Scholar's Choice, Religious Reformations (1547-1559)

Undergraduate group “c” discussion leaders have been asked to provide 1-2 sentences for each of 3 documents from Key and Bucholz, Sources and Debates, ch. 3 “Religious Reformations” [docs. 3.12-3.18], as to what seems useful or interesting about the document, in a comment below (beginning with the one they'd most like to examine/explain/contextualize).  [For students: by Sept. 16. Fri., Group c recommendations are due (online); document assignments & readings distributed by that Sun.; presentations.Sept. 22. Thurs.]

Scholar's Choice, Religious Reformations (pre-1547)

J. Foxe, Acts and Monuments
(1563), detail

Undergraduate group “b” discussion leaders have been asked to provide 1-2 sentences for each of 3 documents from Key and Bucholz, Sources and Debates, ch. 3 “Religious Reformations” [docs. 3.1-3.11], as to what seems useful or interesting about the document, in a comment below (beginning with the one they'd most like to examine/explain/contextualize).  [By Sept. 9. Fri., Group b recommendations are due (online); document assignments & readings distributed by Sun.; Sept. 15. Thurs. Presentations.]

Debating Reformations

Peter Marshall's new article, ‘(Re)defining the English Reformation’, Journal of British Studies 48, 3 (2009): 564-86, is a very useful summary of recent views of the Reformation (from above/below, quick/halting, etc.), and even-handed, even though Marshall himself has staked a position in these debates. This was published too late, of course, to be included in the 2nd ed. of Sources and Debates in English History, 1485-1714, ch. 3, although much of the relevant work is included there under "Historians' Debates," grouped by various debate questions (74-77). Note that the Wiley-Blackwell website includes Historiographical Commentaries
from Sources and Debates in English History (1st edition), which, although not updated with new secondary works like the 2nd ed., are still valuable essays for further research.

Students select Reformation after 1547 documents (group C)

Please post by Sat., Sept. 19 or before as a comment which 3 documents about which you would most want to lead discussion for week 4. Sept. 17. Key and Bucholz, Sources and Debates, ch. 3 (post-1547). Add one sentence for each document about why you like that document or think it would work well in class. (I will email you which one document you will be working on once I have your submissions.) Sign your comment with your first name and last initial.

The Henrician Reformation: a Quiz

To check one's knowledge of the narrative of the 1520s and 1530s (and the relevant glossary words), the linked Quiz is based on Bucholz and Key, Early Modern England, ch. 2.

Students select Reformation documents (group B)

Please post by Sat., Sept. 12 or before as a comment which 3 documents about which you would most want to lead discussion for week 4. Sept. 17. Key and Bucholz, Sources and Debates, ch. 3 (pre-1547). Add one sentence for each document about why you like that document or think it would work well in class. (I will email you which one document you will be working on once I have your submissions.) Sign your comment with your first name and last initial.

Elizabethan Worlds: documents

If focusing on the religious settlement after 1558, there are a number of likely sources:

• Elizabeth and Archbishop Grindal on prophesyings, 4.11 and 4.12 (1st ed.) relate strongly to
• Field and Wilcox, Admonition, and their criticism of the established church (4.10, 1st ed.). Is this the Puritan criticism?
• 4.8 and 4.9 are the established church taking on another side to the criticism of the religious settlement, this time from the Catholics.
• The introductory essay (1st ed.) of ch. 4 also has a quote or two regarding "Church Papists," people who remained in the Protestant Church of England, but held to traditional religious beliefs as long as possible.
  

Elizabethan Worlds: secondary work suggestions

If interested in the Elizabethan religious settlement as a focus,

• Bernard, George W. 'The Church of England, c.1529-c.1642'. History, 75:244 (1990), 183-206 is available online at booth library -- go to periodicals list for history (printed in UK, in case there is another by that name).
• Haigh, Christopher. Elizabeth I (Profiles in Power). 2nd edn. London: Longman, 1998. A less positive spin, to put it mildly. This should be in the library.
• There is also Haigh, Christopher. 'Rowse, Elizabeth and England'. History Today, 53 (May 2003), 25-28. available online through Booth, which might have something (Rowse is a very old school historian who Haigh would most probably criticize).
• Haigh, Christopher (ed.). The reign of Elizabeth I. Basingstoke, 1984. although I don't know if we have that at Booth or not.
• Norm Jones has a number of books and articles on the settlement.
  

Reformation(s) Papers: document suggestions

In response to a query about documents that support Dickens’s claim that the reformation came from the bottom up besides the Confession of John Pykas, I suggest

• 3.3 (1st ed.) The Opening of the Reformation Parliament (November 3–December 17, 1529) which has the MPs from the House of Commons quite willing to go along with Henry on this. Most of their reasons are more materialistic than Pykas, but they certainly buy into the idea of the corruption of the old church.
• At the beginning of chapter 3 (1st. ed., and as a separate doc. in the new ed.) John Colet, who preached at the Convocation of English clerics summoned to discuss how to suppress heresy in 1511, attacks his audience for their venality and worldliness.
• Ditto, William Melton (d. 1528), master of Michaelhouse, Cambridge, preaching in Latin to candidates for the clergy (1510).
• Ditto, Simon Fish (d. 1531), who framed his attack on the clergy as a plea to Henry VIII to curb corrupt, greedy priests, bishops, pardoners, summoners, and friars.
  

Some bit of Dickens might be online. But there is also a chapter of Dickens in a collection by Marshall and that and Dickens should be in most university libraries.

Reformation(s) : bibliography suggestions

Regarding Dickens, The best works (besides his general intro. textbook) are in P. Marshall, ed., The Impact of the English Reformation, 1500. The are many recent articles and chapters continuing the Reformation historiography debate in Sources and Debates, ch. 3 on the following questions:

• Was the Reformation popular, shaped by grass-roots movements from below?
• Was it unpopular and forced by a few powerful members of the elite from above?
  

See also, now, R. H. Fritze, "The English Reformation: Obedience, Destruction and Cultural Adaptation," JEcclH 56, 1 (2005). G. Redworth,"Whatever Happened to the English Reformation?," HT 37 (October 1987) (available online) discusses one set of early post-revisionists which go back to Dickens and argue against Haigh and Duffy.

Reformation historiography: an addition

The following review article came to our notice too late to place it in the Historians' Debates section of Sources and Debates in English History, 1485-1714, 2nd ed., ch. 3. But it opens with a useful brief discussion of changing keywords in Reformation historiography. R. H. Fritze, "The English Reformation: Obedience, Destruction and Cultural Adaptation," JEcclH 56, 1 (2005).

Reformation England: the bibliography

Bibliographies covering the 16th-century Reformations (Dickens, Scarisbrick, Haigh, Duffy, MacCullough, etc.)

• J.P. Sommerville, Reformations and the State 1500-1689
• History of the British Isles IV, 1500–1700 (University of Oxford History Faculty 2006)
  
• Government, Politics and Society in England, 1547–58 (University of Oxford Modern History Faculty, 2005)
• An introduction to the historiography of the Reformation (St. George's School, brief)
• The English Reformation (Diarmaid MacCulloch, Folger Institute reading list, 2004)
• English Reign of Philip and Mary, 1553/4-1558 (2007-2008, AD Wright, University of Leeds Library)
• Early Modern England, 1450-1720 (York University, Fall 2007)
• THE HENRICIAN REFORMATION 1509 - 1547 (G.W. Bernard)
• POWER, PATRONAGE AND POLITICS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND 1509‑1660 (G.W. Bernard)
  

bible title page, 1540

Tatiana C. String, “Henry VIII's Illuminated 'Great Bible',” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 59 (1996): 315-324, notes that Holbein's woodcut for the Coverdale Bible (1535) was superseded by that (artist unknown but probably Lucas Horenbout--which I think the world does not need to know) for the Great Bible (1540). Cool article: the 1541 ed. has a big circle on the right where Thomas Cromwell's arms are removed! (And, indeed, there is a colored version of same.) So the claim that the frontispiece to Henry VIII’s Great Bible was a Hans Holbein woodcut is probably erroneous. Thomas Cromwell ordered it purchased by every parish church in September 1538.