Bøker av Professor Eamon (University of Cambridge Duffy

As an authority on the religion of medieval and early modern England, Eamon Duffy is preeminent. In his revisionist masterpiece The Stripping of the Altars, Duffy opened up new areas of research and entirely fresh perspectives on the origin and progress of the English Reformation.Duffy's focus has always been on the practices and institutions through which ordinary people lived and experienced their religion, but which the Protestant reformers abolished as idolatry and superstition. The first part of A People's Tragedy examines the two most important of these institutions: the rise and fall of pilgrimage to the cathedral shrines of England, and the destruction of the monasteries under Henry VIII, as exemplified by the dissolution of the ancient Anglo-Saxon monastery of Ely. In the title essay of the volume, Duffy tells the harrowing story of the Elizabethan regime's savage suppression of the last Catholic rebellion against the Reformation, the Rising of the Northern Earls in 1569.In the second half of the book Duffy considers the changing ways in which the Reformation has been thought and written about: the evolution of Catholic portrayals of Martin Luther, from hostile caricature to partial approval; the role of historians of the Reformation in the emergence of English national identity; and the improbable story of the twentieth century revival of Anglican and Catholic pilgrimage to the medieval Marian shrine of Walsingham. Finally, he considers the changing ways in which attitudes to the Reformation have been reflected in fiction, culminating with Hilary Mantel's gripping trilogy on the rise and fall of Henry VIII's political and religious fixer, Thomas Cromwell, and her controversial portrayal of Cromwell's Catholic opponent and victim, Sir Thomas More.

In 1992, Eamon Duffy created a sensation in Reformation studies by publishing his groundbreaking book The Stripping of the Altars. In it he demonstrated the health of late medieval religion in England and that the thesis hitherto accepted that the Reformation came to wipe away a corrupt and rotten Church was essentially false. In this book follow-up to The Stripping of the Altars, Duffy makes further soundings in late medieval religion, but drills down to the particular and avoids any wide historical sweep. Among the topics he covers are "Purgatory," "The Black Death," "Adoration of the Mother of God," and "Heresy." By his meticulous research, Duffy has discovered many original documents and records during his academic career, proving that his thesis about the Reformation is basically irrefutable.This book is illustrated by a small collection of full color plates which further demonstrate the richness of late medieval religion.

J A Froude was one of the finest English literary stylists of the Victorian age. But he was highly critical of Mary Tudor, whose reign he viewed as something of a disaster. This book takes a different view.

Published to mark the 500th anniversary of the events of 1517, Reformation Divided explores the impact in England of the cataclysmic transformations of European Christianity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The religious revolution initiated by Martin Luther is usually referred to as 'The Reformation', a tendentious description implying that the shattering of the medieval religious foundations of Europe was a single process, in which a defective form of Christianity was replaced by one that was unequivocally benign, 'the midwife of the modern world'. The book challenges these assumptions by tracing the ways in which the project of reforming Christendom from within, initiated by Christian 'humanists' like Erasmus and Thomas More, broke apart into conflicting and often murderous energies and ideologies, dividing not only Catholic from Protestant, but creating deep internal rifts within all the churches which emerged from Europe's religious conflicts.The book is in three parts: In 'Thomas More and Heresy', Duffy examines how and why England's greatest humanist apparently abandoned the tolerant humanism of his youthful masterpiece Utopia, and became the bitterest opponent of the early Protestant movement. 'Counter-Reformation England' explores the ways in which post-Reformation English Catholics accommodated themselves to a complex new identity as persecuted religious dissidents within their own country, but in a European context, active participants in the global renewal of the Catholic Church. The book's final section 'The Godly and the Conversion of England' considers the ideals and difficulties of radical reformers attempting to transform the conventional Protestantism of post-Reformation England into something more ardent and committed. In addressing these subjects, Duffy shines new light on the fratricidal ideological conflicts which lasted for more than a century, and whose legacy continues to shape the modern world.

Professor Eamon Duffy explores the broad sweep of the English Reformation, and the ways in which that Reformation has been written about, remembered and retold.

Gives an autobiographical introduction of the author, explaining how his life as a scholar relates to his childhood, upbringing and deeply held religious belief. The topics range from the interest in monasticism in out time to an understanding of St Valentine's day.

Distinguished scholar addresses the key issues an intelligent person needs to tackle in making sense of being a Catholic today. >