Eamon Duffy, Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition: Religion and Conflict in the Tudor Reformations (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), viii+311 pages. In this well-researched and well-crafted collection of essays, Eamon Duffy, Emeritus Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Magdalene College, continues to argue the case that he made in The Stripping of the Altars (1992), namely, that the English Reformation really did not take hold of the hearts and minds of Englishmen until well into the reign of Elizabeth I. From Duffy’s perspective, the Protestant Tudor monarchs Edward VI and Elizabeth had to employ force and political persuasion to wrest the English people away from their commitment to Roman Catholicism and the papacy. It is a bold thesis—though Duffy is not the only historian who has made this argument—and his arguments for it are strong and compelling. In the final analysis, however, I must say I am not wholly convinced.
In addition to a number of essays that look at the material religious culture of early Tudor England (chapters 3–5), which Duffy believes substantiate his case, recent historiography of the English Reformation (chapters 1 and 2) is also examined. Duffy is right to outline the way in which this historiography has been shaped by the religious allegiances of English historians of the Reformation, though it bears noting that Duffy’s own deep roots in pre-Vatican II Roman Catho
licism should not be overlooked when considering the bent of his historical scholarship.[1] Chapters 6–9 trace the spirituality of two key Roman Catholic cardinals, John Fisher and Reginald Pole, who were far more well-known in the European world of their day than their Protestant counterparts, men like Thomas Cranmer (whose piety is compared with that of Pole in chapter 8) or Hugh Latimer. Chapter 8 is especially interesting where Duffy contrasts the Protestant memory of Cranmer as a noble martyr with that created by Pole: “a very different Cranmer, a concubinate priest, feebly subservient to brutal tyranny [that of Henry VIII], untruthful from the start, and unstable to the end” (p.194).
In chapters 10 and 11, Duffy traces the legacy of Tudor Catholicism. I found the final chapter—“Bare ruin’d choirs: remembering Catholicism in Shakespeare’s England (p.233–253)—especially significant as Duffy looks at the evidence of a single line from Sonnet 73 (“Bare ruin’d quiers, where late the sweet birds sang”) with regard to the religious convictions of William Shakespeare and some of his contemporaries. Duffy rightly questions the supposed Puritanism of the playwright’s father, John Shakespeare (p.240–241), a view that was put forward by a few authors a hundred or so years ago. On the other hand, he convincingly demonstrates through contextual analysis of this line that “if we cannot quite be sure that Shakespeare was a Catholic, it becomes clearer and clearer that he must have struck contemporaries as a most unsatisfactory Protestant” (p.253).
Why then do I remain not fully convinced? First, there is the stubborn fact of the thousands of Bibles from Tyndale’s version to that of the Geneva Bible produced by Protestants in these years: who was reading these copies of the Scriptures if Protestantism was essentially restricted to a small coterie of figures? Then, there are the various “common” people martyred during the reign of Mary I: they surely indicate that if there were many whose hearts were still loyal to the ethos, doctrine and piety of Rome, there were also many whose hearts had been won to the “new” faith. But even if I cannot follow Duffy’s revisionism (though, see his comments in this regard in the Introduction) the whole way, his arguments are not lightly dismissed and reveal that the English Reformation was much more complex, and messier, than some historians in the past have thought.
Michael A.G. Haykin
[1] See, for example, his essay, “Confessions of a Cradle Catholic” in his Faith of our Fathers: Reflections on Catholic Tradition (London/New York: Continuum, 2004), 11–19.
ers of this website. It handles well all of the key issues about Baptists during the time period covered by the book, including, for example, their relationship to the Anabaptists of the previous century, their style of worship, and their “dipping” of believers. And, as Bradstock rightly points out, their democratic approach to leadership and emphasis on religious liberty made them appear to political authorities as “subversive and a threat to good order” (p.25), which is also a good reminder in a day when many equate being Baptist with political conservatism.
of Jesus Christ as revealed in the Word of God. In the excerpt printed below from Andrew Fuller, in a few brief paragraphs Fuller helps us avoid the ditches of political idolatry and political apathy. Both approaches dishonor the Lord Jesus Christ and our responsibility to represent His eternal Kingdom as we live in the temporal kingdoms of this world. I have added the headings below, but the rest is directly from Fuller. He beautifully articulates the relationship between our political engagement, yearning for social justice, and our faith in Christ, His gospel, and His Kingdom. I hope you find this short excerpt from Fuller, as helpful to your peace of mind and the gospel equilibrium during this bizarre election cycle as I have.
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I have a long-standing tradition of reading a book relating to Christology around the time of Christmas. This year it was a booklet rather than a book, a part of the series Basics of the Faith, whose general editor is Sean Lucas, namely, What is the Incarnation? by William B. Evans, the Eunice Witherspoon Bell Younts and Willie Camp Younts Professor of Historical Theology at Erskine Theological Seminary in Due West, South Carolina.
For many in the West today, the very terms Islam and Muslims provoke fear, even hatred, and terrorist acts like the very recent Paris and Mali attacks only serve to reinforce these deep emotions. On the very day when news broke about the horrific attacks in Paris I received this new book by Ibrahim Ag Mohamed, the assistant pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in the heart of London. The author, whose roots are among the Tamasheq, the nomadic shepherds of the Sahara known to the outside world as the Tuareg, is deeply familiar with Islam—in fact, before his conversion, his devotion to Islam led him to burn the Scriptures. But, as he has said, the Scriptures “I had burned came and burned my heart.”