Resumen de Edward VI's treatise on the papal supremacy and the education of a theologian-king
This article extends recent work on the education and court culture of Edward VI through an investigation of the twelve-year-old king's 1549 treatise in French attacking the papal supremacy. The two extant manuscripts- a draft, including copious corrections from the king's French tutor, Jean Belmain, and a presentation copy-offer a unique window into the mechanics of Tudor royal pedagogy. Close reading of the treatise and annotations reveals a youth still learning the finer points of French prose, but growing in conifidence in his intellectual abilities. Though the arguments are standard tropes ef evangelical polemic, Edward engages with his principal source, a dialogue by Bernardino Ochino, critically and creatively. The treatise expands Ochino's biblical glosses, integrates the dialogue with the polemical writings of Richard Morison, and shows evidence of original theological and polemical thought. The text is an early result of a royal pedagogy consciously geared towards producing an active evangelical monarch, foreshadowing the increasingly assertive Edward of the 1550s.
