The Parish Church was the primary site of religious practice throughout the early modern period. This was particularly so for the silent majority of the English population, who conformed outwardly to the successive religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. What such public conformity might have meant has attracted less attention - and, ironically, is sometimes less well documented - than the non-conformity or semi-conformity of recusants, church-papists, Puritan conventiclers or separatists. In this volume, ten leading scholars of early modern religion explore the experience of parish worship in England during the Reformation and the century that followed it. As the contributors argue, parish worship in this period was of critical theological, cultural and even political importance. The volume's key themes are the interlocking importance of liturgy, music, the sermon and the parishioners' own bodies; the ways in which religious change was received, initiated, negotiated, embraced or subverted in local contexts; and the dialectic between practice and belief which helped to make both so contentious. The contributors - historians, historical theologians and literary scholars - through their commitment to an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, provide fruitful and revealing insights into this intersection of private and public worship. This collection is a sister volume to Martin and Ryrie (eds), Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain. Together these two volumes focus and drive forward scholarship on the lived experience of early modern religion, as it was practised in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The Age of Reformation charts how religion, politics and social change were always intimately interlinked in the sixteenth century, from the murderous politics of the Tudor court to the building and fragmentation of new religious and social identities in the parishes. In this book, Alec Ryrie provides an authoritative overview of the religious and political reformations of the sixteenth century. This turbulent century saw Protestantism come to England, Scotland and even Ireland, while the Tudor and Stewart monarchs made their authority felt within and beyond their kingdoms more than any of their predecessors. This book demonstrates how this age of reformations produced not only a new religion, but a new politics - absolutist, yet pluralist, populist yet bound by law. This new edition has been fully revised and updated and includes expanded sections on Lollardy and anticlericalism, on Henry VIII's early religious views, on several of the rebellions which convulsed Tudor England and on unofficial religion, ranging from Elizabethan Catholicism to incipient atheism. Drawing on the most recent research, Alec Ryrie explains why these events took the course they did - and why that course was so often an unexpected and unlikely one. It is essential reading for students of early modern British history and the history of the reformation.

The dramatic story of Christianity from its origins to the present day, told through more than one hundred stunning color maps. With over two billion practicing believers today, Christianity has taken root in almost all parts of the globe. Its impact on Europe and the Americas in particular has been fundamental. Through more than one hundred beautiful color maps and illustrations, Christianity traces the history of the religion, beginning with the world of Jesus Christ. From the consolidation of the first Christian empire-Constantine's Rome-to the early Christian states that thrived in Ireland, Ethiopia, and other regions of the Roman periphery, Christianity quickly proved dynamic and adaptable. After centuries of dissemination, strife, dogmatic division, and warfare in its European and Near Eastern heartland, Christianity conquered new worlds. In North America, immigrants fleeing persecution and intolerance rejected the established Church, and in time revivalist religions flourished and spread. Missionaries took the Christian message to Latin America, Africa, and Asia, bringing millions of new converts into the fold. Christianity has served as the inspiration for some of the world's finest monuments, literature, art, and architecture, while also playing a major role in world politics and history, including conquest, colonization, conflict, and liberation. Despite challenges in the modern world from atheism and secularism, from scandals and internal divisions, Christianity continues to spread its message through new technologies while drawing on a deep well of history and tradition.

Why have Western societies that were once overwhelmingly Christian become so secular? Looking to the feelings and faith of ordinary people, the award-winning author of Protestants Alec Ryrie offers a bold new history of atheism. We think we know the history of faith: how the ratio of Christian believers has declined and a secular age dawned. In this startlingly original history, Alex Ryrie puts faith in the dock to explore how religious belief didn’t just fade away. Rather, atheism bloomed as a belief system in its own right. Unbelievers looks back to the middle ages when it seemed impossible not to subscribe to Christianity, through the crisis of the Reformation and to the powerful, challenging cultural currents of the centuries since. As this history shows, the religious journey of the Western world was lived and steered not just by published philosophy and the celebrated thinkers of the day – the Machiavellis and Michel de Montaignes – but by men and women at every level of society. Their voices and feelings permeate this book in the form of diaries, letters and court records. Tracing the roots of atheism, Ryrie shows that our emotional responses to the times can lead faith to wax and wane: anger at a corrupt priest or anxiety in a turbulent moment spark religious doubt as powerfully as any intellectual revolution. With Christianity under contest and ethical redefinitions becoming more and more significant, Unbelievers shows that to understand how something as intuitive as belief is shaped over time, we must look to an emotional history – one with potent lessons for our still angry and anxious age.

Scholars increasingly recognise that understanding the history of religion means understanding worship and devotion as well as doctrines and polemics. Early modern Christianity consisted of its lived experience. This collection and its companion volume (Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain, ed. Natalie Mears and Alec Ryrie) bring together an interdisciplinary range of scholars to discuss what that lived experience comprised, and what it meant. Private and domestic devotion - how early modern men and women practised their religion when they were not in church - is a vital and largely hidden subject. Here, historical, literary and theological scholars examine piety of conformist, non-conformist and Catholic early modern Christians, in a range of private and domestic settings, in both England and Scotland. The subjects under analysis include Bible-reading, the composition of prayers, the use of the psalms, the use of physical props for prayers, the pious interpretation of dreams, and the troubling question of what counted as religious solitude. The collection as a whole broadens and deepens our understanding of the patterns of early modern devotion, and of their meanings for early modern culture as a whole.

Scholars increasingly recognise that understanding the history of religion means understanding worship and devotion as well as doctrines and polemics. Early modern Christianity consisted of its lived experience. This collection and its companion volume (Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain, ed. Natalie Mears and Alec Ryrie) bring together an interdisciplinary range of scholars to discuss what that lived experience comprised, and what it meant. Private and domestic devotion - how early modern men and women practised their religion when they were not in church - is a vital and largely hidden subject. Here, historical, literary and theological scholars examine piety of conformist, non-conformist and Catholic early modern Christians, in a range of private and domestic settings, in both England and Scotland. The subjects under analysis include Bible-reading, the composition of prayers, the use of the psalms, the use of physical props for prayers, the pious interpretation of dreams, and the troubling question of what counted as religious solitude. The collection as a whole broadens and deepens our understanding of the patterns of early modern devotion, and of their meanings for early modern culture as a whole.

Between the religious massacres, conflicts and martyrdoms that characterised much of Reformation Europe, there seems little room for a consideration of the concept of moderation. Yet it was precisely because of this extremism that many Europeans, both individuals and regimes, were forced into positions of moderation as they found themselves caught in the confessional crossfire. This is not to suggest that such people refused to take sides, but rather that they were unwilling or unable to conform fully to emerging confessional orthodoxies. By conducting an investigation into the idea of 'moderation', this volume raises intriguing concepts and offers a fuller understanding of the pressures that shaped the confessional landscape of Reformation Europe. A number of essays present case studies examining 'moderates' who existed uneasily in the space between coercion and persuasion in Britain, France and the Holy Roman Empire. Others look more broadly at local and national attempts at conciliation, and at the way the rhetoric of moderation was manipulated during confessional conflict. These are all drawn together with a substantial introduction and analytical conclusion, which not only tie the volume together, but which also pose wider conceptual and methodological questions about the meaning of moderation.

On the 500th anniversary of Luther’s rebellion, this spectacular global history traces the revolutionary faith that shaped the modern world. Five hundred years ago Protestant Christianity began with one stubborn monk – today, it includes a billion people across the globe. The upheaval Martin Luther triggered inspired one of the most creative and destructive movements in human history. Protestants is the story of the men and women who made and remade this quarrelsome faith by demanding alarming new freedoms and experimenting in new systems of government. Inspired by their newly accessible Bibles, they transformed their inner lives, a transformation that spilled over into social upheavals and political revolutions. Alec Ryrie’s dazzling history explores how its restless energy made and is still making the modern world.

Examines the pursuit of orthodoxy, and its consequences for the history of Christianity. Christianity is a hugely diverse and quarrelsome family of faiths, but most Christians have nevertheless set great store by orthodoxy - literally, 'right opinion' - even if they cannot agree what that orthodoxy should be. The notion that there is a 'catholic', or universal, Christian faith - that which, according to the famous fifth-century formula, has been believed everywhere, at all times and by all people - is itself an act of faith: to reconcile it with the historical fact of persistent division and plurality requires a constant effort. It also requires a variety of strategies, from confrontation and exclusion, through deliberate choices as to what is forgotten or ignored, to creative or even indulgent inclusion. In this volume, seventeen leading historians of Christianity ask how the ideal of unity has clashed, negotiated, reconciled or coexisted with the historical reality of diversity, in a range of historical settings from the early Church through the Reformation era to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These essays hold the huge variety of the Christian experience together with the ideal of orthodoxy, which Christians have never (yet) fully attained but for which they have always striven; and they trace some of the consequences of the pursuit of that ideal for the history of Christianity.

During the last decade of Henry VIII's life, his Protestant subjects struggled to reconcile two loyalties: to their Gospel and to their king. This book tells the story of that struggle and describes how a radicalised English Protestantism emerged from it. Focusing on the critical but neglected period 1539-47, Dr Ryrie argues that these years were not the 'conservative reaction' of conventional historiography, but a time of political fluidity and ambiguity. Most evangelicals continued to hope that the king would favour their cause, and remained doctrinally moderate and politically conformist. The author examines this moderate reformism in a range of settings - in the book trade, in the universities, at court and in underground congregations. He also describes its gradual eclipse, as shifting royal policy and the dynamics of the evangelical movement itself pushed reformers towards the more radical, confrontational Protestantism which was to shape the English identity for centuries.

The Scottish Reformation of 1560 is one of the most controversial events in Scottish history, and a turning point in the history of Britain and Europe. Yet its origins remain mysterious, buried under competing Catholic and Protestant versions of the story. Drawing on fresh research and recent scholarship, this book provides the first full narrative of the question. Focusing on the period 1525-60, in particular the childhood of Mary, Queen of Scots, it argues that the Scottish Reformation was neither inevitable nor predictable. A range of different 'Reformations' were on offer in the sixteenth century, which could have taken Scotland and Britain in dramatically different directions. This is not a 'religious' or a 'political' narrative, but a synthesis of the two, paying particular attention to the international context of the Reformation, and focusing on the impact of violence - from state persecution, through terrorist activism, to open warfare. Going beyond the heroic certainties of John Knox, this book recaptures the lived experience of the early Reformation: a bewildering, dangerous and exhilarating period in which Scottish (and British) identity was remade. -- .

The last years of Henry VIII's life, 1539-47, have conventionally been seen as a time when the king persecuted Protestants. This book argues that Henry's policies were much more ambiguous; that he continued to give support to Protestantism and that many accordingly also remained loyal to him. It also examines why the Protestants eventually adopted a more radical, oppositional stance, and argues that English Protestantism's eventual identity was determined during these years.

This collection of essays examines the traumatic religious upheavals of early- and mid-sixteenth century England from the point of view of the early Protestants, a group which has been seriously neglected by recent scholarship. Leading British and American scholars re-examine early Protestantism, arguing that it was a complex movement which could have evolved in a number of directions. They explore its approach to issues of gender roles, the place of printing and print culture, and the ways in which Protestantism continued to be influenced by medieval religious culture.

The Age of Reformation charts how religion, politics and social change were always intimately interlinked in the sixteenth century, from the murderous politics of the Tudor court to the building and fragmentation of new religious and social identities in the parishes. In this book, Alec Ryrie provides an authoritative overview of the religious and political reformations of the sixteenth century. This turbulent century saw Protestantism come to England, Scotland and even Ireland, while the Tudor and Stewart monarchs made their authority felt within and beyond their kingdoms more than any of their predecessors. This book demonstrates how this age of reformations produced not only a new religion, but a new politics - absolutist, yet pluralist, populist yet bound by law. This new edition has been fully revised and updated and includes expanded sections on Lollardy and anticlericalism, on Henry VIII's early religious views, on several of the rebellions which convulsed Tudor England and on unofficial religion, ranging from Elizabethan Catholicism to incipient atheism. Drawing on the most recent research, Alec Ryrie explains why these events took the course they did - and why that course was so often an unexpected and unlikely one. It is essential reading for students of early modern British history and the history of the reformation.

Concepts of Christian martyrdom changed greatly in England from the late middle ages through the early modern era. The variety of paradigms of Christian martyrdom (with, for example, virginity or asceticism perceived as alternate forms of martyrdom) that existed in the late medieval period, came to be replaced during the English Reformation with a single dominant idea of martyrdom: that of violent death endured for orthodox religion. Yet during the seventeenth century another transformation in conceptions of martyrdom took place, as those who died on behalf of overtly political causes came to be regarded as martyrs, indistinguishable from those who died for Christ. The articles in this book explore these seminal changes across the period from 1400-1700, analyzing the political, social and religious backgrounds to these developments. While much that has been written on martyrs, martyrdom and martyrologies has tended to focus on those who died for a particular confession or cause, this book shows how the concepts of martyrdom were shaped, altered and re-shaped through the interactions between these groups. THOMAS S. FREEMAN is Research Officer at the British Academy John Foxe Project, which is affiliated with the University of Sheffield. THOMAS F. MAYER is Professor of History at Augustana College. Contributors: JOHN COFFEY, BRAD S. GREGORY, VICTOR HOULISTON, ANDREW LACEY, DANNA PIROYANSKY, RICHARD REX, ALEC RYRIE, WILLIAM WIZEMAN

This collection of essays examines the traumatic religious upheavals of early- and mid-sixteenth century England from the point of view of the early Protestants, a group which has been seriously neglected by recent scholarship. Leading British and American scholars re-examine early Protestantism, arguing that it was a complex movement which could have evolved in a number of directions. They explore its approach to issues of gender roles, the place of printing and print culture, and the ways in which Protestantism continued to be influenced by medieval religious culture.

On the 500th anniversary of Luther's theses, a landmark history of the revolutionary faith that shaped the modern world. "Ryrie writes that his aim 'is to persuade you that we cannot understand the modern age without understanding the dynamic history of Protestant Christianity.' To which I reply: Mission accomplished." -Jon Meacham, author of American Lion and Thomas Jefferson Five hundred years ago a stubborn German monk challenged the Pope with a radical vision of what Christianity could be. The revolution he set in motion toppled governments, upended social norms and transformed millions of people's understanding of their relationship with God. In this dazzling history, Alec Ryrie makes the case that we owe many of the rights and freedoms we have cause to take for granted--from free speech to limited government--to our Protestant roots. Fired up by their faith, Protestants have embarked on courageous journeys into the unknown like many rebels and refugees who made their way to our shores. Protestants created America and defined its special brand of entrepreneurial diligence. Some turned to their bibles to justify bold acts of political opposition, others to spurn orthodoxies and insight on their God-given rights. Above all Protestants have fought for their beliefs, establishing a tradition of principled opposition and civil disobedience that is as alive today as it was 500 years ago. In this engrossing and magisterial work, Alec Ryrie makes the case that whether or not you are yourself a Protestant, you live in a world shaped by Protestants.

English summary: The authors of this volume address similarities and differences between the reformation in England and in the Holy Roman Empire with regard to Christian ethics. For even if ethics were clearly considered an integral part of Christian life by all parties, their theological contextualization remained controversial, both amongst the Reformation and its opponents, as well as within the different streams of the Reformation itself. The contributors to this volume discuss answers to the question of the function of theological ethics provided principally by representatives of the Reformation in England and the Holy Roman Empire, while at the same time addressing decisions and behavioral dictums within various practical spheres, such as the ethics of law, the economy, war or diplomacy. German description: Die Autoren dieses Bandes behandeln Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede zwischen der Reformation in England und im Heiligen Romischen Reich deutscher Nation hinsichtlich der christlichen Ethik. Denn so selbstverstandlich die Ethik fur alle Seiten zum christlichen Leben gehorte, so umstritten war doch ihr theologischer Ort, und das sowohl zwischen der Reformation und ihren Gegnern als auch unter den verschiedenen Stromungen der Reformation. Die Beitrage des vorliegenden Bandes behandeln einerseits Antworten, die von Vertretern der Reformation in England und im Heiligen Romischen Reiche prinzipiell auf die Frage nach dem theologischen Ort der Ethik gegeben wurden, und sie widmen sich andererseits Entscheidungen und Verhaltensmaximen auf konkreten Handlungsfeldern hier und dort, so der Ethik des Rechts, der Wirtschaft, des Krieges oder der Diplomatie.

Why have Western societies that were once overwhelmingly Christian become so secular? Looking to the feelings and faith of ordinary people, the award-winning author of Protestants Alec Ryrie offers a bold new history of atheism. We think we know the history of faith: how the ratio of Christian believers has declined and a secular age dawned. In this startlingly original history, Alex Ryrie puts faith in the dock to explore how religious belief didn't just fade away. Rather, atheism bloomed as a belief system in its own right. Unbelievers looks back to the middle ages when it seemed impossible not to subscribe to Christianity, through the crisis of the Reformation and to the powerful, challenging cultural currents of the centuries since. As this history shows, the religious journey of the Western world was lived and steered not just by published philosophy and the celebrated thinkers of the day - the Machiavellis and Michel de Montaignes - but by men and women at every level of society. Their voices and feelings permeate this book in the form of diaries, letters and court records. Tracing the roots of atheism, Ryrie shows that our emotional responses to the times can lead faith to wax and wane: anger at a corrupt priest or anxiety in a turbulent moment spark religious doubt as powerfully as any intellectual revolution. With Christianity under contest and ethical redefinitions becoming more and more significant, Unbelievers shows that to understand how something as intuitive as belief is shaped over time, we must look to an emotional history - one with potent lessons for our still angry and anxious age.

Since the apostolic age, Christian churches have seen a constant dialectic between inspiration and institution: how the ungoverned spontaneity of Spirit-led religion negotiates its way through laws, structures and communities. If institutional frameworks are absent or insufficient, new, creative and dynamic expressions of Christianity can disappear or collapse into disorder almost as quickly as they have flared up. If those frameworks are excessively rigid or punitive, they can often quench the spirit of any new movements. This volume explores the interplay between inspirational movements and institutional structures throughout Christianity's history, examining how the paradox of inspiration and institution has been negotiated from the ancient world to the modern era, tracing how different Christian movements have striven to hold these two vital aspects of their faith together, often finding creative or unexpected ways to institutionalize inspiration or to breathe new life into their institutions.

The Reformation was about ideas and power, but it was also about real human lives. Alec Ryrie provides the first comprehensive account of what it actually meant to live a Protestant life in England and Scotland between c. 1530-1640, drawing on a rich mixture of contemporary devotional works, sermons, diaries, biographies, and autobiographies to uncover the lived experience of early modern Protestantism. Beginning from the surprisingly urgent, multifaceted emotions of Protestantism, Ryrie explores practices of prayer, of family and public worship, and of reading and writing, tracking them through the life course from childhood through conversion and vocation to the deathbed. He examines what Protestant piety drew from its Catholic predecessors and contemporaries, and grounds that piety in material realities such as posture, food and tears. This perspective shows us what it meant to be Protestant in the British Reformations: a meeting of intensity (a religion which sought authentic feeling above all, and which dreaded hypocrisy and hard-heartedness) with dynamism (a progressive religion, relentlessly pursuing sanctification and dreading idleness). That combination, for good or ill, gave the Protestant experience its particular quality of restless, creative zeal. The Protestant devotional experience also shows us that this was a broad-based religion: for all the differences across time, between two countries, between men and women, and between puritans and conformists, this was recognisably a unified culture, in which common experiences and practices cut across supposed divides. Alec Ryrie shows us Protestantism, not as the preachers on all sides imagined it, but as it was really lived.

An earl's son, plotting murder by witchcraft; conjuring spirits to find buried treasure; a stolen coat embroidered with pure silver; crooked gaming-houses and brothels; a terrifying new disease, and the self-trained surgeon who claims he can treat it. This is the world of Gregory Wisdom, a physician, magician, and consummate con-man at work in sixteenth-century London. In this book, Alec Ryrie uses previously unknown documents to reconstruct this extraordinary man's career. The journey takes us through the cut-throat business of early modern medicine, down to Tudor London's gangland of fraud and organized crime; from the world of Renaissance magi and Kabbalistic conjurers to street-corner wizards; and into the chaotic, exhilarating religious upheavals of the Reformation. On the way, we learn how Tudor England's dignified public face and its rapacious underworld were intimately connected to each other. Gregory Wisdom's career is an object lesson in how to conjure up wealth and respectability from nothing in a turbulent age. And it provides a unique glimpse into a world intoxicated with new ideas, where it was impossible to know quite what to believe - or who to trust.