Fires of Faith
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Catholic England under Mary Tudor
Eamon Duffy
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The renowned author of The Stripping of the Altars takes a new and controversial look at the reign of England’s “Bloody Mary”
The reign of Mary Tudor has been remembered as an era of sterile repression, when a reactionary monarch launched a doomed attempt to reimpose Catholicism on an unwilling nation. Above all, the burning alive of more than 280 men and women for their religious beliefs seared the rule of “Bloody Mary” into the protestant imagination as an alien aberration in the onward and upward march of the English-speaking peoples.
In this controversial reassessment, the renowned reformation historian Eamon Duffy argues that Mary's regime was neither inept nor backward looking. Led by the queen's cousin, Cardinal Reginald Pole, Mary’s church dramatically reversed the religious revolution imposed under the child king Edward VI. Inspired by the values of the European Counter-Reformation, the cardinal and the queen reinstated the papacy and launched an effective propaganda campaign through pulpit and press.
Even the most notorious aspect of the regime, the burnings, proved devastatingly effective. Only the death of the childless queen and her cardinal on the same day in November 1558 brought the protestant Elizabeth to the throne, thereby changing the course of English history.
"And now the learned, astonishingly productive Eamon Duffy has joined the fray, revising the revisionists upwards—dramatically. In this powerful, punchy book he argues that the Marian restoration of English Catholicism was much more than the rather low-profile and sometimes timid attempt to return to the past which even the recent revisionists have portrayed. No, says Duffy (and I must now agree), it was a full-blooded attempt to introduce into England the "new" Catholicism of the fledgling Counter-Reformation. . . . Once again, Eamon Duffy has changed the landscape of English Reformation history."—J.J. Scarisbridge, The Weekly Standard
‘We are once again indebted to Prof. Duffy – as we were in 1992 – for giving us a study that should help us to get a more balanced view of this decisive era in our country’s history’ — JM, Contemporary Review
‘This is an outstanding and confident work, as one would expect…Duffy’s book is very timely.’ — Ashley Beck, The Pastoral Review
‘It is the individual stories of religious persecution and suffering, which pepper the book, that leave the deepest impression on the reader.’ — Anna French, Theology
“… vividly-written and forcefully-argued”—G.W. Bernard, English Historical Review
Publication Date: October 26, 2010
30 color illus.
