In recent years, Anne Askew has attained something of celebrity status among scholars of Tudor women’s writing and, more generally, of Tudor Reformation history. In the course of privileging Askew’s examinations above those of other female defendants (such as Elizabeth Young), scholars sometimes equate Askew’s rhetorical expertise with legal expertise. Thus, it has been argued that Askew knew...

When new editions of the writings of Paracelsus (1493– 1541) were published in the early 1560s, this “Paracelsian revival” provoked among the erudite a heated debate about the advantages and disadvantages of his medical system that found its culmination in 1571 with the first volume of Thomas Erastus’s (1524– 83) Disputationum de medicina nova Paracelsi. Erastus conceded openly that...