ABSTRACT
For St John Chrysostom it was a question whether bishops could be saved. Dante had no hesitation about envisaging a Pope in hell. Carranza was chosen by Philip II to be the shaping influence on the Catholic Reform in England. This chapter suggests that the point at issue between Carranza and Pole was the Court itself, and the struggle for the formation of religious policy. Carranza had depicted the Court as the scene of ultimate corruption. He had theologized a topos, he had identified the Court as the habitat of demons, the locus of disinformation. The implication was that inside the Court there was no salvation. In reality, Carranza seems to have intended his strictures to apply only to bishops resident at Court. The voice of Carranza spoke posthumously in the Roman Catechism of 1566 for centuries to come, while Pole's Reformatio Angliae became the point of departure for the world-wide provision of a vocationally motivated clergy.
