Monday, February 20, 2023

It is the 20th of February, 2023. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

A very happy Monday- time to go to the mailbag, and I’ll tell you a secret. If you ask a question that is for you or your child's homework, you have a good chance of jumping the queue. Also, if you are a 1517 employee and can ask me over slack… well, here you go, Seth from Long Beach.  

Long Beach is, of course, the home of Snoop Dogg, the birthplace of Nicholas Cage, and Ju Ju Smith Schuster, who, despite being a Trojan, was also the “victim” of the lamest call in Super Bowl history.

Seth is writing on behalf of his daughter, who attends St Joseph High School- the Jesters are the all-girls Catholic school that is the brother school of St. John Bosco. St. Joseph’s is the alma mater of Ava DuVernay- director of Selma, 13th and a Wrinkle in Time.

Ok- so the question: what is was the protestant reformations' influence on English renaissance society? Ooooh, ooooh, I know the answer.

So- Reformation and Renaissance aren’t exactly synonymous, but they are parallel events- often, “Reformation” refers to the church while “Renaissance” means the general society.  

Here are five things-

First: Commercialism. Henry VIII was able to sell off all the old church lands- the monasteries, the abbeys- they all went on the market for the highest bidder. DO you ever wonder why Downtown Abbey isn’t a show about monks? The land was secularized. The fields were enclosed and subsistence farming gave way to commercial farming.

Two: Conservatism. With the enclosure of the common fields, with the revolutions in Germany and France, the English gentry- now with more land- wanted nothing to do with the English radicals- the 5th monarchy men, the levelers. The English did not want a revolution- they wanted people to know their place. One aspect of the Reformation and its aftermath was a hardening of the famed British class system.

Number 3: Literacy. Literacy was on the rise in Early Modern Europe and Early Modern England. Still, there is a sense in which the English bible project and the book of common prayer taught a generation to read and gave it a common language. From the Coverdale Bible to the Great Bible to the King James Bible, this would be the unifying text that gave the west a common language. Of course, this would also be the era of Shakespeare which takes us to number 4: the arts and theatre in particular.  

Elizabethan and Jacobean England (1558-1625) saw the explosion of English theatre and chorale. It’s a little later, but George Handel the German came to England in part because while in Italy, the Catholic Church banned opera, and so he found patronage in England. The English Reformation wrested authority from the Pope to censor the arts, and it avoided the banning of the arts that we see in some of the countries with more radical reformations (the English would get a glimpse of this with the Puritans for a spell later in the 17th c.)  

And finally, Nationalism. I lived in the UK- you know who loves England? The English. They will talk of “Europe” as if they aren’t a part of it (and yes, Brexit and the like). But a sense of what it means to be English comes from the Reformation. Ask an uppity Anglican if they are Protestant- “of course not, we are Anglican,” they might respond. They are not like Catholic France and their Scottish compatriots. They aren’t the German brutes. They are refined, ancient, separate, and special, just ask them.

Ok- a few bibliographic bits- check out the Stripping of the Altars by Eamon Duffy. Alec Ryrie has written a bunch and is always worth it. Peter Marshall just published a book that you can use to scour footnotes to look for other recent sources.

I hope that helps- go St. Joseph’s Jesters, and I hope you know how to cite a podcast.  

The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary on our way to Ash Wednesday- this is Exodus by way of Acts, from the 7th chapter

30 “After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. 31 When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to get a closer look, he heard the Lord say: 32 ‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look.

33 “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34 I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 20th of February 2023, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man known to sip on gin and juice- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man with my mind on my money and my money on my mind; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.