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

by Eamon Duffy (Author) "This book attempts two tasks usually carried out separately, and by at least two different sets of practitioners ..." (more)
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
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'A mighty and momentous book... which reorders one's thinking about much of England's religious past.' Jack Scarisbrick, The Tablet; 'Duffy wants to show the vitality and appeal of late medieval Catholicism and to prove that it exerted a diverse and vigorous hold over the imagination and loyalty of the people up to the very moment of the Reformation. He succeeds triumphantly.' Susan Bridgen, London Review of Books; 'A magnificent scholarly achievement, a compelling read, and not a page too long.' Patricia Morrison, Financial Times; 'A landmark book in the history of the Reformation.' Ann Eljenholm Nichols, Sixteenth Century Journal; 'This book will afford enjoyment and enlightenment to layman and specialist alike. Duffy sweeps the reader along... by his lively and absorbing detail, his piercing insights, patient analysis, and his vigour in debates.' Peter Heath, Times Literary Supplement; 'Sensitively written and beautifully produced, this book represents a major contribution to the Reformation debate.' Norman Tanner, The Times; 'Deeply imaginative, movingly written, and splendidly illustrated.' Maurice Keen, The New York Review of Books' --The Tablet, London Review of Books, Financial Times, Sixteenth Century Journal, TLS, The Times, NYRB


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This profoundly influential book re-examines events leading up to the Reformation in England and illuminates our understanding of the period. A prize-winning account, it recreates lay people's experience of the religion of the pre-Reformation church showing 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 substantial new introduction, including a discussion of the Lollards and reflecting on recent developments in Reformation studies. 'A mighty and momentous book ...which reorders one's thinking about much of England's religious past.' Jack Scarisbrick, The Tablet 'Duffy wants to show the vitality and appeal of late medieval Catholicism and to prove that it exerted a diverse and vigorous hold over the imagination and loyalty of the people up to the very moment of the Reformation. He succeeds triumphantly.'Susan Bridgen, London Review of Books 'A magnificent scholarly achievement, a compelling read, and not a page too long.' Patricia Morrison, Financial Times 'A landmark book in the history of the Reformation.' Ann Eljenholm Nichols, Sixteenth Century Journal 'This book will afford enjoyment and enlightenment to layman and specialist alike. Duffy sweeps the reader along ...by his lively and absorbing detail, his piercing insights, patient analysis, and his vigour in debates.' Peter Heath, Times Literary Supplement 'Sensitively written and beautifully produced, this book represents a major contribution to the Reformation debate.' Norman Tanner, The Times 'Deeply imaginative, movingly written, and splendidly illustrated.' Maurice Keen, The New York Review of Books
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This book attempts two tasks usually carried out separately, and by at least two different sets of practitioners. Read the first page
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4.7 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars I would give it six stars if the computer would let me..., 24 Feb 2006
By Triptych (England) - See all my reviews
This book is not only meticulously researched and exhaustive on all the minutiae of common piety in late medieval/early modern England, it is far more readable and absorbing than such a weighty tome has any right to be. Duffy recreates a lost world in a way that is sensitive and sympathetic - the characters in the brief sketches he can offer from the sources become real people to us. Real quality.
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65 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A revolution in thinking about the English church., 11 Jan 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 (Paperback)
During the last 30 years there has been a revolution in our thinking about the 16th century English church. This has been the result of a vast body of and also a great deal of cross-referring to other primary sources, including the church buildings themselves. One of the richest fruits of all this research is this extraordinary book, which manages to capture in less than a thousand pages the full panoply of pre-Reformation liturgy and life, and how it was effectively destroyed by the reformers. This study and others like it confront head-on the received tradition of a moribund and corrupt medieval English church 'rescued' by the Reformation. This tradition arose largely from the enthusiasm of the Oxford Movement, and the Anglican revival for which it was responsible. This harnessed popular anti-Catholic prejudice in the 19th century, to create the illusion of a modern Church of England which had evolved naturally from the church of St Augustine and the mind of the medieval liturgy, stripped of its corruption and excesses. The Reformation was presented by these people as a smooth, evolutionary process, whereby roods, wallpaintings, etc., were removed from churches in the 16th century because of 'new liturgical practices' that no longer required them. Any idea that the Reformation in England was a violent and unpopular fracture was quietly lost. The obvious destruction that had taken place in English parish churches was most often attributed to the ultra-protestant Puritans of a century later. Duffy, however, documents in some detail how the churches of England were comprehensively wrecked between 1538 and 1553, and then again after Elizabeth I's accession in 1558. He uses documentary evidence to show how this happened in specific churches, particularly in East Anglia. He visits these churches, to examine the damage that was caused. Ironically, the dull-headed attempt by Mary I to restore the Catholic church to England in the 1550s has left us with a great deal of evidence of the destruction that had occurred up to that point. Today, in many church guides this destruction is still attributed to William Dowsing and his fellow-Puritans of the 1640s. They are not men to be blamed for nothing; but Duffy unfolds in this book an amazing story, one all too rarely told, of an earlier holocaust on a massive scale. It enhances our understanding of how English parish churches have come to look the way they do. It also has tremendous consequences for our thinking about the modern Anglican church. It has to be said that there are those who are not entirely comfortable with this revisionist history. Some find it difficult because of the way it contradicts the Reformation history that English people of a certain age have grown up with. Some others will find it hard to accept that late-medieval English Catholicism was popular. For Anglo-Catholics, there is the further difficulty that Duffy (and others) is suggesting that the Church of England is not the inheritor of the medieval English church in they way they had understood. One Suffolk vicar with whom I discussed this (he will remain nameless; in any case, he is now in the Exeter diocese) said "Duffy is nothing but a bog-Irish upstart". Any book that causes a reaction like that HAS to be worth reading.
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27 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The English Reformation Unmasked, 9 Oct 2002
By Mr. William Sibree "williamsibree" (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 (Paperback)
A thoroughly satisfying book. Duffy makes it quite clear why he considers it important to examine late medieval English piety in such comprehensive detail in the first part of this book. His minute and coherent analysis is well repaid by illuminating his crisp narrative analysis in the second half. I wished he had spent more time on the background and motivation to the royal visitations which followed in Edward VI's and Elizabeth I's reigns. In particualar the Commons' vote after Elizabeth's succession gets very little space for such a momentous decision. A little more on how the clergy was reorganised and replaced in Mary's reign and Pole's cardinalate would have been interesting for someone new to this subject like myself. Just occasionally there is a tendentious note. For a modern catholic there is something slightly unhealthy in the lack of communion and the pax bread communion surrogate and here one is inclined to side with the reformers and to doubt the vitality of this late medieval piety. But the argument is pushed home with compelling detail. These are parishes not just stripped of their altars but with the very warp of their communities chopped and unravelled with nothing but the hollow clang of Cranmer's solemn humility to echo in the empty spaces.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Relevant to nowadays
Although this is a history book, it is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the meanings and developments of Catholic doctrine. Read more
Published 27 days ago by F. Caldwell

5.0 out of 5 stars Encyclopedia Duffytanica
This work is, without a doubt, the absolute benchmark when it comes to the study of English popular religion on the eve of the Reformation. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Deadletters

3.0 out of 5 stars A tendentious history
As a rationalization of late medieval religion this work will no doubt stand the test of time, but it is a most tendentious account of the Reformation. Read more
Published on 26 Feb 2002

5.0 out of 5 stars An intellectual tour de force.
The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England by Eamon Duffy is an excellent study of the Protestant reformation in England by a top-notch historian. Mr. Read more
Published on 30 Jun 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent revisionist Catholic history.
Duffy shows that, contrary to the received wisdom, the reformation was not a necessary aggiornamento of a worn out church, but was imposed by a few determined extremists on a... Read more
Published on 24 May 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, wonderful, and thought provoking.
This is the most enjoyable book I've read in the last five years. I learned so much about what the church was like in England before the Reformation. Read more
Published on 3 Dec 1998

4.0 out of 5 stars A different approach to Reformation history.
A warning to potential readers with strong Christian convictions: this book may send you into a frenzy! Read more
Published on 13 Oct 1997

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