of the heretic John Wyclif (c. 1320–84), who was the first to translate the entire Bible into English but who was unaware of the developments in devotional prose in the vernacular; his influence came after the Reformation, of which he was later regarded as a precursor.

The greatest poet of 14th-century England is Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340–1400). He drew upon the finest classical and medieval literary traditions, infusing them with a healthy and frank realism. Uninhibited and at times overly frank in depicting the customs and vices of his age, he remained fully orthodox, and even in his masterpiece, *The Canterbury Tales*, religious and edifying themes appear, drawn not only from chivalric sources but also from hagiography and ecclesiastical tradition. His knowledge of Italian culture and Italy enriched and matured his style, complementing his earlier experience of French chivalric and allegorical poetry. He was also, in his own way, a scholar and humanist, possessing a broad and solid—though disparate and heterogeneous—knowledge of classical and European culture. Alongside Chaucer, mention should be made of John Gower (1330?–1408), a versatile versifier in English, French, and Latin, a poet of no striking originality but refined and learned. A far more significant figure is William Langland (1330?–1400?), whose allegorical and social poem *The Vision Concerning Piers the Plowman* is linked, even technically (being written in alliterative verse), to the Anglo-Saxon “visions.”

To the same period belongs a considerable body of popular ballads, some of historical subject matter, first collected by Percy in 1765 in *Reliques of Ancient English Poetry*. A vast body of romance literature arose around the traditional cycles treated in the major European literatures and originally in France and Provence: Charlemagne and his paladins, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the deeds of Alexander the Great, Thebes, and Troy. The Arthurian cycle, which enjoyed particular favor in England, draws on the information contained in the *Historia Regum Britanniae* (in Latin) by Bishop Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1140). To this cycle belongs *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight*, probably composed around 1370 in alliterative verse. It is the finest of English romances, remarkable for its vivid portrayal and depth of content. The same author is attributed *The Pearl*, another “vision” preserved in the same manuscript, also composed in alliterative verse. The conventional themes and codes of chivalric romance provoked a reaction even in Chaucer (cf. *The Tale of Sir Thopas*, a satire of the knight errant), though he himself had treated the genre. Later, however, it experienced a kind of rehabilitation through Sir Thomas Malory, whose prose in *Le Morte d’Arthur* (c. 1470) is lively and almost decadent; it was among the earliest books printed in England (in 1485 by William Caxton), and Tennyson drew upon it for his *Idylls of the King* (1859–85).

The typical allegorism of medieval English lyric poetry (which, even in the full Renaissance, looks back to Spenser) finds its counterpart in the equally characteristic symbolism of drama (which, with the plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare, reaches its culmination). In England, as elsewhere, drama arises in the form of sacred representation, and more precisely of the miracle play, which has its origin in the liturgy itself and presents scenes drawn from sacred texts and the lives and legends of the saints, and of the morality play, a more abstract and psychological type of drama in which allegorical conflicts of personified virtues and vices are represented. As an example of the former, the *Secunda Pastorum* is recalled, attributable to the second half of the fourteenth century and belonging to the group of the so-called *Towneley Plays*. It presents a characteristic blend of sacred elements with comic traits and social overtones, and a notable characterization of its characters. As an example of the latter, *Everyman* (fifteenth century) is cited, in which the inner conflicts of man in the face of death are vividly represented. Finally, among the documents of late medieval English prose, one may recall the picturesque and fantastic *Mandeville’s Travels* (Mandeville is a pseudonym and the travels were originally written in French), the *Paston Letters* (a private correspondence written between 1440 and 1446), and the *Book of Faith* (1456) by Bishop Reginald Pecock, a refutation of Wyclif and the Lollards that is also of linguistic interest. The learned language continues to be Latin, which is also the official language of the University of Oxford, founded in the thirteenth century and dominated from the outset by the figure of the friar Roger Bacon, philosopher and scientist of European renown, and in a certain sense the founder of English empiricism.

Humanism penetrated England late and was strongly conditioned by the causes and effects of the Schism. Petrarchism was introduced into England by the two court poets Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (the latter beheaded by order of Henry VIII). Their verses (mostly imitated or translated from Petrarch) appear in *Tottel’s Miscellany*, the first regular English anthology (1557). Surrey modified the Petrarchan sonnet into the form later adopted by Shakespeare and hence known as the English sonnet (three quatrains and a rhyming couplet), though it was also called the English sonnet because of its popularity in England (Milton, however, in his sonnets adopted the Italian model). Wyatt, in translating two books of the *Aeneid*, was the first to use the “blank verse,” i.e., iambic pentameter or unrhymed decasyllable, which became so popular as to become the official verse of English drama (adopted by Sackville and Norton in what may be considered the first regular English tragedy, *Gorboduc*, performed in 1561) and later, with Milton, of the epic poem. In short, it enjoyed a fortune equal to, if not greater than, that of the Italian hendecasyllable.

But the most distinguished humanists of the period were Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn, who learned Greek in Italy and introduced it at the University of Oxford; John Colet, who founded the first school of classical studies in London; Erasmus, who lived, studied, and taught for a long time in England; and, greater than all, Erasmus’s congenial friend Thomas More (1478–1535). As is well known, after a brilliant literary and political career, More, in his capacity as Lord Chancellor, refused to subscribe to the Act of Supremacy of Henry VIII, was condemned to death, and met his martyrdom serenely. The Church has canonized him (1935). The best-known of his writings, *Utopia* (which he wrote, moreover, in Latin), proposes a theoretical state founded solely on reason and which does not correspond (as some eminent critics, among them Sargent and Shafer, have rightly pointed out) to More’s religious and political ideal: a state, in short, which, in the author’s intentions (and in conformity with the traditional character of English utopias), is meant more as a warning than as a model (nor should it be forgotten that some parts of *Utopia* are pure literary digression and entertainment). The renewed interest in the classics is also evidenced by numerous translations, some of them excellent. Thomas North translates from Amyot’s French version of Plutarch (1579), providing Shakespeare with material for his Roman plays; Philemon Holland translates Pliny, Livy, Suetonius, and Xenophon (early seventeenth century); John Florio, son of an Italian Protestant exile in England, translates Montaigne’s *Essays* (1603) and writes Italian-English glossaries and phrases; translations appear of *Il Cortegiano* (1561), *Il Galateo* (1576), and other Italian treatises, as well as of Montemayor’s *Diana*, Du Bartas’s *Divine Weekes*, and the novellas of Bandello and other Italian storytellers.

The “Reformation” possesses in the English Bible, or as it was also called, the Cranmer Bible, its most notable literary document. The translation is largely the work of the learned heretic William Tyndale, who adhered to Lutheranism before the official beginning of the English Reformation. From England he moved to Germany, where he came into contact with Luther himself and there published in 1526 a version of the New Testament that was attacked by More. He then set to work on the Old Testament, and his version was well advanced when he was betrayed by an English companion, handed over to the troops of Charles V, and burned as a heretic (1535). The translation is highly commendable from a literary standpoint, and its author possessed a perfect command of his own language and an exceptional talent for the use of metaphor. After the Schism, the translation was completed by Miles Coverdale, under the direction of Archbishop Cranmer (who had sanctioned the annulment of Henry’s marriage and the Act of Supremacy), who later compiled and published under his own name the *Book of Common Prayer* (1548), which is still the official text of Anglican prayers. The definitive edition of the English Bible is the so-called “Authorized Version,” published under James I in 1611. Its core consists of Tyndale’s version, but it was revised by a committee of fifty-four scholars. Its influence is evident throughout the course of English literature.

The tradition of medieval, Platonic, and allegorical lyric poetry continues in Spenser, a poet who is both chivalric and humanistic. Alongside the Virgilian and bucolic *Shepherd’s Calendar* (1579), whose models are Virgil and Theocritus, he writes *The Faerie Queene* (1591), which is the quintessence of chivalric concepts, Platonic idealism, and medieval allegory, while in the *Amoretti* (1595) he makes his own contribution to Petrarchism. His friend and contemporary Philip Sidney was another exemplary “courtier” and, as a poet, an exemplary champion of chivalric love. In his *Defense of Poesy*, published posthumously, he leaves a typical document of Renaissance poetics; in *Astrophel and Stella* one of the most notable sonnet sequences; and in *Arcadia* the most refined pastoral novel of the period. Beside these should be mentioned *Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit* (1579), which is more a model of rhetoric than a novel and inaugurated in England the vogue for that most elaborate prose, based on the parallelism of phrases and periods, the frequent use of alliteration, and the pedantic and overdone citation of erudition, which from it took the name of “Euphuism.” A striking example of the contrast between humanistic ideals and Protestant rigor is offered by Roger Ascham, who in his *Scholemaster* (1570), while extolling the Greeks and Romans, violently attacks not only the Catholic Rome but also chivalric ideals (refuting, for example, Malory).

Meanwhile, the theatre, for which the English had an innate vocation, continued to develop, refine itself, and ultimately emancipate itself—with the playwrights of the Jacobean era—from every convention and requirement that did not align with its true nature. As already noted, Marlowe, the greatest of Shakespeare’s precursors, retained only the structure of the *morality play*, inserting into it individual conflicts and titanic accents. Alongside him, other professional playwrights emerged, asserting and imposing upon the public the characteristics and tendencies of the era’s taste: pseudo-Machiavellianism, laced with exotic horrors, and Stoicism in the manner of Seneca, which found perfect resonance in Elizabethan customs and spread in England, above all, through the influence of Italian treatises, first among them Giraldi Cinthio. The most typical tragedy in this sense is *The Spanish Tragedy* by Thomas Kyd (1558–94), which sets unprecedented horrors and crimes against a conventional Spanish backdrop. No less typical are *The White Devil* (or *Vittoria Corombona*, 1612) and *The Duchess of Malfi* (c. 1614) by John Webster. The anonymous *Arden of Feversham* (1586) is a powerful tragedy of English setting that realistically stages an adultery. The first regular English comedy is *Ralph Roister Doister* (1553), an adaptation of Plautus’ *Miles Gloriosus*. The principal source for historical dramas of English subject matter, not only for Shakespeare but for all Elizabethans, is Holinshed’s *Chronicle* (1578).

In the works of Shakespeare, the greatest dramatic genius the world has known, the English theatrical tradition reached its ultimate pinnacle. He brought to the stage universal forces, passions, and conflicts, and though he was not an innovator and accepted the models and sources of his time, he far surpassed all his contemporaries, who were often better educated and more culturally equipped than he. In his plays, even boundless passions are woven into harmonious and masterful structures, and he possessed such perfect and superb control over simile and metaphor, such inexhaustible creativity in imagery, that he never fell into disproportion by sacrificing parts to the whole. In Shakespeare’s later works (and already in those so-called problematic plays belonging to his full maturity), the religious aspects of existence are more insistently and passionately explored, considered, and contemplated. This is especially true of his final play, *The Tempest* (whose evocative atmosphere recalls to Praz the Dantean Purgatory), a drama of distinctly Christian imprint and substance, which it is likely (as was later asserted) preludes the poet’s return to the Catholic faith. Belloc, indeed, sees in Shakespeare’s entire oeuvre the signs of his fundamental Catholic inspiration. The *songs*, the youthful poems, and the admirable sequence of sonnets represent almost a lyrical counterbalance (and, in the plays, equally suggestive pauses) to the dramatic work of this genius, lights that better illuminate and frame his greatness.

Ben Jonson (1572–1637), celebrated author of well-crafted character comedies, observed the classical precepts scrupulously in his works. He was also the creator of *masques* (spectacles composed of recitation, music, and dance, with mythological and allegorical subjects) and a refined lyricist. Among other dramatists of the period, mention should be made of George Chapman, John Marston, and Beaumont and Fletcher, who collaborated on several plays.

John Donne (1573–1631) founded a tradition (rather than a school), that of the so-called “metaphysical” poets. The epithet was coined by Dryden, taken up by Samuel Johnson, and in Johnson’s usage it connotes more “fantastical” than mystical or religious qualities. Donne’s case is singular: he is a mannerist of anti-rhetoric, his conceit grounded far more in bold, syncopated metaphors and bizarre allusions than in the parallelism and other devices of rhetoric. Donne’s conceits permeate both the content and the form of his verse. The metaphysical poets, all of them, have been reevaluated in recent times, especially through the work of the critic Grierson and the poet T. S. Eliot, whose “Imagism” consciously links back to metaphysical poetry on one side and to Elizabethan drama on the other. Donne was born Catholic and remained so during his youth. In 1615 he was ordained a priest in the Anglican Church, and from 1621 he served as dean of St. Paul’s in London. His sermons rank among the most notable of the century. In them, as in his verse, there is reflected the restlessness and insatiability of an adventurous spirit torn by the conflicts between nature and the supernatural, conflicts keenly experienced in his time. Donne, like Ben Jonson but in different ways, represents a critical deepening of poetry, which explains why Samuel Johnson erroneously lumped the two so dissimilar poets together under the single label of “metaphysical.” More specifically religious from the outset is the conceited lyricism of Richard Crashaw, who had a precursor in the Jesuit Robert Southwell (martyred in 1595). Crashaw begins from the metaphysical style but draws closer than the others to Continental *concettismo* (Gongorism and Marinism). In his flights of fancy and daring imagination, he anticipates the Romantic poets (Shelley and, more recently, Francis Thompson). He converted to Catholicism, moved to Italy, where he served as secretary to Cardinal Pallotta, and died in Loreto in 1649. Among the major preachers of the era, besides Donne, are Richard Hooker and Jeremy Taylor, champions of Anglicanism and rationalist theologians who are already, in reality, at the origins of Deism and Sensism, champions rather of natural religion than of revealed religion.

The *essay*, a literary form that enjoyed extraordinary success in England and presided over the birth of journalism, is well represented in the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages. In Francis Bacon’s *Essays*, it finds its mature form in a lucid and sober epigrammatic prose. Of the others, it will suffice to recall Robert Burton (1577–1640), whose *Anatomy of Melancholy* (1621), rambling and pedantic, is strongly influenced by Euphuism. More interesting in the subsequent era are Thomas Browne’s *Religio Medici* (1643), notable for its introspective qualities, and the writings of Izaak Walton, who, alongside digressions or divertissements (*The Compleat Angler*, 1653), pioneered the biographical genre (lives of Donne, Herbert, etc.).

The 17th century has in John Milton (1608–74) its greatest poet. Milton, also in consideration of the numerous Italian sources he drew upon, may be regarded as the last poet of the Renaissance in England. His controversial prose is considerable both in quantity and in vigour. Milton’s poetry is humanistic, idyllic and pastoral in his early poems, solemn and suggestively Baroque in his masterpiece, Paradise Lost (1667), speculative and almost austere in Paradise Regained (1671), bitter and tragic in his final work, a tragedy inspired by both Greek and biblical models: Samson Agonistes (1671). In the troubled spirit of this poet, the two great historical facts already “settled” in his age—Renaissance and “Reformation”—are characteristically intertwined (it is worth recalling that the English Bible is itself a humanistically linguistic text). Though openly anti-Catholic, Milton was not insensitive to the spirit of the Catholic Reformation (influenced in this, too, by Tasso’s poem), nor was he rigorously Protestant (he did not, for example, deny but rather exalt the value of works for the individual and social regeneration of humanity). And if he championed freedom of thought, he was at the same time a firm believer in original sin and the necessity of redemption, which every education must propose as its ultimate end. He was less sensitive to the demands of revealed religion, though he had a clear grasp of them in his mind; he saw in Christ rather the vicar of God among men (he was a convinced millenarian) than their Redeemer, and he failed to grasp fully the value of the Passion, which indeed he refused to treat in poetry. His language is richly imbued with classical elements. He was the last great English humanist at a time when the fortunes of Humanism were declining even in its countries of origin. His attention was entirely focused on sin and the means of redemption offered to man in the course of his individual and historical existence. Not for nothing does the archangel Michael reveal to Adam the varied fortunes of his descendants through the ages, just as Anchises had revealed to Aeneas the destiny of Rome.

A far more sober and rigorous expression of Puritanism is found in The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), a kind of allegorical novel written for edification and in a tone of inspired devotion by John Bunyan, of humble birth and no formal education (his books were the Bible and the Protestant Martyrology of John Fox). He served under Cromwell and endured long years of imprisonment during the Restoration. The clarity and composure of its language make The Pilgrim’s Progress a classic of English literature. Its diffusion was enormous (in England and in America, where it accompanied the first colonists). It reflects a long, spare but concise and essential idea of the inner struggles, intense faith and real tribulations of this unyielding Puritan believer.

The Restoration (1660–88) is characterized in literature by the academicism of John Dryden (1631–1700). He is the greatest man of letters of his age (a period to which some critics have given his name) and, as such, though certainly not a poet of deep inspiration, he possessed singular skills and talents. In his youth he wrote a panegyric on the death of Cromwell, but shortly afterwards celebrated in Astra Redux the accession of Charles II. In 1682 he defended the Anglican Church in Religio Laici, but in 1686 he converted to Catholicism and justified his conversion in the allegorical poem The Hind and the Panther. After the revolution of 1688, having refused to take the required oath, he was deprived of his offices and the title of Poet Laureate, and from then on underwent no further political or religious conversions, devoting himself to compilations and translations of Greek, Latin and Italian classics. His versatility and the formal excellence of his verse ensured him undisputed fame until the advent of the Romantics. Dr Johnson, who admired and celebrated him in one of his essays, attempted to justify even his political volte-face by asserting that if he changed, he changed with his country, and his final refusal to subscribe to the revolution of William of Orange helped to redeem his earlier changes of direction.

Political satire, frequently treated by Dryden as well, has a typical product in the long satirical poem in rhyming couplets by Samuel Butler: Hudibras (1663–78), a sharp attack on Puritan hypocrisy. The theatre of the Restoration (the theatres had been closed by the Puritans in 1642)—the so-called comedy of manners, for the most part cynical and licentious—has its principal representatives in Wycherley, Congreve, Otway and Etherege. A picturesque document of the manners of the time is the diary of Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), written by the author in a kind of personal shorthand that was not deciphered until 1826. Political scepticism has its classic text in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, written even before the Restoration, and philosophical empiricism in John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690).

Poetry and drama of the Restoration are already strongly influenced by French models, but the influence of French poetics on English letters becomes predominant and evident in the work of Alexander Pope (1688–1744). Pope is, after Dryden, the greatest of English literary poets. His works are largely marked by that literary, political and social satire which characterizes much of 18th-century English literature (even in moderate writers such as Fielding and Goldsmith) and is never entirely absent from English literature, indeed constituting a salient feature of it and reappearing even in Romantic poets—not only in a Byron but also in a Shelley. In Pope, poetry is never divorced from a correlative rhetoric or poetics, drawn from French models. In his essays he is a critic in verse, and in his verse a critical poet. Those formalistic principles known as poetic diction, which were overthrown only by Wordsworth’s Romantic reaction, found in him their perfect realization, and his poetic masterpiece (understood in the proper sense) is The Rape of the Lock (1714), an exquisitely elegant composition of social satire, a tiny mock-epic of perfect versification. To Pope is also owed an artificial and 18th-century translation of the Iliad into “heroic couplets.” Pope was born a Catholic and never repudiated his faith. In his works, however, he appears as a rationalist and a deist (as is clearly evident from the Essay on Man, which is directly influenced by Shaftesbury’s deism).

The 18th century in England (as throughout Europe) was dominated by "literature," and one should not expect that the novel of the period, which was its highest literary expression, would be a product of pure imagination. Nevertheless, it is a fact that the most creative and original minds of the century turned preferably to prose rather than poetry, and prose predominated over verse until the advent of the Romantics. A typical feature of the 18th-century novel, which blends almost imperceptibly with the journalistic essay, is moralism (which, however, could be intensely personal, as in Swift and Sterne), that moralism—or, if one prefers, content-focused analysis and psychological insight—which were deeply ingrained in the English character.

The 18th century was not in England an era of intense religious strife. With the *Toleration Act* (1689), persecution of Catholics ceased, though their full emancipation came much later. The Franciscan John Wall was the last Catholic martyr (1679), dying with the prophetic awareness of his martyrdom. Political struggle, marked by the growing supremacy of Parliament, the automatic subordination of the monarchical power, and the alternating rule of Whigs and Tories, was lively and tenacious but not bloody. Minds turned instead to the critique of manners and to internal reforms. These characteristics are reflected in the novel and the essay.

Swift (apart from the singularities of his temperament, which make him a unique and eccentric figure) belongs less to the narrative tradition than to the polemical and utopian one. He accepted Christian ethics (and was a minister of the Anglican Church) and defended them in writing, yet he opposed all historical forms of Christianity—Catholicism, Calvinism, and even Lutheranism (embodied respectively in Peter, Jack, and Martin in *The Tale of a Tub*, published in 1704). His masterpiece, *Gulliver’s Travels* (1726), admirable for its linguistic clarity, inventive and dialectical flair, and psychological acumen, nonetheless shows clear signs of exaggerated and pathological egocentrism.

The true novel, as has been noted, was heralded by the journalistic essay, in which Steele and Addison excelled. Steele possessed a more lively and exuberant genius, while Addison was more balanced and coherent, a typical spokesman for the English middle class, more concerned with the affairs of his own country than curious about the rest of the world (his *Italian Remarks on Several Parts of Italy* [1705], placed on the Index in 1729, reveal a typical misunderstanding of our country). The journal he co-edited with Steele, *The Spectator*, in which Mr. Spectator serves as the mouthpiece for the tastes and needs of a circle of bourgeois figures, became the model for the best 18th-century European journalists. The aim of this journal, which addressed a broad public not exclusively literary, was to instruct while entertaining.

To the success of journalism in England, Defoe also contributed, with a more realistic spirit as a chronicler. His *Review* paved the way for the founding of *The Spectator* and the birth of *The Taller*. Defoe wrote his most famous novel, *Robinson Crusoe*, in 1719, when he was already sixty years old. A man of few scruples in life, he was nonetheless a stern moralist, and the edifying content of his masterpiece should not be overlooked: its protagonist is sustained throughout the narrative by confidence in his own strengths, aided by the providence of God. The moralistic tone persists undiminished even in Defoe’s worldly and realistic novels, stories of lowlife narrated with exemplary stylistic sobriety. Defoe’s works lack the subtle nuances and half-tones of humor in which other 18th-century narrators excelled. He also wrote on occultism (*The Political History of the Devil*, condemned by the Church).

Samuel Richardson is the founder of the sentimental and psychological novel, and though his sentimentalism is often forced and conventional, his fine psychological analysis secured him a new influence over modern and contemporary novels. His epistolary novels had a vast impact on continental Europe. Contrasting with Richardson’s delicate and effeminate temperament was that of Henry Fielding, the greatest English novelist of the 18th century and one of the most vigorous humorists in all of European literature. Arguing in the name of natural goodness of heart against sentimentalism and hypocrisy, in *Joseph Andrews* (1742)—one of his masterpieces—he sought to satirize and counterbalance Richardson’s *Pamela*. *Tom Jones* (1749), considered his major work, essentially expands the same narrative structure. The vigor of its portrayal and the freshness of its humor are admirable, yet the protagonist, as a champion of human instincts, sometimes appears conventional. His only positive virtue is the sincerity he shares with his author. Fielding’s style softens in *Amelia* (1751), his last novel, which is essentially Richardsonian in character. Social issues, which Fielding addressed competently through his long service in the magistracy, permeate the work, blending with romantic and sentimental motifs to produce a characteristically English novel.

A narrator of types and typical scenes rather than of characters and plots was Tobias Smollett (1721–71), a naval physician who translated *Don Quixote* into English and wrote several travel books, including the semi-autobiographical *Roderick Random*. He spent time in Italy, where he died at Montenero, near Livorno, in the final years of his life. With Laurence Sterne (1713–68), the English parson of not entirely blameless life, the novel becomes a wandering, erudite farce and introspective digression in which characters are lost and plots dissolve. His tender expansiveness, the pathos of laughter seasoned abundantly with tears, made Sterne a favorite of the Romantics, though in him sentimentalism (unlike in Richardson) is ironic and self-critical.

Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) also displayed eccentric traits, yet he remained faithful to conventional narrative forms in his sole novel, *The Vicar of Wakefield*, which bears the imprint of Fielding’s influence but is tempered by a different humor and a more Christian sense of life. Goldsmith, like his vicar, placed full trust in the ways of Providence, which aids and saves the good even when it tests them severely. This sense, coupled with a lively interest in humble lives, at times recalls our Manzoni and his masterpiece.

Scholarly and academic criticism found its last great champion in Samuel Johnson (1709–84), whose *Dictionary* (1747–55) and *Lives of the Poets* (1779–81) remain famous. His contemporary James Boswell left a perfect portrait of the man—his talents, his humor, his eccentricities—in what is considered the greatest literary biography of a country where the biographical genre enjoyed particular success.

English historiography in the 18th century was enriched by what is considered its greatest historical work: Edward Gibbon’s *The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire* (1776–88). Gibbon converted to Catholicism in adolescence but, sent by his father to be educated in Switzerland, recanted and thereafter, as is evident in his work (whose chapters on Christianity provoked reactions even from Anglicans and which was placed on the Index), remained a typical "enlightened" skeptic. Other historical works of the period include David Hume’s *History of Great Britain* and William Robertson’s *History of Scotland* (1721–93), both marked by critical inquiry into facts.

The late 18th century possesses in England at least one playwright of marked talent: Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816). Towards the end of the century, certain characteristics already appear that mark the subsequent Romantic era. Such are the nature poetry of James Thomson (1700–48), and the taste for graveyard poetry in Edward Young (1683–1765) and in Thomas Gray’s famous *Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard* (1750). Gray was among the first to study with passion the primitive Germanic epic. *Ossian*, which was to move the Romantics so deeply, though largely a work of mystification, appeared between 1760 and 1773. A work of honest scholarship, on the other hand, is the first anthology of medieval English and Scottish ballads edited by Thomas Percy, published in 1765, which promoted the study of so-called popular poetry. The highly musical *Ode to Evening* (1746) by William Collins is rich in lyrical inspiration. The taste for the exotic asserts itself and becomes exaggerated in the novels of Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, M. G. Lewis, in *Melmoth the Wanderer* by C. R. Maturin—a work that deeply impressed Baudelaire—in *Vathek* (1784) by William Beckford, a strange tale ablaze with Oriental splendours and horrors. A singular example of Messianic and inspired poetry is found in the solemn and impetuous *Song to David* (1763) by the eccentric Christopher Smart, which in some way anticipates Blake.

The celebrated historian and orator Edmund Burke (1729–97), author of *Reflections on the French Revolution* (1790), in which he defends legitimism, and champion of Catholic emancipation, defended in his treatise *On the Sublime* (1757) that “enthusiasm” which academic criticism had rejected and distrusted. The poet William Cowper (1731–1800), while remaining faithful to the canons of 18th-century descriptive poetry, anticipates with his preference for natural landscapes the style of Wordsworth, and, under the influence of Methodism (founded by John Wesley), successfully re-engages with properly religious lyric poetry. Yet all the poets cited thus far remain more or less faithful to the precepts of “poetic diction,” and their work, in terms of form, belongs to the 18th century. The first true Romantics (setting aside Chatterton, who committed suicide at eighteen and whose figure assumes purely symbolic value) are the Scotsman Robert Burns (1759–96), a powerful instinctive and revolutionary lyricist, and the most original William Blake (1757–1827), an occultist and visionary poet whose verbal magic foreshadows the theories and techniques of the Symbolists.

Jane Austen (1775–1817), in a not long but highly fruitful career as a novelist, remained faithful to 18th-century models, investing her enchanting novels of bourgeois society with a distinctly feminine talent for minute character analysis through wonderfully balanced dialogue and a spontaneous, delicate humour. This earned her the praise of Walter Scott, who is nevertheless considered the creator of the Romantic novel.

The true Romantic revolution officially begins with the publication of *Lyrical Ballads* (1798) by William Wordsworth (1770–1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834). Wordsworth himself, in the preface to the second edition (1801), articulated the aims that guided the two poets: the adoption of a simple and essential language, even in fantastic compositions; a reaction against the artifices and overly rigid formalism of “poetic diction.” After initially adhering to revolutionary principles (and later to the theories of the rationalist anarchist William Godwin, father of Shelley’s second wife, Mary), Wordsworth moved toward increasingly moderate positions and in old age became a political conservative and zealous Anglican. His best verses were all published before 1815. Coleridge is remembered, besides for the singular magic and extraordinary evocative power of his verse, also for the originality of his critical work with its Platonic-Kantian orientation, which, though unstructured, is rich in faithful and brilliant insights.

Typically but differently revolutionary are the two major representatives of the next poetic generation: George Byron (1788–1824) and Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822). In Byron’s work is reflected a typical and exacerbated contrast, heightened by pose, between generous impulses of the soul and the ironic reaction of reason. A poet of rich natural vein, he finds his most felicitous expression in satirical poetry (*Don Juan*, *Beppo*). Shelley is an anarchist in the footsteps of Godwin, a mystical deist with vague and inconsistent ideas, yet endowed with an inexhaustible and rich lyrical vein that allows him to translate the intense vibrations of his sensibility into inspired verse. John Keats (1795–1821) is Romantic precisely in his ardent nostalgia for the classical world, whose splendours and harmonies he passionately evokes; the Decadents would make him their master, and the Pre-Raphaelites would take his medieval-themed poems as models. English Romanticism is not an organized movement, and its leading figures differ widely from one another; it has no political scope nor social resonance (as Victorian literature would partially achieve later), and some of its representatives spend much of their activity far from their homeland. Nor is it perhaps without significance that the only social poet of the period, George Crabbe (1754–1832), still fully follows the rationalistic tradition. Removed from Romantic currents are also the principal reformers of the era: Mill, Malthus, Ricardo, Sydney Smith. Moreover, conservatives remained in power almost uninterruptedly from 1783 to 1830. The *Catholic Emancipation Act* (which Wordsworth opposed) was enacted in 1825: with it, civil and political rights were guaranteed to Catholics.

The most celebrated novelist of the early Romantic period was Walter Scott (1771–1832), who in his numerous historical novels achieved a felicitous blend of Romantic and realistic elements, and with his lively narrative style succeeded in arousing and sustaining the reader’s interest. Impeccable in wisdom and humour was Charles Lamb (1775–1834), also known for his study of minor Elizabethan dramatists, which he rehabilitated and brought to the attention of scholars. Continuing and valuable was Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859), whose *Confessions of an English Opium-Eater* (1821) attracted Baudelaire’s attention. A sceptical and erudite novelist was Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866), whose conversation-based novels set a precedent for modern narrators. Among minor essayists should be mentioned William Hazlitt (1778–1830) and Leigh Hunt (1784–1859), who was also a poet. Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864), who lived long in Italy, was particularly successful in epigram. Of Thomas Hood (1799–1845), social and humorous verses are especially remembered.

The subsequent period, roughly corresponding to the long reign of Queen Victoria, is marked by a closer correspondence between moral and social values and literary expression, by a greater (not always happy) understanding and closer ties between science and imagination, between society and culture. This is due in part to the rise of scientific progress, which rapidly and radically transforms the country through an automatic transition from a predominantly rural civilization to a predominantly industrial one, and to its consequent and progressive democratization, whereby literature also makes room for the feelings, problems, and conflicts of the common man and appeals to a wider circle of readers, also benefiting the interests, rights, and prospects of success of authors. It cannot be denied that this literature, which finds its ideal vehicle in the novel and more generally in prose, is generally lacking in speculative value.

Poetry tends to crystallize in the elaborate and precious verses of the era’s greatest poet, Alfred Tennyson (1809–92), endowed with exquisite Virgilian taste, whose verses, however, too easily stretch and settle into monotony. In Robert Browning (1812–89), lyrical-dramatic inspiration too often shatters and wanders into obscurity and eccentricity. Ideas, so to speak, without a foundation of speculation and suffering, pile up and writhe epileptically in his celebrated and controversial monologues. The notion of mystical reality is the privilege and exclusive domain of a few isolated Catholic poets: a sorrowful but hopeful lyricist because of his faith, the Jesuit G. M. Hopkins (1844–89), the greatest of the English symbolists, whose verses were published only after his death; a solitary and uncompromising champion of Catholic tradition, meditated and personally interpreted: Coventry Patmore (1823–96), who finds his fullest expression in some mystical and allegorical works; an inspired, visionary, and believing lyricist, of feverish imagination and inexhaustible vein: Francis Thompson (1859–1907). John Henry Newman (1801–90), who converted in 1845, was throughout his life a tireless and deeply aware defender of the needs of modern man, of revealed religion, essentially unchanging and necessary for men of every age. His *Apologia pro Vita Sua* (1861) stands among the great models of English prose. A strenuous advocate of individualism understood as the cult of the hero and the Superman, and an opponent of democratic institutions, as well as a more eloquent than convincing historian, was Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), whose vast work bears the imprint of idealistic currents in German thought. A similar role as inspired critic and opponent of industrial civilization is played, with regard to the visual arts, by John Ruskin (1819–1900), who focuses his interest on the ethical and social values of art: he is a mystic socialist and one of Europe’s greatest art critics. Opposing the utilitarian conception of culture and in the name of a humanistic and universalistic concept of education, the critic and poet Matthew Arnold (1822–88) also fought. The underlying or residual content of his critical thought is documented by his definition of poetry as “a criticism of life,” a criticism applied to life. The conception of the absolute supremacy of art, and of aestheticism as a philosophy of life, is asserted for the first time in the essays of Walter Pater (1839–94), whose supremely refined work as an artistic critic has been felicitously characterized by Praz as “romanced criticism.”

The two greatest novelists of the Victorian era are Charles Dickens (1812–70) and William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63). Dickens is not a great psychologist, but he possesses a singular inventive imagination and inexhaustible humor. His novels, though not impeccable in style, nevertheless speak to the hearts of their countless readers. Thackeray is more cultured and refined and constructs his dialogues better, but he is less rich in imagination and too prone to digression. Anthony Trollope (1815–88) is a meticulous analyzer of typical Victorian milieus. The most notable women writers are: George Eliot (1819–80), in whose novels the didactic aim and preconceived thesis are often too obvious; the Brontë sisters: Charlotte (1816–55), Anne (1820–49), and Emily (1818–48), the last of whom reveals in her sole novel, *Wuthering Heights*, an exceptional and singular personality in a powerfully evocative style. Social novels were written by Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–65), whose best work, however, is the short provincial novel *Cranford*. “Pre-Raphaelitism” is represented in poetry mainly by the medievalists Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882), son of an Italian perfumer, and William Morris (1834–1896), who was also a propagator of a socialism inspired by medieval guilds. Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–59) was a brilliant and versatile historian and essayist but neither original nor profound, though much celebrated in his time.

The literature immediately following the Victorian era and its last decades is partly distinguished by a more open and declared reaction against the ideals and customs of that period. The revolt against every codified morality and the crisis of ethical values in the name of the absoluteness of the aesthetic word is well documented in the dazzling Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909), who writes verses of rare formal perfection, and in Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), who constructs a pseudo-novel and precious fairy tales around the motif of the absoluteness of the aesthetic ideal, the axiom that beauty alone is truth, and in his uninhibited comedies delights and scandalizes the public with a fusillade of clever paradoxes. A curious mixture of skepticism, analytical acumen, and naive positivist dogmas is found in the novelist George Meredith (1828–1909), whose best novel is perhaps *The Egoist* (1879), a work in which unresolved and unexamined conflicts persist. A more powerful and suggestive narrator is Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), whose radical and programmatic tragic pessimism (in reaction to the official optimism of the age) is refracted in numerous novels and stories set in a desolate rural and provincial landscape. Even more radical and methodical is the social pessimism underlying the novels of George Gissing (1857–1903), who also wrote an excellent essay on Dickens. The gloomy and despairing poem *The City of Dreadful Night* (1874) by James Thomson, an anarchist atheist and alcoholic, is equally well known. Ferociously anti-Victorian was Samuel Butler (1835–1902), who inspired Bernard Shaw, in his programmatic and semi-autobiographical novel *The Way of All Flesh* and in the Swiftian utopia *Erewhon* (an anagram of “Nowhere,” which translates as “utopia”). A more learned but soberer and more restrained poet than Swinburne was Robert Bridges (1844–1930), who was appointed poet laureate in 1913.

Fan group in themselves the exotic narrators: Robert Louis Stevenson (1856–1944), whose elaborately wrought prose possesses singular evocative power in his exotic tales and who continues Scott in more modern forms and rhythms in his Scottish stories; Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), who sets the torments of his characters amid exotic landscapes and whose analytical and introspective art exerted an influence on Henry James; Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), whose activist and imperialistic idiom is nourished and colored by variegated exotic suggestions. The Catholic literature has two strong champions in Hilaire Belloc (b. 1870) and G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), both militant and versatile writers, the former sober and solid, the latter imaginative and paradoxical. A Catholic convert is also Maurice Baring (1874–1945), a fine and cultivated essayist, poet, and most elegant novelist who describes privileged settings and characters with singular discretion and delicate touch. G. B. Shaw (1856–1950) is absorbed by individual and social evolution in his brilliant essays and his most popular comedies based on extravagant paradox; H. G. Wells (1866–1946) champions biological evolution and technical progress, though his later works take on a tinge of pessimism; John Galsworthy (1867–1933), in his serial novels and comedies, documents with finesse and precision the crisis of the bourgeoisie and of individualism between the end of the century and the first decade after the First World War.

Properly modern literature is experimental literature, that is, the literature of our tormented age, which, however, cannot be denied the merit of re-proposing and seeking—even if confusedly or desperately—those speculative values that nineteenth-century literature had too much neglected. These exigencies are reflected in a more attentive search for psychological truth in the novel, in a re-evaluation of metaphor, and in the absolute objectification of feeling in poetry. Psychological and introspective analysis, aimed at representing even the most fluid perceptions and the slightest reactions of a character to his environment, governs the entire work of Henry James (1843–1916), an American by birth, who is the acknowledged master of subsequent European narrators, and in the Irishman James Joyce (1882–1941) it progressively leads to the dissolution of every logical connection and to the dissociation of language itself into a chaotic and prophetic jargon, removed from time and space, which has been defined as “an Esperanto of the subconscious.” A writer of rich lyrical vein and refined culture is Virginia Woolf, who took her own life during the Second World War (1941). A skeptical individualist, yet a passionate investigator of the elusive and fleeting relationships among human beings of our age, is E. M. Forster (b. 1879), who is also a lively and penetrating literary critic. A writer of instinct and rich lyrical vein is D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930), obsessed by a kind of idolatry of sexual union. Aldous Huxley (b. 1894), a versatile writer and essayist, after giving a felicitous representation of the disorientation and moral crisis of the post-war period in *Point counter point* (1928), progressively turned in his subsequent essays and novels toward a kind of methodism of ascetic and contemplative life, a programmatic and intellectualistic serenity of asceticism, deriving it syncretistically from the mystical and ascetic works of all civilizations. Some Catholic writers are among the best known and most widely read: Evelyn Waugh (b. 1903), a master of polemical satire; Graham Greene (b. 1905), perhaps the strongest of contemporary English narrators, an inexorable investigator of conflicts of conscience and souls; Bruce Marshall (b. 1899), a moderate and far-sighted Catholic and a humorist in the school of Chesterton; Elizabeth Myers (1913–47), a delicate and acute interpreter of troubled consciences.

The greatest living poet is T. S. Eliot (b. 1888), an American by birth, who is also an authoritative literary and social critic and a convinced advocate of the validity of the Christian notion and tradition (Eliot is an Anglo-Catholic). The school of “Imagism,” which stems from him, has a programmatic basis in the theory of the “objective correlative” as the key to poetic language, and is connected to themes that, as has already been noted, recall the so-called “Metaphysicals” of the seventeenth century. To Eliot are largely linked the poets of the subsequent generation, among whom the most representative are: Cecil Day Lewis (b. 1905), Wystan Hugh Auden (b. 1907), and Stephen Spender (b. 1909), all of whom also engage in literary criticism. We should also recall the names of two excellent women poets: Edith Sitwell (b. 1887) and Kathleen Raine (a Catholic), and, among the poets who fell in the last war, the very young and promising Sydney Keyes.

Historical and literary biography, always cultivated with interest and passion in England, has had its most notable representative in Lytton Strachey (1880–1932), an elegant analytical and introspective essayist. Beside him should be mentioned David Cecil (b. 1902), Percy Lubbock (b. 1879), and the already cited Edith Sitwell. A satirical writer of assured talent, whose recent untimely death we must lament, is George Orwell (1903–1950), notable for his pungent social satire *The Animal Farm* (1945) and for the catastrophic, bitter, and despairing utopia of *1984*, published shortly before his death.

IV. ARCHAEOLOGY AND ART

### I. ARCHAEOLOGY

Between the end of the 4th century and that of the 6th (with the arrival of St. Augustine in Canterbury in 598), Christian monuments in England are represented by rough Latin inscriptions in the regions of lowland Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall. As regards buildings for Christian worship, two are the oldest churches: the first is the small apsidal church of Silchester, explored in 1892; the second is that of Caerwent in Monmouthshire. Bede records that when St. Augustine arrived in Canterbury

In 598 he found the remains of two ancient churches. In the 7th century two groups can be distinguished: one in Kent, where the mission of St Augustine unfolded, and the other in Northumbria, following the constructions of Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrith. The Kent group is represented in Canterbury by the churches of SS Peter and Paul, built between 597 and 604 (C. R. Peers and A. W. Chapman, St. Augustine's abbey church Canterbury, before the Norman conquest, in *Archaeologia*, 77 [1946], p. 201); of St Mary founded by Eadbald, king of Kent, c. 620 (ibid., p. 211); and of St Pancras (*Archaeologia Cantiana*, 25 [1913], pp. 222-37). It should be noted that Bede recalls in Canterbury an ‘ecclesia in honorem Sancti Martini antiquitus facta dum adhuc in Romana Britannia incolerent’ (Hist. eccl., I, 26). In Rochester, St Andrew was founded in 604 by King Æthelberht; in Lyminge, St Mary was erected after 633 (*Archaeologia Cantiana*, 10 [1898], p. 102); in Bradwell-on-Sea, St Peter was very likely built by St Cedd after 653; in Reculver, St Mary dates from c. 669. A characteristic of this group of churches is the porch used also as a burial place, as at Lyminge, where Tobie, bishop of Rochester, and St Ethelburga were buried. Later than these churches is that of Brixworth (Northampton), notable because it dates to the 7th century, as does the other at Abingdon, c. 680.

The Northumbrian group of churches includes first those of Monkwearmouth, built by Benedict Biscop c. 675, and Jarrow with its inscribed dedication of 685; then those of Escomb in Durham and Corbridge, which reused Roman materials. Ceolfrith built or restored the churches of Ripon and Hexham. The church of Hexham had three naves divided by columns, a transept and a crypt in the manner of the Roman church of St Stephen on the Via Latina. At Hexham a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary was built with a porch on each of the four sides, and it was ‘in modum turris erecta et fere rotunda’, according to the testimony of Richard of Hexham.

Bishop Hedda (691-721) built the church of Lichfield; the king of Wessex (689-728) enlarged the pre-existing church of Glastonbury, dedicated in the 6th century to the Virgin Mary and known in succession as the ‘vetusta ecclesia’; near it was a chapel dedicated to St David. In 676 the abbey was blessed under the abbot Bertwald. The king of Wessex had a larger church built, called the ‘maior ecclesia’. Excavations in 1927-28 identified the remains of its foundations. William of Malmesbury calls ‘basilisci pulcherrimi operis’ the church erected by King Offa at St Albans. Regarding the internal decoration of the church, the Venerable Bede attests that Benedict Biscop (628-90), on his fifth journey from Rome, had brought back a copy of the pictorial cycle to adorn the church of St Peter attached to the monastery of Wearmouth, which he had built, introducing for the first time from Gaul the glass windows hitherto unknown in England (*Vita Sanctorum abbatum*, I: PL 94, 717-18).

II. Art

The first manifestations of Christian art in England are to be sought in the Roman period, when crosses and religious symbols of this kind were carved in stone or some figures that were entirely pagan in appearance were given Christian names. But such objects can hardly be classified as artistic works, and even fewer were produced during the period of barbarian rule that followed the departure of the Romans, although there was a flourishing of pagan art, especially in the form of personal ornaments, metalwork and enamels. A large number of these objects, some of them very beautiful, has been found in graves; worthy of mention is the rich burial ship discovered about ten years ago at Sutton Hoo, in East Anglia.

But in the 7th century, with the spread of Christianity, things changed. Personal ornaments became rare, for even if they were produced they were no longer buried in graves: instead, Christian art began to flourish. Excellent metalwork was executed (among which the ‘Ormside cup’, now in York, deserves mention), but the finest things were produced in stone on a large scale, and to a lesser extent in painting. Stone sculpture was not intended for private use but to decorate the great crosses erected in every sacred centre or place of particular importance throughout the north of Britain.

Of these, the finest are perhaps those of Ruthwell and Bewcastle near the Scottish border, both executed c. 670. As their principal decoration they have compositions of figures inspired by Eastern Christianity, and the quality of their craftsmanship is unrivalled in Europe except in the Byzantine area. Similar images also appear in manuscript illuminations, but in this field the greatest interest is given to a particular decoration of geometric interlace and zoomorphic figures. The artists who worked on these books show little knowledge of figurative art, but their ingenuity in drawing and painting intricate patterns is remarkable, and the miniatures they produced are of rare beauty. There were close links between the school of Northumbria and that of Ireland, and lively discussions have taken place among scholars about the respective contributions of these two areas to the creation of the art generally known as Hiberno-Saxon. But it is very likely that the manuscript known as the ‘Lindisfarne Gospels’ was produced in Northumbria, probably at Lindisfarne itself, c. 700. A splendid work and very different in style from Irish works such as the Book of Durrow or the Book of Kells (v. CELTS, art; IRELAND, art).

The Danish invasion of the 8th-early 9th century arrested artistic development, and manuscripts and sculptures from c. 750 onwards are evidently decadent. Nevertheless, a revival of art is noted in Mercia around 800. King Offa (757-96) is known as an enlightened patron of the arts, and some sculptures at Breedon (Leicestershire), Fletton near Peterborough and elsewhere may perhaps be connected with him. But this late 8th-century revival was evidently local, and only at the end of the 9th century did art begin to flourish everywhere, a result of the unification of government and the enlightened policy of King Alfred. Of great value are some works that can be dated to the reign of Alfred or shortly afterwards, the most important of which are: the jewel of King Alfred himself in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the stole of St Cuthbert at Durham, executed between 909 and 916; probably from the same period a magnificent stone cross at Codford St Peter (Dorset). But at that time the finest production was only gradually achieved, and the acme of late Saxon art came towards the end of the 10th century. Then all the arts flourished with the greatest vigour, and although English architecture can hardly be compared with that of the Continent, stone and ivory carvings, textiles and miniatures have no equal in any country except Byzantium. Much has been lost, but among the stone carvings should be mentioned the Virgin of York and the Crucifixes of Romsey and Langford, and among those in ivory a wonderful crucifix mounted on a metal pedestal of Germanic origin, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The highest artistic value, however, was perhaps achieved in the field of manuscript illumination. It seems that the earliest works were produced at Abingdon, but soon the centre of production moved to Winchester, and although there were ‘scriptoria’ in all the principal monasteries, Winchester remained the most important, and the name ‘Winchester school’ is often used to designate as a whole the late Saxon miniatures. The most notable of all is perhaps the Benediction of St Athelwold, in the collec-

before the Conquest, since the church of Edward the Confessor at Westminster was a Norman and not a Saxon building. But immediately after the Conquest a whole series of cathedrals, abbeys and churches began to be built, and although most of them were not completed until the 12th century, the years around 1075 represent one of the most active periods of construction that England has ever seen. Many of these new buildings are of exceptional artistic level, but it is enough to recall Durham, which is not only large and beautiful, but also interesting as the first example of the use of the pointed arch to cover the main nave.

Naturally this was one of the characteristic features of the Romanesque style, but Durham provides the earliest example of the actual use of such a vault on a large scale; it dates from 1093. There were pauses in this great wave of building, due to lack of money or to anti-ecclesiastical policy on the part of some kings, such as William II, but, in general, building continued throughout the 12th century, and in this period an Anglo-Norman style developed, which combined continental currents with essential English ones. In time, the tendency to revive ancient English tastes again manifested itself, and the interplay of these tastes and currents was at the basis of English medieval art from its very beginning. Thus, in the end, the Conquest acted as a stimulus to national artistic development and did not merely mark the introduction of a new foreign style, as it seemed at first.

The most important manifestations of the Anglo-Norman style occurred in architecture, and there is almost no church in the country that does not preserve some trace of that time; to architecture is joined a decisive development of architectural sculpture: figurative sculpture was of lesser importance, and there are only a few monuments scattered here and there that can in any way be compared to the splendid works produced in France during the 12th century. The great south porch at Malmesbury is the most important of these. Textiles, metalwork, carvings and ivory sculptures were, however, very fine; mural paintings were executed and manuscripts were illuminated by the leading masters. Indeed, the ancient Saxon heritage is most evident in painting, and the fine figure of St Paul at Canterbury, dated to the first half of the 12th century, is as Saxon as it is Norman. It is also difficult to determine to which period some books may be attributed, and similarities are perhaps accentuated by the penetration, at the beginning of the 12th century, of a new wave of Byzantine influences. Saxon art was, in many cases, deeply influenced by Byzantine art; the same occurred in the field of painting by the early Norman art, but the ancient Anglo-Saxon gentleness gives way, and Saxon art

The Norman Conquest of 1066 marked the end of this beautiful Anglo-Saxon art, which was soon supplanted by a completely new style, already fully developed when introduced from the Continent; indeed, in architecture the change had already occurred

England — Funerary inscription with monogrammatic cross (c. end of 5th cent.) — Pennal Church (Carnarvonshire).

tionally for the great north window, later known as the ‘Five Sisters’. It is a simple style, rather austere, where the effect is given by proportion and line rather than by decorative elements, but in some cases figurative sculpture was also used, as, for example, on the west front of Wells, becoming more important in the subsequent phase of English architectural development, that known as the ‘Decorative’. Worthy of mention are the angels placed high in the tympanums of the arches of Westminster Abbey or in the ‘choir of angels’ at Lincoln. All these sculptures are undoubtedly very important, although on the whole figurative production was never, in the Gothic period, of a value comparable to that of French sculpture, and there is no building in Great Britain that can boast of rich and complete decoration as splendid as that of Reims or Amiens.

The Decorated style first developed along lines closely parallel to those followed by French architecture, but in time English architects showed greater originality and, instead of developing Gothic forms to their logical conclusion, as happened in France, there was a return to a style of a simpler and more austere character, dominated by straight lines. The exuberant curves and spirals of French Flamboyant Gothic were replaced in England by the vertical ornaments and composed mouldings of the Perpendicular style. This style was conceived in the 14th century, but about fifty years after its birth fine works in the Decorated style were still being produced, and it was only in the 15th century that the Perpendicular became the predominant style in architecture, surviving throughout the 16th century, to be finally replaced by the new Renaissance fashion brought to Italy by Inigo Jones and his followers. The first example of the Perpendicular style, and in a sense one of the most perfect, is the choir of Gloucester, whose rebuilding began in 1330. The great east window, the largest in England, was completed in 1350, and the superb choirs were added between 1351 and 1412. By the 15th century the new style was universally adopted, and buildings of the greatest importance are to be remembered, such as the chapel of King’s College at Cambridge and the chapel of Henry VII at Westminster. The last example of this style and the last truly fine Gothic work in England is the staircase of Christ Church College in Oxford, from the second quarter of the 17th century.

The Perpendicular style was, on the whole, simple in its ornamentation, but sculpture was widely employed in funerary monuments. Notable are the famous alabasters of Nottinghamshire, produced in large quantities for export, and the fine tomb figures in metal of various members of the royal family at Westminster, including that of Henry VII. Work in ivory was also carried out, and the finest examples date from the 14th century. Particularly noteworthy are a fragmentary Crucifix and a diptych depicting Christ and the Virgin with the Child, both in the Victoria and Albert Museum. These two works are distinctly English, but other pieces are closer to French models, and it is still debated whether the finest of these, the Wilton Diptych in the National Gallery, dated c. 1395, is the work of an English or a French artist. However, other paintings of the period are more distinctly English, and by the 15th century numerous schools flourished; that of East Anglia was perhaps the most important. Both panel paintings and frescoes have suffered severe damage; manuscript illuminations are better preserved. Pages entirely illuminated are often very beautiful, but the finest work may perhaps be found in the initials and borders at the beginning of chapters, where the liveliness and humour characteristic of English art at this period frequently appear. The Dyson Perrins and the Luttrell Psalters should be mentioned, and painted glass should not be overlooked, for from the 12th century onwards there was an excellent production in England, in no way inferior to that of France; but much of it was destroyed by iconoclasts, so that only a few fragments remain.

The golden age of religious art in England came to an end with the dissolution of the monasteries in 1540, and a final blow was dealt to it by the Puritanism of the Civil War. But church building resumed after the Restoration, and a good opportunity presented itself when London was rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666. The great architect Christopher Wren took advantage of this circumstance, and the churches of the city, beginning with St Paul’s Cathedral, form a worthy successor to the Gothic monuments of two or three centuries earlier. The spirit, however, is different, for these churches reflect the soul of English Protestantism, just as the buildings of Vignola reflect that of the Counter-Reformation in Italy. Apart from these 17th- and 18th-century churches, however, religious art was little in evidence, and although many of the great artists of the 18th century, such as Reynolds, Hogarth and Constable, attempted religious painting in a more or less Italian Renaissance style, English painting of the 18th century reached its highest achievements in the fields of portraiture, landscape and genre painting. In these fields, as in portraiture, the works of Ramsay, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Raeburn and others, and in genre painting the pictures of Hogarth, as well as the landscapes of Wilson, Constable and Turner, represent perhaps the finest artistic achievement of the country. Constable’s influence on later development was considerable, especially in France. Once again, in this period the minor arts excelled, and the ceramics of Wedgwood and other factories, as well as the furniture of Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite, are all of excellent quality.

Towards the end of the 18th century religious architecture experienced a revival with the introduction of the so-called Neo-Gothic style, and many of the churches built in this style are not lacking in beauty, although the attempt to revive the spirit of the Gothic age was bound to fail at a time when society was developing in a quite opposite direction, towards large-scale industrialism. And so, in the field of painting, the movement known as Pre-Raphaelitism, although it produced works of considerable interest, was too dominated by the past and lacked the spirit of the great avant-garde movement on the Continent, Impressionism. Since then, despite the production of some artists of genius, such as Augustus John and Sickert, and despite the construction of some fine buildings, no great style has emerged, and on the whole it may be said that art has marked time until a new creative epoch arises in the artistic field, comparable to the Anglo-Saxon, Gothic, or 18th-century periods.

V. EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

The Education Act of 1942 develops extensively the Act of 1918 and the ‘Carnegie Trust’, and establishes that the pupil’s personality is sacred and that his needs must be the basis of education. Every pupil has the right to be housed, fed, clothed, and has the right to medical supervision and care. All pupils have equal opportunity to approach the sources of knowledge, and the time necessary for study must be allowed them. All have the right to religious instruction.

This Education Act is an attempt to unify English education, which has hitherto been characterized by the widest freedom of instruction. From the origins of English education, State intervention in the field of schooling has been rare. In 1867 the Elementary Education Act made elementary education compulsory and free; in 1870 the Forster Education Act introduced religious tolerance into the school system, limiting the predominance of the Anglican Church and giving Catholics the faculty to found their own schools. In 1899 the Board of Education (Ministry of Education) was founded. The duties of this Ministry were merely to promote the spread of culture and to enforce the ‘Code of Regulations’. Scotland has its own Education Department, which is responsible for the inspection and training of teachers in training colleges. In 1925, because of State financial subsidies, disputes arose between the established Presbyterian Church and the Catholic Church, which were resolved by the Act of 1928, which confirmed the Forster Education Act and permitted the foundation of Catholic schools.

In 1902 the Education Act established the control of private schools. In 1918 the Fisher Education Act introduced uniform standards in each English school organization and established further education for young people from 14 to 18 years of age.

Education is divided into pre-school and school education. Pre-school education takes place in nursery schools or nursery classes, where the Montessori system finds its widest application.

School education, on the other hand, takes place in elementary schools, where teaching is strictly individual and is based on the experimental psychology of W. MacDougall. Elementary schools comprise: 1) provided council schools, which may be considered almost state schools, where religious instruction is compulsory according to the pupils’ faith; 2) non-provided voluntary schools, which belong to a Catholic Church or to the Church of England. Both are divided into infant schools for children from 5 to 7 (8) years of age, junior schools for children from 7 (8) to 11 years of age, senior schools and modern schools from 11 to 16 years of age. These latter are in turn divided into rural, commercial, industrial and domestic schools.

Secondary education comprises: "selective central schools" of a mixed type where pupils are encouraged to follow their own inclinations; "non-selective central schools"; "senior classes specially"; "technical trade schools"; "day schools" (middle schools); "colleges and State-aided secondary schools." At 16, one may take a "first schools examination" and attend university. If one has not attended middle school, one may be admitted to university only after passing an entrance examination.

In English middle schools, character formation is emphasized: loyalty, self-honesty, and initiative are valued more than general instruction. For this reason, the majority of school discipline is entrusted to the pupils themselves. Order is maintained not only by the teacher but also by the students, who occasionally take on the role of "school prefects." Every secondary school, particularly "boarding schools" or "girls' schools," is divided into "houses." Each "house" is overseen by a "master" who has "house prefects" under his authority. All public schools are divided into literary, scientific, and musical circles, each headed by a specialized teacher.

Higher education is provided by universities. Universities are independent of State control, and no minister may exercise authority over their activities. They enjoy freedom in the selection of teachers, the choice of subjects taught, and the methods employed. The Universities of Oxford, founded in 1168, and Cambridge, founded in 1209, have attached to them male and female colleges where personal education is imparted. There also exist the Universities of St. Andrews (founded in 1411), Glasgow (founded in 1455), Aberdeen (founded in 1494), Edinburgh (founded in 1582), Wales (founded in 1903), London (founded in 1825), Durham (founded in 1870), Birmingham (established in 1900), Sheffield (founded in 1900), and Belfast (founded in 1849).

The education of primary school teachers takes place in State colleges under State supervision and lasts two years; that of secondary school teachers takes place in government schools or in independent schools subject to universities. According to the law of 1944, there is no difference in the instruction of the two categories. The education of Catholic clergy takes place in 15 colleges, 2 college-seminaries, 5 full seminaries, 4 major seminaries, and 4 minor seminaries. There also exist the Collegium Lisbonense in Portugal and the Collegium a Sancto Beda in Rome. – See plates CXVIII–CXXII.