The Culture of the English People

The Culture of the English People
Author: N. J. G. Pounds
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 500
Release: 1994-05-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521466714

This wide-ranging book, first published in 1994, traces the development of popular culture in England from the Iron Age to the eighteenth century.

The Reformation of the English Parish Church

The Reformation of the English Parish Church
Author: Robert Whiting
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2010-03-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139486667

In the sixteenth century, the people of England witnessed the physical transformation of their most valued buildings: their parish churches. This is the first ever full-scale investigation of the dramatic changes experienced by the English parish church during the English Reformation. By drawing on a wealth of documentary evidence, including court records, wills and church wardens' accounts, and by examining the material remains themselves - such as screens, fonts, paintings, monuments, windows and other artefacts - found in churches today, Robert Whiting reveals how, why and by whom these ancient buildings were transformed. He explores the reasons why Catholics revered the artefacts found in churches as well as why these objects became the subject of Protestant suspicion and hatred in subsequent years. This richly illustrated account sheds new light on the acts of destruction as well as the acts of creation that accompanied religious change over the course of the 'long' Reformation.

A History of the English Parish

A History of the English Parish
Author: N. J. G. Pounds
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 624
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521633512

A 'grass roots' cultural history of the English parish from the earliest times to Queen Victoria.

English Parish Churches

English Parish Churches
Author: Edwin Smith
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1989
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780500201398

Smith's 214 photographs of parish churches are accompanied by a text setting the buildings in their social and historical context, as well as including notes by Olive Cook, Smith's widow.

The People of the Parish

The People of the Parish
Author: Katherine L. French
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2012-03-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812201957

The parish, the lowest level of hierarchy in the medieval church, was the shared responsibility of the laity and the clergy. Most Christians were baptized, went to confession, were married, and were buried in the parish church or churchyard; in addition, business, legal settlements, sociability, and entertainment brought people to the church, uniting secular and sacred concerns. In The People of the Parish, Katherine L. French contends that late medieval religion was participatory and flexible, promoting different kinds of spiritual and material involvement. The rich parish records of the small diocese of Bath and Wells include wills, court records, and detailed accounts by lay churchwardens of everyday parish activities. They reveal the differences between parishes within a single diocese that cannot be attributed to regional variation. By using these records show to the range and diversity of late medieval parish life, and a Christianity vibrant enough to accommodate differences in status, wealth, gender, and local priorities, French refines our understanding of lay attitudes toward Christianity in the two centuries before the Reformation.

English Parish Drama

English Parish Drama
Author: Alexandra F. Johnston
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 164
Release: 1996
Genre: Amusements
ISBN: 9789042000605

This collection of essays presents the multiplicity of dramatic and paradramatic activity that flourished in medieval and early modern England at the parish level. The evidence here adduced is largely from churchwardens' accounts and from the records of the ecclesiastical courts. The book contains ten articles that consider the various money making ventures undertaken by English parishes for the support of the church. The authors study subjects ranging from paradramatic activities such as rushbearing, dancing and bull and bear baiting through more hybrid and problematical events such as the king games and Robin Hood gatherings and plays, to what can be considered 'true' drama with sets, props, texts and actors. All the contributors are editors in the Records of Early English Drama project and bring to their material the insights of scholars working with original material in what are still only partially charted waters. »Ludus« intends to introduce those interested in literature, in the performing arts, or in history to the various aspects of theatre and drama from the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance. It publishes books on closely defined topics, mostly seen from a comparative point of view.

Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain

Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain
Author: Alec Ryrie
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2016-02-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134785771

The Parish Church was the primary site of religious practice throughout the early modern period. This was particularly so for the silent majority of the English population, who conformed outwardly to the successive religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. What such public conformity might have meant has attracted less attention - and, ironically, is sometimes less well documented - than the non-conformity or semi-conformity of recusants, church-papists, Puritan conventiclers or separatists. In this volume, ten leading scholars of early modern religion explore the experience of parish worship in England during the Reformation and the century that followed it. As the contributors argue, parish worship in this period was of critical theological, cultural and even political importance. The volume's key themes are the interlocking importance of liturgy, music, the sermon and the parishioners' own bodies; the ways in which religious change was received, initiated, negotiated, embraced or subverted in local contexts; and the dialectic between practice and belief which helped to make both so contentious. The contributors - historians, historical theologians and literary scholars - through their commitment to an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, provide fruitful and revealing insights into this intersection of private and public worship. This collection is a sister volume to Martin and Ryrie (eds), Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain. Together these two volumes focus and drive forward scholarship on the lived experience of early modern religion, as it was practised in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Parish Clergy Wives in Elizabethan England

Parish Clergy Wives in Elizabethan England
Author: Anne Thompson
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2019-02-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004353917

In Parish Clergy Wives in Elizabethan England, Anne Thompson shifts the emphasis from the institution of clerical marriage to the people and personalities involved. Women who have hitherto been defined by their supposed obscurity and unsuitability are shown to have anticipated and exhibited the character, virtues, and duties associated with the archetypal clergy wife of later centuries. Through adept use of an extensive and eclectic range of archival material, this book offers insights into the perception and lived experience of ministers’ wives. In challenging accepted views on the social status of clergy wives and their role and reception within the community, new light is thrown on a neglected but crucial aspect of religious, social, and women’s history.

O Sing unto the Lord

O Sing unto the Lord
Author: Andrew Gant
Publisher: Profile Books
Total Pages: 605
Release: 2015-09-24
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1782830502

Andrew Gant's compelling account traces English church music from Anglo-Saxon origins to the present. It is a history of the music and of the people who made, sang and listened to it. It shows the role church music has played in ordinary lives and how it reflects those lives back to us. The author considers why church music remains so popular and frequently tops the classical charts and why the BBC's Choral Evensong remains the longest-running radio series ever. He shows how England's church music follows the contours of its history and is the soundtrack of its changing politics and culture, from the mysteries of the Mass to the elegant decorum of the Restoration anthem, from stern Puritanism to Victorian bombast, and thence to the fractured worlds of the twentieth century as heard in the music of Vaughan Williams and Britten. This is a book for everyone interested in the history of English music, culture and society.

Selling the Church

Selling the Church
Author: Robert C. Palmer
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780807827437

"Palmer analyzes an extensive set of data drawn from common law records to reveal a vigorous and effective effort by the laity to enforce the statutes of 1529. Motivated by both economic incentives and traditional ideals, the litigants used the statutes to compel the residence of their clergy and to make the commercial activities of lease-holding and buying for resale and profit the sole province of the laity. Inserting the rector back into the parish. Palmer shows, dramatically altered the economic, educational, and religious context of parish life."--BOOK JACKET.