Taverner's Use of Erasmus and the Protestantization of English Humanism
It is of course now obvious that the execution of More and Fisher did not bring about the collapse of the humanist movement in England during the middle third of the sixteenth century. Little attention, however, has been given to the fact that the loss of the two outstanding leaders of the older generation of humanists was followed by a decline of Catholic and the substantial growth of Protestant humanism. The primary aim of recent studies has been, rather, to establish the continuity of English humanism in the period that was not long ago widely believed to be its dark age. These recent works, to be sure, have persuasively traced its continuity in the analytical and realistic discussion of social and economic problems, the ideological bases of Henrician policy, and the interaction of Erasmian religious thought and the political Reformation.