Eamon Duffy - The Stripping of the Altars

Reviews of the first edition:

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 debate. Peter Heath, Times Literary Supplement

Deeply imaginative, movingly written, and splendidly illustrated. Duffy's analysis, in his richly detailed book, of what happened at the Reformation to the religion of the laity of England carries conviction. Maurice Keen, New York Review of Books

Revisionist history at its most imaginative and exciting. [An] astonishing and magnificent piece of work. Edward T. Oakes, Commonweal

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 Reformation. He succeeds triumphantly. Susan Brigden, London Review of Books

A landmark book in the history of the Reformation. Ann Eljenholm Nichols, Sixteenth Century Journal

Sensitively written and beautifully produced, this book represents a major contribution to the Reformation debate. Norman Tanner, The Times

With the publication of this book, a kind of map or illustrated atlas of late medieval English Christianity, English Reformation studies will never be the same again. Patrick Collinson, Times Higher Education Supplement

Duffy offers an unrivaled picture of late medieval parochial religion, with all its ritual symbolism and visual imagery.Keith Thomas, The Observer

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

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important landmarks in the study of late medieval English religion to have hitherto appeared, and it is unlikely to be superseded for quite some time.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

This is a monumental work Duffy writes elegantly, handling complex and controversial subject matter in a way at once sober and factual. It should be read by every historian of the medieval and early modern periods, by every Catholic, indeed by every Christian with a serious interest in the history of Christendom. Evelyn Birge Vitz, Theological Studies

A valuable source of information supported with excellent illustrations and bibliography. Choice

A very illuminating and satisfying book, which takes a major step towards better understanding of the English reformation. Margaret Aston, English Historical Review

This is a work of exceptional importance, demonstrating massive erudition, great sympathy, and eloquence of style. It presents a marvelously detailed new picture of traditional religious belief and practice in England during the century prior to the Reformation and it shows exactly when and how the customs of faith and ceremony were stripped away in the sixteenth century. Our interpretation of the Reformation and our understanding of Tudor religion will never be the same. Stanford Lehmberg, Sixteenth Century Journal

Scholarly, compulsively readable and revolutionary in thesis Scholars of the period will enjoy the controversy and the general reader will be carried back empathetically to the days when religion was not as we know it now.Gillian Mottram, Faith and Freedom

[This book] at last gives the culture of the late Middle Ages in England its due, and helps us to see the period as it was and not as Protestant reformers and their intellectual descendants imagined it to be. A monumental and deeply felt work.Gabriel Josipovici, Times Literary Supplement

An outstanding history of the English Reformation.Commonweal

Copyright 1992 by Yale University

Second edition 2005

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All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.

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ISBN 978-0-300-10828-6 (pbk)

Library of Congress Catalog Number 9250579

Deus, qui nos patrem et matrem honorare praecepisti, miserere clementer animabus patris et matris meae, eorumque peccata dimitte, meque cum illis in aeternae claritatis gaudio fac vivere.

Per Christum Dominum Nostrum. Amen.

From the Mass for the Dead,

Missale ad Usum Insignis et Praeclarae Ecclesiae Sarum,

ed. F. H. Dickinson, 186183, col. 873*.

CONTENTS

The Ceremonies of Holy Week

Sacred Place, Sacred Time

Sacred and Secular Time?

Priests, People and Catechesis

The Impact of Catechesis: Imagery and Dramatic Evidence

The Impact of Literacy: Lay Didactic and Devotional Collections

The Coming of Print

Seeing the Host

Seeing and Believing

Dredd into Sweetness

Spectators or Participants? Lay Religion and the Mass

Praying the Mass: the Individual's Experience

Praying the Mass: Privatization?

Praying the Mass: the Parochial Experience

Making the Peace

Gild and Parish

The Saints in their Images

The debt of interchanging neighbourhood

Old and New Allegiances

Holiness and Help

Coins, Candles and Contracts

Gift, Grace and Fellow-feeling

Pilgrimage

St Walstan of Bawburgh

The Primer and Lay Prayer

Devotions to the Passion

The Mass of St Gregory and the Wounds of Jesus

The Seven Words on the Cross

Devotions to the Virgin

Pardons and Promises

The Image of Death

The Hour of Death

Ars Moriendi

Death and Memory

Purgatory: Ante-room of Heaven or Outpost of Hell?

Christendome and Kindred

Ways of Deliverance: Shortening the Paints of Purgatory

The Works of Mercy

The Rejection of Penny Doles

Bridges and Highways

Prayers and Supplications

Religious Priorities in Marian England

The Marian Primers

The Programme in the Parishes

The Visitation of Kent, 1557

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In the course of more than seven years work on this book, I have accumulated many debts. Much of that indebtedness has grown from the writings, conversations and arguments of workers in the same or related fields: Margaret Aston, John Bossy, Susan Brigden, Pat Collinson, Christopher Haigh, Dorothy Owen, Miri Rubin, Jack Scarisbrick, Bob Scribner, and Margaret Spufford have all helped to stimulate my thoughts and provoke me to question, though they will not always approve of the answers. Ann Nichols and Dick Pfaff not only shared their learning in late medieval liturgy, iconography, and sacramental theology, but drove with me through rural East Anglia in search of its material traces.