[PDF] The Secularization Of Early Modern England eBook

Author : Charles John Sommerville
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 20,42 MB
Release : 1992
Category : England
ISBN : 0195074270

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This study overcomes the ambiguity and daunting scale of the subject of secularization by using the insights of anthropology and sociology, and by examining an earlier period than usually considered. Concentrating not only on a decline of religious belief, which is the last aspect of secularization, this study shows that a transformation of England's cultural grammar had to precede that loosening of belief, and that this was largely accomplished between 1500 and 1700. Only when definitions of space and time changed and language and technology were transformed (as well as art and play) could a secular world-view be sustained. As aspects of daily life became divorced from religious values and controls, religious culture was supplanted by religious faith, a reasoned, rather than an unquestioned, belief in the supernatural. Sommerville shows that this process was more political and theological than economic or social.

Author : C. John Sommerville
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 35,19 MB
Release : 1992-04-09
Category : History
ISBN : 0195360753

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This study overcomes the ambiguity and daunting scale of the subject of secularization by using the insights of anthropology and sociology, and by examining an earlier period than usually considered. Concentrating not only on a decline of religious belief, which is the last aspect of secularization, this study shows that a transformation of England's cultural grammar had to precede that loosening of belief, and that this was largely accomplished between 1500 and 1700. Only when definitions of space and time changed and language and technology were transformed (as well as art and play) could a secular world-view be sustained. As aspects of daily life became divorced from religious values and controls, religious culture was supplanted by religious faith, a reasoned, rather than an unquestioned, belief in the supernatural. Sommerville shows that this process was more political and theological than economic or social.

Author : Malcolm Gaskill
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 50,19 MB
Release : 2003-01-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780521531184

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An exploration of the cultural contexts of law-breaking and criminal prosecution in England, 1550-1750.

Author : Elizabeth Lane Furdell
Publisher : University Rochester Press
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 48,78 MB
Release : 2002
Category : History
ISBN : 9781580461191

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An investigation of the role which the English book trade played in an important transitional period in early modern medicine.

Author : Amy Linch
Publisher :
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 20,70 MB
Release : 2009
Category : Church and state
ISBN :

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Comparative analysis of the impact of religion on liberal political development is hampered by the presumption of secularization in canonical works of historical institutionalism. The prevailing arguments about the origins of liberal political institutions either omit religion completely as a significant factor in political and social life, or presume unique compatibility between Protestant Christianity and liberal democracy. This project challenges both the assumption of secular modernity and Christian exceptionalism as preconditions of liberal political development by examining the debates about religious toleration in early modern England. The toleration debates provide a record of the ideas generated in response to state expansion, and demonstrate the critical role of religion in establishing the modern state as the primary frame of political power. They further illustrate the importance of religious narratives in justifying liberal political principles such as popular sovereignty and accountable government, as well as the fundamental rights to freedom of speech, the press, association and conscience. Drawing upon original readings of pamphlets, newspapers and political tracts from the seventeenth century, I argue that religion promoted political transformation in early modern England not because of the specifics of doctrine or decline in its relevance to social and political life, but because it was the locus of individual experience of state power. The monarchy radically extended its scope and capacity by appropriating the institutional and symbolic resources of the church. It used the church to promote institutional and cultural regularity across the realm. The common experience of civil power through state regulation of religious practice led to the development of a collective interest in securing the right to religious worship that extended across class and regional divisions. The Protestant political identity cultivated by the monarchy in its campaign for religious uniformity created cultural opportunities for political resistance to the state's encroachment upon communal and individual autonomy. Competing interpretations of the meaning and requirements of this Protestant identity for individuals on one hand, and the requisites of political order and stability on the other, led to a public reconceptualization of the role of government and the rights and responsibilities of political membership.

Author : Arthur F. Marotti
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
Page : 378 pages
File Size : 43,87 MB
Release : 2013-10-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0814339565

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Scholars of religious, literary, and cultural history will enjoy this illuminating collection.

Author : Robert Zaller
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 844 pages
File Size : 39,3 MB
Release : 2007
Category : History
ISBN : 9780804755047

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The Discourse of Legitimacy is a wide-ranging, synoptic study of England's conflicted political cultures in the period between the Protestant Reformation and the civil war.

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 42,27 MB
Release : 2005-01-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9401202079

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Communities have often shaped themselves around cultural spaces set apart and declared sacred. For this purpose, churches, priests or scholars no less than writers frequently participate in giving sacred figures a local habitation and, sometimes, voice or name. But whatever sites, rites, images or narratives have thus been constructed, they also raise some complex questions: how can the sacred be presented and yet guarded, claimed yet concealed, staged in public and at the same time kept exclusive? Such questions are pursued here in a variety of English texts historically employed to manifest and manage versions of the sacred. But since their performances inhabit social space, this often functions as a theatrical arena which is also used to stage modes of dissent, difference, sacrifice and sacrilege. In this way, all aspects of social life – the family, the nation, the idea of kingship, gender identities, courtly ideals, love making or smoking – may become sacralized and buttress claims for power by recourse to a repertoire of religious symbolic forms. Through critical readings of central texts and authors – such as Sir Gawain, Foxe, Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne, or Vaughan – as well as less canonical examples – the Croxton play, Buchanan, Lanyer, Wroth, or the tobacco pamphlets – the twelve contributions all engage with the crucial question how, and to what end, performances of the sacred affect, or effect, cultural transformation.

Author : Stefan Fisher-Høyrem
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 48,98 MB
Release : 2022
Category : England
ISBN : 3031092856

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This open access book draws on conceptual resources ranging from medieval scholasticism to postmodern theory to propose a new understanding of secular time and its mediation in nineteenth-century technological networks. Untethering the concept of secularity from questions of religion and belief, it offers an innovative rethinking of the history of secularisation that will appeal to students, scholars, and everyone interested in secularity, Victorian culture, the history of technology, and the temporalities of modernity. Stefan Fisher-Hyrem (PhD) is a historian and Senior Academic Librarian at the University of Agder, Norway.