Enforcing Reformation in Ireland and Scotland, 1550–1700
Enforcing Reformation in Ireland and Scotland, 1550–1700

Author: Crawford Gribben

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-29

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1317143469

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The last few years have witnessed a growing interest in the study of the Reformation period within the three kingdoms of Britain, revolutionizing the way in which scholars think about the relationships between England, Scotland and Ireland. Nevertheless, it is a fact that the story of the British Reformation is still dominated by studies of England, an imbalance that this book will help to right. By adopting an international perspective, the essays in this volume look at the motives, methods and impact of enforcing the Protestant Reformation in Ireland and Scotland. The juxtaposition of these two countries illuminates the similarities and differences of their social and political situations while qualifying many of the conclusions of recent historical work in each country. As well as Investigating what 'reformation' meant in the early modern period, and examining its literal, rhetorical, doctrinal, moral and political implications, the volume also explores what enforcing these various reformations could involve. Taken as a whole, this volume offers a fascinating insight into how the political authorities in Scotland and Ireland attempted, with varying degrees of success, to impose Protestantism on their countries. By comparing the two situations, and placing them in the wider international picture, our understanding of European confessionalization is further enhanced.

Measuring Eternity
Measuring Eternity

Author: Martin Gorst

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2002-11-12

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0767908449

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The untold story of the religious figures, philosophers, astronomers, geologists, physicists, and mathematicians who, for more than four hundred years, have pursued the answer to a fundamental question at the intersection of science and religion: When did the universe begin? The moment of the universe's conception is one of science's Holy Grails, investigated by some of the most brilliant and inquisitive minds across the ages. Few were more committed than Bishop James Ussher, who lost his sight during the fifty years it took him to compose his Annals of all known history, now famous only for one date: 4004 b.c. Ussher's date for the creation of the world was spectacularly inaccurate, but that didn't stop it from being so widely accepted that it was printed in early twentieth-century Bibles. As writer and documentary filmmaker Martin Gorst vividly illustrates in this captivating, character-driven narrative, theology let Ussher down just as it had thwarted Theophilus of Antioch and many before him. Geology was next to fail the test of time. In the eighteenth century, naturalist Comte de Buffon, working out the rate at which the earth was supposed to have cooled, came up with an age of 74,832 years, even though he suspected this was far too low. Biology then had a go in the hands of fossil hunter Johann Scheuchzer, who alleged to have found a specimen of a man drowned at the time of Noah's flood. Regrettably it was only the imprint of a large salamander. And so science inched forward via Darwinism, thermodynamics, radioactivity, and, most recently, the astronomers at the controls of the Hubble space telescope, who put the beginning of time at 13.4 billion years ago (give or take a billion). Taking the reader into the laboratories and salons of scholars and scientists, visionaries and eccentrics, Measuring Eternity is an engagingly written account of an epic, often quixotic quest, of how individuals who dedicated their lives to solving an enduring mystery advanced our knowledge of the universe.