Reforming Printing
Syon Abbey's Defence of Orthodoxy 1525-1534
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£117.50
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199653560
Number of Pages: 216
Published: 12/07/2012
Width: 14.9 cm
Height: 22.2 cm
This book investigates how Syon Abbey responded to the religious turbulence of the 1520s and 1530s. It examines the eleven books three brothers - William Bonde, John Fewterer and Richard Whitford - had printed during this period and argues that the Bridgettines used vernacular printing to engage with religious and political developments that threatened their understanding of orthodox faith. Through these works - and their some twenty-six editions - the Abbey
presented itself as part of the vanguard of the Church, fighting heterodoxy with a three-fold commitment to reformed spiritual leadership, vernacular theology and the spiritual education of the laity. It used its printed books to to augment inferior parochial instruction; bolster orthodox faith and
contradict evangelical argument; resist Henry VIII's desire for ecclesiastical supremacy; and defend the monastic way of life.
The book has three principal aims. First, to continue the debate about the nature of late medieval Catholicism by directing attention to one community that publicly proclaimed a very specific Catholic identity. Second, to highlight the shifting nature of that identity, which developed continuously in response to evangelicalism. Third, to emphasise the importance and impact of conservative vernacular theology in this period.
Reforming Printing makes a strong contribution to our understanding of the Bridgettine community of Syon Abbey, and more generally the monastic and Catholic response to the developments that culminated in Henry VIII's break with Rome. It sheds new light upon the religious climate of the 1520s and 30s and will be of considerable interest to literary scholars and historians of the English Reformation, especially those working on early modern religious writing.
"This careful study makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the role of one of the foremost religious houses in England during the turmoil that arose as a result of the events surrounding Henry VIII's divorce and subsequent break with Rome." --Renaissance Quarterly