Thomas Stapleton

Thomas Stapleton (Henfield, Sussex, July 1535 – Leuven, 12 October 1598) was an English Catholic priest and controversialist.

Life

He was the son of William Stapleton, one of the Stapletons of Carlton, Yorkshire. He was educated at the Free School, Canterbury, at Winchester College, and at New College, Oxford, where he became a Fellow, 18 January 1553. On Elizabeth I's accession he left England rather than conform to the new religion, going first to Leuven, and afterwards to Paris, to study theology.

In 1563, being in England, he was summoned by the Anglican bishop William Barlow to repudiate the pope's authority, but refused and was deprived of the prebend of Woodhorne in Chichester Cathedral, conferred on him in 1558. He then retired to Leuven with his father and other relatives. In 1568 he joined Cardinal Allen at Douai and took a great part in founding the English College there, both by lecturing and by devoting to its support his salary as lecturer in theology at Anchin College. and possibly also "Puritan"; A Return of Untruths (Antwerp, 1566); A Counterblast to M. Horne's vain blast (Louvain, 1567); Orationes funebres (Antwerp, 1577); Principiorum fidei doctrinalium demonstratio (Paris, 1578); Speculum pravitatis hæreticæ (Douai, 1580); De universa justificationis doctrina (Paris, 1582); "Tres Thomæ" (Douai, 1588); Promptuarium morale in two parts (Antwerp, 1591, 1592); Promptuarium Catholicum in Evangelia Dominicalia (Cologne, 1592); Promptuarium Catholicum in Evangelia Ferialia (Cologne, 1594) and "Promptuarium Catholicum in Evangelia Festorum" (Cologne, 1592); Promptvarivm morale svper Evangelia dominicalia totivs anni (Antwerpen, 1593) available via KU Leuven Special Collections; Relectio scholastica (Antwerp, 1592); "Authoritatis Ecclesiasticæ circa S. Scripturarum approbationem defensio" (Antwerp, 1592); Apologia pro rege Philippo II (Constance, 1592), published under the penning pseudonym of Didymus Veridicus Henfildanus, i.e., Thomas the Stable-toned [truth-speaking] Henfieldite; Antidota Evangelica, Antidota Apostolica contra nostri Temporis Hæreses (both at Antwerp, 1595); Antidota Apostolica in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos (Antwerp, 1595); Triplicatio inchoata (Antwerp, 1596); Antidota Apostolica in duas Epistolas ad Corinthios (Antwerp, 1598); Orationes catecheticæ (Antwerp, 1598); Vere admiranda, seu de Magnitudine Romanæ Ecclesiæ (Antwerp, 1599 and Roma, 1600 available via KU Leuven Special Collections); Orationes academicæ miscellaneæ (Antwerp, 1602); Oratio academica (Mainz, 1608).

All his works were republished in four folio volumes in Paris in 1620, with an autobiography of the author in Latin verse and Henry Holland's Vita Thomæ Stapletoni. These volumes include Latin translations of Stapleton’s English works, too.

A critical, annotated edition of Stapleton's correspondence with the Flemish printer Jan Moretus was published in Humanistica Lovaniensia in 1996.