The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England,1400-1580

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England however, as Duffy rightly points out, remained quietly and confidently Catholic until William Tyndale, copying the Lutheran example, translated the Bible into English. This merits two mentions in the whole book, including one in which it is stated that the Tyndale translation was made illegal. The fact that hundreds, if not thousands, of these bibles were smuggled into the country is glossed over. This was the beginning of the Reformation in England and it took place before the marital troubles (or rather succession difficulties) of Henry VIII came to a head. The essentially conservative king took the Byzantine view of the connection between the monarchy and the church, with the King as the Supreme Head. This, of course, led to the rejection of the role of the Papacy and that in turn led to the King seeking allies amongst those who would support the Royal Supremacy. Henry VIII was essentially cautious about embracing Protestant ideas. In terms of material evidence, this simply wasn't the case. While the Church had plenty of flaws, especially higher in its hierarchy, on the local level it was very active and responsive to the needs of varying communities. Most people attended services with enthusiasm; even if they were not markedly pious, it was the main entertainment available, and priests and architects tried hard to make the experience of church attendance attractive and interesting. Even if congregants were not entirely happy with a particular pastor there is rarely evidence that they were dissatisfied with Catholicism per se. In fact, there is a mass of evidence in the form of wills* that English people had strong views on certain doctrines such as charity, prayer, and Purgatory.

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Robert Ombres OP, writing in Moreana said, "Duffy's book is in every sense a substantial achievement. It is lengthy, carefully argued and researched..." [8] This mammoth of a book is often labeled as a “revisionist” history, which is a meaningless shorthand unless one knows the subject under revision. That subject is the notion that, on the eve of the English Reformation, Catholicism was a spent force, a hodgepodge of superstition and clerical corruption. In this view, Reformation could not come fast enough to this world of incomprehensible prayers in a language unknown to the vast majority of the people; of idolatrous worship and veneration of images; of a venal trade in indulgences; of a separation between clerical and lay pieties, between devotions affordable for the rich and merely accessible for the poor. Duffy dismantles this view. For him, late medieval Catholicism in England was a vibrant, coherent set of communal beliefs and practices, largely shared by the elites and the common folk alike.Historical scholarship, like any other field of knowledge, never stands still. No take on the past is ever definitive, no historian either has or ought to have the last word: truth, that elusive thing, is the daughter of time. The best any of us can hope for is to have provoked others to disagree productively. The Stripping of the Altars has been providing disagreement, and some qualified assent, for 30 years. It is my hope that it may prove to have something to contribute to the conversation and debate for at least a little longer. Duffy also highlights a few issues affected by the Reformation which I had not given much thought to. One is how guilds and the abundance of different masses and cults for saints gave lay people a degree of control over their religion. Another is how the traditional and reformed religions viewed death and the dead. Of course indulgences are famously controversial and Duffy treats those with criticism for their excess, while rejecting the view of traditional Christianity at the end of the Middle Ages as a "religion of the living in service of the dead." But more novel (to me) is Duffy's description of how traditional practices such as the bede roll and funeral services, as well as the concepts of purgatory and indulgences, led to a view of human community made up of the dead and living together, bound by ties of kinship or otherwise and responsibilities to act for each other that did not end simply because one person was dead and another was living. Some of the most moving passages in the book describe how inscribed bronze plates from graves were sold off by the hundredweight during the Edwardine spoliation: a concrete expression of the reforming theological changes that severed the tie between living and dead, and the idea that the living could do anything or bear any obligation for the souls of those who had died.

The Stripping of the Altars - Google Books

In The Stripping of the Altars, Eamon Duffy recreates lay people’s experience of religion in the pre-Reformation church, showing that late-medieval Catholicism was neither decadent nor decayed, but a strong and vigorous tradition. Revisionist history at its most imaginative and exciting. . . . [An] astonishing and magnificent piece of work.”—Edward T. Oakes, Commonweal The Stripping of the Altars was used as the title of a book by Eamon Duffy, which has now been in circulation for a quarter century. It is a remarkable revisionist history of the English Reformation, which to my mind has grown in significance over this time. It challenges the myth and propaganda that has guided our thinking in the English-speaking realms, and beyond them wherever our influence has been felt.David Siegenthaler, writing in the Anglican Theological Review said, "The importance of this book is that it affords opportunity to look broadly and comprehensively at the religious life of women and men before and after the separation from the Roman obedience and so take the measure of that life that in the continuum of English church history it can be noted and honored." This book will afford enjoyment and enlightenment to layman and specialist alike.”—Peter Heath, Times Literary Supplement Unlike Schwarz, however, Ronald Hutton and W. Brown Patterson found Duffy's narrative of the Reformation unconvincing. Ronald Hutton criticised Duffy's neglect of unpublished sources and his 'selective blindness in his treatment of colleagues and sources'. [10] If he [the priest] [should] say duly the words over the bread that our Lord Jesus Christ said when he made his Maundy among his disciples [while] he sat at supper, I believe that it is his very flesh and blood and not material bread; and never may [these words] be unsaid, be [they] once said.” (110, my adaptation) Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic. The magazine is now reaching many UK parishes and its globals subscription base continues to rise.

The Stripping of the Altars - Google Books The Stripping of the Altars - Google Books

Scholars wishing to examine the causes of and the reasons for the success of the English Reformation will have to grapple with Duffy's comprehensive, sympathetic, and convincing portrayal of 'traditional religion'."—Joel Berlatsky, Albion To start off, you're expected to be able to read Middle English and possibly a few latin words. There's a lot of old English quotes used to make certain point and if you can't read them you lose out. Many Catholics have at least heard of the English King Henry VIII and the Anglican Church, even if they don’t necessarily know the details of how the former established the latter: “ Something about a divorce . . . . ” If you are looking to remedy that hazy understanding, read on. Under Henry VIII (r.1509-1547), though the parishes were commanded to destroy sacred images being “worshiped,” some were very slow in heeding these commands. When the time came to get rid of them, they would “sell” images and statues to parishioners who protected them from the destructive tendencies of royally reformed authorities. In the very brief period of Catholic restoration under Queen Mary (1563-1568), altar stones, holy images, statues, vestments, candles, Masses for the dead, and Latin suddenly reappeared in churches after having been outlawed for years. If Henry VIII’s officials did not want the physical remains of Catholicism to survive, it seems that a fair number of the laity did.Whose candelle burneth cleere and bright, a wondrous force and might. Doth in these candelles lie, which, if at any time they light, They sure believe that neither storm nor tempest dare abide, Nor thunder in the skie be heard, nor any divil spide, Nor fearfull sprites that walk by night, nor hurt by frost and haile [8] Deeply imaginative, movingly written, and splendidly illustrated. . . . Duffy’s analysis . . . carries conviction.”—Maurice Keen, New York Review of Books It was the reason that gilds, by pooling the resources of their members, endowed chantries where Masses could be sung for their dead. It was the reason why even the poorest among the parishioners left money for wax to be used as light before the image of their patron saint, or why the household items, no matter how cherished in life, were left to be repurposed for church service. This is a quite remarkable, indeed brilliant, study, which puts flesh on the bones of the so-called 'revisionist' interpretation of the English Reformation. . . . This is essential reading for all those who wish to understand late medieval religion and the means by which it was undermined against the wishes of the vast majority of its practitioners."—Christopher Harper-Bill, Theology Deeply imaginative, movingly written, and splendidly illustrated. . . . Duffy's analysis . . . carries conviction."--Maurice Keen, New York Review of Books

Washing of the Altar – The Episcopal Church Washing of the Altar – The Episcopal Church

So compelling, so rich is this account, it has the effect of enlisting one as a fervent partisan of the world in which these practices flourished. In that world, Duffy argues, both the upper classes and the simpler folk believed in the same things, they participated in the same communal rites, they drew on -- regardless of their literacy -- the same religious literature, and they expressed their piety in similar ways. As their wills attest, their means might have been different, but the concerns were often very much alike. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400-1580. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Pre-Reformation Catholicism was, he argues, a deeply popular religion, practised by all sections of society, whether noble or peasant. A key point that Duffy makes is that there is no substantial difference between the beliefs and practices of the clergy and the elite and that of the masses. He effectively refutes Jean Delumeau's contention that there was any significant distinction between the religion of the educated elite and of the illiterate populace. [4] Earlier historians’ claims that English religious practice was becoming more individualised (with different strata of society having radically different religious lives) is contested by Duffy insisting on the continuing ‘corporate’ nature of the late medieval Catholic Church, i.e. where all members were consciously and willingly part of a single institution.

Then, I began to explore the churches of East Anglia, and had it borne in on me that huge numbers of them had undergone extensive and costly extensions, rebuilding and refurbishment in the 15th and early 16th century, and that this remarkable surge of activity was funded largely by lay donations and bequests, a massive popular investment in the practice and beliefs of late-medieval Catholicism that had left its trace not only in a vast archive of late-medieval wills, but in the funeral brasses, carved fonts, rood screens and wall-paintings, stained glass, and family and guild chapels, which survived in such astonishing abundance in East Anglia. How could all this be squared with conventional notions of a failing church which had forfeited the confidence of the laity?