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The early transition from Catholicism to Protestantism was a complicated journey for England, as individuals sorted out their spiritual beliefs, chose their political allegiances, and confronted an array of religious differences that had sprung forth in their society since the reign of Henry VIII. Inner anxieties often translated into outward violence. Amidst this turmoil the poet and Protestant preacher John Donne (1572–1631) emerged as a central figure, one who encouraged peace among Christians. Raised a Catholic but ordained in 1615 as an Anglican clergyman, Donne publicly identified himself with Protestantism, and yet scholars have long questioned his theological orientation. Drawing upon recent scholarship in church history, the authors of this collection reconsider Donne's relationship to Protestantism and clearly demonstrate the political and theological impact of the Reformation on his life and writings. The collection includes thirteen essays that together place Donne broadly in the context of English and European traditions and explore his divine poetry, his prose work, the Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, and his sermons. It becomes clear that in adopting the values of the Reformation, Donne does not completely reject everything from his Catholic background. Rather, the clash of religion erupts in his work in both moving and disconcerting ways. This collection offers a fresh understanding of Donne's hard-won irenicism, which he achieved at great personal and professional risk.

In the years of expanding state authority following the Black Death, English common law permitted the leasing of parishes by their rectors and vicars, who then pursued interests elsewhere and left the parish in the control of lay lessees. But a series of statutes enacted by Henry VIII between 1529 and 1540 effectively reduced such clerical absenteeism. Robert Palmer examines this transformation of the English parish and argues that it was an important part of the English Reformation.Palmer analyzes an extensive set of data drawn from common law records to reveal a vigorous and effective effort by the laity to enforce the new statutes. Motivated by both economic and traditional ideals, the litigants made the commercial activities of leaseholding and buying for resale and profit the exclusive domain of the laity and acquired the power to regulate the clergy. According to Palmer, these parish-level reformations presaged and complemented other initiatives of the crown that have long been considered central to the reign of Henry VIII.

The role of bishops in the process of Reformation in the 16th century, studied from their surviving writings and contemporary discussion.The English bishops played a crucial role in the process of Reformation in the sixteenth century, from the first arrival of continental Reformed thought to the virtual extinction of the office in 1559. This work has at its core the bishops'own understanding of the episcopate, drawn from their surviving writings and other contemporary discussions; such a study is key to understanding what became of the English Church of the middle ages and what it was to become under Elizabeth. Carleton examines the interplay between bishop and king, the episcopate in the context of other orders, and the social context of the office; he studies episcopal activity in key areas such as preaching, ordaining, and opposing heresy; and he notes the influence of the models which the bishops themselves set up as ideals, most notably Christ himself as the ideal bishop. The backgrounds of the bishops are set out in the appendix.

English devotional poets of 17c set in a wider European and Catholic context.This book offers a comprehensive account of the literary and theological background to English devotional poetry of the seventeenth century, concentrating on four major poets, Donne, Herbert, Vaughan and Crashaw. It challenges both Protestant poetics and postmodernism, the prevailing critical approaches to Renaissance literature: by reading the poetry in the light of continental Catholic devotional literature and theology, the author demonstrates that religious poetry in seventeenth-century England was not rigidly or exclusively Protestant in its doctrinal and liturgical orientation. He argues that poetic genres and devices that have been ascribed to strict Reformation influence are equally prominent in the Catholic poetry of Spain and France; he also shows that postmodernist anxiety about subjective identity and the capacity of language for signification is in fact a concern of such landmark Christian thinkers as Augustine and Aquinas, and appears in devotional poetry in the Christian tradition. Professor R.V. YOUNGteaches at North Carolina State University.

A.G. Dickens is the most eminent English historian of the Reformation. His books and articles have illuminated both the history and the historiography of the Reformation in England and in Germany. Late Monasticism and the Reformation contains an edition of a poignant chronicle from the eve of the Reformation and a new collection of essays. The first part of the book is a reprint of his edition of The Chronicle of Butley Priory, only previously available in a small privately financed edition which has long been out of print. The last English monastic chronicle, it extends from the early years of the sixteenth century up to the Dissolution. Besides giving an intimate portrait of the community at Butley, it reveals many details concerning the local history and personalities of Suffolk during that period. The second part contains the most important essays published by A.G. Dickens since his Reformation Studies (1982). Their themes concern such areas of current interest as the strength and geographical distribution of English Protestantism before 1558; the place of anticlericalism in the English Reformation; and Luther as a humanist. Also included are some local studies including essays on the early Protestants of Northamptonshire and on the mock battle of 1554 fought by London schoolboys over religion.

'Select bibliography of A.G. Dickens': p. 583-584.

Few periods of English history have been so subject to `revisionism'as the Tudors and Stuarts. This volume offers a full introduction to the complex historiographical debates currently raging about politics and religion in early modern England. It • draws together thirteen articles culled from familiar and also less accessible sources • embraces revisionist and counter-revisionist viewpoints • combines controversial works on both politics and religion • covers Tudor as well as early Stuart England • includes helpful glossary, explanatory headnotes and suggestions for further reading. These carefully edited and introduced essays draw on the new evidence of newsletters and ballads and ritual, as well as the more traditional sources, to offer a new and broader understanding of this transformative era of English history.

While much has been written on the connections between Lollardy and the Reformation, this collection of essays is the first detailed and satisfactory interpretation of many aspects of the problem. Margaret Aston shows how Protestant Reformers derived encouragement from their predecessors, while interpreting Lollards in the light of their own faith.This highly readable book makes an important contribution to the history of the Reformation, bringing to life the men and women of a movement interesting for its own sake and for the light it sheds on the religious and intellectual history of the period.

This examination of the fate of lost ideas after the Protestant reformation explores what might be called the pathology of the Renaissance.The first part of the book treats Spenser's Faerie Queene and Milton's Paradise Lost, concentrating on vacant cultural spaces and abandoned icons to trace the gap between sacred and secular life, between poetry and belief. The second part focuses on Shakespeare's Hamlet and Elizabeth Cary's Tragedy of Mariam to investigate the eschatological implications of this gap, the ways that history is disentangled from memory and nostalgia severed from experience.The book challenges readings of Renaissance culture as an increasingly secular one, proposing that sacred symbols and practices still powerfully organized the English moral imagination, oriented behaviors and arranged perceptions, and specified the limits of the known world.

From 1570 to 1640, Protestantism became the leading moral and intellectual force in England. During these seven decades of rapid social change, the English Protestants were challenged to make'morally and spiritually comprehensible'a new pattern of civilization. In numerous sermons and tracts such men as Donne, Hall, Hooker, Laud, and Perkins explored the meaning of man and his society. The nature of the Protestant mind is a crucial question in modern historiography and sociology. Drawing on the writings of these important years, the authors find that the real genius of the Protestant mind was not “Puritanism,” but the via media, the reconciliation of religious and social tensions. “'Puritanism,'” the authors show, “is a word, not a thing.”Originally published in 1961.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

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.

This work, aimed at students unfamiliar with religious ideas and terminology, attempts to convey the centrality of religion to people's lives in early modern England, and to understand why people were prepared to die and kill for their faith.

Susan Doran describes and analyses the process of the Elizabethan Reformation, placing it in an English and a European context. She examines the religious views and policies of the Queen, the making of the 1559 settlement and the resulting reforms. The changing beliefs of the English people are discussed, and the author charts the fortunes of both Puritanism and Catholicism. Finally she looks at the strengths and weaknesses of Elizabeth I as royal governor, and of the Church of England as a whole.

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.

English royal funeral ceremony from Mary, Queen of Scots to James I gives fascinating insight into the relationship between power and ritual at the renaissance court.This book represents the first detailed study into English royal funeral ceremonies of the period, building on earlier scholarship dealing with the French royal funeral and with the social history of death and burial in early modern England. Funeral rituals are approached as performances, and placed in their political, religious and broader cultural contexts, showing them to be a microcosm of cultural change. The impact of the Reformation, with its strongiconophobic strain, on a ritual process which was centred on the display of a life-sized image of the dead monarch, is explored. Later, the counter influence of the Arminianism and Continental art is considered in relation to theapotheosis of the theatre of death under the early Stuarts, with particular reference to the funeral of James I. Earlier individual funeral occasions are also addressed, with varied focus. The author shows how the obsequiesof Elizabeth I were used to help establish the new Stuart dynasty; the sudden death of the young Henry Stuart, heir to the throne, led to a funeral quite different in atmosphere and political purpose. The death rituals of Mary, Queen of Scots (both the ceremonies staged in the wake of her execution, and the monuments and funeral performances created years later by her son, James) are analysed in depth: the emergent picture of the deliberate manipulation of the Scottish Queen's posthumous image provides a fascinating insight into the relationship between power and ritual at the renaissance court. Dr JENNIFER WOODWARD gained her Ph.D. from the University of Warwick.__________________