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An eighteenth-century anonymous preacher lamented in his sermon on “human ingratitude” for the Thursday preceding Easter that “our Savior Jesus” suffered now from “bad and cruel Catholics” just as he had suffered from “malicious Jews” and “heretics”: And so I have been preaching about human ingratitude. And how much more I could say about the horrible ingratitude that our Savior Jesus had experienced in the Most Dear Sacrament, and continues to experience in our times, and is bound to experience until the end of times because of the cruel faithlessness of people who don't believe. Not once was He tortured in the Most Holy Hosts by malicious Jews. Not once was He thrown out of the pyx and trampled, or thrown into fire by blind heretics robbing holy Catholic churches. And not once, was He secretly stolen and desecrated by people possessed by the Devil. And … how much humiliation does he suffer from believing, but bad and cruel, Catholics! The Catholic clergy's frustration with its loss of influence went beyond their frustration with those in power. Many ordinary Catholics, too, ignored the teachings of the Church. The sins and religious ignorance of those the preacher called “bad and cruel Catholics” exposed how far the Church was from its ideal. The Church felt beset on all sides by “malicious Jews,” “blind heretics,” and disobedient Catholics themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular religion – the religion of the generality of people, especially those of the lower orders – is a large subject. It ranges from belief, worship, private prayer, and reading to morality, charity, and the payment of church dues. These elements may vary according to people's gender, age, status, and context, presenting the historian with many aspects to study and evaluate. This chapter is concerned with three of them: worship in church, the economic support of churches, and ceremonies outside church. It begins by reviewing the systems in force in early Tudor England, continues by studying the impact of “state religion” during the Reformation of the mid-sixteenth century, and concludes by tracing the survival of some pre-Reformation beliefs and practices between about 1600 and 1750. To achieve focus, the survey centers on one English county, Cornwall, an appropriate area for this purpose because it is rich both in pre-Reformation records of popular religion and in literary descriptions of its society and customs after the Reformation. Some features of Cornish popular religion were characteristic of other parts of England and illustrate general conditions. Equally, Cornwall had attributes distinct to itself, like all English counties, and some of these were untypical of England elsewhere. Its study reveals both national verities and regional variations. Cornwall is England's most maritime county: a long peninsula attached to the mainland by a short land border with Devon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Counter-Reformation was for Spain, as it was for other European countries, a great watershed, a time when longstanding beliefs and behaviors usually characterized as traditional or medieval were discarded in favor of new ones. Official changes in religious ideas were made carefully, for early modern theologians and rulers fully understood both religion's integrative and disintegrative power. They saw the intimate connection between formal theology and social dealings, and if they embarked on the perilous course of changing religious law, they also expected concomitant change in society. Early modern people intuitively understood Clifford Geertz's conclusion that culture does not consist of a catalog of gestures per se but of the meanings that give gestures their significance, hence their willingness to fight (endlessly, it seems to us) over the religious laws and symbols, both humble and exalted, that gave meaning to their lives. Both Reformations are distinguished by their self-conscious efforts to direct the beliefs and actions of entire populations or, to put it another way, their attempt to ensure cultural conformity through the shared understanding of symbols of faith. No transformation of cultural attitudes had been attempted on this scale in Europe since the original conversion of the Germanic tribes in the early Middle Ages, which took place under vastly different circumstances. This early modern battle for symbols and souls was waged on several fronts, through religious education, propaganda, and social discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]