Memory and the Dissolution of the Monasteries in Early Modern England

Explores the seismic impact of the dissolution of the monasteries, offering a new perspective on the English Reformation.

Harriet Lyon (Author)

9781316516409, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 October 2021

300 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.58 kg

The dissolution of the monasteries was recalled by individuals and communities alike as a seismic rupture in the religious, cultural, and socio-economic fabric of early modern England. It was also profoundly important in shaping contemporary historical consciousness, the topographical imagination, and local tradition. Memory and the Dissolution is a book about the dissolution of the monasteries after the dissolution. Harriet Lyon argues that our understanding of this historical moment is enriched by taking a long chronological view of the suppression, by exploring how it was remembered to those who witnessed it and how this memory evolved in subsequent generations. Exposing and repudiating the assumptions of a conventional historiography that has long been coloured by Henrician narratives and sources, this book reveals that the fall of the religious houses was remembered as one of the most profound and controversial transformations of the entire English Reformation.

Introduction
1. 'No news but the abbeys shall be down': reform, surrender, and suppression in the 1530s and 1540s
2. 'Worthy of lasting memory': the dissolution in the early modern historical imagination
3. 'Raised out of the ruins': monastic sites in the early modern topographical imagination
4. 'Many pretty odd tales': monks, monasteries, and the sin of sacrilege in local tradition
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: History of religion [HRAX], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]