{"product_id":"the-stripping-of-the-altars-traditional-religion-in-england-14001580","title":"The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England  1400-1580","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis important and provocative book offers a fundamental challenge to much that has been written about the pre-Reformation church. Eamon Duffy recreates fifteenth-century English lay peoples experience of religion  revealing the richness and complexity of the Catholicism by which men and women structured their experience of the world and their hopes within and beyond it. He then tells the powerful story of the destruction of that Church - the stripping of the altars - from Henry VIIIs break with the papacy until the Elizabethan settlement. Bringing together theological  liturgical  literary  and iconographic analysis with historical narrative  Duffy argues that late medieval Catholicism was neither decadent nor decayed but was a strong and vigorous tradition  and that the Reformation represented the violent rupture of a popular and theologically respectable religious system. The first part of the book reviews the main features of religious belief and practice up to 1536. Duffy examines the factors that contributed to the close lay engagement with the structures of late medieval Catholicism: the liturgy that was widely understood even though it was in Latin; the impact of literacy and printing on lay religious knowledge; the conventions and contents of lay prayer; the relation of orthodox religious practice and magic; the Mass and the cult of the saints; and lay belief about death and the afterlife. In the second part of the book Duffy explores the impact of Protestant reforms on this traditional religion  providing new evidence of popular discontent from medieval wills and parish records. He documents the widespread opposition to Protestantism during the reigns of Henry and Edward  discusses Marys success in reestablishing Catholicism  and describes the public resistance to Elizabeths dismantling of parochial Catholicism that did not wane until the late 1570s. A major revision to accepted thinking about the spread of the Reformation  this book will be essential reading for students of British history and religion.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44965330386997,"sku":"ByrdShop_0300053428","price":225.31,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780300053425.jpg?v=1770493030","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-stripping-of-the-altars-traditional-religion-in-england-14001580","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}