Victors Wrote the Histories of Shakespeare and Francis of Assisi (Part 3: Religious Bias in Shakespeare Scholarship)

If scholarly bias is in some ways analogous to war between opposing camps, those who win certain battles for a time may not win the war in the long run. Or at least it sometimes seems that way. History is often written by victors whose crimes are erased along with the suffering of the vanquished. How does this apply to Shakespeare and Francis of Assisi?

[Images, L-R: Secret Shakespeare by Richard Wilson (2004), and The Saint and the Sultan by Paul Moses (2009).] *

Shakespeare incorporated not only Protestant, Puritan, and Catholic themes in his plays, but often specifically Franciscan themes. In both literal and figurative violence of religious and cultural wars in medieval and Early Modern Europe, Franciscans were twice the losers, first to Rome, then to England.

Francis of Assisi (c.1181-1226) was a reformer in his own right who recognized ways that money, power, and violence had corrupted the Catholic church. He expressed solidarity with and love for the sick and poor. He loved enemies. In one tale, he convinced the wolf of Gubbio to stop terrorizing the locals, and convinced the locals to feed the wolf, who became the town’s beloved pet and protector.

Francis met for a few days in 1219 with the Sultan of Egypt, al-Kamil, during the Fifth Crusade. The early version of these and other events by Thomas of Celano, biographer of Francis, was not to Rome’s liking, so Rome assigned Bonaventure the task of writing a new biography and ordered all previous biographies burned.

How did the memory of Francis lose out? Instead of portraying Francis as meeting Christendom’s enemy with an open mind and heart, finding things to appreciate and learn from in the Egyptian Muslims, Francis was portrayed as having only the triumphant goal of converting the Sultan, or dying a martyr. He is portrayed as miraculously walking over a bed of hot coals to prove Christianity’s superiority and truth.

Catholicism marginalized Francis, refashioning him into a messenger of their triumphalist claims, instead of allowing him to be the radical lover of enemies that he was. Francis who had reconciled a town with a wolf-enemy became a safe garden statue with cute birds and rabbits.

Franciscans had a long monastic history in England. But in the strife between Catholics, Protestants, and Puritans, eventually the English monarchy and its Church were the victors. They wrote the history. Catholic and Franciscan sympathies in Shakespeare’s plays, and questions the plays raised about the political status quo, were downplayed for centuries by critics and scholars, and Shakespeare was taught as post-Christian, apolitical, and universal.

Many have noted that Shakespeare was more sympathetic to Franciscans than his contemporaries, but this is mostly a footnote in religious commentaries stuck in a Protestant-Catholic binary. And remember: Many scholars and instructors of Shakespeare worldwide still assume he was a conforming Protestant, in spite of the fact that certain highly respected scholars assume that his sympathies seem to have been Roman Catholic, in spite of having to project an image of a good, conforming Protestant playwright. Many are still stuck in the binary.

To transcend that binary, we might consider the Franciscan sympathies in Shakespeare as a third way, not only because Francis was a reformer who predated Luther by centuries, but also because the methods of Francis were originally far more peaceful and conciliatory than many Protestants and Catholics later proved to be.

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* I include images of these books because Paul Moses' The Saint and the Sultan explores much of this about Francis, and because Richard Wilson explores the secretive nature of Shakespeare's writing inasmuch as it touches on religion, but also the strong evidence of his conflicted Catholic sympathies, torn between some Catholic traditions on the one hand, and an aversion to plots of assassination on the other.
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MORE - on Francis of Assisi as possible namesake for the sentinel Francisco in Shakespeare's Hamlet:

How Geographical Memory May Have Encouraged the Naming of Francisco and Bernardo in Hamlet:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/07/how-geographical-memory-may-have.html

Hamlet & Francis refocus on transcendent fathers:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/11/shakespeares-hamlet-finds-father-in.html

Melancholy & Lost Delight in Hamlet & Francis of Assisi:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/07/melancholy-lost-delight-hamlet-francis.html

What Bernard(o) and Francis(co) have to do with Shakespeare & the Bible:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/12/what-do-francisco-bernardo-have-to-do.html

List of Reasons Why Francis May be Named After Francis of Assisi:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/04/top-six-reasons-shakespeare-probably.html
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Series on Religious (and a few other) Biases in Shakespeare Scholarship:
1. Biases & Assumptions Influence What We Notice, Seek, or Neglect - 11 January, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/01/biases-assumptions-influence-what-we.html

2. Religious Bias in Shakespeare/Hamlet Scholarship - 18 January, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/01/part-2-factors-contributing-to.html

3. Victors Wrote the Histories of Shakespeare and Francis of Assisi - 25 January, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/01/victors-wrote-history-of-shakespeare.html

4. Biblical Seeds of Secular Shakespeare Bias - 1 February, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/02/biblical-seeds-of-secular-shakespeare.html

5. Catholic Bias in Simon Augustus Blackmore - 8 February, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/02/catholic-bias-in-simon-augustus.html

6. Nietzschean & Christian-Mythical Bias in G. Wilson Knight - 15 February, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/02/nietzschean-christian-mythical-bias-in.html

7. Roland Frye's Protestant Bias - 22 February, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/02/roland-fryes-protestant-bias.html

8. Gatekeeping and Religious Turns in Shakespeare Scholarship - 1 March, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/03/gatekeeping-and-religious-turns-in.html

9. Honigmann, Hammerschmidt−Hummel, and Moses' Shoes - 8 March, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/03/taking-off-shoes-in-presence-of.html

10. Protestant Bias in Arthur McGee's 1987 book, "The Elizabethan Hamlet" - 15 March, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/03/protestant-bias-in-arthur-mcgees-1987.html

11. Catholic Bias in Clare Asquith's 2005 book, "Shadowplay" - 22 March, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/03/catholic-bias-in-clare-asquiths-2005.html

12. Protestant and authoritarian bias in Roy W. Battenhouse - 29 March, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/03/battenhouses-authoritarian-protestant.html


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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to point out how the Bible and religion may have influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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Thanks for reading!
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My current project is a book tentatively titled Hamlet’s Bible, about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.

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