‘The Stripping of the Altars’, 30 years on {review of book by Eamon Duffy}

Catholic Herald ^ | March 30, 2022 at 9:00 am | Eamon Duffy

[Cronos]

In the early 1980s, three unrelated events converged to turn my attention decisively to the late Middle Ages and the Reformation. I was invited to give a lecture on the Book of Common Prayer Burial Service. I decided to tackle this task by comparing the elaborate medieval Latin burial service with the austerely Protestant rite Cranmer had quarried from it: the realisation that, in the medieval service at the moment of committal of the corpse, the priest addressed the dead person directly, whereas in the Prayer Book rite the minister turned instead to the living mourners round the grave and spoke about the dead only in the third person, would develop into one of the key ideas of The Stripping of the Altar

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?

The goal is to correct two very different errors about the English Reformation... Refuting all of this is a big order and is accomplished most effectively in Duffy's encyclopedic account of the pre-Reformation Church.

[Cronos]

Contrary to what has been taught and generally believed about the Protestant Reformation in England, satisfaction with the Roman Catholic "traditional" religion, its fêtes, rituals and observances was almost universal at the time of the Reformation and that the Reformation, itself, was imposed upon the people by royal and civil authority, not popular will.

[Cronos]

Voices around Henry VIII, who despite his quarrels with the papacy remained ambivalent about his religious identification, radicalized his policies in the persons of ranting Hugh Latimer and Machiavellian Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer, culminating in 1533 in the ultimate break with the Roman church and, in the name of removing idolatrous objects, the subsequent eponymous stripping of the altars, art, and statuary of the churches and the destruction of abbeys and monasteries, a sad price to pay for the concepts of religious individualism and personal responsibility for salvation.

The reaction of the traditionalists was varied. Some resisted while others went underground or accommodated and accepted the new authority; however, given the opportunity, Duffy emphasizes, the “vast majority” of the people quickly reverted to traditional religion after the deaths of Henry in 1547 and of the young King Edward VI in 1553 and the brief accession to the throne of Catholic Mary Tudor. As the reign of Elizabeth I began in 1558 and the Protestant Church of England was reinstated, many quickly changed sides of the aisle again, but, Duffy asserts, the ultimate defeat of the traditionalists was the result only of lengthy systematic repression, an effort that finally subverted the true will of the people.

[Cronos]

In this book you will find a wide array of sources—wills, journals, liturgies, and more—to I think successfully make the case that, contra many centuries of historiography that was Protestant in its sympathies, Catholicism in late medieval England was far from moribund, at least at a grass-roots level.

The shift of the general population’s religious convictions, identities, and preferences took place over a span of generations and was not so abrupt as had often been assumed.

[bigbob]

“It’s good to be King”

- Henry VIII

[BipolarBob]

Charles Stross wrote, “History is written by the survivors, a narrative they compose to explain events to themselves”.

[NorthMountain]

Thank you for posting. Just ordered the book.

[bigbob]

While many “papists” clung to the old beliefs in private, I’m sure the book agrees that the Roman church had become corrupt, immoral, and was badly in need of reform (especially the monastaries). On the other hand, Henry scarcely acted out out of anything but greed and personal animus against the Pope. The sale of monastic properties brought in the equivalent of millions of dollars in modern terms which Henry used to finane his military ambitions and the Court of Augmentations under Richard Rich provided another opportunitiy for corrupt alliances.

Without a doubt, the dissolutions and massive redistribution of wealth and power under Henry VIII was perhaps the most revolutionary events in English history. And “poor” Thomas Cromwell who project-managed it for the King ended up losing his head for his trouble!

[Cronos]

In the case of the English reformatting, it was none of the above.

The reason was simply that the King wanted the ability to chop and change his wives - he had 6.

[bigbob]

Changing would have been OK, but he went a little overboard when it came to “chopping”.

In many ways, Henry is an interesting comparison vs. our present Potus... The seven deadly sins certainly have not changed in 500 years.

[NorthMountain]

The seven deadly sins certainly have not changed in 500 years.

And human nature hasn't changed a whit since Cain slew Abel, and then had the insufferable gall to ask if he was his brother's keeper ...

[AnAmericanMother]

The English church was very remote from Rome - you could figure about a month to get to Rome from London, at best. And the English church was not particularly corrupt - certainly not along the lines of the Borgias etc. While theoretically answerable to the Pope, it had its own traditions, its own hierarchy, its own governance, and its own beautiful artistic and musical traditions.

Just one example - Sarum Chant, which unlike Gregorian is metrical (typically triple time) and characterised by what a musical historian of the time called the "contenance Anglais." Here is a very late example by the great Thomas Tallis - who remained Catholic despite persecution, and along with his fellow-Catholic, student, and successor William Byrd ("our Fenix") was protected by Queen Elizabeth for the sake of their glorious music. Here, Renaissance polyphony is interspersed with the Sarum Chant:

Audivi Vocem de Caelo ("I heard a voice from Heaven")

Henry did not wish to change anything other than placing himself as head of the Church in England, and looting the substantial assets of the monasteries to fund his inflationary policies and reward his friends. It was his son Edward, a child ruled by radical Protestant advisors, who oversaw the destruction of the Church and all its treasures: liturgical, musical, artistic.

The unintended consequence that really hurt was that the Church had been funding all the hospitals, orphans' homes, pilgrims' refuges, and poor relief. Only after the English belatedly realized that they had cut loose all the suffering in the realm to fend for themselves, did stopgaps like the Poor Laws and workhouses come into being. They didn't work nearly as well.

[married21]

Thank you for your post.

[daniel1212]

Eamon Duffy (Former president of Magdalene College and member of Pontifical Historical Commission, and Emeritus Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge) and provides the following on the Roman church becoming more like the empire in which it was found as a result of state adoption of (an progressively deformed) version of Christianity:

The conversion of Constantine had propelled the Bishops of Rome into the heart of the Roman establishment...They [bishops of Rome] set about [creating a Christian Rome] by building churches, converting the modest tituli (community church centres) into something grander, and creating new and more public foundations, though to begin with nothing that rivaled the great basilicas at the Lateran and St. Peter’s...

These churches were a mark of the upbeat confidence of post-Constantinian Christianity in Rome. The popes were potentates, and began to behave like it. Damasus perfectly embodied this growing grandeur. An urbane career cleric like his predecessor Liberius, at home in the wealthy salons of the city, he was also a ruthless power-broker, and he did not he did not hesitate to mobilize both the city police and [a hired mob of gravediggers with pickaxes] to back up his rule…

Self-consciously, the popes began to model their actions and their style as Christian leaders on the procedures of the Roman state. — Eamon Duffy “Saints and Sinners”, p. 37,38