Historical Interpretations of the English Reformation

Historical Interpretations of the English Reformation

10/10/09

Kauser Yunus

Pg 113

ACTIVITY

1a) Outline each historians argument in about fifteen words.

• Source 9.10

A.G Dickens

The Church was on the verge of collapse.

• Source 9.11

J-J. Scarisbrick

The Church being in decline was very questionable

• Source 9.12

G.R Elton

Hatred towards the Church mounted and collapse was inevitable; however it’s evils were exaggerated.

• Source 9.13

C.Haig

The English people hadn’t turned against their church and its corruption was historical illusions.

• Source 9.14

E.Duffy

People were loyal to the Church with no signs of collapsing until reformation actually happened.

b) Which historians agree with each other?

C. Haig and E.Duffy both agreed that lay people didn’t turn against the Church and that stories about it being corrupted were either exaggerated or untrue. Also J.J Scarisbrick thought that the Church wasn’t going to collapse.

A.G Dickens and G.R Elton both agree that the Church was on the verge of collapse and that people started to hate the priests. However unlike Dickens, Elton said he thought the Church’s evils were exaggerated.

2) Identify the two main lines of argument put forwards by the two schools of historians.

The first school of thought was that the Church was going to collapse before the Reformation because lay people started to hate the priests, as they believed the Church was corrupt and evil.

The second school of thought was that lay people didn’t hate the priest’s and didn’t think the Church was going to collapse. Also corruption of the Church was made up or extremely exaggerated, because they might have been tensions in individuals but they weren’t institutionalised.

3) Write a paragraph that sums up the work of all these historians in relation to the question of whether the state of the Church contributed to the Reformation.

A.G Dickens and G.R Elton both thought that the state of the Church definitely had an effect on the reformation. That believed that the Church was going to collapse because it was corrupt and lay people showed a lot of hatred towards the priests as they thought the Church was evil. However Elton believed that anticlericalism exaggerated the Church’s evil but their stories had enough reality in them to be believed.

Other historians such as J.J Scarisbrick believed that the Church in 1529 was spiritually in just as good a condition as it had been a hundred years ago and therefore it wasn’t corrupt. C.Haig agreed with this and added that people did not hate the priest’s and anyone who only a few individuals may have disagreed with the Church’s policies but this feeling was not institutionalised. Another historian called E.Duffy believed that people were still loyal to Catholicism ‘up to the very moment of reformation’. Also traditional religion didn’t look like it was collapsing this was shown through religious books on regional saints.