Sermons, Separatists, and Succession Politics in Late Elizabethan England
Abstract In late 1599 the population of York was able to witness a fairly extraordinary sight. In York Castle, the Catholic prisoners of conscience, as they saw themselves (though others regarded them as dangerous political dissidents), were being compelled to listen, once a week, to a Protestant sermon. These sermons were preached at them by a slate of godly ministers. This exercise was something the prisoners actively contested by murmuring, blocking their ears, shouting, and attempting to rush out of the hall. The prisoners' antics provoked the authorities into increasingly coercive measures to make them hear the Word of God. This outwardly rather ridiculous and unseemly charade went on, week after week, for nearly a year, at which point the whole business was abandoned by the lord president, Lord Burghley, as a waste of time. However, by decoding the extant manuscript narrative that we have of the sermon series and by looking at who was involved in this business and why, and what political messages were being sent during the course of it, we can say something about the popular politics of late Elizabethan England. In particular, we can comment on the strategies adopted by those who were anticipating the moment, surely not far off, when Tudor power would be extinguished and Elizabeth's crown would pass to her successor.
The ‘True and Zealouse Seruice of God’: Robert Parsons. Edmund Bunny, and The First Booke of the Christian Exercise
It appeareth (I saye) what an exacte lyfe the trew lyfe of a Christian is: which is a continuall resistance of all sinne, bothe in thought, word and deede, and a performance or exercise of all good woorkes, that possiblie he can deuise to doe. God requireth at our handes, that we should make his lawes and preceptes our studie and cogitations: that we should think of them continuallie, & meditate vpon them bothe day and night, at home and abrode, early & late, when we go to bedde, and when we rise in the morning: this is his commaudement, & there is no dispensation therin.
Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe 1550-1750
Lutheran Germany Calvinist Germany catholic Germany the confessional state cities and confessionalization culture and confessionalism the moral police confessionalism and the people conclusion.