Note on Texts of the "De unitate" and Manuscripts and Sources

The Latin text upon which this translation is based is in the Rare Book Room of the New York Public Library: Reginaldi Poli Cardinalis Britanni pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione, libri quatuor, Romae: Apud Antonium Bladum, c. 1536. Other copies of this first edition known to be extant in the United States are at the Library of Congress; the H. E. Huntington Library in San Marino, California; the Yale University Library; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; and the Chapin Library of Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts. This first edition appeared, without Pole's permission, most probably 1537—38. It was based on a manuscript copy of the De unitate that Pope Paul Ill seems to have acquired from Cardinal Contarini. The original manuscript of the De unitate, preserved in the Rolls House, London, does not exactly parallel the version of the printed copies. Certain more vehemently critical passages are omitted in the manuscript form. The accusations concerning Henry's intimate relations with Anne Boleyn's are not found in the manuscript intended for Henry's perusal.

Pole did everything possible to prevent this first publication of the De unitate, and endeavored to withdraw from circulation all copies of the "pirated" 1537—38 edition he could lay his hands on. Pole cannot be held responsible for his "friends'" zeal in preparing this premature edition. Pole insisted that the De unitate was originally "to be read by one person," Henry VIll, and that he had written the De unitate "without the slightest thought of publication." Only in January, 1555, did Pole reluctantly give his approval for publication of his work. By coincidence, in the very year Pole finally gave unrestricted permission for the publication of his work, the 1555 Strasburg edition of the De unitate appeared under the editorship of Petrus Paulus Vergerius. This edition differs from the 1537—38 edition only in minor spelling, punctuation, and textual variations. Put forth under Lutheran inspiration, the 1555 volume includes, following the complete text of the De unitate, pertinent writings from Martin Luther, Mathias Francowitz (alias Flaccus Illyricus, a disciple of Luther and founder of the Centuries of Magdeburg), Franciscus Vilierius, Philipp Melanchthon, John Calvin, M. Bucer, and Wolfgangus Musculus—all directed against the supremacy of the Roman pontiff. All the selections are directed toward interpretations of the famed verse from Matthew 16: 18 on the primacy of Peter. This was odd company for Pole. The editor had originally planned to include Stephen Gardiner's De vera obedientia against the supreme authority of the Roman pontiff, but a complete text of Gardiner's work was not available. Pole's De unitate was substituted, and only Pole's work was given credit on the title page of this volume. The Protestant contributors remain nameless on the title page and are referred to almost casually, as merely a few other writers on the Roman primacy. Surprising though it may seem, Pole's De unitate appeared in this magnificently printed edition, under Protestant auspices, in the famous year of the Religious Peace at Augsburg, 1555. At least one more sixteenth-century edition of the De unitate appeared in 1587, from the press of Paul Manutius at Inglostadt.

Essential sources consulted in preparing and editing this translation include the numerous and invaluable volumes of the Calendars of State Papers, preserved in Her Majesty's Public Record Office, London, 1856 to the present; the Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, London, 1864—1920; Cardinal Angelus Maria Quirini's five-volume collection of Pole's letters: Epistolarum Reginaldi Poli ... et aliorum ad ipsum, Brescia, 1744—1757; and other writings of Reginald Pole: Admonitio atque hortatio legatorum sedis apostolicae ad patres in Concilio Tridentino . Cracow, 1546; De concilio liber Reginaldi Poli Cardinalis, et, Reformatio Angliae ex decretis Reginaldi Poli Cardinalis . . , the first Aldine Press book printed in Rome, 1562; De summo Pontifice Christi in terris vicario . Louvain, 1569; Consilium delectorum cardinalium . de emendanda ecclesia Romana, jussu Pauli III Papae conscriptum, London, 1609; A Treatie of Justification Founde emong the writinges of Cardinal Pole of blessed memorie . . , Louvain, 1569. Manuscripts of many of Pole's letters are in Codices vaticani latini, Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library, St. Louis University.

The classic biography of Pole, and the source of material for all subsequent biographies, is Lodovico Beccadelli's contemporary account found in vol. I, Quirini's edition of Pole's letters. The original manuscript of the Italian copy, Vita del cardinale Reginaldo Polo, Inglese, Venice, 1560, is at the Newberry Library, Chicago. Later biographers of Pole include: T. Phillips, S.J., 1765; W. F. Hook, in Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, vol. Ill, 1869; A. M. Stewart, 1882; F. G. Lee, 1888; A. Zimmerman, s.J., 1893; M. Haile, 1910; R. Biron and J. Barennes, 1922. Of more recent studies of Reginald Pole the most reliable are J. Gairdner in vol. X VI, Dictionary of National Biography, and W. Schenk's Reginald Pole, Cardinal of England, 1950.