Pole, Reginald

Abstract

Reginald Pole was a member of the Plantagenet royal house of England and graduated in Arts from Oxford University. In 1521, he was sent by King Henry VIII (1491–1547) to study in Padua, Italy, where he became an enthusiast of the “Christian philosophy” of the Italian Renaissance. During the 1520s and 1530s, he devoted himself increasingly to biblical study and came to believe that faith in God, as revealed in Christ, surpassed all human knowledge and should be the goal of Christians. Pole was able to put some of his ideas into practice, as a cardinal of the Roman Church, from 1536; as papal legate, on several occasions, to England, France, and the Emperor Charles V (1500–1558); and as archbishop of Canterbury (1556–1558). In the last 5 years of his life, he worked with Queen Mary I (1516–1558), and her husband Philip (1527–1598), to restore Catholicism in England. Most of his achievement was reversed after his death, but in Catholic Europe he retained a reputation as a holy man and a Catholic reformer (Mayer, Cardinal Pole in European perspective. Aldershot, 2000; Edwards, Archbishop Pole. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014).