Reformation Divided
Catholics, Protestants and the Conversion of England
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Reformation Divided
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Narrated by:
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Eamon Duffy
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By:
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Eamon Duffy
About this listen
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.©2017 Eamon Duffy (P)2022 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Critic Reviews
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Henry Tilney
- 09-03-2023
A Heart Breaking Text
Eamon Duffey reads his own work in this extraordinary collection of essays. He's not an actor; he's a scholar - one of the most respectd authorities on the sixteenth century Reformation in England. The reading is therefore a little dry, perhaps, and won't suit all tastes. What the reader lacks in pep, however, he more than makes up for in scholarly authority. I found the voice and the delivery both comfortable and engaging. The subject matter is dramatic enough,surely, without a breathless delivery. Duffey's challenge is to take this story of pride, arrogant ambition and faltering faith and make the people of Tudor England accessible to the modern, secular reader. He does this admirably. There are a few heroes and plenty of villain in the story - and a great many ordinary men and women who struggled to act with integrity. This is not a conventional history of the Reformation and it presupposes a knowledge of the context. Expect your prejudices to be challenged. Sir Thomas More is far from the saintly soul of Robert Bolt's play; Mary Tudor is much more than the hard hearted, bigoted woman who sends faithful Protestant martyrs to be consumed by fire. It's a joy to encounter in Duffey such a generous spirit who tries to be fair to all sides.
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