The Religious Culture of Marian England (review)

This general discussion and analysis of religion in the England of Mary I arise out of the comprehensive online transcription and edition of the first four editions of John Foxe’s mighty Protestant martyrology, the Acts and Monuments. Several useful studies have arisen out of this project, and in this case its director distills his own thoughts on the character and development of Christian religion in England between the fifteenth century and the early years of Elizabeth’s reign. In an introduction and nine chapters, Loades examines, in turn, religion as it existed in England before the reign of Henry VIII, categories of religious experience that he describes as “elite” and “popular”; the place of religion in the daily life of English people in the mid-Tudor period; the training of clergy; heresy, dissent, and their punishment; contemporary portrayal of religious repression under Mary; and a postscript on the characteristics of the English Church in Elizabeth’s reign.

In his introduction, Loades criticizes those who have concentrated on the upper reaches of Church and society in their analysis of English religion in this period. In particular, he reproaches Thomas Mayer for committing this sin in his fine and voluminous studies of one of the main religious figures in this period, Cardinal Reginald Pole. This seems unfair, in that Pole was perforce and by definition an “elite” figure, and the overall conclusion from a reading of Loades’s book has to be that he has been no more successful than anyone else in accurately characterizing the religion of early-modern English people. On this evidence, he appears to regard late-medieval religion, in England and no doubt elsewhere, as largely external, overstructured, and repressive, whereas the churches of Henry VIII and Elizabeth were “sensible” and “English” (not Welsh or Irish, let alone Scottish), with a period in between of wild swings and turmoil, in a more “extreme” Protestant direction under Edward and a Catholic one under Mary. There seems to be an underlying assumption that no normal person would ever have been a Catholic, if in possession of a full understanding of the Christian religion. Yet, paradoxically, although there is much discussion here of the nature of “elite” and “popular” religion in the period, and these concepts need to be questioned far more than they are here, there is a strange void at the heart of this learned and often vivid writing, as good as one expects from Loades. This gap can best be characterized, perhaps ironically given the author’s approach to the Reformation period, as a failure to address the delicate but vital question of how people in early-modern England related to God. On this account, it is hard to see what exactly attached people at that time to the Catholic faith and its practice. We hear a great deal about rulers, church leaders, and structures, but readers gain no sense of the inner life of the practice of the liturgy in churches and its place in the public and private lives of individuals. When Pole tried to rebuild this religious life in Mary’s reign, he came, although he was a keen preacher himself, to put the teaching and ceremonies of the reforming Catholic Church even before that verbal teaching of God’s word. Not everyone needed to know Latin to attend school as a Christian soul, and both the Bible and Church tradition could be—and were—communicated by means of all the senses as well as the intellect. So, although this book contains much useful and relevant material, built on many years of scholarship, and powerfully and effectively presented, there also is perhaps too much of that highly talented, but hardly objective, Protestant propagandist, John Foxe.