Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500–1558), father of seminary education

Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500–1558)

Portrait by a follower of Sebastiano del Piombo (c. 1485–1547)

Magdalen College, Oxford

Reginald Pole (1500–1558) is one of the great figures of Tudor history. Born a Plantagenet, he numbered two kings of England as great-uncles and Henry VIII (1491–1547) as a kinsman.

Destined from an early age to follow an ecclesiastical career, Pole studied at Oxford and Padua and gained a reputation as a Renaissance scholar, associated with the likes of Michelangelo (1475–1564), Vittoria Colonna (1492–1547) and Marcantonio Flaminio (1498–1550). Strongly opposed to Henry’s divorce, he settled as a self-imposed ‘exile’ in France and Italy. In 1536 he was created a cardinal. However, he was increasingly seen as a threat to Henry’s regime and had to evade several plots of assassination or kidnap; worse of all was the persecution of his family and the execution of his mother, Blessed Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (1473–1541). He regarded himself as the son of a martyr.

Pole took a prominent part in the first session of the Council of Trent and narrowly missed out on being elected pope at the conclave of 1549–50. He returned to England in 1553 as papal legate, following the accession of Mary I (1516–1558) and, from 1556 until his death, he was archbishop of Canterbury. However, his attempt to restore Catholicism was cut short by his sudden death, of influenza, on 17 February 1558 – just twelve hours after the death of the queen.

Pole had several links with the English Hospice in Rome, the precursor to the current Venerable English College. From 1538 he acted as its custos or warden. This office had previously been a royal appointment but, after Henry’s break with Rome, Pope Paul III (1468–1549) had wanted to fill the gap with a candidate of his own who would ensure loyalty to the papacy. The confraternity that administered the day-to-day running of the Hospice was also largely filled with members of Pole’s entourage, including George Lily (d.1559, son of the famous grammarian), Michael Throckmorton (c.1503–1558, of the notable Warwickshire family) and Thomas Goldwell (1501–1555, later bishop of St Asaph).

The Liber Rationarius Hospitalis, or account book of the English Hospice, Rome, for 1548–49, bearing the arms of Cardinal Reginald Pole as custos or warden of the Hospice (AVCAU, Liber 23)

It is not widely known that Cardinal Reginald Pole was one of the founders of the seminary system. In 1555 he convened the Synod of London, which covered urgent issues such as the residence of bishops, pluralism, simony and the non-alienation of church property. The eleventh decree of the Synod states that every bishop should set up in his cathedral ‘a sort of nursery, and, as it were, a seminary of ministers’, where youths – including those from poor backgrounds – would be ‘instructed in ecclesiastical doctrine and discipline.’ Bishops were asked to ‘pay annually the fortieth part of the revenue which they draw from their sees for the maintenance of these youths’.[1]  

The provisions of the 1555 Synod, which were strikingly forward-thinking, had hardly begun to be implemented when Mary Tudor and Pole both died: however, it is likely that, had they lived, seminaries would have been established in many parts of England. The Synod decrees were, however, taken careful note of in Rome, where they were published under the title Reformatio Angliae in 1562, pre-dating the decree concerning seminaries of the twenty-third session of the Council of Trent (15 July 1563).

A copy of the Latin version of the decrees of the 1555 Synod of London, published in Rome in 1562 at the Aldine Press of Paulus Manutius or Paolo Manuzio (1512–1574), third son of the celebrated Venetian printer Aldus Manutius and his wife Maria Torresano

Pole’s ideas were influenced by the scholarly reformist circles in which he moved. An important member of his entourage was Nicolò Ormanetto (c.1515–1577), who served the English cardinal as chaplain during his governorship of Bagnoregio and who was his private secretary in London. Ormanetto had formerly worked with the bishop of Verona, Gian Matteo Giberti (1495–1543), whose 1542 Constitutiones were considered throughout the sixteenth century a model for diocesan reform. Giberti set up a diocesan college (a sort of proto-seminary), printed a catechism and encouraged the study of the Greek Fathers. Ormanetto undoubtedly brought this vision to Pole’s household and, in later life, he served alongside St Charles Borromeo, the reforming archbishop of Milan, who founded one of the first Tridentine seminaries.

It is even possible that the English Hospice in Rome was seen as a potential part of this new wave of colleges. A substantial number of early printed books in the Library of the Venerable English College are inscribed with the letters ‘R. P. C.’, denoting that they were gifted to the Hospice by Cardinal Reginald Pole. These include the works of the Pseudo-Dionysius (1516) and Omnia Themistii (1534), volumes which would not have normally been required by a Hospice for pilgrims. Did Pole see the Hospice as fulfilling a new function as a college to train English and Welsn clerics and promote scholarship in the heart of Rome?

A copy of Tade enestin en tēde tē biblo tou Hagiou Dionysiou, a text by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (floruit c. 650—c. 725), from the press of Filippo Giunta (1450?—1517) [Florence, 1516], bearing the inscription ‘R.P.C.’ or ‘Reginaldus Polus Cardinalis’ (Venerable English College Library, Rare Book Collection)

An Aldine Press edition of Omnia Themistii opera, hoc est paraphrases, et orationes. Alexandri Aphrodisiensis libri dvo De anima, et De fato vnvs (Venetiis: In aedibus haeredum Aldi Manutii, & Andreae Asulani mense Maio M.D.XXXIIII [1534]), again bearing an ‘R.P.C’ inscription — and indicating its status as a book from the Library of the English Hospice in Rome (Venerable English College Library, Rare Book Collection)

Meanwhile, Pole’s legacy lived on posthumously at the Hospice, which was by now a refuge for ‘exiled pluralists in search of chaplaincies, scholars, dispossessed administrators – few of them saintly although they had all suffered in some way for the Catholic faith’.[2]  The new Protector, Cardinal Giovanni Morone (1509–1580), founded a chantry at the Hospice to pray for Pole’s soul. Many of those who resided there and who took a part in its slow transition into a seminary had previously been associated with Pole, including Bishop Thomas Goldwell, who served as custos of the Hospice, and Dr Morys Clynnog (c.1520/21–c.1581?), the last custos of the Hospice and the first rector of the College, who was the cardinal’s former almoner and personal secretary.

The Venerable English College today can indeed take great pride in its associations with this eminent Englishman, who helped set up a system of clerical formation that has borne fruit all over the world for nearly five hundred years.

[1] Henry Reikes, The Reform of England by the Decrees of Cardinal Pole (Chester, 1839), pp. 50–52.

[2] Michael Williams, The Venerable English College, Rome: A History 1579–1979 (Gracewing, Leominister, 2008), p. 2.