FINISHED READING - Royal Books & Holy Bones by Eamon Duffy

 

This collection of Essays In Medieval Christianity explores the frequently esoteric aspects of Medieval England's practice of the Christian faith. And how the focus of these adapts to the iconoclastic sweep of the Reformation.

A compilation of previously published essays, talks, reviews and articles, could so easily become a rag bag of themes. Each one running off in a different direction. It is, fortunately held together by Eamon Duffy's genial authorial tone and evident desire to be really really thorough. Mirroring the effects of his breakthrough revisionist  books The Stripping of the Altars and The Voices of Morebath, in correcting Protestant Reformation propaganda about the true state of personal faith in late medieval English society. 

In Royal Books & Holy Bones he delves, once again, deep into the faith and practices of ordinary people, in villages and towns outside of London. Uncovering those long forgotten oddities of the rural backwaters the local Saint. St Wulstan or St Erkenwald both figures surviving from the late Anglo Saxon era to become martyrs and destinations for pilgrimage. Though neither become international figures in the devotions they prompted, because they are too parochial. Local saints are to be considered as parallel developments to the regional visions and variations of the Virgin Mary. From Walsingham to Woolpit.

Henry 6th, though considered a weak king as viewed by history, became, as many assassinated figures did, this proto Saint in the aftermath of his death. With campaigns to have him canonised well advanced, which dwindle away to nothing by the time of the Tudors. Duffy expertly describes the rise and fall of his popularity, that was essentially a grass roots movement originating in the spiritual feelings and responses of ordinary people.

There are many other minor rich seams here. Difficult relations between Crowland Abbey and its surrounding population. The effects the Reformation had on imagery and forms of representation in churches. How the Rosary and its accompanying rituals and recitations was developed. The popularity of The Four Latin Doctors in painted screens and stained glass.The effect of plague upon faith and how that sets the foundations for movements to reform the church. All fascinating small gems of information that enrich the picture we have of the medieval zeitgeist.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8