Pseudo-Martyr

M. Morgan Holmes teaches English at McGill University.

Published only once during John Donne’s lifetime, the voluminous
Pseudo-Martyr of 1610 is a work of synthesizing and ratiocinative
theological genius, as well as an invaluable window into the
early–17th-century feud between secular and spiritual authority. The
text and margins are crammed with past and contemporary names, events,
and quotations that boggle the modern reader’s mind. To help us to
discover “the thread running through [the book],” Anthony Raspa has
provided a brilliant introduction and commentary notes on the
historical, religious, and literary forces that informed it.

Principal among the historical contexts is the controversy surrounding
King James I’s demand that even Roman Catholics take the oath of
allegiance and thus contravene the Pope’s absolution of loyalty to
so-called heretical monarchs. While Donne’s thoughts on this matter
are couched in labyrinthine rhetoric and are dependent on the reader’s
awareness of historical and current affairs, Raspa lucidly explains the
political and religious grounds for Donne’s conclusion that one could
swear loyalty to James as temporal ruler and still remain faithful to
the tenets of the Roman Church. The value of Raspa’s dissection of a
hitherto neglected instance of the early modern separation of juridical
and ecclesiastical power has value beyond the realm of Donne studies,
for it touches on one of the central features of the development of
modern Western society.

In addition to the political resonance of Pseudo-Martyr, Raspa also
illuminates a perennial fascination of Donne critics: namely, the
autobiographical element. Raspa shows not only that Donne tried to
convince Roman Catholics in England to remain loyal to James—a tactic
that he likely thought would also win him a more central place at
court—but also that the text carries an “implicit suggestion that
Donne [was] still trying to convince himself that his religious
convictions are settled.” The conclusion that Donne’s flight from
Catholicism to Anglicanism primarily involved the spirituality of
visions, excessive obedience, and the papal interdiction against James
provides, like the rest of the editorial commentary and apparatus, a
fully historicized basis for further theoretical investigations of
17th-century religiopolitical life and of the psychology of Donne
himself.