Overview
- Explores the role of the individual in English Reformation history
- Offers accessible introductions to a selection of key individuals, of each gender and from different parts of the religious spectrum
- Investigates how and why the reputations of these central historical figures have changed and been shaped over the centuries
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About this book
This book highlights the pivotal roles of individuals in England’s complex sixteenth-century reformations. While many historians study broad themes, such as religious moderation, this volume is centred on the perspective that great changes are instigated not by themes, or ‘isms’, but rather by people – a point recently underlined in the 2017 quincentenary commemorations of Martin Luther’s protest in Germany. That sovereigns from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I largely drove religious policy in Tudor England is well known. Instead, the essays collected in this volume, inspired by the quincentenary and based upon original research, take a novel approach, emphasizing the agency of some of their most interesting subjects: Protestant and Roman Catholic, clerical and lay, men and women. With an introduction that establishes why the commemorative impulse was so powerful in this period and explores how reputations were constructed, perpetuated and manipulated, the authors of the nine succeeding chapters examine the reputations of three archbishops of Canterbury (Thomas Cranmer, Matthew Parker and John Whitgift), three pioneering bishops’ wives (Elizabeth Coverdale, Margaret Cranmer and Anne Hooper), two Roman Catholic martyrs (John Fisher and Thomas More), one evangelical martyr other than Cranmer (Anne Askew), two Jesuits (John Gerard and Robert Persons) and one author whose confessional identity remains contested (Anthony Munday). Partly biographical, though mainly historiographical, these essays offer refreshing new perspectives on why the selected figures are famed (or should be famed) and discuss what their reformation reputations tell us today.
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Keywords
Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
“Recent trends in English Reformation history … eclipsed the powerful part played by prominent personalities in the making of religious change. Inspired by the quincentenary of Luther’s protest against the papacy in 1517, Reformation Reputations reasserts the value of a biographical perspective on these developments. … all the essays in this valuable volume bear out the editors’ observation … . They highlight the agency that their subjects exercised in crafting their own reputations in the present and for the future.” (Alexandra Walsham, Catholic Historical Review, Vol.110 (2), 2024)
“This appears to be the first book, featuring interdisciplinarity, dedicated to exploring the rich history of the Reformations by investigating the topic with reference to reputations. … This well-appointed volume features two dozen figures and tables, along with a twenty-six–page index. Each of the ten chapters is lavishly documented, and there are plenty of provocative suggestions for additional research. The editors and the publisher should be congratulated on a handsome volume that is certain to stimulate considerable discussion.” (Thomas A. Fudge, Journal of Religious History, Vol. 46 (2), June, 2022)
“This wide-ranging volume opens with an expansive introductory chapter by the editors that, at 157 pages, is the length of a short book. … The introduction and the essays that follow offer valuable analyses of the ways in which the reputations of English Reformation figures were forged, reworked, and contested in shifting contexts, all the way down to the present day.” (Karl Gunther, Church History, Vol. 91 (1), March, 2022)
“Each article and the splendid introduction are first-rate. … Women are not overlooked in the collection. Susan Wabuda reexamines Anne Askew, burned at the stake for heresy by King Henry VIII in 1546, and immortalized in Foxe’s Actes and Monuments. … In an especially intriguing contribution, Rachel Basch considers Margaret Cranmer, Anne Hooper, and Elizabeth Coverdale … .” (Thomas M. McCoog, S.J., Journal of Jesuit Studies, Vol. 9, 2022)
“Crankshaw and Gross are writing neither Reformation history nor memory study. They are considering lives remembered across time. Noting that remembering required print, and that printed reputations could provoke printed responses, they provide a very useful table of autobiographical and biographical works through 1718. … This fine collection gives historians of religion much to ponder. As we watch the heroes of the English Reformation swing … we must ask what our parts are in this process of reputation building.” (Norm Jones, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 73 (1), January, 2022)
“Each of the essays in this volume offers new understandings of the men and women who shaped England’s religious politics in the sixteenth century. The volume as a whole is a timely reminder of the historical significance of ‘the power of individual agency’ … .” (Mary Morrissey, Renaissance and Reformation, Vol. 43 (4), 2021)
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
David J. Crankshaw is Lecturer in the History of Early Modern Christianity at King’s College London, UK. He has published on the Court of Faculties, St Paul’s Cathedral and ecclesiastical statesmanship.
George W. C. Gross is a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, UK, where he wrote his doctoral thesis entitled “The Lord’s Anointed”: British Coronations in Religious, Political and Social Contexts, c.1661–c.1714’ (2017).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Reformation Reputations
Book Subtitle: The Power of the Individual in English Reformation History
Editors: David J. Crankshaw, George W. C. Gross
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55434-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-55433-0Published: 11 November 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-55436-1Published: 11 November 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-55434-7Published: 10 November 2020
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXVII, 474
Number of Illustrations: 10 b/w illustrations, 14 illustrations in colour
Topics: History of Britain and Ireland, Historiography and Method, History of Religion, History of Early Modern Europe, Political History