Why read The Irish Church and the Tudor Reformations?

Book cover of The Irish Church and the Tudor Reformations

Book description

This important book examines Ireland's experiences of the Tudor reformations. Part I shows that the Irish Church, far from being in decline, enjoyed an upsurge in lay support before Henry VIII's reformation. Part II shows how the early Tudor reformations failed to address the pre-existing weaknesses of the Irish Church,…

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European history

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Irish Church and the Tudor Reformations as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Crawford Gribben

Author

Since the later sixteenth century, historians have been trying to explain why the Irish refused to follow their political leaders into the newly established protestant church. Jefferies’s book highlights the scale of the problem – showing that by the turn of the seventeenth century, seventy years after the beginnings of protestant reform, the number of native Irish converts amounted to little more than one hundred. Pushing against the triumphalism that marked an older way of writing the history of the reformation, Jefferies demonstrates the popularity of the late medieval church and argues that historians should reframe their research questions.

It…

From Crawford's list on The best books on the history of Christianity in Ireland.