Reformation Divided: Catholics, Protestants and the Conversion of England by Eamon Duffy review

A superb collection of essays reveal the bloody theological tussles of the 16th century in all their nuance

Ian Thomson
Sunday 26 February 2017 02.30 EST

Post-Reformation England, jittery with fears of a Catholic revival, presented a John le Carré-like world of cloak and dagger intrigue, double dealing and “spiery” (as the Elizabethans called it). Moles were planted in Catholic seminaries abroad, and Tudor diplomacy created a looking-glass war in which priest was turned against priest, informant against informant.

The split between Catholics and Protestants is easily parodied as “the warm south versus the cold north, wine drinkers versus beer drinkers, and so on”, says Eamon Duffy. Ultimately, however, Catholics and Protestants in Tudor England saw in each other the same heretic infidel. The brutal and insistent Protestant dogma under Elizabeth had much in common with the anti-Protestant Inquisition in Catholic Spain. Each extracted confessions by means of “enhanced interrogations” involving the rack and burning tongs. Their methods of intimidation and control were designed chiefly to spread fear.

Reformation Divided, a collection of essays by Professor Duffy on English recusant Catholicism, is published to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther’s campaign to “restore” biblical Christianity to 16th-century Germany had spread across Europe as a violent attack on Marian veneration and papal infallibility. Within two generations, writes Duffy, “England’s Catholic past was obliterated”. The Reformation nevertheless helped to usher in capitalism and modern secularism, and was therefore, in the words of 1066 and All That, a “Good Thing”. In the Catholic view, however, it destroyed the mystery of the sacraments and the magic and pageantry of the Mass. Moreover, priceless ecclesiastical treasures were lost in the drive to uproot “Mass-mongers” and other traitors from the English body politic.

Duffy’s essay on Thomas More (Saint Thomas More to Roman Catholics) wonders if the Renaissance humanist-philosopher really was the vile master-torturer of Hilary Mantel’s Booker prize winner Wolf Hall. Unfortunately, Mantel’s has become very much the authorised portrait. Certainly More loathed heretics, and viewed the Protestant reformer William Tyndale in particular as a meddlesome devil. Why? Tyndale’s vernacular translation of the New Testament loaded and vivified our language with coinages still in use (“my brother’s keeper”, “signs of the times”). Yet, by translating the Greek ekklesia as “congregation” rather than “church”, Tyndale had deliberately deprived the Church of its resonance as a holy assembly, and undermined the priesthood’s sacramental function. This was no mere biblical inerrancy, it was heretical. From the mid-1520s onwards, More became the arch “pursuivant” of heretics.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/26/reformation-divided-catholics-protestants-conversion-england-eamon-duffy-review



http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/reformation-divided-9781472934376/