‘Renaissance Catholicism in the Work of Thomas Lodge [Le Catholicisme anglais de la Renaissance dans 1’oeuvre de Lodge]’, Phillip John Usher (trans.), Thomas Lodge: Temoin de son Temps, Paris: Didier Erudition, pp. 465–79 [503–18]

His first profession of faith was published in 1584, in the poem Truths Complaint over England, which contains careful but nevertheless clear allusions to the anti-papal policies of the Elizabethan government. From the first verse, Lodge announces his determination to become the spokesman for Truth,1 after which he deplores the “recent banishing” 2 of traditional Catholic faith, a situation which caused all of England’s problems, “The common state which error doth infect.” 3

The very existence of the new Church is connected with the degradation of social mores and justice. By underlining the disappearance of such fundamental virtues as abstinence and the practice of alms,4 Lodge is simultaneously denouncing Henri VIIFs suppression of monasteries, where charity had flourished, and the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone, which brings in its wake the devaluing of undertakings such as fasting and giving help to the needy.5 Lodge thus pointed out the nefarious consequences on society’s equilibrium of the anti-Catholic policies and to this he added the charge of simony, made against the Anglican clergy. The interpreter o f the Truth is indeed nostalgic for the time when church

“livings were not sold For lucre...but given by desart.” 6 It is a sacrilege with which Lodge will deal in Wits Miserie as one of the deadly sins and which consists in “buying or selling a religious object.” 7 Finally, towards the poem’s conclusion there reappears the nostalgia for the “blessed time” when “English hearts” received from heaven the gift o f wisdom .8