He argues that in early modern England, “the liturgy was in fact the principle reservoir from which the religious paradigms and beliefs of the people were drawn” (p. Duffy doesn't altogether deny that such practices existed, but he adds to the picture by arguing for the central importance of the liturgy and catechism, through which an essential Catholic orthodoxy was maintained. Thomas' book argues that the Medieval Church in England retained many of the “magical,” unorthodox beliefs of pre-Christian native animist religions, in which spells, amulets, and sacred places, if invoked, could automatically protect someone from misfortune. This book serves as a background to Duffy's own analysis. One major, influential study that has looked at late Medieval Catholicism in its own right and not merely as a precursor to the English Reformation is Keith Thomas's 1971 book, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England. One of Duffy's purposes is to rectify this situation, and he devotes the first half of his book to investigating the “structures of traditional religion.” The second half of the book analyzes “the stripping of the altars,” or the disruption of traditional belief that Reformation measures caused.

Duffy notes that the traditional English Reformation narrative has led to looking at late Medieval religion as merely a stage set for the Reformation and not for its own intrinsic qualities, thus greatly distorting the picture scholars have formed. As a result, the measures taken by the crown to carry out their Reformation were an abrupt, unpopular break, not a natural evolution. Duffy disputes this argument by asserting that in reality, Catholic Christianity was flourishing in early modern England, and that “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 the Reformation” (p.

This strain of scholarship presents the Reformation that occurred as inevitable and natural.

One traditional narrative of the English Reformation is that proto-Protestant impulses and demands for the reform of a corrupt, decaying Catholic Church existed in English society well before Henry VIII made his official break. 1400- 1580 (Eamon Duffy, 1992)Įamon Duffy's book is a revisionist account of the English Reformation. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.

Duffy stripping of the altars