This book considers the ideological development of English Catholicism in the sixteenth century, from the complementary perspectives of history, theology, and literature. Lucy Wooding argues that Erasmian humanism had laid the foundations for Catholic reformation in England, but that it was Henry VIII who turned an intellectual trend into an actual reform programme, reshaping English Catholicism in the process. The reformist strand within Catholic thought remained influential during the reign of Mary I, and in the early Elizabethan period, but was then reconfigured by the experience of exile and the onset of the drive for Counter-Reformation uniformity. Dr Wooding shows that Catholicism in this period was neither a defunct tradition, nor one merely reacting to Protestantism, but a vigorous intellectual movement responding to the reformist impulse of the age. Its development illustrates the English Reformation in microcosm: scholarly, humanist, didactic, and preserving its own peculiarities independent of European trends. Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England makes an important contribution to the intellectual history of the Reformation.

This compelling new history situates the religious upheavals of the civil war years within the broader history of the Church of England and demonstrates how, rather than a destructive aberration, this period is integral to (and indeed the climax of) England's post-Reformation history.

Now in its third edition, Reformation England 1480-1642 provides a clear and accessible narrative account of the English Reformation, explaining how historical interpretations of its major themes have changed and developed over the past few decades, where they currently stand, and where they seem likely to go. This new edition brings the text fully up-to-date with description and analysis of recent scholarship on the pre-Reformation Church, the religious policies of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I, the impact of Elizabethan and Jacobean Puritanism, the character of English Catholicism, the pitfalls of studying popular religion, and the relationship between the Reformation and the outbreak of civil war in the seventeenth century. With a significant amount of fresh material, including maps, illustrations and a substantial new Afterword on the Reformation's legacies in English (and British) history, Reformation England 1480-1642 will continue to be an indispensable guide for students approaching the complexities and controversies of the English Reformation for the first time, as well as for anyone wishing to deepen their understanding of this fascinating and formative chapter in the history of England.

The survival and revival of Roman Catholicism in post-Reformation Britain remains the subject of lively debate. This volume examines key aspects of the evolution and experience of the Catholic communities of these Protestant kingdoms during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Rejecting an earlier preoccupation with recusants and martyrs, it highlights the importance of those who exhibited varying degrees of conformity with the ecclesiastical establishment and explores the moral and political dilemmas that confronted the clergy and laity. It reassesses the significance of the Counter Reformation mission as an evangelical enterprise; analyses its communication strategies and its impact on popular piety; and illuminates how Catholic ritual life creatively adapted itself to a climate of repression. Reacting sharply against the insularity of many previous accounts, this book investigates developments in the British Isles in relation to wider international initiatives for the renewal of the Catholic faith in Europe and for its plantation overseas. It emphasises the reciprocal interaction between Catholicism and anti-Catholicism throughout the period and casts fresh light on the nature of interconfessional relations in a pluralistic society. It argues that persecution and suffering paradoxically both constrained and facilitated the resurgence of the Church of Rome. They presented challenges and fostered internal frictions, but they also catalysed the process of religious identity formation and imbued English, Welsh and Scottish Catholicism with peculiar dynamism. Prefaced by an extensive new historiographical overview, this collection brings together a selection of Alexandra Walsham's essays written over the last fifteen years, fully revised and updated to reflect recent research in this flourishing field. Collectively these make a major contribution to our understanding of minority Catholicism and the Counter Reformation in the era after the Council of Trent.

The study of the Reformation in England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland has usually been treated by historians as a series of discrete national stories. Reformation in Britain and Ireland draws upon the growing genre of writing about British History to construct an innovative narrative of religious change in the four countries/three kingdoms. The text uses a broadly chronological framework to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the pre-Reformation churches; the political crises of the break with Rome; the development of Protestantism and changes in popular religious culture. The tools of conversion - the Bible, preaching and catechising - are accorded specific attention, as is doctrinal change. It is argued that political calculations did most to determine the success or failure of reformation, though the ideological commitment of a clerical elite was also of central significance.

This volume presents a selection of papers from the 6th International Conference of the Tudor Symposium, held at the University of Sheffield in 2009. It brings together new explorations of Tudor literature from scholars based all over Europe: France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Norway, and the United Kingdom. The papers cover the long mid-Tudor period, from Skelton and more to the young Shakespeare, but with a central emphasis on the middle decades of the sixteenth century. Topics range widely from philosophy and social commentary to more traditionally literary kinds of writing, such as lyric and tragedy (both dramatic and non-dramatic). The volume as a whole offers an attractively kaleidoscopic image of the variety of new work being carried out in the area in the new millennium.

This collection of original essays combines the interests of leading 'Catholic historians' and leading historians of early modern English culture to pull Catholicism back into the mainstream of English historiography