The Holocaust of His Discretion: Metaphors of Judgment in the Early Stuart Church

This essay establishes the significance of the concept of “discretion” to the scope and nature of episcopal power in the early Stuart Church. Examples are drawn from the Church’s constitutional documents and the ecclesiology of Richard Hooker, where “discretion” named a faculty of judgment and the p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Church history and religious culture
Main Author: Clayton, Tom (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill [2020]
In: Church history and religious culture
Further subjects:B Jurisdiction
B Episcopacy
B Discretion
B Metaphor
B Adiaphora
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:This essay establishes the significance of the concept of “discretion” to the scope and nature of episcopal power in the early Stuart Church. Examples are drawn from the Church’s constitutional documents and the ecclesiology of Richard Hooker, where “discretion” named a faculty of judgment and the particularly controversial form of autonomous power over adiaphora, or “things indifferent,” proper to the clergy. Turning to the manuscript and print records of a dispute between Bishop of Lincoln John Williams and the Archiepiscopal regime of William Laud, the essay argues that contrasting interpretations of discretion within the Church’s institutional culture characterized divergent approaches to conformity. These differences were established through the metaphors that translated between objects at the edges of episcopal jurisdictions and the concerns closest to the Church’s doctrinal identity. Disputes over these metaphors aggravated constitutional tensions in the years preceding the civil wars.
ISSN:1871-2428
Contains:Enthalten in: Church history and religious culture
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/18712428-bja10007