England’s Protestant Reformation

When England’s Reformation began, only a small band of idealists - or fanatics - truly wanted a Protestant England. Nevertheless, within a single lifetime, they achieved it.
The lecture considers how the upheavals of the Tudor era led to the emergence of a genuinely new religious consciousness in England, as reformers set about rebuilding the nation’s spirit from the ground up. By their own impossibly high standards, these reformers failed; but their ‘failure’ was transformative and its consequences are enduring.
A lecture by Alec Ryrie
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...
Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: gresham.ac.uk/support/

Пікірлер: 78

  • @alanblight9233
    @alanblight92333 жыл бұрын

    Professor Ryrie is so engaging , he passes to the listener the passion he evidently feels for his subject .

  • @adrianjanssens7116
    @adrianjanssens71163 жыл бұрын

    Sorry to be repetitive, but if I attended Gresham College, I would sit in on Professor Ryrie's lectures even if I wasn't enrolled in his class.

  • @skeletalbassman1028

    @skeletalbassman1028

    3 жыл бұрын

    You ARE attending Gresham. It's a free-to-the-public university with public lectures, no degrees or enrolled students. Gresham himself wanted it this way when he endowed the institution in 1597.

  • @Mrch33ky

    @Mrch33ky

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@skeletalbassman1028 Indubidably.

  • @marshaprice8226
    @marshaprice8226 Жыл бұрын

    While I have been interested in the history of England and the Church of England for some time, I have never heard this story of their history before. Fascinating! Thanks so much for this series!

  • @Mrch33ky
    @Mrch33ky3 жыл бұрын

    Thank you Professor Ryrie. This series truly illuminates English history like a passionately and professionally illustrated folio from a monastery.

  • @sgu00dir
    @sgu00dir3 жыл бұрын

    This professors range and depth of knowledge (and you can tell its knowledge and not just learned facts by his beautiful and helpful delivery) is outstanding. I found him by an apartheid history video, and have learned a tonne about this history, of which I actually know very little and have shown little intest in, even as a well educated British guy.

  • @Baddy67110
    @Baddy671103 жыл бұрын

    Thank you for this video ! We can really see how passionate you are about history. Very refreshing !

  • @Lemma01
    @Lemma018 ай бұрын

    Less than a minute into this and I'm hooked. As an historian of the c.17th, it seems to me more and more that we cannot discuss events in early modern England and Scotland without a full understanding of what was and was not resolved under Elizabeth. Thank you.

  • @alastairchestnutt6416
    @alastairchestnutt64163 жыл бұрын

    Another excellent lecture. Thanks

  • @danremenyi1179
    @danremenyi11792 жыл бұрын

    Thank you ............................... an excellent presentation!

  • @szeevster5767
    @szeevster57673 ай бұрын

    Wonderful lecture

  • @kidmohair8151
    @kidmohair81513 жыл бұрын

    Thank you Professor Ryrie... while falling asleep listening to this lecture, which sounds as if it is a disrespectful thing to do, but isn't, I was struck by the resemblance of the events of 500 years ago in christianity, to the events in Islam in this time. I say this from an observational point of view, a point of view that is uninformed, but not unthoughtful; this is something that has been floating around in my head for a few years now. The schismatic nature of the desire to reform is the same, the passions are very similar, even the violence of feeling is as deep. In 4 or 5 hundred years, will some scholar in a different situation, to a different audience, but with the same erudition, offer a lecture as informative, and deeply thought out, on the past reforms of Islam? I shan't be around to listen and wonder, though.

  • @emwesigwa
    @emwesigwa2 жыл бұрын

    Am I right in assuming the reason ‘national unity’ theme always crops during these times is a fear of a return of dynastic wars of the 15th century?

  • @skeletalbassman1028
    @skeletalbassman10283 жыл бұрын

    He's back!

  • @lucasotgiu7398

    @lucasotgiu7398

    3 жыл бұрын

    You y

  • @lucasotgiu7398

    @lucasotgiu7398

    3 жыл бұрын

    You

  • @lucasotgiu7398

    @lucasotgiu7398

    3 жыл бұрын

    You

  • @lucasotgiu7398

    @lucasotgiu7398

    3 жыл бұрын

    don’t

  • @lucasotgiu7398

    @lucasotgiu7398

    3 жыл бұрын

    Y

  • @robertc2619
    @robertc2619 Жыл бұрын

    There is never an end game, on and on an on division after division after division.But what do I know !.

  • @notlimey
    @notlimey Жыл бұрын

    You have the wrong year on the image of Tyndale's execution

  • @oldpondfrog788
    @oldpondfrog7882 жыл бұрын

    Can I recommend the Francis Yates trilogy to the interested. Geodarno Bruno; The Rosecrucian Enlightenment; and the Occult Doctrine in the Elizabethan Age. The latter I've actually finished and thoroughly enjoyed. All three variously present an intriguing combination of characters; themes; powers; secrets; societies; religious heterodoxy; pressures; utopianism; esotericism; art and metaphysics all bound up in stories or histories seldom told yet touching on so much mainstream history and culture. What's more TODITEA (and intro to Geodarno Bruno) was fairly readable and clear despite being a little deep and academic.

  • @borderlands6606
    @borderlands66063 жыл бұрын

    It might be interesting to plot the puritan legacy with the rise of sceptical materialism. The parallels are many, not least predestination and lack of free will, man as totally depraved passive observer and "lumbering biological robot" (R. Dawkins), the universe as machine, etc.

  • @alecryrie8209

    @alecryrie8209

    3 жыл бұрын

    There are common threads there (and a common intellectual ancestry). But there's a positive side to it too. In the same way that Dawkins can get rapturous on the beauty and elegance of the world viewed through the lens of evolution, the best of the puritans could communicate real wonder and awe at their theocentric understanding of the world.

  • @davidevans3227
    @davidevans32272 жыл бұрын

    i want to find a course/courses on the reformations, but i just had a look at the open university (probably the best way for me) and struggled.. possibly to understand the website, but for example, i asked for english reformation and got plenty on English language and one on 1500 - 1700.. surely there is more than that.. does anybody have any ideas?? 🙂

  • @redfire20003
    @redfire200033 жыл бұрын

    The quality of the Audio does not do justice to the content of the lecture. I see that AV equipment failure seems to be an issue with many of the Gresham College lectures.

  • @Urlocallordandsavior
    @Urlocallordandsavior2 жыл бұрын

    What does "FVR" mean at 45:42? If it stands for fur, does "for the fur" mean something like "inside one's skin"?

  • @stephenpowstinger733
    @stephenpowstinger7333 жыл бұрын

    Thanks. This is an interesting but not well understood period of history. So the Puritans never quite captured the English government and had to settle for slow victory. I am probably agnostic but I side with the Protestant idea of religion over the Catholic. (Raised as a American Methodist of Scotch-English ancestry).

  • @Urlocallordandsavior
    @Urlocallordandsavior2 жыл бұрын

    Commented for the algorithm.

  • @johnericson4098
    @johnericson40986 ай бұрын

    Your delineation of Luther's theology is inaccurate. Luther did see the sacraments as a means of grace. You are merging Luther with the more radical Reformation is suggesting so.

  • @JamesKimSynergize
    @JamesKimSynergize3 жыл бұрын

    People often think Christendom is when church and state are combined. Rather, it seems the problem in Western Christendom is when politics dominates religion. If church and state are a marriage they are not equal partners.

  • @MarcTompkins

    @MarcTompkins

    2 жыл бұрын

    Whenever politics and religion mix they are both corrupted.

  • @JamesKimSynergize

    @JamesKimSynergize

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@MarcTompkins You are letting them off too easy, my friend. They don't need each other to become corrupted. The danger is to think if we get rid of either then everything would be okay. Thanks!

  • @AlaiMacErc

    @AlaiMacErc

    2 жыл бұрын

    No, the problem is *exactly* the opposite of the one you suggest. For religion -- though apparently religion for these purposes is restricted to Western Christianity? -- were to be an "equal partner" with liberal democracy, which is to imply, broad, sweeping immunity and hence impunity under the law, that'd be a huge step towards outright theocracy.

  • @angusmacangus3181

    @angusmacangus3181

    Жыл бұрын

    @@AlaiMacErc Provide an example, otherwise you are just pontificating.

  • @AlaiMacErc

    @AlaiMacErc

    Жыл бұрын

    @@angusmacangus3181 An example of precisely what? And get some manners. Otherwise you're just another impertinent loudmouth behind a keyboard.

  • @kimberlyperrotis8962
    @kimberlyperrotis8962 Жыл бұрын

    Why doesn’t he name the Cambridge preacher of 1523 he mentions?

  • @SuperCulloden
    @SuperCulloden2 жыл бұрын

    !5,300 views and 348 approvals over more than a six month period.

  • @jasonwolfe920
    @jasonwolfe9202 жыл бұрын

    GO TO RUMBLE AND WATCH STEW PETERS INTERVIEW W/DAVID JOSE ON APRIL 14TH,2022...

  • @kimberlyperrotis8962
    @kimberlyperrotis8962 Жыл бұрын

    I don’t think Elizabeth was so much against further reforms as trying to remain popular with the majority of her subjects, who were still Catholic, and the radical Protestants of London and the south of England. She had to walk a very fine line between them and she feared the anti-hierarchical elements of the radicals, didn’t she say “no bishops, no monarchs?”

  • @madisonjacobowitz9180
    @madisonjacobowitz91802 жыл бұрын

    My teacher is making me watch this, but i know for a fact he did not watch all 56.26 of this

  • @johnorchard4
    @johnorchard43 жыл бұрын

    Your slide on the death of William Tyndale needs a little edit I think. I am not convinced that the burghers of Brussels would have judicially strangled him in 1636?

  • @cptnjcuncia2213
    @cptnjcuncia2213Ай бұрын

    Me, the OA Dominion Angelis🫖

  • @AliShah-er7iu
    @AliShah-er7iu3 жыл бұрын

    One committed Anglican, angry at the claim that the Church has a strong Puritan foundation giving the thumbs down

  • @madisonjacobowitz9180
    @madisonjacobowitz91802 жыл бұрын

    Professor Ryrie, I did not like this video

  • @sabrinascavuzzo4288

    @sabrinascavuzzo4288

    2 жыл бұрын

    I second

  • @freebornjohn2687

    @freebornjohn2687

    2 жыл бұрын

    I think you could at least expand on why you didn't. I have watched numerous of his videos and have found them all to be exceptional.

  • @leejennifercorlewayres9193
    @leejennifercorlewayres91932 жыл бұрын

    It is not professional to show bias when teaching history. The cold hard facts are enough.

  • @varbalvarbal

    @varbalvarbal

    2 жыл бұрын

    Have you noticed that this lecture is just one of a masterly set of *six* different interpretations of the english reformation, each with its own "bias" but in line with facts? Listened to together, they give one a fairly rounded picture.

  • @thegreenmage6956
    @thegreenmage69563 жыл бұрын

    Protestantism wrecked what little was left of real native British Culture for the short-term profit of misguided men, and we are left to pick up the meagre pieces. Shame on you. Shame on you all.

  • @skeletalbassman1028

    @skeletalbassman1028

    3 жыл бұрын

    Nonsense. It was inevitable that Britain would go her own way as she always has. Catholicism was a Roman ambition and was hardly native.

  • @borderlands6606

    @borderlands6606

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@skeletalbassman1028 Britain didn't go "her own way", she went Germany's, if you identify the origin of an idea with its social geography. As this lecture suggests, Britain exhibited few of the excesses that lead to reforming zeal elsewhere. Catholicism wasn't "Roman", which was a later pejorative, it was western Christianity. See Duffy's "The Stripping of the Altars" which shows the church was hugely popular in England. The dissolution of the monasteries lead to thousands dying on their doorsteps, as evangelical Protestantism had no mechanisms for replacing the church's role in society. Five hundred years after Henry's search for loopholes, the Anglican church still doesn't know whether it is Catholic or Protestant.

  • @dianesicgala4310

    @dianesicgala4310

    3 жыл бұрын

    Yes I agree. I have learned so much from this gentleman. I am Catholic. Was brought up in the Church of England. I converted to the Catholic Church living in Northeastern Pa.

  • @skeletalbassman1028

    @skeletalbassman1028

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@borderlands6606 she went Germany’s are you joking? Church of England was such an insane compromise, again something typically English. The Scots went more continental and even they were based off the French/Swiss model. German Protestantism didn’t really take hold in England.

  • @skeletalbassman1028

    @skeletalbassman1028

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@dianesicgala4310 what’s it like worshipping the anti-Christ, then?