Making Women Martyrs in Tudor England examines the portrayal of Protestant women martyrs in Tudor martyrology, focusing mainly on John Foxe's Book of Martyrs . Foxe's women martyrs often defy not just ecclesiastically and politically powerful men; they often defy their husbands by chastising them, disobeying them, and even leaving them altogether. While by marrying his female martyrs to Christ Foxe mitigates their subversion of patriarchy, under his pen his heroic women challenge the foundations of social and political order, offering an accessible model for resistance to antichristian rule.

By analyzing the interrogations of Margery Kempe, Anne Askew, Marian Protestant women, Margaret Clitherow and Quaker women, Genelle Gertz examines the complex dynamics of women's writing, preaching and authorship under religious persecution and censorship and uncovers unexpected connections between the writings of women on trial for their religious beliefs.

This book engages in an interdisciplinary study of the establishment and entrenchment of gender roles in early modern England. Drawing upon the methods and sources of literary criticism and social history, this edited volume shows how politics at both the elite and plebeian levels of society involved violence that either resulted from or expressed hostility toward the early modern gender system. Contributors take fresh approaches to prominent works by Shakespeare, Middleton, and Behn as well as discuss lesser known texts and events such as the execution of female heretics in Reformation Norwich and the punishment of prostitutes in seventeenth-century London to draw new conclusions about gender in early modern England.

This collection of interdisciplinary essays examines the origins and growth of Mary Tudor's historical reputation, from the reign of Elizabeth I up to the 20th century. Re-appraising aspects of her reign that have been misrepresented the book creates a more balanced, objective portrait of England's last Catholic, and first female, monarch.

A compelling, authoritative history of how women shaped the Reformations and transformed religious life across the globe The Reformations, both Protestant and Catholic, have long been told as stories of men. But women were central to the transformations that took place in Europe and beyond. What was life like for them in this turbulent period? How did their actions and ideas shape Christianity and influence societies around the world? In this rich and definitive study, renowned scholar Merry Wiesner-Hanks explores the history of women and the Reformations in full for the first time. Wiesner-Hanks travels the globe, examining well-known figures like Teresa of Avila, Elizabeth I, and Anne Hutchinson, as well as women whose stories are only now emerging. Along the way, we meet converts in Japan, Spanish nuns in the Philippines, and saints in Ethiopia and America. Wiesner-Hanks explores women's experiences as monarchs, mothers, migrants, martyrs, mystics, and missionaries, revealing that the story of the Reformations is no longer simply European--and that women played a vital role.

Smithfield, settled on the fringes of Roman London, was once a place of revelry. Jesters and crowds flocked for the medieval St Bartholomew's Day celebrations, tournaments were plentiful and it became the location of London's most famous meat market. Yet in Tudor England, Smithfield had another, more sinister use: the public execution of heretics. The Burning Time is a vivid insight into an era in which what was orthodoxy one year might be dangerous heresy the next. The first martyrs were Catholics, who cleaved to Rome in defiance of Henry VIII's break with the papacy. But with the accession of Henry's daughter Mary - soon to be nicknamed 'Bloody Mary' - the charge of heresy was leveled against devout Protestants, who chose to burn rather than recant. At the center of Virginia Rounding's vivid account of this extraordinary period are two very different characters. The first is Richard Rich, Thomas Cromwell's protégé, who, almost uniquely, remained in a position of great power, influence and wealth under three Tudor monarchs, and who helped send many devout men and women to their deaths. The second is John Deane, Rector of St Bartholomew's, who was able, somehow, to navigate the treacherous waters of changing dogma and help others to survive. The Burning Time is their story, but it is also the story of the hundreds of men and women who were put to the fire for their faith.

Notions of which behaviours comprised sin, and what actions might lead to salvation, sat at the heart of Christian belief and practice in early modern England, but both of these vitally important concepts were fundamentally reconfigured by the reformation. Remarkably little work has been undertaken exploring the ways in which these essential ideas were transformed by the religious changes of the sixteenth-century. In the field of reformation studies, revisionist scholarship has underlined the vitality of late-medieval English Christianity and the degree to which people remained committed to the practices of the Catholic Church up to the eve of the reformation, including those dealing with the mortification of sin and the promise of salvation. Such popular commitment to late-medieval lay piety has in turn raised questions about how the reformation itself was able to take root. Whilst post-revisionist scholars have explored a wide range of religious beliefs and practices - such as death, providence, angels, and music - there has been a surprising lack of engagement with the two central religious preoccupations of the vast majority of people. To address this omission, this collection focusses upon the history and theology of sin and salvation in reformation and post-reformation England. Exploring their complex social and cultural constructions, it underlines how sin and salvation were not only great religious constants, but also constantly evolving in order to survive in the rapidly transforming religious landscape of the reformation. Drawing upon a range of disciplinary perspectives - historical, theological, literary, and material/art-historical - to both reveal and explain the complexity of the concepts of sin and salvation, the volume further illuminates a subject central to the nature and success of the Reformation itself. Divided into four sections, Part I explores reformers’ attempts to define and re-define the theological concepts of sin and salvation, while Part II looks at some of the ways in which sin and salvation were contested: through confessional conflict, polemic, poetry and martyrology. Part III focuses on the practical attempts of English divines to reform sin with respect to key religious practices, while Part IV explores the significance of sin and salvation in the lived experience of both clergy and laity. Evenly balancing contributions by established academics in the field with cutting-edge contributions from junior researchers, this collection breaks new ground, in what one historian of the period has referred to as the ‘social history of theology’.