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Tudor Religious Cultures in Practice: The Piety and Politics of Grace Mildmay and Her Circle
Author(s) -
Warren Nancy Bradley
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2006.00362.x
Subject(s) - piety , mysticism , historiography , reign , politics , protestantism , religious studies , literature , early modern period , history , middle ages , period (music) , history of religions , reading (process) , philosophy , classics , art , ancient history , law , aesthetics , political science , archaeology , linguistics
This essay explores the diversities, complexities, and ambiguities of English religious cultures during the period of religious and political turmoil that constituted the Tudor era. An examination of the religious practices and writings of Grace Sharington Mildmay, members of her natal and conjugal families, and her Northamptonshire neighbors provides a snapshot of the diverse, complex range of Catholicisms and Protestantisms in existence from the beginning of the reign of the first Tudor monarch Henry VII through the end of the Elizabethan regime. The essay emphasizes continuity as well as change, providing an overview of competing versions of the historiography of Tudor religion and underlining the need to reconsider overly simplified understandings of such terms as “Calvinist,”“Puritan,”“recusant,” and “church papist.” It also highlights, through a comparative reading of texts written by Grace Mildmay and the medieval mystic and anchoress Julian of Norwich, the need to rethink the binaries of “medieval” and “early modern” as well as “Catholic” and “Protestant.”