Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England

by Christine Peters

Overview

Offering a new interpretation of the transition from Catholicism to Protestantism in the English Reformation, this book explores its implications for an understanding of women and gender. It asserts that late medieval Christocentric piety shaped the nature of the Reformation, and reasseses assumptions that the "loss" of the Virgin Mary and the saints was detrimental to women. In defining the representative frail Christian as a woman devoted to Christ, the Reformation could not be an alien environment for women, while the Christocentric tradition encouraged the questioning of gender stereotypes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521093446
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/11/2009
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	412
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Graduating from St Hugh's College, Oxford, the author travelled widely in Eastern Europe on a Leverhulme Scholarship and was a Fellow at the Warburg Institute before transferring to Oxford. She has published articles based on the first part of her doctoral thesis in Past and Present and Continuity and Change. This is her first book.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Part I: 1. Religious roles; 2. Religious choices; 3. The Virgin Mary and Christocentric devotion; 4. The saints; 5. Eve and the responsibility for sin; Part II: 6. Responses to Reformation change; 7. Parish religion in the Reformation; 8. The godly woman; 9. The Virgin Mary and the saints; 10. The return to the Old Testament; 11. Martyrs; 12. Adam's fall; 13. Godly marriage; Conclusion; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...this book will be of value to libraries supporting graduate level coursework in religiuous or social history." Catholic Library World

"Christine Peters' contribution is a very significant one...It will be required reading for anyone with a serious interest in late medieval religion, Protestantism, and the effects of the Reformation on the piety of men and women, and on perceptions of gender." American Historical Review

"This important contribution to the history of the Reformation and its impact on women and gender relations will undoubtedly stimulate much further research." Anglican and Episcopal History, Martha Skeeters, Norman, Oklahoma

"This book is beautifully produced with many illustrations and a full bibliography as well as notes. It deserves to be widely read." Renaissance Quarterly

From the Publisher