The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England,1400-1580

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Ye pure Virgynes in that ye may or can, with tapers of wax loke ye come forth here and worship this child very god and man Offrid in this temple be his moder dere.

The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Eamon Duffy. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional

Of course, 90% of it had no foundation at all in the Bible, and some of the saints had started as pagan gods and goddesses. Famously there were enough relics of Splinters of the True Cross in Medieval Europe to build a fleet of ships. But many issues arise. A Protestant , who opposes the religious practices such as the intercession of saints, the veneration of relics, and prayers for souls in purgatory, will probably not be won over by arguments that these beliefs were popular and part of the culture. Those who find Medieval Catholicism repressive are unlikely to be convinced ....the author's understating of the persecution of heretics during the reign of Mary I , do not help his case. note 2) Duffy develops this perspective in his most recent work, a full-length treatment of Mary published just this week: Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). 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 suceeds triumphantly."—Susan Brigden, London Review of Books

For a historian increasingly preoccupied with the nature of the Reformation, all this had a special resonance. I didn’t of course imagine that the ritual revolutions of the 16th and the 20th centuries could be equated, but some of the issues were undoubtedly the same. The calls for the drastic simplification of worship as a good in its own right, the disparagement of the apparently magical mindset which underlay the ritual framework of pre-conciliar Catholicism, the abolition of “rote” practices like Friday abstinence in favour of voluntary and private acts of penance, which were held to be superior because more “authentic” – these were in some respects a re-run of the reforming agenda of the 16th century, and were often justified with strikingly similar arguments. Duffy divides his work into two parts. The first and most extensive is a portrait of popular spirituality on the eve of the Protestant Reformation. He describes a robust parish life in late Medieval England, hardly the spiritual doldrums that Protestants claimed it to be. Late Medieval Catholicism “exerted an enormously strong, diverse, and vigorous hold over the imagination and the loyalty of the people up to the very moment of Reformation” (p. 4) He shows this through many aspects of parish life. First, laypeople integrated seasonal liturgy with personal devotional gestures such as feasting, processions, and other forms of celebration—most notably, during Candlemas and Holy Week. “For townsmen and countrymen alike,” says Duffy, “the rhythms of the liturgy on the eve of the Reformation remained the rhythms of life itself” (p. 52). Second, laypeople invested themselves in catechesis: they funded and produced wall paintings and church furnishings, and they read liturgical and devotional books that circulated widely with the rise of print and literacy. These are among the means by which “the ploughman learned his paternoster.” Third, they celebrated the Mass—not merely as passive recipients, but actively, through sponsorship of special masses and imitating Mass liturgy in private devotions. Fourth, the laity devoted themselves to the saints. They celebrated saints’ days around the calendar, read hagiography, and infused their work and commerce with devotion to saints. Finally, their concern about death underlay an elaborate cult of intercession for the dead, including provision of Masses, alms, pilgrimage, and the adornment of churches and images.

Stripping of the Altars | Dominicana Stripping of the Altars | Dominicana

This is a monumental work. . . Duffy writes elegantly, handling complex and controversial subject matter in a way at once sober and factual. . . . A powerful book, superbly constructed and written, timely and often moving. 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 One can feel some sympathy for the Lollards who rejected the over the top adoration of the eucharist in that period (not to mention the Jews who were treated as hardly human by their Christian neighbors), while at the same time appreciating how the traditional faith and the liturgical cycle at its core could give and express meaning and a sense of belonging and purpose for many people. It was in some ways a dangerous book for an academic to publish, for its author’s empathy for the religious system that the book scrutinised was clear, inevitably inviting the accusation of religious bias. Most of the reviewers commented on the sympathy with which late-medieval popular Catholicism, or, in the book’s preferred term, “traditional religion”, was handled, and more than one suggested that the book marked the regrettable rise or revival of “denominational history”. This seemed to me a curious, even risible suggestion, given that most modern writing about English Reformation history had been produced either from an overtly or discernibly Protestant confessional standpoint, or at any rate from within a culturally Protestant and post-Enlightenment mindset liable to influence historical judgement about the character and worth of medieval Christianity just as surely, if less obviously, as any denominational affiliation.As Christ was stripped of his garments, so the altars are stripped of their coverings in the traditional Maundy Thursday celebration. “They parted my garments amongst them: and upon my vesture they cast lots.” Following hard upon this antiphon is the recitation of Psalm XXI, the Deus meus: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Nevertheless, it is the liturgical celebration which shaped and defined such gild observances, and the same centrality of the pattern of the liturgy is evident in a number of the surviving Corpus Christi plays of the Purification. In the East Anglian Ludus Coventriae play of the Purification, for example, Simeon receives the child Jesus with a speech which is simply a literal verse rendering of the opening psalm of the Mass of the feast. While he holds the child in his arms, a choir sings “Nunc Dimittis”, almost certainly to the Candlemas processional music. Joseph distributes candles to Mary, Simeon, and Anna, and takes one himself. Having thus formed, in the words of the Speculum, a “worshipful processioun”, they go together to the altar, where Mary lays the child, and Joseph offers the temple priest five pence. For the audience, the whole play would have been inescapably redolent of the familiar Candlemas liturgy, and in essence an extension of it.[21]

The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional book by Eamon Duffy The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional book by Eamon Duffy

Revisionist history at its most imaginative and exciting. . . . [An] astonishing and magnificent piece of work.’

Open Library

Is it the case that English Christians festered under Roman rule? Is it the case that English Christians felt burdened rather than uplifted by the ecclesiastical structure, with its liturgical seasons, feasts, fasts, and a ready ritual to almost any and every aspect of one’s life? Is it the case that English Christians longed for the day when they would be freed from notions of Purgatory, prayers for the dead, Masses, and devotion to the Saints? The established view is that they were. As far as Duffy is concerned, this perception is pure fantasy. Such revolutionary aspirations may have existed among a subsection of the elite and a small collection of radicals, but for the vast majority of English people, the prevailing view was one of contentment with the existing Church structure. Far from being resented or opposed, English Catholicism was embraced, providing structure, meaning, and occasion. Far from a church being governed by iron-rod wielding clergy, Duffy presents a nation of laity firmly attached to the parish system; indeed, exercising a great deal of control over its management. Immense pride was taken in all things from memorized prayers, to decorated Altars and shrines, all representing the piety and devotion of the people. Duffy focuses a great deal of effort into revising the pre-Reformation approach to the Sacraments, particularly the Mass. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass--the foundation of the liturgical and spiritual life of the Church--was not merely ‘observed’ by a passive congregation, but, like all Sacraments, was actively participated in through the faith and devotion. Ingrained pious practices were dear to the people, particularly devotion to individual Saints, as well as the much derided ‘cult of the dead’ (the system of praying for the souls in Purgatory, and knowing that people would be praying for your soul after your own death), which provided comfort in an often precarious existence. The Catholic Church in pre-Reformation England was a Church that was intertwined in the lives of ordinary English people, and these same ordinary people gave the Church their support and dedication.