‘The Archtyrant of the Earth’: Papal Monarchy and Political Tyranny in English Protestant Thought, ca. 1530-1645.

Abstract

This article examines how English Protestant writers between the Reformation and the Civil War came to construe the papal monarchy as the archetypal tyranny. It argues that England’s quarrel with Rome concerned the nature of legitimate monarchy, and that the association between papalism and absolutism was a central component of English anti-Catholicism. By invoking conciliar theory, and by citing the claims of medieval canonists, Protestant writers recast the pope as the embodiment of lawless will. In doing so, they fashioned a language of tyranny and a vocabulary of anti-papalism that were redeployed in domestic debates about government in church and state.