England’s Protestant Reformation

When England’s Reformation began, only a small band of idealists – or fanatics – truly wanted a Protestant England. Nevertheless, within a single lifetime, they achieved it.

The lecture considers how the upheavals of the Tudor era led to the emergence of a genuinely new religious consciousness in England, as reformers set about rebuilding the nation’s spirit from the ground up. By their own impossibly high standards, these reformers failed; but their ‘failure’ was transformative and its consequences are enduring.

A lecture by Alec Ryrie

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

[alanblight]

Professor Ryrie is so engaging, he passes to the listener the passion he evidently feels for his subject .

[marshaprice]

While I have been interested in the history of England and the Church of England for some time, I have never heard this story of their history before. Fascinating! Thanks so much for this series!

[Lemma]

Less than a minute into this and I'm hooked. As an historian of the c.17th, it seems to me more and more that we cannot discuss events in early modern England and Scotland without a full understanding of what was and was not resolved under Elizabeth. Thank you.

[sgudir]

This professors range and depth of knowledge (and you can tell its knowledge and not just learned facts by his beautiful and helpful delivery) is outstanding. I found him by an apartheid history video, and have learned a tonne about this history, of which I actually know very little and have shown little intest in, even as a well educated British guy.

[Mrchky]

Thank you Professor Ryrie. This series truly illuminates English history like a passionately and professionally illustrated folio from a monastery.

[Baddy]

Thank you for this video ! We can really see how passionate you are about history. Very refreshing !

[adrianjanssens]

Sorry to be repetitive, but if I attended Gresham College, I would sit in on Professor Ryrie's lectures even if I wasn't enrolled in his class.

[kidmohair]

Thank you Professor Ryrie...
while falling asleep listening to this lecture, which sounds as if it is a disrespectful thing to do,
but isn't,
I was struck by the resemblance of the events of 500 years ago in christianity,
to the events in Islam in this time.
I say this from an observational point of view, a point of view that is uninformed, but not unthoughtful;
this is something that has been floating around in my head for a few years now. The schismatic
nature of the desire to reform is the same, the passions are very similar, even the violence of feeling
is as deep.
In 4 or 5 hundred years, will some scholar in a different situation, to a different audience,
but with the same erudition, offer a lecture as informative, and deeply thought out,
on the past reforms of Islam? I shan't be around to listen and wonder, though.

[Urlocallordandsavior]

What does "FVR" mean at 45:42? If it stands for fur, does "for the fur" mean something like "inside one's skin"?

[johnericson]

Your delineation of Luther's theology is inaccurate. Luther did see the sacraments as a means of grace. You are merging Luther with the more radical Reformation is suggesting so.

[redfire]

The quality of the Audio does not do justice to the content of the lecture. I see that AV equipment failure seems to be an issue with many of the Gresham College lectures.

[davidevans]

i want to find a course/courses on the reformations, but i just had a look at the open university (probably the best way for me) and struggled.. possibly to understand the website, but for example, i asked for english reformation and got plenty on English language and one on 1500 - 1700.. surely there is more than that..
does anybody have any ideas?? 🙂

[notlimey]

You have the wrong year on the image of Tyndale's execution

[oldpondfrog]

Can I recommend the Francis Yates trilogy to the interested. Geodarno Bruno; The Rosecrucian Enlightenment; and the Occult Doctrine in the Elizabethan Age.

The latter I've actually finished and thoroughly enjoyed. All three variously present an intriguing combination of characters; themes; powers; secrets; societies; religious heterodoxy; pressures; utopianism; esotericism; art and metaphysics all bound up in stories or histories seldom told yet touching on so much mainstream history and culture.

What's more TODITEA (and intro to Geodarno Bruno) was fairly readable and clear despite being a little deep and academic.

[emwesigwa]

Am I right in assuming the reason ‘national unity’ theme always crops during these times is a fear of a return of dynastic wars of the 15th century?

[kimberlyperrotis]

I don’t think Elizabeth was so much against further reforms as trying to remain popular with the majority of her subjects, who were still Catholic, and the radical Protestants of London and the south of England. She had to walk a very fine line between them and she feared the anti-hierarchical elements of the radicals, didn’t she say “no bishops, no monarchs?”

[borderlands]

It might be interesting to plot the puritan legacy with the rise of sceptical materialism. The parallels are many, not least predestination and lack of free will, man as totally depraved passive observer and "lumbering biological robot" (R. Dawkins), the universe as machine, etc.

[kimberlyperrotis]

Why doesn’t he name the Cambridge preacher of 1523 he mentions?

[stevepowsinger]

Thanks. This is an interesting but not well understood period of history. So the Puritans never quite captured the English government and had to settle for slow victory. I am probably agnostic but I side with the Protestant idea of religion over the Catholic. (Raised as a American Methodist of Scotch-English ancestry).

[robertc]

There is never an end game, on and on an on division after division after division.But what do I know !.