Saints, Sacrilege, and Sedition: Religion and Conflict in the Tudor Reformations by Eamon Duffy (review)
- Saints, Sacrilege, and Sedition: Religion and Conflict in the Tudor Reformations by Eamon Duffy
In this collection of essays, Duffy pursues further the constructed opposition “Catholic versus Protestant,” which has its origins in Reformation polemics. He ignores or contests work that blurs, challenges, or otherwise moves past that ancient trope. For Duffy, a “Catholic” recognizes papal supremacy; thus, Reginald Pole, who called upon Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, to “liberate” England from the Tudors, was a Catholic, but Thomas More not quite. A “Protestant” is obedient to that “tyrant” (Duffy’s word) Henry VIII; thus, Thomas Cranmer could never have been a “Catholic,” though some of his contemporaries thought him not Evangelical enough. So, too, Duffy continues a related trope, also originating in Reformation polemics: one group is “innovative”—the term itself was bandied back and forth—and one group, and one group alone, has existed, unchanged and unchanging, from Peter to the present. The argument may be historical, but is it history?
Lee Palmer Wandel is professor of history, religious studies, and visual culture at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her books include The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy; The Reformation: Towards a New History; Always among Us: Images of the Poor in Zwingli’s Zurich; and Voracious Idols and Violent Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich, Strasbourg, and Basel.
