Disappearing the Dead
The Cambridge academic Eamon Duffy first published The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 in 1992. The book’s premise is that the Medieval religion of England, including all of the bells, incense, candles, veneration of saints and pageantry of a highly liturgical religion, was still practiced day in and day out throughout England with vigor and belief when a top-down cultural revolution dissolved this essence of English life over a couple of generations. Duffy explores in detail the beliefs and practices at the parish level and how the grand history affected these pious people. It is rather well known that the Tudor king Henry VIII started the process in order to authorize his serial divorces. But Henry liked many of the old “superstitious” practices of the old religion. So it was only during the short reign (1547-53) of his son, the child king Edward VI, that the radical stripping of the altars occurred. Among the Protestant reformers, like Cranmer and Cromwell who probably were the real powers behind the throne, I am sure there was true belief in their iconoclastic form of Christianity. But to implement their reforms a bureaucracy was needed. Each bit of wealth directed toward Catholic religious practice, from books, to candles, to vestments, and more was winnowed and pillaged. Not directly stated by Duffy, but what I infer from his
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