II.Narratives and Master Narratives
Any broad consideration of such issues at some point encounters the question of a master narrative,established and received opinion.Tackling the issues in relation to such a narrative is not easy,as recent historiographical developments have made any master narrative elusive.Arguably,though,whether such a narrative has ever existed for pre-Reformation English religion can be questioned:if there was one,it was perhaps to be found in the reconstruction offered by Reformation historians,essentially as advocated by A.G.Dickens.His English Reformation was long the standard work on the subject.[6]In this version of the history,all seemed straightforward:the Reformation emerged out of gross dissatisfaction with the chaos and decay of the late medieval church,as England cast off the Roman yoke.A sense of imminent collapse could be taken almost for granted,with increasing dissatisfaction with the church among the ordinary people.This dissatisfaction found vocal and forceful expression in the spread of Lollardy,that English heresy which owed its origins to John Wyclif in Oxford in the late fourteenth century.Reformers(and their opponents)identified Wyclif as a fore-runner of Lutheran heresy and Reformation;[7]modern research,while finding continuities between Lollards and later dissenting populations,has been less successful in demonstrating strong Lollard influence in and on the Reformation process itself.[8]Indeed,the significance of Lollardy in the late medieval church is itself now somewhat contested.[9]
The underlying problem with the‘Dickens’approach to the English Reformation was that it was built on a particular understanding of the late medieval church and religious life,one largely shaped by an assumption that contemporary criticism should be taken at face value,and that catholicism was almost by definition wrong and burdensome.[10]Yet the difficulty with much of the criticism of the medieval church offered by medieval sources is precisely that it often lacks direct and solid supporting evidence,being usually partisan and anecdotal.Such unsubstantiated criticism is dangerous,and can easily be misused.
From early signs in the 1970s,the standard picture came under sustained attack in the 1980s and 1990s.Dickens's The English Reformation had been published in 1964,but knowledge of the late medieval and Reformation church had changed much by 1990.Greater awareness of the social significance of the church,and of the scale and intensity of popular devotional activity,with greater sophistication in the use of sources,had produced a much more positive appreciation of the pre-Reformation structures,reflected in a torrent of books and articles.[11]When Reformation historians realised what was happening a dam broke,and‘revisionism’ swept away much of the old consensus.Even though comment on the medieval church served merely as a prologue to the main concern with writing about the Reformation,the realisation that the late medieval church did not match the Dickens model forced fundamental rethinking about the progress of the Reformation itself.If,as it appeared,late medieval catholicism was actually vibrant,popular and securely based,where did the Reformation come from,and why had it happened?The old model of crown and people collaborating to reject a discredited and unwanted religion could no longer be sustained;the critical issue now was whether change was popular at all,whether the initial Reformation was primarily something imposed from above on a reluctant,and possibly recalcitrant,people.The debate between‘top-down’and‘bottomup’understandings of reform also acquired confessional overtones when some of the leading revisionists were unabashed about their own catholicism.The pioneering publications particularly of J.J.Scarisbrick,Eamon Duffy,and Christopher Haigh smashed the consensus on the English Reformation,and there is still no uncontested replacement.[12]It is important to recognize that this debate is primarily among self-styled Reformation historians:the revisionist portrait of the medieval church is an essential foundation to their understanding of the Reformation itself.This is particularly important for Eamon Duffy's reconstruction of what he calls‘traditional religion’,his vision of late medieval English religious and devotional practices over a long fifteenth century.It is notable that one of his fiercest critics is a medievalist,David Aers,who complains about the absence of any reference to Lollardy,and sees Duffy's reconstruction as misleading and potentially dangerous.This criticism is founded on a basic misunderstanding of the purpose of Duffy's work(Aers simply ignores the analysis of the process of actually stripping the altars,which is really Duffy's primary analytical concern,and for which the extensive discussion of pre-Reformation practice is an extended prologue);but there are signs that some of his fears may be justified.[13]
Revisionism certainly faced opposition and resistance,but its primary arguments have not yet been rebutted.Even so,as revisionism generates post-revisionism,old views may yet re-emerge.[14]Yet,if widespread dissatisfaction with the pre-Reformation church can no longer provide the driving force or key stimulus for change,basic questions remain,and must be addressed.One aspect is high politics,notably the role of King Henry VIII himself.That issue has been firmly and provocatively tackled by G.W.Bernard.In a book published in 2005 he argued that the whole process of religious change was driven personally by Henry VIII from the late 1520s onwards,as he strove to achieve his goals regardless of opposition:it was very much‘the King's Reformation’.[15]The main problem with this analysis is that it proposes a top-down approach to Reformation which is so singleminded,so determined to crush opposition,and assumes so much potential resistance,that one has to ask how Henry got away with it.Whatever the early English Reformation was it was not,and could not be,a one-man show.
Before going further,one key point must be made about revisionism.Just as the‘Dickens’view of the medieval church depended on the work of earlier late medievalists,so the revisionists’analysis generally followed leads provided by more recent writers on the pre-Reformation period.However,in that depiction of the late medieval church,one aspect which was generally neglected was monasticism.[16]The magisterial work of David Knowles had by 1961 produced a view of late-medieval English monasticism which was treated for decades as definitive,and is only now being significantly revised.[17]Even though Knowles was himself a monk,his assessment of his pre-Reformation brethren was by no means positive.[18]The general acceptance of his view allowed the revisionist version of the early English Reformation largely to ignore the problem of the religious orders:the dissolutions of the monasteries between 1536 and 1540 could still be explained in terms of decadence and lack of relevance.An insistence that the monasteries no longer had a specific function to serve or contribution to make within the pre-Reformation church is still strongly argued on occasion;[19]but the study of late medieval England's religious orders is now producing its own version of revisionism.Not only did the religious houses and their inmates contribute to the development of late medieval English spirituality;it is now increasingly being argued that they were institutionally significant,and played a positive part in sustaining catholic practice in the pre-Reformation world.[20]
Revisionism has forced changes in the‘master narrative’of the English Reformation;the starting point for the analysis has shifted,so that the totality of the Reformation in the sixteenth century can be seen as a process in which‘one of the most Catholic of European countries…became,within three generations,one of the most anti-Catholic’.[21]To some extent,from a late medievalist perspective,this shift in approaches is almost as worrying as the traditional misrepresentation which it replaced.Post-revisionism is mainly concerned with how the Reformation played out under Henry VIII and his successors;it again seems to treat the state of the late medieval church as a given rather than an issue,a starting rather than debating point.This is,as Peter Marshall has noted,largely due to the influence of Eamon Duffy's Stripping of the Altars:he comments that one of its major effects was‘not so much to initiate a debate over the character of late medieval catholicism as to close it down’—a judgement which perhaps validates David Aers's fears about the impact of Duffy's work.[22]Yet the changed formulation of post-revisionism does direct attention to the process of change,demanding awareness of local preconditions for and receptivity to reform.The possibility of interpreting those evolutions as a process whose waves rippled out from London with varying degrees of force would throw yet more emphasis on the local conditions and impacts of change.[23]
To extend coverage over the early Reformation years does complicate matters.It could be argued that late medieval English religion can be analysed without regard to the Reformation because the late medieval church was not consciously a‘pre-Reformation’church.That would certainly validate a break,but seems inadequate.The Reformation may not have been foreseen,but reformation was not thereby excluded.Indeed,the church was ever imperfect;there was always scope for improvement,certainly among individuals and local communities.The church before the Reformation was not a stable and static institution;rather,it was in a constant state of flux and evolution,something which must be integrated into perceptions of what catholicism really was,and how it could be lived.[24]