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

Product Information

The confirmed anti-ritualist mistrusts external expression. He values a man’s inner convictions. Spontaneous speech that flows from the heart, unpremeditated, irregular in form, even somewhat incoherent, is good because it bears witness to the speaker’s real intentions… They can’t take it, the… open-minded teachers who seize on a watered-down expression of a faith that has practically lost meaning for them. The Mystery of the Eucharist is too dazzlingly magical for their impoverished symbolic perception…” Hugely, hugely detailed book that does a very nice job of critiquing what had been the prevailing viewpoint of the English Reformation: that medieval Catholicism had petered out, with disinterested clerics and semi-pagan peasants only revitalized by the influence of Protestant reform. It's an inaccurate way of looking at things (or at best oversimplified), and Duffy does a really nice job lining up piece after piece of evidence that suggests that medieval Catholicism wasn't worn out or despised by most Englishmen, but rather it was an integral part of their lives, both as individuals and as a community.

The Stripping of the Altars’ Candlemas: An Extract from ‘The Stripping of the Altars’

urn:lcp:strippingofaltar00duff:epub:bad920d6-6caa-4cd7-913b-9e15892bbd9a Extramarc University of Toronto Foldoutcount 0 Identifier strippingofaltar00duff Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t2n614n6r Invoice 11 Isbn 9780300060768 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. This magnificently produced volume must rank as one of the most important landmarks in the study of late medieval English religion to have hitherto appeared, and it is unlikely to be superseded for quite some time. . . . The sheer scale of Duffy's achievement, the enormous value of the information he provides and the vigour and elegance with which he presents it, make his book, in every sense, a must."—Robert Peters, History Review But many issues arise. A Protestant , who opposes the religious practices such as the intercession of saints, the veneration of relics, and prayers for souls in purgatory, will probably not be won over by arguments that these beliefs were popular and part of the culture. Those who find Medieval Catholicism repressive are unlikely to be convinced ....the author's understating of the persecution of heretics during the reign of Mary I , do not help his case.

Upon its publication, the book was hailed by many as original and persuasive account of English Catholicism in the Late Middle Ages. Writing in the New York Review of Books, British historian Maurice Keen stated, Ye pure Virgynes in that ye may or can, with tapers of wax loke ye come forth here and worship this child very god and man Offrid in this temple be his moder dere.

The stripping of the altars : traditional religion in England The stripping of the altars : traditional religion in England

Duffy divides his work into two parts. The first and most extensive is a portrait of popular spirituality on the eve of the Protestant Reformation. He describes a robust parish life in late Medieval England, hardly the spiritual doldrums that Protestants claimed it to be. Late Medieval Catholicism “exerted an enormously strong, diverse, and vigorous hold over the imagination and the loyalty of the people up to the very moment of Reformation” (p. 4) He shows this through many aspects of parish life. First, laypeople integrated seasonal liturgy with personal devotional gestures such as feasting, processions, and other forms of celebration—most notably, during Candlemas and Holy Week. “For townsmen and countrymen alike,” says Duffy, “the rhythms of the liturgy on the eve of the Reformation remained the rhythms of life itself” (p. 52). Second, laypeople invested themselves in catechesis: they funded and produced wall paintings and church furnishings, and they read liturgical and devotional books that circulated widely with the rise of print and literacy. These are among the means by which “the ploughman learned his paternoster.” Third, they celebrated the Mass—not merely as passive recipients, but actively, through sponsorship of special masses and imitating Mass liturgy in private devotions. Fourth, the laity devoted themselves to the saints. They celebrated saints’ days around the calendar, read hagiography, and infused their work and commerce with devotion to saints. Finally, their concern about death underlay an elaborate cult of intercession for the dead, including provision of Masses, alms, pilgrimage, and the adornment of churches and images.Nevertheless, it is the liturgical celebration which shaped and defined such gild observances, and the same centrality of the pattern of the liturgy is evident in a number of the surviving Corpus Christi plays of the Purification. In the East Anglian Ludus Coventriae play of the Purification, for example, Simeon receives the child Jesus with a speech which is simply a literal verse rendering of the opening psalm of the Mass of the feast. While he holds the child in his arms, a choir sings “Nunc Dimittis”, almost certainly to the Candlemas processional music. Joseph distributes candles to Mary, Simeon, and Anna, and takes one himself. Having thus formed, in the words of the Speculum, a “worshipful processioun”, they go together to the altar, where Mary lays the child, and Joseph offers the temple priest five pence. For the audience, the whole play would have been inescapably redolent of the familiar Candlemas liturgy, and in essence an extension of it.[21] 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."—David Siegenthaler, Anglican Theological Review

The Stripping of the Altars - Wikipedia

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] Candlemas, the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary or, alternatively, of the Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple, was celebrated forty days after Christmas, on 2 February, and constituted the last great festival of the Christmas cycle. The texts prescribed for the feast in breviary and missal emphasize the Christmas paradoxes of the strength of the eternal God displayed in the fragility of the new-born child, of the appearance of the divine light in the darkness of human sin, of renewal and rebirth in the dead time of the year, and of the new life of Heaven manifested to Simeon’s, and the world’s, old age. [1] Celebrated as a “Greater Double” – that is, of lesser solemnity only than the supreme feasts such as Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, but of equal status to Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi, and All Saints – its importance in the popular mind is reflected in the fact that it was one of the days on which, according to the legend of St Brendan, Judas was allowed out of Hell to ease his torment in the sea.[2] The Purification was marked by one of the most elaborate processions of the liturgical year, when every parishioner was obliged to join in, carrying a blessed candle, which was offered, together with a penny, to the priest at Mass. The candles so offered were part of the laity’s parochial dues, and were probably often burned before the principal image of the Virgin in the church.[3] An account survives from fourteenth-century Friesthorpe in Lincolnshire of a row between the rector and his parish because on the day after Candlemas “maliciously and against the will of the parishioners” he took down and carried off all the candles which the previous day had been set before the Image of the Blessed Virgin, “for devotion and penance”.[4] The blessing of candles and procession took place immediately before the parish Mass, and, in addition to the candles offered to the priest, many others were blessed, including the great Paschal candle used in the ceremonies for the blessing of the baptismal water at Easter and Pentecost. The people then processed round the church carrying lighted candles, and the “Nunc Dimittis” was sung. Mass began immediately afterwards with the singing of verses from Psalm 47, “We have received your mercy, O God, in the midst of your temple.”[5]Duffy equates Royal will to Cromwell's policy- interesting explanation of radical reforms from 1534-1539?/perhaps Elton's praise of Cromwell isn't necessarily exaggerated? This prize-winning account of the pre-Reformation church recreates lay people’s experience of religion in fifteenth-century England. Eamon Duffy shows that late medieval Catholicism was neither decadent nor decayed, but was a strong and vigorous tradition, and that the Reformation represented a violent rupture from a popular and theologically respectable religious system. For this edition, Duffy has written a new Preface reflecting on recent developments in our understanding of the period. Especially when it came to death. How to die properly was perhaps the main preoccupation of late medieval piety -- as, of course, it had to be when one considers how much depended on it. At a minimum, one had to die in communion, but for any "even cristen" that was only the beginning. Those spared eternal damnation still had to endure the pains of Purgatory, and to do so for unknown lengths of time. Still, the ordeal could be shortened, if not altogether bypassed, through the intercession of the Virgin, the saints or the diligent prayers of the survivors. Winning that intercession was the goal of the ars moriendi, or the doctrine of proper death, and it was an endeavor that claimed the energies, the thoughts and the resources of countless men and women, no matter their rank, wealth or education. The myth of neutral history is just that: a myth. If it actually existed, no one would want to read it. Every historian brings to their subject-matter a raft of experience, opinions, attitudes and assumptions that inform their perceptions, and influence both the issues they find interesting, and the questions they bring to their material. History is an attempt to discern the patterns that underlie the surviving traces of the past, not a bloodless chronicle of patternless events, and the interpretation of the records of the past demands personal gifts like imagination and empathy. One can feel some sympathy for the Lollards who rejected the over the top adoration of the eucharist in that period (not to mention the Jews who were treated as hardly human by their Christian neighbors), while at the same time appreciating how the traditional faith and the liturgical cycle at its core could give and express meaning and a sense of belonging and purpose for many people.

‘The Stripping of the Altars’, 30 years on - Catholic Herald

She then leads the company in a dance. This and the final dance of virgins to the accompaniment of minstrels, with which the play concludes, takes it beyond the scope of liturgy, but not perhaps worlds away from para-liturgical observances like those of the Beverley Candlemas Gild, which, the gild certificate states, were to conclude “cum gaudio”. What is beyond argument, however, is that the spectrum of Candlemas observances evident in these sources testifies to a profound and widespread lay assimilation and deployment of the imagery, actions, and significance of the liturgy of the feast. And the introduction of a “folk” element into the Digby play, in the form of dances “in the worshipe of Iesu, our lady, and seynt Anne”, serves to warn us against underestimating the links between liturgical observance and the “secular” celebratory and ludic dimensions of lay culture at the end of the Middle Ages.[24] 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.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. Deeply imaginative, movingly written, and splendidly illustrated."—Maurice Keen, New York Review of Books