Lancelot Andrewes

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Lancelot Andrewes
translator
Alma materPembroke Hall, Cambridge
Lancelot Andrewes
Venerated inAnglican Communion
Feast25 September (Church of England)
26 September (ECUSA)
Monument with effigy of Lancelot Andrewes in Southwark Cathedral

Lancelot Andrewes (1555 – 25 September 1626) was an English bishop and scholar, who held high positions in the

James I. During the latter's reign, Andrewes served successively as Bishop of Chichester, of Ely, and of Winchester and oversaw the translation of the King James Version of the Bible (or Authorized Version). In the Church of England he is commemorated on 25 September with a lesser festival
.

Early life, education and ordination

Andrewes was born in 1555 near

Master of Arts degree in 1578.[1] His academic reputation spread so quickly that on the foundation in 1571 of Jesus College, Oxford he was named in the charter as one of the founding scholars "without his privity" (Isaacson, 1650); his connection with the college seems to have been purely notional, however.[2] In 1576 he was elected fellow of Pembroke College; on 11 June 1580 he was ordained a priest by William Chaderton, Bishop of Chester,[3] and in 1581 was incorporated Master of Arts (MA) at Oxford. As catechist at his college he read lectures on the Decalogue
(published in 1630), which aroused great interest.

Once a year he would spend a month with his parents and, during this vacation, he would find a master from whom he would learn a language of which he had no previous knowledge. In this way, after a few years, he acquired most of the modern languages of Europe.[4]

Andrewes was the elder brother of the scholar and cleric Roger Andrewes, who also served as a translator for the King James Version of the Bible.

During Elizabeth's reign

In 1588, following a period as chaplain to

Roman Catholicism and adduced John Calvin
as a new writer, with lavish praise and affection.

Yet, Andrewes was certainly no

Calvinist. It has been said that he developed a proto-Arminian soteriology while at Cambridge and that he maintained this non-Calvinist theology throughout his life.[5] He made it a point to refuse to repeat the common Calvinist slogans of his time.[6] During the first half of the seventeenth century, he claimed that Calvinism was incompatible with civil government, preaching, and ministry.[7] Throughout his sermons, he unashamedly criticized Calvinist doctrine and practice.[8] He has been referred to as an avant-garde conformist, which is understood as an implicitly proto-Arminian precursor to Laudianism and explicit English-Arminianism. He outright decried the translation and Calvinistic notes in the Geneva translation of the Bible. He taught that God condemned Cain for his own freely chosen sin and he denied that God unconditionally predestined any to salvation or that he unconditionally condemned anyone. He argued for soteriological synergism, using Lot's wife as a picture that one's salvation is not secure post-conversion apart from an ongoing and freely chosen cooperation with God's saving grace.[9] John Overall and Andrewes were more sympathetic to the Remonstrants than the Calvinists at the time of the Synod of Dort. Andrewes, out of fear, denied his support for the Remonstrants when letters sent to him from that party were intercepted. He was not on friendly terms with the delegates to the synod and he made it clear that he did not support the results. He and the Remonstrants attempted to use the ecclesiological similarities between the Contra-Remonstrants and the Puritans to persuade James I not to involve himself in the Synod of Dort or to support the Remonstrant cause if he did.[10]

Through the influence of Francis Walsingham, Andrewes was appointed prebendary of St Pancras in St Paul's Cathedral, in 1589, and subsequently became master of his own college of Pembroke, as well as a chaplain to John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury. From 1589 to 1609 he was prebendary of Southwell. On 4 March 1590, as a chaplain of Elizabeth I, he preached before her an outspoken sermon and, in October that year, gave his introductory lecture at St Paul's, undertaking to comment on the first four chapters of the Book of Genesis. These were later compiled as The Orphan Lectures (1657).

Andrewes liked to move among the people, yet found time to join a society of antiquaries, of which

Salisbury, because of the conditions attached. On 23 November 1600, he preached at Whitehall a controversial sermon on justification. In July 1601 he was appointed Dean of Westminster
and gave much attention to the school there.

When

lepers, etc. Andrewes claimed that the plague was caused by "inventions" like "new meats in diet" and "new fashions in apparel" that had roused the wrath of God. He condemns changes in Christian tradition that "our fathers never knew of".[11]

During the reign of James I

Simon de Passe, engraving

On the accession of

James I, Andrewes rose into great favour. He assisted at James's coronation, and in 1604 took part in the Hampton Court Conference
.

Andrewes' name is the first on the list of divines appointed to compile the Authorized Version of the Bible, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611. He headed the "First Westminster Company" which took charge of the first books of the Old Testament (Genesis to 2 Kings). He acted, furthermore, as a sort of general editor for the project as well.

On 31 October 1605 his election as

Lord High Almoner (until 1619).[12] Following the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, Andrewes was asked to prepare a sermon to be presented to the king in 1606 (Sermons Preached upon the V of November, in Lancelot Andrewes, XCVI Sermons, 3rd. Edition (London,1635) pp. 889, 890, 900–1008 ). In this sermon Andrewes justified the need to commemorate the deliverance and defined the nature of celebrations. This sermon became the foundation of celebrations which continue 400 years later.[13] In 1609 he published Tortura Torti, a learned work which grew out of the Gunpowder Plot controversy and was written in answer to Bellarmine's Matthaeus Tortus, which attacked James I's book on the oath of allegiance. After moving to Ely[3] (his election to that see was confirmed on 22 September),[12]
he again controverted Bellarmine in the Responsio ad Apologiam.

In 1617 he accompanied James I to

Presbyterianism. He was made dean of the Chapel Royal and translated (by the confirmation of his election to that see in February 1619)[12] to Winchester, a diocese that he administered with great success. Following his death in 1626 in his Southwark palace, he was mourned alike by leaders in church and state, and buried beside the high altar at St Saviour's (now Southwark Cathedral, then in the Diocese of Winchester
).

Legacy

Portrait of Andrewes by Hollar
Memorial in Winchester Cathedral

Two generations later, Richard Crashaw caught up the universal sentiment, when in his lines "Upon Bishop Andrewes' Picture before his Sermons" he exclaims:

This reverend shadow cast that setting sun,
Whose glorious course through our horizon run,
Left the dim face of this dull hemisphere,
All one great eye, all drown'd in one great teare.

Andrewes was a friend of

Catholic". His position in regard to the Eucharist
is naturally more mature than that of the first reformers.

As to the Real Presence we are agreed; our controversy is as to the mode of it. As to the mode we define nothing rashly, nor anxiously investigate, any more than in the Incarnation of Christ we ask how the human is united to the divine nature in One Person. There is a real change in the elements—we allow ut panis iam consecratus non-sit panis quem natura formavit; sed, quem benedictio consecravit, et consecrando etiam immutavit [ie, "that the bread once consecrated is not the bread which nature has formed, but that which the blessing has consecrated and, by consecrating it, has also changed"]. (Responsio, p. 263).

Adoration is permitted, and the use of the terms "sacrifice" and "altar" maintained as being consonant with scripture and antiquity. Christ is "a sacrifice—so, to be slain; a propitiatory sacrifice—so, to be eaten." (Sermons, vol. ii. p. 296).

By the same rules that the Passover was, by the same may ours be termed a sacrifice. In rigour of speech, neither of them; for to speak after the exact manner of divinity, there is but one only sacrifice, veri nominis, that is Christ's death. And that sacrifice but once actually performed at His death, but ever before represented in figure, from the beginning; and ever since repeated in memory to the world's end. That only absolute, all else relative to it, representative of it, operative by it ... Hence it is that what names theirs carried, ours do the like, and the Fathers make no scruple at it—no more need we.(Sermons, vol. ii. p. 300).

Lancelot Andrewes memorial stained glass window in the cloister of Chester Cathedral

Andrewes preached regularly and submissively before James I and his court on the anniversaries of the

Divine Right of Kings
.

His Life was written by Alexander Whyte (Edinburgh, 1896), M. Wood (New York, 1898), and Robert Lawrence Ottley (Boston, 1894). His services to his church have been summed up thus: (1) he has a keen sense of the proportion of the faith and maintains a clear distinction between what is fundamental, needing ecclesiastical commands, and subsidiary, needing only ecclesiastical guidance and suggestion; (2) as distinguished from the earlier protesting standpoint, e.g. of the Thirty-nine Articles, he emphasised a positive and constructive statement of the Anglican position.

His best-known work is the Preces Privatae or Private Prayers, edited by

F. E. Brightman appeared in 1903.[15] John Rutter set some of those prayers to music. Andrewes's other works occupy eight volumes in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology (1841–1854). Ninety-six of his sermons were published in 1631 by command of Charles I, have been occasionally reprinted, and are considered among the most rhetorically developed and polished sermons of the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries. Because of these, Andrewes has been commemorated by literary greats including T. S. Eliot
.

Andrewes was considered, next to

King James Bible, Howard Brenton's Anne Boleyn (2010), Jonathan Holmes' Into Thy Hands (2011) and David Edgar's Written on the Heart
(2011).

He has an academic cap named after him, known as the

mortarboard but made of velvet, floppy and has a tump or tuff instead of a tassel. This was in fact the ancient version of the mortarboard before the top square was stiffened and the tump replaced by a tassel and button. This cap is still used by Cambridge DDs and at certain institutions as part of their academic dress
.

Collected works

Andrewes created a significant personal library. In his will, he bequeathed approximately 400 volumes to Pembroke where they remain.[16]

His collection included:

Works of Lancelot Andrewes, 11 volumes (Oxford, 1841–1854),[17]

Lancelot Andrewes Collection, 7 volumes[18]

Styles and titles

  • 1555–c. 1579: Lancelot Andrewes Esq.
  • c. 1579–1589: The Reverend Lancelot Andrewes
  • 1589–bef. 1590: The Reverend Prebendary Lancelot Andrewes
  • bef. 1590–1594: The Reverend Prebendary Doctor Lancelot Andrewes
  • 1594–1601: The Reverend Canon Doctor Lancelot Andrewes
  • 1601–1605: The Very Reverend Doctor Lancelot Andrewes
  • 1605–1626: The Right Reverend Doctor Lancelot Andrewes

References

Citations

  1. ^ "Andrews, Lancelot (ANDS571L)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  2. ^ Allen 1998, pp. 116–117.
  3. ^ a b c "Andrewes, Lancelot (1580–1609) (CCEd Person ID 21583)". The Clergy of the Church of England Database 1540–1835. Retrieved 1 February 2014.
  4. ^ M'Clure 1853, p. 78.
  5. OCLC 61346117
    .
  6. OCLC 11747880
    .
  7. OCLC 28748037
    .
  8. OCLC 957139812
    .
  9. OCLC 957139812
    .
  10. OCLC 61459730
    .
  11. ^ Gilman, E. B. (2009). Plague Writing in Early Modern England. Ukraine: University of Chicago Press, p. 147.
  12. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/520. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  13. ^ Andrewes 1606.
  14. ^ Whyte 1896.
  15. ^ Cross 1957, p. 50.
  16. ^ "Lancelot Andrewes 1555–1626 – Book Owners Online". www.bookowners.online. Retrieved 23 October 2022.
  17. ^ "RARE WORKS OF LANCELOT ANDREWES 11 leather volumes COMPLETE SPURGEON REC VG + | #243909509". Worthpoint. Retrieved 26 November 2021.
  18. ^ "Lancelot Andrewes Collection (7 vols.)". www.logos.com. Retrieved 26 November 2021.

Sources

External links
Academic offices
Preceded by
Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge

1589–1605 		Succeeded by
Church of England titles
Preceded by Bishop of Chichester
1605–1609 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Bishop of Ely
1609–1619 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Bishop of Winchester
1618–1626 		Succeeded by
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