A Political History of Modern Europe. From the Reformation to the Present Day.

Twenty years ago, when Patrick McGrath was writing Papists and Puritans, it made sense to present the history of Tudor Catholicism in terms of early decline and later heroic recovery. Our understanding of the sixteenth century was then dominated by two books, which seemed to demonstrate revolutions in religion and government that breached all continuities in ecclesiastical and political history. In A. G. Dickens's The English Reformation, an increasingly sophisticated laity, discontented with the moral laxity and spiritual torpor of the late medieval clergy, was shown to have accepted with enthusiasm the break with Rome and the new doctrines of Protestantism. Gentlemen, lawyers, merchants and artisans responded to the energetic evangelism of the early reformers, and abandoned medieval obscurantism. Secular and ecclesiastical politicians espoused reform for their own calculations of expediency or experience of spirituality, and threw the weight of the state behind the new doctrines, while conservatives lacked the commitment and imagination to resist change.

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Dares Printed and Philologized

The First Pagan Historian ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190492304.003.0006 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 211-250

Author(s):

Frederic Clark

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Print Culture ◽

Early Modern Europe ◽

Ancient Greek ◽

Classical Scholarship ◽

Jean Bodin ◽

Counter Reformation ◽

The Reformation ◽

History Of ◽

Modern Europe

Chapter 5 looks in closer depth at just why Dares remained a source of debate in early modern Europe, even after some critics had seemingly demolished him once and for all. The first part of the chapter examines phenomena traditionally associated with the rise of criticism and the downfall of forgeries, including print culture, the recuperation of ancient Greek texts, and scientific empiricism. It argues that these phenomena actually bolstered the reputation and credibility of Dares Phrygius. From the Elizabethan Philip Sidney’s neo-Aristotelian poetics to the proliferation of printed reference works by Conrad Gessner, Jean Bodin, and others, Dares remained a canonical first in the history of history. The second part of the chapter examines how, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, both the increasingly professionalized world of classical scholarship and the confessional polemics engendered by the Reformation and Counter–Reformation responded to this perpetuation of Dares’ longevity with renewed attacks.

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The Real History of Protestantism: Thomas Carlyle and the Spirit of Reformation

Bulletin of the John Rylands Library ◽

10.7227/bjrl.90.1.14 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 90 (1) ◽

pp. 305-322 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

John Morrow

Keyword(s):

Human Development ◽

Thomas Carlyle ◽

The Real ◽

Starting Point ◽

The Reformation ◽

Imperial Power ◽

Transformative Action ◽

History Of ◽

Modern Europe

Carlyle regarded the Reformation as a seminal event in the history of modern Europe, the starting point of an ongoing stage in human development. Reformation Protestantism gave birth to a more general and pervasive spirit of ‘reformation’ that Carlyle identified with the moral destiny of all individuals and communities. These qualities were epitomized by heroic figures such as Luther and Cromwell but they were also embedded in cultures that responded productively to the ongoing challenge of reformation. Having traced the history of the ethos of reformation through English Puritanism and in the commitment to transformative action or ‘work’ that gave rise to Britains emergence as a leading industrial and imperial power, Carlyle brought this reinvention of the Reformation to bear in his critique of the counter-reforming tendencies in early Victorian society that he saw as posing a profound threat to it.

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A. G. Dickens as a Yorkshire historian

Historical Research ◽

10.1111/j.1468-2281.2004.00201.x ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 77 (195) ◽

pp. 111-126

Author(s):

Claire Cross

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Early Modern ◽

Political History ◽

Early Modern Period ◽

Local Context ◽

History Of Religion ◽

International History ◽

Modern Period ◽

The Reformation ◽

History Of

AbstractFor thirty years after graduating from Oxford in 1932 Dickens, a devoted Yorkshireman, produced a stream of articles on the intellectual, social and political history of the county in the sixteenth century, which culminated in 1959 in his pioneering work Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York, 1509–58. After leaving Hull for London in 1962 he never found a county in the south of England to replace Yorkshire in his affections, and moved from the history of the Reformation in its local context to concentrate upon the national and international history of religion in the early modern period.

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Early Modern Europe: Beyond the Strictures of Modernization and National Historiography

European History Quarterly ◽

10.1177/0265691410376368 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 40 (4) ◽

pp. 606-623 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Jeroen Duindam

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Political History ◽

European History ◽

Comparative Perspective ◽

Primary Sources ◽

Early Modern Europe ◽

Global History ◽

History Of ◽

Modern Europe ◽

National Orientation

This paper examines the particulars of ‘early modern’ as well as ‘European’ political history in terms of chronological and spatial divides. Most political historians of early modern Europe and its component states are far removed from classic teleological approaches based on national state formation and modernization. On the whole, however, a pragmatic national orientation of research based on the proximity of sources and the language capabilities of researchers remains strong, even if it is combined with transnational conceptual gestures. Moreover, the demands of specialized historical research lead to concentration on relatively brief periods: only rarely do we find research reaching from the sixteenth into the eighteenth century. In consequence, while well-worn conventional divides in time as well as in space have few staunch advocates, they tenaciously remain in place. The political history of European states, full of untested reputations, needs a comparative perspective. This will work only if it is based on symmetrical comparison and analysis of primary sources: comparison founded on secondary literature threatens to reinforce national clichés. European history, finally, finds its place only in contrast with other variants of global history. A global comparative perspective presents daunting challenges for researchers, but it is an inevitable and necessary component of the reassessment of European history, modernization, and period labels.

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