Joseph Hall (bishop)
Joseph Hall (1 July 1574 – 8 September 1656) was an English bishop, satirist and moralist. His contemporaries knew him as a devotional writer, and a high-profile controversialist of the early 1640s. In church politics, he tended in fact to a middle way.
Joseph Hall | |
|---|---|
| Bishop of Norwich | |
Detail of an engraving by John Payne (1628) | |
| Diocese | Diocese of Norwich |
| Appointed | 1641 |
| Term ended | 1646 |
| Predecessor | Richard Montagu |
| Successor | Episcopacy abolished |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1 July 1574 Prestop Park, Leicestershire, England |
| Died | 8 September 1656 (aged 82) Heigham, near Norwich |
| Buried | Norwich Cathedral |
| Nationality | English |
| Spouse | Elizabeth Bambridge |
| Children | Six |
| Previous post(s) | Bishop of Exeter (1627–1641) |
| Alma mater | Emmanuel College, Cambridge |
Thomas Fuller wrote:
He was commonly called our English Seneca, for the purenesse, plainnesse, and fulnesse of his style. Not unhappy at Controversies, more happy at Comments, very good in his Characters, better in his Sermons, best of all in his Meditations.
Hall's relationship to the stoicism of the classical age, exemplified by Seneca the Younger, is still debated, with the importance of neo-stoicism and the influence of the Flemish philosopher Justus Lipsius to his work being contested, in contrast to Christian morality.