![]() ![]() ![]() For instance, he shows how the life of rural villages was dominated by a "liturgical calendar". His detailed reconstruction of what this entails is fascinating. ![]() For instance, on the "eve of the Reformation" there were some 50,000 Books of Hours in circulation, many of them produced in cheap editions in continental "factories" aimed at a mass audience.ĭuffy uses the phrase "traditional religion" to describe religious beliefs and practises before the Reformation. Nor was this a period where the mass of the population was kept in ignorance while the ruling class had all the knowledge - one of the main arguments here is that there was wide knowledge of church doctrine. While the more well off may have had better religious books, nicer churches and so on, the actuality of how they worshipped and what they believed was near identical. In The Stripping of the Altars he takes this to a new level, giving an over-view of a couple of centuries of change.Ī key point that Duffy makes is that there is no "substantial gulf" between the religion of the clergy and the elite and the mass of the population. Eamon Duffy is a master at mining church records for the minutiae of everyday life, as his wonderful book The Voices of Morebath showed. This is a fascinating and comprehensive account of the impact of the English Reformation on the people of England in particular how they practised their religion and how they understood their world. ![]()
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