Reforming Printing Syon Abbey's Defence of Orthodoxy 1525-1534

by da Costa, Alexandra

• ISBN13: 9780199653560
• ISBN10: 0199653569
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-09-08
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This book investigates how Syon Abbey, one of the most ascetic and strict monastic foundations, responded to the religious turbulence of the 1520s and 1530s. It discusses the large corpus of books the brethren had printed during this period in order to augment inferior parochial instruction; bolster orthodox faith; contradict evangelical argument; resist Henry VIII's desire for ecclesiastical supremacy; and defend the monastic way of life. It argues that the Abbeygrasped the vital importance of reaching out to the laity by writing in the vernacular and publishing cheap volumes of religious instruction, and that this effort far outshone any other conservative body or writer. The book is an exciting contribution to recent debates over the character of late medieval Catholicism, the shifting nature of religious identity and the development of vernacular theology in the sixteenth century. It will be of considerable interest to literary scholars andhistorians of the English Reformation

Author Biography

Alexandra da Costa is a Fellow in English at St Hilda's College, where she is now working on a project investigating exchanges between conservative and evangelical writers printed between 1529 and 1531. Before coming to St Hilda's, she was a Research Fellow and Tutor at Keble College, Oxford, and prior to that an undergraduate and postgraduate at Oxford University.