3. Protestantization in Practice: Popular Beliefs
- Created by: Alasdair
- Created on: 25-05-19 14:17
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- 3. Protestantization in Practice: Popular Beliefs
- 1. Keith Thomas: Religion & the Decline of Magic (historian)
- A pagan world?
- Protestantism undermines all Christian belief
- Critiques:
- Use of sources:
- Uncontextualised, puritan authors for evidence, reliant on published sources for behaviour
- Thomas relied almost entirely on written accounts by Clergymen
- would mean sources were written mostly by Puritans who would be specifically looking for stories like this to suit their own agenda
- New scholarship on science and magic:
- magical beliefs not a 'rival' world-view
- Some argue that Witchcraft fitted in with Christianity - weren't rival ideas around
- Use of sources:
- Moved conversations away from people just talking narrowly about Reformation
- Were there any Christians below the elite?
- Protestantism comes along and takes beliefs in Paganism away from ordinary people and leaves them with nothing else
- Theories been attacked since they came out
- People found it hard to find many examples like ones Thomas found
- 2. Protestantism - positive evidence
- Attendance at communion (Jeremy Boulton)
- Looked at Suffolk
- Levels of attendance were perhaps related to efforts made by local authorities
- Idea of people worshiping together
- By 1590s, low figures for absence from church (Ingram)
- Attendance at communion (Jeremy Boulton)
- 3. Protestantism: A problem of evidence
- Church of England only patrols outward behaviour
- Government only tested outward behaviour but did not test their personal beliefs
- Other evidence
- Historians have limited sources concerning what people personally believed
- Church of England only patrols outward behaviour
- 4. Sources of religious ideas
- Book of Common Prayer
- officially sanctioned by government
- According to historian Maltby, some people do not like it
- based on Catholic Mass book but with some of perceived Catholic 'errors' removed
- Sermons
- Book of Homilies
- Little short sermons prepared for clergymen to read out to their congregation
- Puritans not always keen on it
- published sermons, sermon notes
- Book of Homilies
- Catechisms
- Small books of religious instruction
- Question and answer format
- Quite user friendly, can be used with children
- Some run to 60 editions
- Estimated around 1600 there are half a million of what they call the official Catechism (as drawn up by one of the bishops)
- Estimated 3/4 million existed written by other clergymen
- May not get into complex ideas like Predestination but gives basic information
- designed to provide simple religious education
- Bibles
- Religious education comes principally from Bible
- During James I era more Bibles in English exist than any other time
- By 1630, there were ten times the amount of Bibles produced in 1540
- Most popular books of period
- Numerous editions and major retranslation results in 1611 King James version
- Cheap Printed Literature
- Literacy rates?
- People exist on a scale of literacy, e.g. some can just write their name, others more
- Combination of text and pictures
- Protestant reluctance to use images (Collinson) BUT Tessa Watt emphasises use of images in cheap print and at home
- Collinson: Visual anorexia
- Watt: demonstrated how Collinson missed the extent of the presence of cheap literature
- Bawdy rhymes, pamphlets
- But many printed works have religious tone to them
- Chapbooks
- Sold for a penny
- Had a mixture of songs, sermons, rhymes, prayers, almanacs
- Lamenting lady, who rejects a beggar woman and is 'strangely punished' by God - gives to 352 children
- Chapbooks from the pedlar's pack
- Watt suggests many are distinctively 'post-Reformation' in their content
- Woodcuts, verses, murder ballads, pamphlets, etc.
- Debates over English use of images - iconophobia
- Protestant reluctance to use images emphasied by (Collinson) BUT Tessa Watt emphasises use of images in cheap print and at home
- Literacy rates?
- Book of Common Prayer
- 5. Providentialism
- Popularity of Providential themes in cheap print
- e.g. Lamenting lady, who rejects a beggar woman and is 'strangely punished' by God
- e.g. 'Thunder, Hail and Lightning from Heaven' (1616) - features a picture of God
- e.g. Anthony Painter's 'The Blaspheming Carrier' (1614)
- Alexandra Walsham, 'Providence in Early Modern England' (1999)
- The 'Fatal Vespers' at Blackfriars in 1623: God's judgement on Catholics attending a clandestine service
- e.g. Catholics attending secret service - number resulted in floor giving away and some dying
- Popularity of Providential themes in cheap print
- 6. Peter Lake
- Puritans and providentialism
- Use of murder pamphlets to engage a popular audience
- Report latest murders
- Way of sending moral message
- Murderer was caught, found God before they were executed
- 'Deeds against Nature: Cheap Print, Protestantism and Murder in Early Seventeenth-Century England'
- 7. Key shifts in Protestantisation
- De-catholicisation
- e.g. Edmund Bunny purges a work by Jesuit, Robert Parsons and publishes it as 'A Booke of Christian Exercise' in 1584
- A generational shift
- People don't need to make effort to join Church of England, just sliding into it
- As we go on, people don't need to convert to Protestantism
- Born into Protestant England and not familiar with Catholic era
- De-catholicisation
- 1. Keith Thomas: Religion & the Decline of Magic (historian)
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