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

(Paperback)

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In this wide-ranging book, Professor Eamon Duffy explores the broad sweep of the English Reformation, and the ways in which that Reformation has been written about. Tracing the fraught history of religious change in Tudor England, and the retellings of that history to shape a protestant national identity, once again he emphasizes the importance of the study of late medieval religion and material culture for our understanding of this most formative and fascinating of eras. Getting to grips with the misconceptions, discontinuities and dilemmas which have dogged the history of Tudor religion, he traces the lived experience of Catholicism in an age of upheaval: from what it meant to be a Catholic in early Tudor England; through the nature of militant Catholicism at the height of the conflict; to the after-life of Tudor Catholicism and the ways in which the 'old religion' was remembered and spoken about in the England of Shakespeare. Duffy writes at all times with grace, elegance and wit as he questions prejudices and myths about the Reformation, to demonstrate that the truth about the past is never pure nor simple.

Reviews

Mentioned in the Church Times' "new titles just published" section. -- Frank Nugent, of the Church House Bookshop, which operates the Church Times Bookshop * Church Times *
This book is a collection of essays on various aspects of early modern English religion which Duffy has written over the past fifteen years, complemented by a few previously unpublished pieces. Collections like that can be annoyingly miscellaneous, but here the stronger impression is of the unity of his body of work. A series of strong, consistent ideas emerges. Nobody who knows Duffys robust approach to the Reformation will be surprised by anything that is here, but they will still find it worth reading. -- Alec Ryrie, Durham University * Theology *
There is something compelling and even thrilling about Duffy's combination of cutting-edge historical scholarship and effortless prose. -- Peter Stanford * The Independent *

Author Bio

Eamon Duffy is Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge, UK, and a Fellow of Magdalene College. His most recent book was Fires of Faith (Yale UP, 2009).