ABSTRACT
One useful place to start in thinking about celebrity is to look at how the word itself fi rst emerged. The Oxford English Dictionary identifi es Richard Hooker’s reference in 1600 to ‘the dignity and celebrity of mother cities’ as the earliest use of the word, but ‘celebretie’ fi rst appears in English in 1565, in the commentary by the leading Protestant reformer John Jewel (1522-71), Bishop of Salisbury, 1 on the baptism practices of the Apostles. Bishop Jewel remarked that ‘whereas he [Jesus] commanded them to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Sonne, and of the Holy Ghost, they [the Apostles] baptized in the name of Iesus Chiste Onely, intending thereby to make that be of more fame and celebritie’. 2 A little later, in 1587, John Bridges, Dean of Sarum, explained that the Apostle John preached at the Church of Ephesus, which he saw as a key site, ‘because for the multitude of beleeuers, and the celebritie of the place’. 3 It was used, then, to refer to the condition of being well known, in forms such as ‘the celebrity of his name’ or ‘the celebrity of his writings’.
