Homage to the Old Religion
Susan Brigden, 27 May 1993
The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400-c.1580
by Eamon Duffy.
Yale, 704 pp., £29.95, November 1992,0 300 05342 8 Show More
by Eamon Duffy.
Yale, 704 pp., £29.95, November 1992,
“... At the Reformation a world was lost that could never be recovered. The images and altars, the dooms and roods of the parish churches, the towers and cloisters of the religions houses were desecrated. But the loss and profanation of the treasures donated over centuries was nothing compared to the shattering of the beliefs they had symbolised. For Catholics, the desecration threatened the end of mediation, propitiation and spiritual solace: the loss of community between the dead and the living ... ”