Protestant evangelicals and addiction in early modern English

When the English word ‘addict' emerged in the sixteenth century, it did not mean the same as addiction today. This article uses the language of early modern addiction to not only determine the meaning and use of ‘addict', but also as a means of tracing a particular readership network in reformation England. It focuses initially on the first printed appearances in the work of two evangelical writers; the three meanings they applied to the word; and the etymology behind those meanings. Next, it traces appearances of the word in the writing of early protestant reformers in England, who made almost exclusive use of the term in printed sources before 1550. This is particularly notable because there was nothing conceptually unique about the word: non‐reformers expressed the same ideas, in similar contexts, but using different words. In examining uses of the word ‘addict’ within the religious context of early sixteenth century England, this article suggests the existence of a discrete evangelical vocabulary, and thus a means of tracing a reformist readership network. More than this, it potentially reveals one means by which a persecuted and suppressed group created a sense of shared identity and community.

necessarily considered reprehensible or medically harmful; in fact, addiction was not considered a medical phenomenon at all. Samuel Purchas's 1613 collection of travel narratives provides a good demonstration of the range and variety of addictions in the early modern period. According to Purchas, the Pharisees 'were much addicted to Astrology, and the Mathematics', the Babylonians 'addict themselves to Music, riot, and such like', whilst 'the Ephesians as all the other Ionians, were much addicted to niceness and sumptuousness of attire.' 4 Purchas tells his readers about a manatee in a lake in Hispaniola that was 'addicted to one young man, which used to feed her', and he tells the tragic tale of how 'Cambletes a Lydian King was so addicted to gourmandise, that in the night he did tear and eat his Wife.' 5 These are not quite the stories of pathological consumption and compulsion that a modern reader might expect to find from addiction narratives. In early modern English, 'addiction' meant something quite distinct from the modern, medicalized, addiction concept. ADDICTION

STUDIES
The field of historical addiction studies is well established, yet until recently early modern addiction had received little attention. In the late twentieth century a debate emerged on the origins of addiction, prompted by a 1978 article by Harry G. Levine which argued that Benjamin Rush, founder of the Temperance Movement, was the first to clearly articulate a modern concept of addiction. 6 Levine's model was challenged first by Roy Porter, and then by Jessica Warner, both of whom saw modern addiction emerging as a more gradual, long-term process. 7 In particular, Warner argued that the roots of addiction can be found earlier, in seventeenth-century moral treatises and sermons. The regular appearance of the word 'addict' throughout the early modern period is not part of this debate, because Levine, Porter, and Warner are concerned only with the modern concept, not with the history of the word. In fact, Porter called early appearances of the word 'bogus forerunners', which clearly 'did not anticipate Victorian psychopathology', and Warner noted that '[early modern] usage of the label "addicted" is [. . .] riddled with ambiguity'. 8 Another strand of scholarship which routinely uses the term 'addiction' in reference to the early modern period is the study of historical intoxication and consumption. 9 Like Levine, Porter, and Warner, these works are seeking to locate modern addiction in the past. Up until recently there had been no attempt to explore the existence of a distinct, early modern concept of addiction.
This changed in 2008 when Deborah Willis published a chapter on 'Doctor Faustus and the Early Modem Language of Addiction'. 10 Willis set out to explore the role of an emerging early modern addiction discourse in Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, noting that 'it is a discourse that has affinities with, but also crucial differences from, our own contemporary ideas about addiction.' 11 Willis identifies various threads in this discourse, but is primarily interested in the idea of addiction as 'sinful habituation' -the notion, dating back to Augustine, that 'the voluntary repetition of sinful acts impairs the will and produces a sense of powerlessness.' 12 In 2016 Rebecca Lemon, building on Willis's work, argued that sinful addiction in Faustus was actually the distortion of 'beneficial and even laudable' addiction; it is the very qualities that make addiction good which, when misdirected, can lead one to damnation. 13 Lemon identifies two strands to this positive addiction: in early modern translations of Seneca and Cicero (in 1614 and 1576 respectively); and in the late sixteenth-century work of Protestant reformers Jean Calvin, John Foxe, and William Perkins. Where Seneca praises addiction to philosophy, Calvin praises addiction to scripture. 14 Early modern addiction emerges from the work of Willis and Lemon as a concept wholly distinct from modern addiction, yet deeply varied and controversial. It could embody both laudable and sinful behaviour, and contributed to ideas surrounding free will and constraint; because of this, it can shed light on early modern attitudes to habitual behaviour.
However, this relatively new field of early modern addiction studies is still mapping out the context and range of contemporary meaning and use. Rather than attempting to interpret a concept that is not yet fully defined, this article takes as its premise the notion that, as Phil Withington puts it, 'language is a 9 Examples include Scott K. Taylor, '"A Miserable Captivity" or "Happily Redeemed from Captivity to Liberty": Taylor's use of the word 'addiction' throughout the article appears to be with modern connotations. Lemon similarly provides no definition, but uses the word in the context of drunkenness; her concern is primarily intoxication rather than addiction. Kezar provides a brief discussion of early modern definitions, but uses the word with modern connotations throughout the article, and is primarily interested in intoxication. Perry does examine the etymology of addiction, but he uses the modern concept as the basis of his analysis. 10  powerful tool of historicism, enabling early modern culture to be recovered on its own terms.' 15 By analysing the language of 'family' in eighteenth-century texts, for example, Naomi Tadmor has shown that the word was commonly understood to mean the household-family, and not just the nuclear-family. 16 Using digital technology to conduct a diachronic analysis of the word 'peace', Withington has revealed a deeply contested semantic field, that was intrinsically linked to political, social, and religious tensions of the seventeenth century. 17 These approaches treat language as the reflection of a social and cultural landscape, but also as a mechanism through which that landscape is shaped. As Mark Knights concluded in his examination of methods for the social history of language, unless words are properly contextualized, they will always be 'inscribed with meanings derived from the intellectual and political concerns of the twenty-first rather than the sixteenth century'. 18 Perhaps the most significant context for understanding any word is that in which it emerged, yet in focusing on Doctor Faustus, which was written c.1590, both Willis and Lemon have left the origins of addiction -over fifty years earlier -largely unexplored. 19 These origins had an important role in shaping early modern addiction; both the etymology, and the social, religious, and cultural contexts in which the word was formed, are decisive factors in determining its meaning and use. In this article I examine the emergence of the term 'addict', from its print debut in the late 1520s, through the first twenty years of use. I focus initially on the first printed appearances in the work of two evangelical writers; the three meanings they applied to the word; and the etymology behind those meanings. Next, I trace appearances of the word in the writing of early protestant reformers in England, who made almost exclusive use of the term in printed sources before 1550. 'Addict' appears in fifty-six printed works between 1529 and 1549, out of the 732 searchable texts on EEBO-TCP (Early English Books Online -Text Creation Partnership). 20 Of these, over 78% -forty-four 15  Lemon's discussion of devotional addiction in the work of Calvin, which is framed as an examination of origins, focuses on works printed from 1563 onwards. As this study demonstrates, the term was used in philosophical and religious contexts throughout the 1530s and 1540s. 20 The works included in this study were taken predominantly from the EEBO-TCP corpus which is a fully transcribed and searchable collection of over 60,000 printed texts, covering the period 1475 to 1700. EEBO-TCP is not a complete record of early modern print, nor is it a representative sample; the TCP selection criteria mean that some genres are under-represented, and there are numerous duplicate entries and transcription errors. In spite of these limitations, when used carefully EEBO-TCP is an enormously valuable resource, which represents a significant portion of early modern print culture. EEBO-TCP can be accessed online through several different websites, two of which were used to locate sources for this study: eebo.chadwyck.com (which found 48 texts containing 'addict' or variants, 3 of which were duplicates) and cqpweb.lancs.ac.uk (which found 43 texts, with 2 duplicates). I also added two texts where 'addicte' had been incorrectly transcribed as 'addicre', neither of which appeared in these searches.
texts -had evangelical authors. This is particularly notable because there was nothing conceptually unique about the word: non-reformers expressed the same ideas, in similar contexts, but using different words. In examining uses of the word 'addict' within the religious context of early sixteenth-century England, this article suggests the existence of a discrete evangelical vocabulary, and thus a means of tracing a reformist readership network. More than this, it potentially reveals one means by which a persecuted and suppressed group created a sense of shared identity and community.

LANGUAGE AND METHODOLOGY
Marlowe's Faustus, which is the focus of both Willis's and Lemon's work on addiction, is in some respects a curious choice, because the text does not actually contain the word 'addict'. This is not a problem in itself, but it does highlight one of the common pitfalls in writing about early modern addiction: a persistent lack of clarity between word and concept. This is not surprising given the complexity of the topic. Not only are there various forms of the word in use at different times, including 'addict' as both noun and verb, there are also the numerous concepts, modern and pre-modern, that have been applied to those words. 21 When speaking about historical addiction, care must be taken not to slip back and forth between concepts, or to assume that a word and a concept are interchangeable; doing so distorts what contemporaries meant when they used the word, and risks imposing a modern understanding onto an early modern word. The solution I adopt in this article imitates the practices commonly employed by linguists to provide clarity when speaking about the history of words: using a range of formatting rules to make clear distinctions between terms. The following style rules have therefore been applied to this article. Italics are used to denote a specific word form, such as addicted. Where all the variant forms of a word are indicated, I have used small capitals on the dictionary form (also known as the lemma). For example, ADDICT refers to all forms of the word (including addict, addicted, addiction, etc.), whereas addicted would refer just to that specific form. This formatting is also applied to Latin words: ADDICERE includes different forms of the verb (addico, addictus, etc.), whereas addicere refers to one specific term only. When speaking about concepts (or word and concept together), no special formatting is applied, and where the modern concept is referred to, it is always indicated. For example, the modern concept of addiction emerged later than the lemma ADDICT, but earlier than the noun addict. ***

THE THREE MEANINGS OF ADDICT
The sixteenth century was a period of unprecedented religious change, with bouts of intense religious persecution; it was also a period of educational reform, and one in which a vibrant print culture emerged. In the 1520s Lutheran ideas began to spread in English universities, and a number of scholars became convinced of the need for religious reform. Many were humanisteducated, trained in the skills of classical translation, and the reformation provided a powerful motivation to apply these skills to propagating religious works and ideas in the vernacular. However, early reformers faced strong opposition from the Henrician government: the 1530s and 1540s saw a steady stream of evangelical executions. John Frith was burnt at the stake in 1533, and John Lambert in 1538, both for denying transubstantiation. Robert Barnes was executed in 1540 for unspecified heresies, and Anne Askew was tortured and executed for heresy in 1546. 22 Despite the threat of persecution, from the 1520s onwards English biblical translations and Lutheran-inspired treatises began to be produced, circulated, and read by those eager for reform.
Both humanist values and reformist designs placed the English language under increased scrutiny, and prompted a period of intensive linguistic reform. Perceived inadequacies were gradually swept away, in a process that involved the rapid expansion of English vocabulary, regularization of spelling, and the emergence of a lexicographical discipline. 23 The exact number of new words introduced in this period is hard to quantify, but the influx was significant enough that 'the character of the English lexicon was permanently altered'. 24 Many of the new words were loanwords, taken from other languages, often by scholars working on translations; as Christian Kay and Kathryn Allan put it, 'nothing reveals the deficiencies of a language more surely than translating into it'. 25 ADDICT was one such loanword, borrowed from the Latin term ADDICERE. The earliest surviving appearance in print is from a 1529 text criticising the Pope, written by the young protestant reformer, John Frith. 26 Although the concept of 'first use' is problematic -ADDICT may well have appeared first in speech or manuscript, or in printed works that have not survived -the fact that the word made regular appearances in print from 1529 onwards suggests that Frith's use of the term was influential. Frith was Cambridge educated, but had been recruited to Cardinal Wolsey's exclusive, newly formed Cardinal College in 22 These executions and others are described by John Foxe in John Foxe, Actes and monuments of matters most speciall and memorable (London, 1583; EEBO-TCP Phase I). 23  Oxford in the 1520s. In 1529 he was accused of heresy along with other Oxford reformers, and fled to Antwerp. Frith was executed four years later aged just thirty, but his writing had a profound impact on the early reform movement, and his articles of faith (written shortly before his death) were essentially those later adopted by the reformed church. 27 Despite his youth, Frith took his role as a religious leader seriously and towards the end of 1529 in a work called Antithesis, he urges his readers to: 28 Judge. . . all these things with a simple eye/be not partially addict to the one nor to the other/But judge them by the scripture. 29 In A disputacion of purgatorye two years later, Frith uses the word again. This time he is mounting a defence against those who would dismiss his work because of his youth. Referencing Timothy 1, 'Let no man despise the youth', Frith argues that: no man should despise his youth for as the spirit of god is bound to no place/ even so is he not addict to any age or person. 30 In both cases, Frith uses the word addict in the context of making a choice between two or more things. In the first, he urges his reader not to be predisposed to one idea or another, but to judge purely by the scripture. In the second, he explains that God is not bound to a particular place, age, or person. In both sentences the word has a clear meaning, indicating a preference for one choice over another.
Frith undoubtedly borrowed ADDICT from the Latin addictus (from the verb ADDICERE) which in classical Latin was primarily a legal term, used when goods were sold or delivered as a result of a legal judgement. In cases concerning debt, it could also describe the forced servitude of a debtor to their creditor, until the debt was repaid. 31 However, ADDICERE had a second, less common meaning as an augural term. Pierre Danet's 1700 Complete dictionary of the Greek and Roman antiquities offers this definition: 'After the Augurs had consulted the Will of the Gods by the Flying of Birds, if the Signs were favourable, they answered thus, Id addicunt aves, Gods favour this Enterprise.' 32 Used in the augural sense, ADDICERE  choices, of favouring one idea over another, of prejudging something or someone. It is notable too that in both of Frith's examples, to be addicted, or to favour one thing over another, has negative connotations. Frith may have chosen to borrow ADDICERE not only for the meaning of the word, but also because, in a reformist text, referencing the augural rituals of pagan Gods was a way of highlighting how undesirable the behaviour was. In the years that followed, ADDICT was taken up and used by other protestant reformers. However, it was rarely used in the same way that Frith used it, to indicate a preference for one choice over another. There are some uses that are related, but not identical. For example, in Edward Hall's 1548 chronicle, the Lady Margaret urged her son (the future Henry VII), 'with all speed & diligence to addict & settle his mind and full intention how to return home again into England'; ADDICT is used here to determine a course of action, but there is no preformed bias, and no alternative actions to choose between. 33 The next use of ADDICT that matches the meaning applied by Frith was not until 1555, when the evangelical martyr John Bradford wrote that 'thou needest no more to confirm thy faith in this matter, but to read them with an indifferent mind, not being addict otherwise, than to the desire of the truth.' 34 Instead later writers used ADDICT almost exclusively with meanings first found in the work of George Joye, a year after Frith used it.
Unlike Frith, Joye's use of ADDICT in 1530 was in a translation from Latin. Joye was a prolific writer who produced a string of English translations in the early 1530s, including two primers, two psalters, and the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah. He also produced an unauthorised version of Tyndale's New Testament, which resulted in a quarrel that has tarnished Joye's reputation ever since; the historiographical depiction of him 'is an almost unvarying defamation'. 35 However, Gergely M. Juh asz has shown that Joye's contemporaries regarded him 'as one of the most prominent members of the Lutheran group at Cambridge'. 36 Far from being deficient in literary faculties, 'Juh asz demonstrates that Joye sought to bring variety into his translations, possessing fondness for words and language'. 37 Joye was an accomplished scholar who put care and consideration into his work, and it seems that his use of ADDICT   Joye uses ADDICT with two distinct meanings. Rather than a pre-existing judgement or prejudice towards a particular course of action or idea, Joye uses it to mean either the type of binding attachment between a person and a God, or the act of giving up, or surrendering, to an activity or action. The first meaning can be seen in psalms 106 and 119, in which a person is both bound and devoted to a God. The second meaning can be seen in psalms 17, 92, and 94, two of which describe an attachment to wickedness. Psalm 17 is slightly different because it refers ostensibly to a place rather than a behaviour. Examining the context, however, it is clear that 'this world' refers to a very similar type of behaviour as 'wickedness'. The psalm is one in which David prays to God for deliverance from his attackers. The 'mortal men addict to this world' are his attackers; 'the violent ungodly' that are more concerned with their material life than their spiritual salvation. Being addicted to this world, like being addicted to wickedness, meant that you were ungodly and sinful. Neither of the two meanings applied to ADDICT by Joye relate to the augural use of ADDICERE. Nor do they bear resemblance to the Roman legal term ADDI-CERE; they do not relate to the physical transfer of goods or people, and they are not a punishment inflicted by a third party. However, ADDICERE was a word of multiple meanings, and these meanings were not static. Whilst the legal and augural uses were common in classical Latin, both meanings declined alongside the cultural practices they described; neo-Latin texts use ADDICERE predominantly to describe devotion to an individual, or the pursuit of a behaviour or activity. 39 These two meanings -which are self-imposed and self-affecting actions -are almost identical to those applied to ADDICT by George Joye. There is an understandable appeal in the transition from bonded servitude to substance abuse, since both are characterized by loss of free will, and it is no surprise that this connection has often been made by scholars commenting on the 38  origins of ADDICT. 40 However, it seems that ADDICT was actually transmitted, not through the classical legal term ADDICERE, but through non-specialist neo-Latin uses of the same word. This conclusion is born out through an examination of later works too: twenty-five of the appearances of ADDICT before 1550 are translated from other languages; of these, 92% come from neo-Latin, and none are from classical or late Latin. In Frith's original use of the term, to be addicted was a negative thing. Lack of addiction -that is, the absence of prior attachment, bias, or preference -was praiseworthy. In Joye's use, addiction to a behaviour (wickedness) was negative, but addiction as devotion could be either good or bad depending on the object of addiction. In the work of later evangelical writers, the moral connotations of addiction came to depend entirely upon the subject matter, regardless of which meaning was applied to ADDICT. One could be addicted to vices or sins, as in 'The fierce and proud disdainful man which is addict to pride', 'all carnal things, thereto being given and addict', and 'whosoever is addict to sin hath the devil his lord'. 41 But one could also be addicted to virtuous behaviour: 'Being for Christs sake addict To suffer all pains willingly', 'men of the say sort given & addicted to prayers', 'a mind, wholly addict, to sober living Will not be corrupt'. 42 Likewise, addiction to an individual could be either positive -'hath addicted himself to the service of god' -or negative -'we do, so lightly addict or bind our selves, to these new impostors'. 43 In his 1542 religious treatise A newe pathway vnto praier Thomas Becon uses ADDICT to refer to both positive and negative qualities: Satan is 'fervently addict to the destruction of man', but the human tongue 'chiefly be addict & given to. . . preach the magnificence, laude & praise of God'. 44 Addiction, at least in the first half of the sixteenth century, was morally neutral; the behaviours or relationships that it referred to often had strong moral connotations, but the term ADDICT itself conveyed no inherent judgement.
None of the three concepts applied to ADDICT by Frith and Joye were new. Frith could have used the word favour ('to treat with partiality') or prefer ('to favour one person or thing in preference or to another'). 45  to (a person) by ties of duty, gratitude, affection, etc.'). 46 Both writers chose to employ a new word, taken from Latin, rather than using a word already in existence. This raises questions about possible motivations for borrowing, which were undoubtedly complex. Both Frith and Joye were acting within the context of ongoing debates about loanwords, word borrowing, and the status of the English language, as well as the influence of humanist traditions and emerging reformist conventions. Whilst sharing a broadly evangelical mindset, the two men had markedly different approaches to their work, both in terms of style and genre. Frith was unusual among reformist writers for introducing numerous Latin loanwords in his work -a practice which was often criticized for resulting in obscure, less readable texts, but which was nevertheless common among non-evangelical writers of this period. 47 Whilst Frith's use of ADDICT can thus be explained in part by his stylistic preferences, Joye's motives are less apparent. However, it is notable that Joye includes a synonym for ADDICT on two occasions, for each of the two different meanings -'addict and all given to wickedness', and 'addict and married unto Baal Peor'. Joye's use of a recent and therefore obscure loanword is mitigated by his provision of an explanatory synonym; a practice that was also favoured by Thomas   which Alec Ryrie describes as 'painfully moderate.' 51 I have counted as 'reformist work' writings like William Hugh's The troubled mans medicine, which according to Ryrie was 'more Erasmian than evangelical, but it did take a reformist line on justification.' 52 Also included is Edward Hall's The vnion of the two noble and illustre famelies of Lancastre [and] Yorke; whilst Hall is described by his biographer Peter Herman as a 'moderate Protestant', the work was completed by Richard Grafton, 'whose sometimes incautious combination of reformist commitment and commercial activity made him one of the most eye-catching evangelicals of the period.' 53 In assessing the reformist credentials of these texts, I have prioritized the religious values of translators over those of the original authors. This is due to the practice described by Ryrie whereby printers or translators gave works 'a reformist twist'; thus Thomas Langley's Polydore Vergil was repackaged as anti-papal, and in the hands of Richard Taverner 'Erasmus became a full-blown evangelical'. 54 Discounting works where the translator was unknown, only seven out of fifty-six texts containing ADDICT in the 1530s and 1540s were not written by reformers. This fairly astonishing statistic seems to suggest that evangelical writers were making use of at least one word which other contemporary writers tended not to use, perhaps indicating the existence of a discrete reformist vocabulary. What makes this particularly notable is that there is nothing inherently religious about the meanings conveyed by ADDICT. The texts that contained the word were written by evangelical writers, but were not necessarily about evangelical topics; Richard Taverner was a dedicated religious reformer, but he also studied law, and ADDICT appears in his work on The principal lawes customes and estatutes of England. 55 Furthermore, as we will see, it is possible to find exactly the same meanings being conveyed in non-evangelical works, using words like GIVE, DEDICATE, and BIND.
ADDICT in the sense of a binding attachment comes closest to describing specifically evangelical interests, since it could be used in reference to God, as in, 'so wholly given and addicted to God the father', or 'the soul it self being addict unto God.' 56 It could also be used indirectly to speak about the worship or service of god, speaking 'of a mind more addict to the serving of god', or of one 'wholly addict to the honouring of their false gods', or perhaps warning that a Christian man should not 'addict himself to the wicked service of idols'. 57 But it was also 51  used to speak about a binding attachment to another person, such as loyalty to a monarch -'your most addict subjects Queen' -and it could describe adherence to, or praise of, the ideas or principles of a particular figure. 58 Examples of the latter include Miles Coverdale's translation of Erasmus, which speaks about 'our divines, that are too much addict to Aristotle', and Lancelot Ridley, writing of Saint Augustine and others, that 'these authors would have no man so addicted unto their sayings that whatsoever they should speak or had written it should be believed as truth'. 59 None of these contexts or topics were exclusive to Protestant reformers. The humanist scholar Sir Thomas Elyot wrote of someone 'equally as much bounden to Aristotle', and the advice of Catholic spokesman John Feckenham was 'to dedicate our selves wholly to the service of God'. 60 Meaning and context were the same -the difference lay in the choice of word.
The same is true of the other meaning that Joye applied to ADDICT, describing the attachment to habitual behaviours or customs. Plato and Anaxagoras welcomed isolation, according to William Hugh, because it meant 'their minds were more quiet thereby and addict to the study of philosophy', and reformist writer and clergyman George Bancrafte advises that we should not 'be addict & given to the observance of the Iavish ceremonies'. 61 When similar topics appear in the work of non-evangelicals, the same meanings are conveyed without the use of ADDICT. The humanist Thomas Starkey wrote that he had 'given [him] self to the study of letters', and the Bridgettine monk Richard Whitford argued that religious persons 'be not bound unto their ceremonies'. 62 These alternatives to ADDICT -GIVE, DEDICATE, BIND -are found in the work of evangelicals too; the difference is that reformers had an additional word in their arsenal, which non-reformers did not embrace. In other words, ADDICT had evangelical connotations because of the writers who used it, not because of its inherent meaning.

AN EVANGELICAL NETWORK
One explanation for this is that reformist books circulated within a tight network. This was a group living under the threat of persecution, reading and sharing books that were frowned upon, if not explicitly banned; when a new word appeared in a reformist text, it took longer to reach a wider audience. As a result, appearances of the word ADDICT can provide a way of tracing readership: if a writer in the 1530s or 1540s uses the term, it is quite likely that they had read 58  reformist literature. However, the use of ADDICT may indicate more than just readership, since these writers were not just passively reading words, but also actively reproducing them. It is widely recognised that vocabulary can both reflect and define a social group. This concept formed the basis of Alan S. C. Ross's now infamous 1954 comparison of upper-and middle-class vocabularies, which Ross referred to as U and non-U class indicators. 63 A more contemporary example is provided by Peter Burke, who described how sixteenth-century English puritans were 'recognisable by their nasal twang and also by their vocabulary, in which terms such as "abomination", "backsliding", "discipline", "edify", "godly" and so on made a frequent appearance'. 64 In the same way if ADDICT is seen as part of evangelical vocabulary of the early sixteenth century, then the act of using it could be viewed as a deliberate statement of evangelical support.
In fact, there is already some evidence that reformers were using language in other ways to create a sense of belonging. Ruth Ahnert has argued that the deliberate rhetorical strategies of reformers like John Frith created a growing sense of group cohesion among reformers from the 1530s onwards. This was a group of believers with common values but no sense of shared history, and its members were likely unaware of the extent of their community beyond those they knew personally. Frith wrote 'to instil communal values and behaviours in his co-religionists' by 'explicitly referring to the size [of that community]; by focusing on an individual and then moving the focus outward to the individual's context within a community; or by detailing the spread of a manuscript beyond its intended audience, thereby creating a reputation of uncontainability.' 65 As a result of strategies like these, reformers increasingly felt 'a sense of membership within a textual community', and their opponents -notably Sir Thomas More -came to perceive them 'as an organised network of evangelicals working together to produce and disseminate texts'. 66 Ahnert posits the formation of a coherent evangelical group in the first half of the sixteenth century, in the form of a textual community; a group which created a sense of unity through the production and consumption of printed works. It does not seem unlikely that the use of a specific vocabulary could -in the same way Ross describes -be a means of reinforcing this sense of identity.
There is some indication that non-reformers may also have recognised ADDICT as being part of an evangelical lexicon, and made a conscious decision not to use the term in some of their work. The humanist writer Sir Thomas Elyot's 1538 Latin-English dictionary contains two uses of the word, in definitions for 63 Alan S. C. Ross, 'Linguistic Class-Indicators in Present-Day English,' Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 55: 1 sympinaticae ('women addict to ceremonies or devotion') and studiosus ('studious, diligent, constant, addict or fervently disposed'). 67 In his 1542 revised edition, these two uses had increased to six, with ADDICT appearing in the entries for solidurij and persequi uoluptates, as well as the biographies of Horatius Flaccus and Paul the Apostle. 68 The appearance of ADDICT in Elyot's dictionaries is an anomaly. He was a prolific writer who produced ten English works and seven translations over the course of the 1530s and 1540s, yet ADDICT appears in none of his other writing. Significantly, as well as being a humanist scholar, a diplomat, and a lexicographer, Elyot was also an opponent to the evangelical cause. Since he was clearly aware of the existence and meaning of the word, it seems to have been a conscious decision to use ADDICT -a Latin loanword -only in his two Latin dictionaries. In other words, Elyot uses ADDICT only when it will be understood in the context of classical Latin lexicography, and avoids using it in his other works where it could be interpreted as an affinity for protestant reform.
If ADDICT was recognized as being part of evangelical vocabulary by both reformers and non-reformers alike, this has quite interesting implications for those non-reformist texts that used the word in 1530s and 1540s. Seven out of fifty-six printed texts that used ADDICT in the 1530s and 40s were not written by reformist writers. The earliest of these appeared just three years after Frith's Antithesis in a 1531 work titled A glasse of the truth, which argues for the annulment of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon's marriage. In A glasse a lawyer and a divine are discussing what a shame it is that learned men put their own self-interests above the public good, and that they are not united in their opinion; the divine comments that this 'showeth a great lack of grace, and an overmuch addiction to private appetites, mixed with too much headiness and obstinacy'. 69 As when Joye wrote of 'the mortal men addict to this world', so A glasse used addiction to refer to behaviour that was both morally reprehensible and limiting; 'private' appetites restrict one from pursuing the much preferred 'public' appetites. The text is often believed to express the personal views of Henry VIII, with Steven Haas contending that Henry 'gave much personal effort to it and that hence A glasse is in fact a mirror to his own views'. 70 It is, however, unlikely to have been written personally by the king. The royal tutor Richard Croke noted that 'many besides Roper [Dean of Henry VIII's College at Oxford] cannot believe it is the king's writing, and, though they admit his wit, think that he lacketh leisure to search and bolt out so difficult a matter'. 71 The fact that ADDICT is used in a sense almost identical to Joye, and only a year reformist readership; one that may have included Henry VIII's 1532 ghost writer, and the once reformist-leaning contributors to the King's Book. The appearance of ADDICT in these non-reformist works was also an important step in transmitting the word to a wider audience; by the 1550s it could no longer be considered an exclusively evangelical term. ***

THE LANGUAGE OF EARLY MODERN ADDICTION
Early modern addiction is an emerging field, which has only recently broken free from a modern concept that is both pathologized, and at times stubbornly moralistic. By relinquishing the compelling story of breakdown and redemption that shapes much of modern addiction discourse, early modern addiction promises instead to uncover rich patterns of habitual behaviour. First, however, a precise understanding of the meaning, connotations, and uses of the word in early modern English must be established. This article has sought to explore the emergence of the term ADDICT within the context of the early English reformation, by drawing on the tools and methodologies of historical linguistics. Making a clear distinction between the word ADDICT and the concepts it describes, I have shown that addiction's evangelical ties were not semantic; the religious connotations of ADDICT emerged not from any meaning attached to the word itself, but through the beliefs of the writers who used it. Whilst ADDICT did not hold specifically religious meaning to reformers, it may nevertheless have held value as one of the mechanisms by which a sense of shared identity was forged.
The vernacular origins of ADDICT provide an interesting case study in the transmission of new words. ADDICT was initially introduced and circulated within a very distinct textual community, and as a result, the distribution of the word throughout early modern texts may echo the dissemination of reformist ideas. Vocabulary thus has the potential to shed light on the elusive issue of audience.
Ultimately, ADDICT did not remain restricted to the works of protestant writers beyond the mid-century. However, the origins of the word had a lasting impact on the connotations and meaning of addiction across the entirety of the early modern period. ADDICT -a morally ambiguous, profoundly versatile English term, plucked from neo-Latin -was used throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to describe two very intimate sentiments: a deep sense of attachment to another person or being, and a strong disposition for doing particular activities or practices. Evangelical addiction thus became a means for early modern people to define both their devoted attachments, and their habitual behaviours.