The First Two Partes of the Actes...

The bishop of Ossory and evangelical polemicist John Bale (1495-1563) wrote his Actes of the Englysh Votaryes in Germany, in the first of two periods of exile. It first appeared in Antwerp in 1546 under a false imprint (Wesel): surreptitious publication reflecting the incendiary nature of print. Bale had abandoned life as a Carmelite monk in order to marry, and the Actes defends marriage as biblical, attacks (in opposition to Henry VIII) the vow of celibacy, and sets out bluntly to expose and vilify the sexual mores of the monastic orders—mores portrayed as encouraged by the pope, who is equated with the Antichrist. Bale presents the Church as having been originally pure but having become polluted as the papacy developed, especially over the question of clerical celibacy, and England as a blessed place for having been influenced by the pope for a comparatively short period. The book was meant to be in four parts, but Bale finished only the first two, from Joseph of Arimathea bringing apostolic Christianity to Britain in the year 1000 to the reign of King John. It became one of his most popular works, published three times between 1548 (shown) and 1560.