This book highlights the pivotal roles of individuals in England’s complex sixteenth-century reformations. While many historians study broad themes, such as religious moderation, this volume is centred on the perspective that great changes are instigated not by themes, or ‘isms’, but rather by people – a point recently underlined in the 2017 quincentenary commemorations of Martin Luther’s protest in Germany. That sovereigns from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I largely drove religious policy in Tudor England is well known. Instead, the essays collected in this volume, inspired by the quincentenary and based upon original research, take a novel approach, emphasizing the agency of some of their most interesting subjects: Protestant and Roman Catholic, clerical and lay, men and women. With an introduction that establishes why the commemorative impulse was so powerful in this period and explores how reputations were constructed, perpetuated and manipulated, the authors of the nine succeeding chapters examine the reputations of three archbishops of Canterbury (Thomas Cranmer, Matthew Parker and John Whitgift), three pioneering bishops’ wives (Elizabeth Coverdale, Margaret Cranmer and Anne Hooper), two Roman Catholic martyrs (John Fisher and Thomas More), one evangelical martyr other than Cranmer (Anne Askew), two Jesuits (John Gerard and Robert Persons) and one author whose confessional identity remains contested (Anthony Munday). Partly biographical, though mainly historiographical, these essays offer refreshing new perspectives on why the selected figures are famed (or should be famed) and discuss what their reformation reputations tell us today.
Author(s): David J. Crankshaw, George W. C. Gross
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 474
City: Cham
Preface and Acknowledgments
Conventions
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Abbreviations
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction: Reformation, Life-Writing and the Commemorative Impulse—The Power of the Individual
Prologue
Heroes and Heroines
Culture War
Making Reformation Reputations
The Commemorative Impulse: Monuments and Epitaphs
The Fallen Celebrity: Defending the Indefensible
Memorialization in Film
Reformation Reputations Made and Marred
2 1535 in 1935: Catholic Saints and English Identity: The Canonization of Thomas More and John Fisher
Postscript
3 Thomas Cranmer’s Reputation Reconsidered
Introduction
No New Athena
New Insights into Tudor Evangelical Conversion
New Insights into Cranmer’s Patristic Methodology
The Influence of Cyril of Alexandria (c.376–444) Upon Cranmer
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Appendix 4
Appendix 5
4 ‘Agents of the Reformation’: Margaret Cranmer, Anne Hooper and Elizabeth Coverdale
Introduction
Clerical Marriage
Historiography
‘Agents of the Reformation’
‘A Most Sober, Chaste, and Godly Matron’: Becoming the Bishop’s Wife
‘In the Time of Her Adversitie’
Conclusion
5 Anne Askew
A ‘Life’, Reconstructed Partially
Beyond Smithfield
A Legacy Refashioned
6 ‘A Man of Stomach’: Matthew Parker’s Reputation
Introduction
Parker’s Lifetime Reputation
Parker’s Posthumous Reputation
Conclusion
7 John Whitgift Redivivus: Reconsidering the Reputation of Elizabeth’s Last Archbishop of Canterbury
8 Anthony Munday: Eloquent Equivocator or Contemptible Turncoat?
Anthony Munday: His Formative Years
Munday’s Roman Adventure: The English Romayne Lyfe
Munday’s Life After Rome
Munday’s Reputation During His Lifetime: His Confessional Allegiance
Munday’s Reputation During His Lifetime: His Literary Abilities
Munday’s Reputation in Current Academic Debate: Was He a Roman Catholic or a Protestant Author?
Conclusion
9 Polemic, Memory and Emotion: John Gerard and the Writing of the Counter-Reformation in England
Introduction
The Appellant Critique
Gerard and Weston Respond
Conclusion
10 Rehabilitating Robert Persons: Then and Now
Introduction
Jesuit Missionary, Educationist, Diplomat
Royal Proclamations: Traitor and Equivocator
Persons in Print: Polemic and Devotion
Catholic Detractors: The ‘Hispanized Camelion’ and the ‘Polypragmon’
Protestant and Catholic Historians: The ‘Black Legend’ and the Politician
Jesuit Historiography: The Heroic Tradition
‘Early Modern British Catholic Studies’
Index
