Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition: Religion and Conflict in the Tudor Reformations

An excellent and well researched study of England at the time of Henry V111.Good easy reading and a very enlightening book.Highly reccomend to those who wish to find out what happened in England in the time of Henry & Elizabeth.

This review applies to all the Eamon Duffy books I have read.He does not shrink from being controversial and when he is, he provides cogent evidence to support his argument.Not a revisionist historian but an historian who demonstrates that revision in historical assumptions is necessary

Professor Duffy has added more nuances to his views and treatment of the Reformation and its aftermath, including attitudes to Catholicism during the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, which are not quite what one would expect, and certainly not monolithic. His chapter on Bishop Fisher I found especially interesting.However I did wonder whether he was barking up the wrong tree altogether in the last chapter on Catholicism in Shakespeare's England: the argument hinges on the famous lines from Sonnet 73, where Professor Duffy takes 'bare ruin'd quiers' to mean literally monastic ruins. Surely this is an image of the tree in autumn, 'where late the sweet birds sang' i.e. they have now migrated for the winter, not necessarily an extension of the choir image. I think it's stretching things to rely on one word ('late')to clinch an argument about late Elizabethan attitudes to the destruction of the monasteries.On the other hand I may just be very pedestrian!Read it and see what you think.

Eamon Duffy successfully challenges the received wisdom concerning the religious transformations of the Tudor period.History comes alive through the pen of Professor Duffy. I recommend this book to any who would wish to understandthe turbulence of this time.

Fast delivery and quality goods

Obviously I am not worthy so much as to pick up the historical crumbs from under Eamon Duffy's table. I was glad I did read the Introduction first, since after reading, at least in places, what I can only describe as bile, it seemed clear to me that this is a book to be read with the greatest of care and scepticism - it did not appear to me to be balanced. Though of course always well argued, and always supported by facts (though pushing it a bit with the Shakespeare bit I thought). I was put in mind of Diarmaid MacCulloch's quote that "Duffy ceases to be a Tudor historian who is a Catholic, and becomes a Catholic historian". But I did enjoy the chapter on Bishop Fisher, which was one of the reasons I'd bought it, so that was a relief!.

I ordered this book for someone else who was impressed and delighted with it.

A very enlightening examination of the true state of religious thought in this country at the time of the Reformation.

Excellent

Bought this book for a book review for my Master's class -- I wound up making an 85 on the review because I wrote too much on how much I thoroughly ENJOYED reading this book! It was a real page turner!!!

I am enjoying this informative and thoughtful book. Really shedding new light on an era with which I thought I was familar.

Eamon Duffy's new book on the English Reformation, subtitled "Religion and Conflict in the Tudor Reformations" is a collection of essays, not the thorough composed book I hoped for initially. Nevertheless, Duffy displays the same level of erudition and original research that can be expected from him. In the first two chapters he speaks directly to the foundation of the English Reformations under the Tudors and its effects:The Reformation marked, for England, the end of the notion of Christendom. The foundation of the English Reformation was neither sola scriptura nor sola fide, but the Royal Supremacy: Henry VIII utterly rejected justification by faith and burned those who preached it, and he understood the authority of scripture to reside chiefly in the fact that the scriptures taught obedience to the king. (Nice chiasmus, there.)He depicts the English Reformation as a crucial break with the past:Overnight, a millennium of Christian splendour--the worlds of Gregory and Bede and Anselm and Francis and Dominic and Bernard and Dante, patterns of thought and ritual and symbols that had constituted and nourished the mind and heart of Christendom for a thousand years--became alien territory, the dark ages of popery. . . . The Reformation silenced the prayers of men and women for their parents, it banished the saints, it drastically reduced the sacramental life of every Christian. The destruction of monasticism did more than take the roofs off some of the best buildings in England: it amputated one of the Church's perennial and most precious sources of Christian inspiration and renewal.Duffy focuses his attention on the rood screens and how documents in parish churches reveal the lay involvement in their construction and renovation in chapter three; examines the records of one extraordinary large parish church in chapter four; and reviews the results of the 1552 Inventories of Church goods in chapter five.He dedicates chapters 6 through 9 to the hierarchy, particularly to Cardinal Bishop and martyred saint, St. John Fisher, and to Reginald Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury.The last two chapters trace "the conservative voice" even among those who went along with the established Church of England as they recalled the past--the rituals, the rhythm of the Church year, the beauty of the churches, etc.; and finally he parses a line from Shakespeare's sonnet about bare ruined choirs, recalling the dissolved monasteries and their reputation.I heartily recommend Saints, Sacrilege, and Sedition for anyone interested in the English Reformation.I. Reformation Unravelled \ Introduction \ 1. Reformation, Counter-reformation and the English nation \ 2. Reformation Unravelled: Facts and Fictions \ II. The Material Culture of Early Tudor Catholicism \ 3. The Parish, Piety and Patronage: the Evidence of Roodscreens \ 4. Salle Church and the Reformation \ 5. The End of It All: Medieval Church Goods and the 1552 Confiscations \ III. Two Cardinals \ 6. John Fisher and the Spirit of his Age \ 7. The Spirituality of John Fisher \ 8. Rome and Catholicity in mid-Tudor England \ 9. Archbishop Cranmer and Cardinal Pole: the See of Canterbury and the Reformation \ IV. Catholic Voices \ 10. The Conservative Voice in the English Reformation \ 11. Bare Ruin'd Choirs: Remembering Catholicism in Shakespeare's England

Very good history of reformation period, especially from the Catholic perspective.