LAUSR

Recent studies of the letters of Ignatius of Antioch have helpfully located seventeenth-century Ignatian scholarship in its ecclesial and political context. Of particular importance, these new works have demonstrated that seventeenth-century British analysis of the genuineness of Ignatius's letters coincided with debates about British ecclesial government and the English Civil War. This essay contributes to such studies by expanding the discussion in three ways. The first two ways extend the study of Ignatian reception backward from the seventeenth century. First, the article observes that the study of the middle recension (the earliest form of Ignatius's letters) can be found in late medieval English theological writings and manuscripts. Second, it addresses how, simultaneously, four Ignatian letters which record a correspondence between Ignatius, John the Elder, and the Virgin Mary were read in Britain. These letters highlight Ignatius's piety and apostolic links. Finally, this essay widens the scholarly narrative of seventeenth-century Ignatian studies by observing that seventeenth-century interpreters drew on late medieval citations of Ignatius and that they were concerned with Ignatius's piety as well as the interpretive puzzles in his letters.