Ralph Baines

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Ralph Baines[1] (Knowsthorpe, Yorkshire, ca. 1504 — Islington, 18 November 1559) was the last English Catholic Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, he was ordained priest at Ely in 1519. He came out against Hugh Latimer, and opposed Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, being incited to the latter by John Fisher[2].

He was rector of Hardwick, Cambridgeshire, until 1544[3]; but he left the country by 1538[4].

[edit] Hebraist

He was a Hebraist, being a college lecturer in Hebrew at St John's. He went to Paris and became professor of Hebrew at the Collège de France, professor of the Hebrew language 1549 from 1554[5].

He was the author of the work "Compendium Michlol" (also with the Hebrew title, "Ḳiẓẓur ha-Ḥeleḳ Rishon ha-Miklol"), containing a Latin abstract of the first part of David Ḳimḥi's Hebrew grammar, and dealing methodically with the letters, reading, nouns, regular and irregular verbs, prefixes and suffixes (Paris, 1554).

[edit] Bishop

In 1554 he returned to England and was consecrated Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, 18 November, 1554.

He vigorously opposed the Protestant Reformers, and features largely in Foxe's Book of Martyrs[6], conducting many examinations with his Chancellor, Anthony Draycot[7]. He was one of the eight defenders of Catholic doctrine at the Westminster Conference of 1558-59.

On the accession of Elizabeth I of England, he was deprived of his bishopric (21 June, 1559)[8] and committed to the care of Edmund Grindal, the Protestant Bishop of London, becoming one of eleven imprisoned bishops. Researches of G. Philips support the theory that, though nominally a guest, he was in fact a strict prisoner. His captivity lasted until 18 November, 1559, when, as Pitts writes, he "died an illustrious Confessor of the Lord".

[edit] Works

  • Prima Rudimenta in linguam Hebraicam (Paris, 1550)
  • Compendium Michol, hoc est absolutissimæ grammatices Davidis Chimhi (Paris, 1554)
  • In Proverbia Salomonis (Paris, 1555).

[edit] References

  • Sanders, Report to Cardinal Moroni, 1561 (Cath. Record Soc. Pubs., 1905), I
  • Pitts, De Angl. Script. (1623)
  • Dodd, Church History (1688), Pt. III, ii, art. 3
  • Cooper, Athenæ Cantabrigienses, 1,202
  • Gillow, Bibl. Dict. Eng. Cath. (London, 1885)
  • Bridgett and Knox, Q. Eliz. and the Cath. Hierarchy (London, 1889)
  • Phillips, Extinction of the Ancient Hierarchy (London, 1905)
  • Wolf, Bibl. Hebrœa., i. 308.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Bayne, Baynes, Banes; Rudolphus, Rudolph, Rodolph, Rodolphus Baynus.
  2. ^ Richard Rex, The Theology of John Fisher (1991), p. 176.
  3. ^ History - Hardwick village
  4. ^ Peter Marshall, Religious Identities In Henry VIII's England (2006), p. 232.
  5. ^ The Circulation of Knowledge in Humanist Europe - CNRS Web site - CNRS
  6. ^ http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/johnfoxe/apparatus/person_glossaryB.html, under Ralph Bayne.
  7. ^ John Foxe's Book of Martyrs
  8. ^ Bishops | British History Online

[edit] External links

This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, a publication now in the public domain. This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.

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