scholarly journals Why the Reformation failed in Ireland

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (158) ◽  
pp. 151-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry A. Jefferies
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Catholic Church

AbstractThe Reformation failed comprehensively and absolutely in Ireland before the end of Elizabeth’s reign: contemporaries estimated the number of Irish Protestants at between forty and 120 individuals. The debate about that failure has been long running, yet inconclusive. After a short historiographical review, this paper considers a range of factors which may have been pertinent in shaping Irish responses to the Reformation policies of Henry VIII and his Protestant children. It shows that Elizabeth’s Reformation in Ireland was stymied by the absence of indigenous support, which meant that religious change was neither propagated by local clergymen nor enforced by the local elites in Irish parishes. It points to the strength and persistence of Catholic resistance to the Reformation in different forms from the very start of Elizabeth’s reign in Ireland, contradicting the unsubstantiated notion that passive ‘church papistry’ was general. Nonetheless, it argues that it was only from the 1580s, when the Catholic church in Ireland was reorganised as a disestablished ‘people’s church’, and infused with the confidence inspired by the Counter-Reformation, can it be stated that the Reformation had failed in Ireland definitively.

A Moveable Feast: Saint George's Day Celebrations and Religious Change in Early Modern England

1999 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muriel C. McClendon
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
English History ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Broad Outline ◽  
The Catholic Church

Recent writing on the English Reformation has been dominated by the so-called revisionists. While not all revisionist historians have advanced an identical interpretation of the Reformation, the broad outline of their argument is neatly summarized in the opening lines of J. J. Scarisbrick's The Reformation and the English People: “On the whole, English men and women did not want the Reformation and most of them were slow to accept it when it came.” While earlier writers argued that the Reformation period represented a sharp break in English history with a definitive rejection of Catholicism, revisionists have asserted that there was considerable continuity in the religious life of sixteenth-century men and women. The Catholic Church was strong and vital and commanded considerable loyalty among the laity, and changes to religious doctrine and practice generated considerable hostility. The demise of the Catholic Church in England was not assured, and the success of the Protestant Reformation was the result of a long straggle fought from above that was won only during the middle years of Elizabeth's reign.The revisionist interpretation has commanded wide attention and support. It currently stands, in many respects, as the new orthodoxy of English Reformation historiography. Most historians now concur on the profound attachment of many men and women to the doctrine and worship of the Catholic Church and their reluctance to abandon them. Nevertheless, a number of questions about the revisionists' interpretation of the Reformation and English religiosity remain.

The Sermon as A Multimedial Instrument of Communication in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalia Marija StančIene
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The Other ◽  
Lay People ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Important Means ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

Abstract At the end of the sixteenth century, during the Christianization of Lithuania, sermons became one of the most important means of communication. As a medium, the sermon functioned through systems of codified sounds and symbols, as well as representing the institution of the Church for which it served as a broadcaster. Increased attention to the sermon was prompted by the desire of the Catholic Church to resist the Reformation and to preserve its spiritual monopoly. Martin Luther and Erasmus of Rotterdam underlined the importance of preaching, claiming that preaching the Gospels could improve society. The Jesuits instructed preachers not to limit themselves to religious matters alone but also to pay attention to social and political problems. There were two kinds of sermon: one for churchmen, preached in Latin; the other for lay people, in the vernacular. The Jesuits trained priests to preach in Lithuanian.

Devotion, Discontent, and the Henrician Reformation: The Evidence of the Robin Hood Stories

2002 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Field
Keyword(s):  
Social Institution ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Robin Hood ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Local Parish ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
The Face ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Masses

The relationship between popular religious attitudes and the English Reformation has long been the subject of a fierce historical debate. The older “Whig-Protestant” view, championed most notably by A. G. Dickens, draws on evidence for clerical corruption and the spread of Lollardy to show that large numbers of English people were dissatisfied with the state of Catholicism, eager for religious change, and on the whole receptive to Protestant ideas. According to this version of events, Henry VIII and the Reformation Parliament rode a wave of popular discontent in breaking from Rome and dissolving the monasteries. If there was a split between the king and the masses, it came only later when Henry's conservative religious beliefs caused him to attempt to retain much of the substance of Catholicism in the face of popular clamor for more thoroughgoing reform. On the other hand, the “revisionist” camp, which includes such well-known names as J. J. Scarisbrick, Christopher Haigh, and Eamon Duffy, prefers to cite evidence from wills, local parish records, liturgical books, and devotional texts to show that “the Church was a lively and relevant social institution, and the Reformation was not the product of a long-term decay of medieval religion.” In this view, Henry VIII and his advisors pushed through a personally advantageous but widely disliked and resisted Reformation.An examination of the religious content of the tales men and women told about Robin Hood in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries offers a fresh perspective on this long-running dispute.

scholarly journals The Fall of the Chorupnik Parish. A Contribution to the History of the Reformation in Poland

2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (2 SELECTED PAPERS IN ENGLISH) ◽  
pp. 31-42
Author(s):  
Bogumił Szady
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Local Dimension ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
Parish Priest ◽  
The Social ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Polish Version ◽  
History Of

The Polish version of the article was published in “Roczniki Humanistyczne,” vol. 61 (2013), issue 2. The article addresses the question of the fall of the Latin parish in Chorupnik that belonged to the former diocese of Chełm. The parish church in Chorupnik was taken over by Protestants in the second half of the 16th century. Unsuccessful attempts at recovering its property were made by incorporating it into the neighbouring parish in Gorzków. The actions taken by the Gorzków parish priest and the bishop together with his chapter failed, too. A detailed study of such attempts to recover the property of one of the parishes that ceased to exist during the Reformation falls within the context of the relations between the nobility and the clergy in the period of Counter-Reformation. Studying the social, legal and economic relations in a local dimension is important for understanding the mechanisms of the mass transition of the nobility to reformed denominations, and then of their return to the Catholic Church.

Roman Catholicism and Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 436-457
Author(s):  
Petr Kratochvíl
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The Political ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Global Nature ◽  
The Church ◽  
Hostile Attitude ◽  
The Catholic Church

This chapter explores the complex relationship between the Catholic Church and Europe over many centuries. It argues that the Catholic Church and Europe played a mutually constitutive role in the early Middle Ages and one would not be conceivable without the other. However, the Church gradually disassociated itself from Europe and vice versa. Since the Reformation, but even more strongly in the last two centuries, the Church’s attitude to Europe has become markedly more ambivalent, due to the rise of the European state, the hostile attitude of the Church to modern European social and political thought, Europe’s ongoing secularization, and the increasingly global nature of the Catholic Church. While the tension between the Church and Europe persists, the process of European unification marked a watershed in the Church’s relationship to Europe, given that integration is a key area in which the Church strongly supports the political developments of the continent.

A Tridentine Response

2020 ◽  
pp. 104-131
Author(s):  
Kenneth Austin
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Catholic Reformation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Catholic Church

This chapter analyzes “Counter Reformation,” a terminology that implies the developments within the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century and beyond of reactions to the Protestant challenge. It explains how historians generally prefer the term “Catholic Reformation” over Counter Reformation as it is more neutral and better able to accommodate the range of initiatives witnessed in the period. It also points out reform efforts that predate the Protestant challenge, in which a new ethos developed within the Catholic Church in the middle of the sixteenth century. The chapter talks about the fathers of the Council of Trent, who sought to address a wide range of issues relating to belief and practice. It looks at the “Tridentine” decrees that were implemented alongside various papal initiatives and efforts at the local level.

scholarly journals They Tore God Limb From Limb

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katlyn Kichko
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Singular Case ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Catholic Church

This paper interacts specifically with two separate texts, that is Michel de Certeau’s The Possession at Loudun and Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller. Both of these texts present a narrative of religious turmoil, demonic possessions and a heretical Inquisition, respectively, and the events which surround a single religious dissenter. Examining the two heretical men presented within these texts in comparison allows for an understanding of Catholic Church dogma during the age of the Counter Reformation, and how such an institution managed threats, both external and internal. Moreover, this paper also examines the methodologies behind the historical discourse, in order to understand the validity of the narratives presented, and the scope of historical depth sought. Addressing methodology is crucial when one narrows focus to two singular case studies by two separate historians. Thus, this paper intends to illustrate the threats to normative religious discourse which Urbain Grandier and Menocchio possessed in the face of the Catholic Church, while also demonstrating the methodologies by which the two men are presented within their respective histories.

Saint or Schemer? The 1527 Heresy Trial of Thomas Bilney Reconsidered

1989 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Walker
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Ambiguous Figure ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
John Foxe ◽  
Significant Figure ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

On 8 December 1527 two scholars, Thomas Bilney and Thomas Arthur, carried penitential faggots at St Paul's Cross as a token of abjuration of heresy. With this act both men formally cleansed their souls and brought about their reconciliation with the Church. Far from being the end of a story, however, this ceremony proved to be the beginning of a controversy which has survived until the present day. For Thomas Bilney subsequently renounced his abjuration and became a significant figure in the early Reformation in England, eventually dying at the stake as a relapsed heretic in 1531. And yet, despite the importance attributed to him as a reformer, Bilney is now, as he was then, an ambiguous figure whose relationship with the Catholic Church and precise beliefs have never been conclusively determined. Many writers have claimed Bilney as a champion of their particular causes or have sought to identify his place in the wider movements of the Reformation. For the Protestant John Foxe he was a martyr, albeit a flawed one, for the reformed faith, who refused to the last to be intimidated into a second abjuration. For Sir Thomas More, in somewhat mischievous mood, he was a Catholic saint brought to realise the error of his ways at the stake and reconciled to the Church with almost his last breath.

Mary and Modernity

2019 ◽  
pp. 530-545
Author(s):  
Charlene Spretnak
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Mechanistic Worldview ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Catholic Church

Because the Reformation was unfavourably disposed toward expressions of the cosmological, mystical, symbolic, and aesthetic dimensions of the Virgin Mary’s spiritual presence, and because secular versions of several concepts in the Reformation became central to emergent modernity, the work of modernizing the Catholic Church at Vatican II resulted in streamlining Mary’s presence and meaning in favour of a more literal, objective, and strictly text-based version, which is simultaneously more Protestant and more modern. In the decades since Vatican II, however, the modern, mechanistic worldview has been dislodged by discoveries in physics and biology indicating that physical reality, the Creation, is composed entirely of dynamic interrelatedness. This perception also informs the Incarnation, the Resurrection, Redemption, transubstantiation, and the full spiritual presence of Mary with its mystical and cosmological dimensions. Perhaps the rigid dividing lines at Vatican II will evolve into new possibilities in the twenty-first century regarding Mary and modernity.

scholarly journals Prosper Guéranger O.S.B. (1805-1875) and the Struggle for Liturgical Unity

1999 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 333-344
Author(s):  
Peter Raedts
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Unbroken Line ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Catholic Church

One of the strongest weapons in the armoury of the Roman Catholic Church has always been its impressive sense of historical continuity. Apologists, such as Bishop Bossuet (1627-1704), liked to tease their Protestant adversaries with the question of where in the world their Church had been before Luther and Calvin. The question shows how important the time between ancient Christianity and the Reformation had become in Catholic apologetics since the sixteenth century. Where the Protestants had to admit that a gap of more than a thousand years separated the early Christian communities from the churches of the Reformation, Catholics could proudly point to the fact that in their Church an unbroken line of succession linked the present hierarchy to Christ and the apostles. This continuity seemed the best proof that other churches were human constructs, whereas the Catholic Church continued the mission of Christ and his disciples. In this argument the Middle Ages were essential, but not a time to dwell upon. It was not until the nineteenth century that in the Catholic Church the Middle Ages began to mean far more than proof of the Church’s unbroken continuity.

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