Iconoclasm in the Long English Reformation

From Once I Was a Clever Boy, some notes on iconoclasm, the destruction of religious images, during the Long English Reformation (I corrected some typos):

I pointed to four main phases of iconoclasm in this country. These firstly are the period 1536-1539 when the monasteries were dissolved and there was the attack of shrines and relics, and especially on the cult of St Thomas of Canterbury. Secondly there is the period from 1548 to 1553 under the Edwardian reform which saw the attack on veneration of the Virgin Mary, the dissolution of the chantries, liturgical change with the imposition of the First and Second Prayer books in 1549 and 1552 and the expropriation of church goods in 1552. Thirdly there was an outbreak of image breaking in the period after 1559 when the Elizabethan settlement was brought in. This lasted until about 1562, but was followed by neglect and abandonment - notably the cessation of worship in the chancels of churches and their consequent appropriation for seating. The fourth phase is that in the First Civil War of 1642 to 1646, with attacks on cathedrals such as Canterbury, Lincoln, Peterborough, and Worchester, and the activities of people such as William Dowsing in East Anglia, who went round destroying the relics of Popery in the parish churches of the region.

All this was followed by two centuries of neglect, before the nineteenth century got to work restoring (sometimes too enthusiastically it has to be said) and conserving our medieval heritage.

This will be a series of posts, so follow it here.

The Long Reformation, redux

This might be an interesting new release: The Long European Reformation, second edition, by Peter G. Wallace, from Palgrave Macmillan:

Peter G. Wallace adeptly interweaves the influential events of the early modern religious reformation with the transformations of political institutions, socio-economic structures, gender relations, and cultural values throughout Europe. In this established study, Wallace:
* examines the European Reformation as a long-term process
* reconnects the classic sixteenth-century religious struggles with the political and religious pressures confronting late medieval Christianity
* argues that the resolutions proposed by reformers, such as Luther, were not fully realised for most Christians until the early eighteenth century.

Incorporating the latest research, the second edition of this essential text now features a new chapter on the Reformation and Islam, expanded discussion of gender issues, and a helpful glossary.

Table of Contents:

List of Maps
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction
PART I: THE WARP: THREADS OF REFORMATION HISTORIES, 1350-1650
The Late Medieval Crisis, 1347-1517
Resistance, Renewal, and Reform, 1414-1521
Evangelical Movements and Confessions, 1521-59
Reformation and Religious War, 1550-1650
PART II: THE WEFT: MAKING SENSE OF THE LONG EUROPEAN REFORMATION
Settlements, 1600-1750: Church Building, State Building, and Social Discipline
Rereading the Reformation through Gender Analysis
The Reformation and Islam: From Menace to Coexistence
Conclusions
Notes
Glossary
Select Bibliography
Index

I don't know if I'm that excited about "Gender Analysis" but much of the other content looks fascinating. I must admit that when I wrote Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation, I did not know about this academic theory of the "Long Reformation". As I studied the English Reformation, however, it was clear to me that England endured religious change/reformation for hundreds of years, primarily because of the monarchy's authority over the church in England--whenever there was a change in monarchy, there was some change in religion. This pattern endures through the Tudor dynasty with Henry VIII's heirs, and manifests itself in the longer Stuart dynasty: James I to Charles I, Cromwell to Charles II; James II to William and Mary; Anne to George I: every change in the authority of the monarch or protector meant a change in religious settlement. Turns out that this is an ongoing theme of research, even in the English Reformation. See this course description from Sewanee, for example:

This course examines the role of ritual and worship in the religious history of England, ca. 1530 to ca. 1700. It studies the transformation of a traditional religion based on rituals into a religious system based as much on word as on rite. The course draws connections between these religious changes and the larger political, social, and cultural contexts in which they occurred.

Palgrave Macmillan provides a sample on their website (55 pages of material!) and some other interesting resources for this volume in their European History in Perspective series.