William Bonde, a Bridgettine monk of Syon Abbey died on July 18, 1530. English Catholics like Bonde and other Bridgettines (Richard Whitford and John Fewterer), and Thomas More were writing works in the vernacular to defend and explain Catholic Church teaching. Bonde wrote “The Pylgrimage of Perfection” in 1526 and “The Directory of Conscience” in 1527. He was buried in the chapel of Syon Abbey--which, according to this blog was about as wide as Salisbury Cathedral--but his resting place is unknown because Syon Abbey was suppressed in 1538 and its buildings destroyed.
This monograph from Oxford University Press describes the efforts of the Bridgettines to defend and reform the Catholic Church:
The book has three principal aims. First, to continue the debate about the nature of late medieval Catholicism by directing attention to one community that publicly proclaimed a very specific Catholic identity. Second, to highlight the shifting nature of that identity, which developed continuously in response to evangelicalism. Third, to emphasise the importance and impact of conservative vernacular theology in this period.
Reforming Printing makes a strong contribution to our understanding of the Bridgettine community of Syon Abbey, and more generally the monastic and Catholic response to the developments that culminated in Henry VIII's break with Rome. It sheds new light upon the religious climate of the 1520s and 30s and will be of considerable interest to literary scholars and historians of the English Reformation, especially those working on early modern religious writing.
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