The changes brought about during the English Reformation clearly reflected the desire of the Crown, government and landed classes to reduce the political power and landed wealth of the late medieval Church. This book covers the background to the Reformation, the processes which brought about these major changes and the impact on the clergy and the general population.
When Henry VIII died in 1547 he left a church in England that had broken with Rome - but was it Protestant? The English Reformation was quite different in its methods, motivations and results to that taking place on the continent. This book: * examines the influences of continental reform on England * describes the divorce of Henry VIII and the break with Rome * discusses the political and religious consequences of the break with Rome * assesses the success of the Reformation up to 1547 * provides a clear guide to the main strands of historical thought on the topic.
That Men Would Praise the Lord breaks apart the process of mass conversion in the sixteenth century to explain why the Reformation occurred, using Nîmes, the most Protestant town in France, as a case study. Protestantism was overwhelmingly successful in Nîmes (since most people converted), but the process culminated in two bloody massacres of Nîmes's remaining Catholics. Beginning in 1559, Nîmes went through a revolutionary period comparable to 1789 in its intensity. Townspeople flocked to hear Protestant preachers and then took over Catholic churches, destroyed statues and stained glass, and zealously took part in the Wars of Religion, which convulsed France beginning in 1562. As the Protestant movement grew, it had to adapt to changing circumstances. Nîmes's first Protestants were attracted to Calvin's theology. Later converts believed that the Church needed to be cleansed of its excesses to encourage moral reform and to assist the royal treasury. Iin the end, many converted because of peer pressure or under duress. Thus rather than argue that one factor - whether religious, economic, or political - explains the Reformation, Tulchin emphasizes that the Protestant movement was the result of compromises forged among its members. The conclusion extends his arguments to the rest of France. That Men Would Praise the Lord marries techniques from the social sciences, anthropology, and cultural history in an analytic narrative, resulting in a new, interdisciplinary theory of the Reformation.
The pace and extent of England's conversion to protestantism between 1530 and 1570 is a subject of lively controversy among historians. In this study the reader is guided through the interpretations of rival scholars, and the complex events of those years. The English Reformation grew out of political action, the existing tensions between secular and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and the indigenous heretical tradition, namely Lollardy. The dramatic events of the Reformation in Germany and Switzerland also introduced radical and unfamiliar ideas, which were then adapted to the circumstances of the English Church. The establishment of these ideas down to 1570 is analysed in detail with documentary illustration.
A consistent, indigenous English doctrine of scriptural perspicuity correlates with a commitment to the availability of the vernacular scriptures in English and supports the English roots of the Early English Reformation (EER). Although political events and figures dominate the EER, its religious component springing from John Wyclif and streaming throughout the tradition must be recognized more widely. This book critically surveys the doctrine of scriptural perspicuity from the beginning of the Church in the first century (noted as early as John Chrysostom) through the seventeenth century, examining its impact on the current debates concerning competing hermeneutical systems, reader response hermeneutics, and the debates in conservative American Presbyterianism and Reformed theology on subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith, the length of «creation days», and other issues.
The dramatic religious revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries involved a battle over social memory. On one side, the Reformation repudiated key aspects of medieval commemorative culture; on the other, traditional religion claimed that Protestantism was a religion without memory. This volume shows how religious memory was sometimes attacked and extinguished, while at other times rehabilitated in a modified guise. It investigates how new modes of memorialisation were embodied in texts, material objects, images, physical buildings, rituals, and bodily gestures. Attentive to the roles played by denial, amnesia, and fabrication, it also considers the retrospective processes by which the English Reformation became identified as an historic event. Examining dissident as well as official versions of this story, this richly illustrated, interdisciplinary collection traces how memory of the religious revolution evolved in the two centuries following the Henrician schism, and how the Reformation embedded itself in the early modern cultural imagination.
This volume is an examination of the debate over clerical marriage in Reformation polemic, and of its impact on the English clergy in the second half of the sixteenth century. Clerical celibacy was more than an abstract theological concept; it was a central image of mediaeval Catholicism which was shattered by the doctrinal iconoclasm of Protestant reformers. This study sets the debate over clerical marriage within the context of the key debates of the Reformation, offering insights into the nature of the reformers’ attempts to break with the Catholic past, and illustrating the relationship between English polemicists and their continental counterparts. The debate was not without practical consequences, and the author sets this study of polemical arguments alongside an analysis of the response of clergy in several English dioceses to the legalisation of clerical marriage in 1549. Conclusions are based upon the evidence of wills, visitation records, and the proceedings of the ecclesiastical courts. Despite the printed rhetoric, dogmatic certainties were often beyond the reach of the majority, and the author’s conclusions highlight the chasm which could exist between polemical ideal and practical reality during the turmoil of the Reformation.
Case studies and thematic studies redress two balances at once: to tell the story of what the Reformation did for the towns of England, and of what the towns did for the Reformation.
Whilst much recent research has dealt with the popular response to the religious change ushered in during the mid-Tudor period, this book focuses not just on the response to broad liturgical and doctrinal change, but also looks at how theological and reform messages could be utilized among local leaders and civic elites. It is this cohort that has often been neglected in previous efforts to ascertain the often elusive position of the common woman or man. Using the Vale of Gloucester as a case study, the book refocuses attention onto the concept of "commonwealth" and links it to a gradual, but long-standing dissatisfaction with local religious houses. It shows how monasteries, endowed initially out of the charitable impulses of elites, increasingly came to depend on lay stewards to remain viable. During the economic downturn of the mid-Tudor period, when urban and landed elites refocused their attention on restoring the commonwealth which they believed had broken down, they increasingly viewed the charity offered by religious houses as insufficient to meet the local needs. In such a climate the Protestant social gospel seemed to provide a valid alternative to which many people gravitated. Holding to scrutiny the revisionist revolution of the past twenty years, the book reopens debate and challenges conventional thinking about the ways the traditional church lost influence in the late middle ages, positing the idea that the problems with the religious houses were not just the creation of the reformers but had rather a long history. In so doing it offers a more complete picture of reform that goes beyond head-counting by looking at the political relationships and how they were affected by religious ideas to bring about change.
The most ambitious one-volume survey of the Reformation yet, this book is beautifully illustrated throughout. The strength of this work is its breadth and originality, covering the Church, art, Calvinism and Luther.
