Many Episcopalians associate the name Richard Hooker with via media and Anglicanism’s three-legged stool of scripture, reason, and tradition.

In the spring issue of Anglican and Episcopal History (AEH), multiple historians challenge accepted narratives and offer new analysis of sixteenth-century priest Richard Hooker’s writings, life, and legacy.

In the lead study, Rudolph P. Almasy argues Hooker’s landmark Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity was not exclusively aimed at Presbyterian critics of the time as is often assumed. Instead, Almasy’s closer examination of Polity argues that Hooker “was aware of and sensitive to the polyvocal religious scene in London as he began to draft the Polity.” And, that knowing this, Hooker “sought to have his work speak to the largest audience possible as he explained the positions and practices of the established church.”

The study is titled “Richard Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity and the Late Elizabethan Polyvocal Religious Scene.” Almasy is emeritus professor and dean emeritus at West Virginia University.

Then in “The Destruction of Richard Hooker’s Manuscripts, Revisited” Daniel F. Graves reconsiders Izaak Walton’s 1655 The Life of Richard Hooker, a once authoritative biography of Hooker that has fallen out of favor in recent years.

Graves contends that “Hooker scholarship has adhered too closely to [C.J.] Sisson and [David] Novarr’s dismissal of Walton as a reliable source and essentially taken him off the table as a resource in reconstructing the life of Hooker. It is high time we treated Walton seriously, although not uncritically, and put him back on the table.” Graves does just that.

He is theologian-in-residence at Trinity Anglican Church in Aurora, Ontario and teaches church history at Huron University College in London, Ontario.

Other Hooker related studies in the spring issue of AEH are:

“The Beauty of Holiness between Hooker and Laud: ‘Not more holy, than comely, nor more sacred than sumptuous’” by Travis J. Knapp. The study looks at evolving usage of the phrase “in the beauty of holiness” in Laudian and anti-Laudian liturgies. Knapp is assistant professor of English at Valley City State University in North Dakota.

“Early Protestant Riffs on Ephesians 4:18 in martin Bucer and Richard Hooker” by David B. Alenskis, a doctoral student at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto.

“‘Pretended Queen’: English Catholics and Elizabethan Treason Legislation, 1569-1572” by Hannah Wygiera, a doctoral student at the University of Calgary who is also involved in church governance within the Anglican Church of Canada

BOOK REVIEWS

Multiple book reviews also examine recent works relevant to Hooker and his times. These include:

• Richard Hooker and the Christian Virtues edited by Daniel F. Graves and Scott N. Kindred Barnes | Reviewed by Rudolph P. Almasy of West Virginia University
• Tudor England, A History by Lucy Wooding | Reviewed by William Gibson of Oxford Brookes University
• England’s Other Countrymen: Black Tudor Society by Onyeka Nubia | Reviewed by Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook, editor-in-chief of Anglican and Episcopal History
• The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church by Matthew Barrett | Reviewed by Jack D. Kilcrease of Christ School of Theology in Brookings, South Dakota
• A joint review of The Anglican Episcopate 1689-1800 edited by Nigel Aston and William Gibson and Civil Religion in the Early Modern Anglophone World, 1550-1700 edited by Rachel Hammersley and Adam Morton | Reviewed by Christopher Fauske of Salem State University
• Lollards in the English Reformation: History, Radicalism, and John Foxe by Susan Royal | Reviewed by Lora Walsh of the University of Arkansas

Anglican and Episcopal History is the peer-reviewed journal of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church. It is published quarterly. For subscription information visit hsec.us/membership.