The reformation of the landscape: religion, identity, and memory in early modern britain and ireland

A richly detailed and original study of the relationship between the landscape of Britain and Ireland, and the tumultuous religious changes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Reformation of the Landscape is a richly detailed and original study of the relationship between the landscape of Britain and Ireland and the tumultuous religious changes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It explores how the profound theological and liturgical transformations that marked the era between 1500 and 1750 both shaped, and were in turn shaped by, the places and spaces within the physical environment in which they occurred. Moving beyond churches,cathedrals, and monasteries, it investigates how the Protestant and Catholic Reformations affected perceptions and practices associated with trees, woods, springs, rocks, mountain peaks, prehistoric monuments, and other distinctive topographical features of the British Isles. Drawing on extensive research andembracing insights from a range of disciplines, Alexandra Walsham examines the origins, immediate consequences, and later repercussions of these movements of religious renewal, together with the complex but decisive modifications of belief and behaviour to which they gave rise.It demonstrates how ecclesiastical developments intersected with other intellectual and cultural trends, including the growth of antiquarianism and the spread of the artistic and architectural Renaissance, the emergence of empirical science and shifting fashions within the spheres of medicine and healing. Set within a chronological framework that stretches backwards towards the early Middle Ages and forwards into the nineteenth century, the book assesses the critical part played by thelandscape in forging confessional identities and in reconfiguring collective and social memory. It illuminates the ways in which the visible world was understood and employed by the diverse religious communities that occupied the British Isles, and shows how it became a battleground in which bitter strugglesabout the significance of the Christian and pagan past were waged. A fascinating account of the religious and cultural changes in Early Modern attitudes toshrines, stones, rocks, springs and much else besides ... a work of deep historical imagination. ... subtle and important. Recommended as a Book of the Year 2011 INDICE: Introduction Loca Sacra: Religion and the Landscape before the Reformation Idols in the Landscape: The Impact of Protestant Reform Britannia Sancta: Catholicism, Counter Reformation, and the Landscape The Religious Regeneration of the Landscape: Ritual, Rehabilitation, and Renewal God's Great Book in Folio: Providence, Science, and the Natural Environment Therapeutic Waters: Religion, Medicine, and the Landscape Invented Traditions: Legend, Custom, andMemory Conclusion Bibliography

• ISBN: 978-0-19-965438-3
• Editorial: Oxford University
• Encuadernacion: Rústica
• Páginas: 656
• Fecha Publicación: 16/02/2012
• Nº Volúmenes: 1
• Idioma: Inglés