Awards

• Winner of American Historical Association Morris D. Forkosch Prize 2000.
• Winner of Longman/History Today Book of the Year Award 2000.
• Winner of Winner of the Longman/History Today History Book of the Year Award 2000 and the American Historical Association Morris D. Forkosch Prize for 2000.
• Winner of Winner of the Longman/History Today History Book of the Year Award 2000 and the American Historical Association Morris D. Forkosch Prize for 2000.

Overview

Providence in Early Modern England is the most extensive study to date of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century belief that God actively intervened in human affairs to punish, reward, warn, try, and chastise. Providentialism has often been seen as a distinctive hallmark of puritan piety. However, Dr Walsham argues that it was a cluster of assumptions which penetrated every sector of English society, cutting across the boundaries created by status and creed, education and wealth. She explores a range of dramatic events and puzzling phenomena in which contemporaries detected the divine finger at work: tragic accidents and sudden deaths, strange sights and mysterious portents, monstrous births and popular prophets, terrible disasters and raging epidemics. She shows how providence helped forge a powerful myth of Protestant nationhood and a lively sense of confessional identity and how, simultaneously, it exacerbated the political and ecclesiastical tensions which culminated in the outbreak of the civil wars in 1642. Framed as a contribution to the continuing debate about the impact, character, and broader repercussions of the English Reformation, this book seeks to deflect attention away from the negative and iconoclastic aspects of the advent of Protestantism towards the undercurrents of continuity that eased the enormous upheavals of the era. It highlights some of the ways in which people adjusted to the religious and cultural revolution as a permanent fact. Based on a detailed analysis of sermons and tracts published by Protestant ministers, and ballads and pamphlets reporting 'true and wonderful newes', it also sheds light on the role of literacy and print in a society in which oral and visual modes of communication continued to thrive.

Full Product Details

9780198208877

Table of Contents

Reviews

In this wise and superbly illustrated book, Alexandra Walsham recalls the world where Calvinism met medieval religion ... Walsham pleasingly eschews postmodern indulgence of the fatuousness of past belief. She writes with a sure grasp of Reformation theology, and clearly had great fun with this book ... we can never again think of Protestantism as dour and dull, now that Alexandra Walsham has introduced us to a pamphlet alerting the godly public to the discovery of A most strange and wonderful herring. * Diarmaid MacCulloch, Times Literary Supplement * an extraordinarily ambitious work...readers will keep turning the pages eagerly with mingled awe, fascination, and, yes, a keen sense of timeliness. This is a book about the past that resonates in the present. * History Today *

an extraordinarily ambitious work...readers will keep turning the pages eagerly with mingled awe, fascination, and, yes, a keen sense of timeliness. This is a book about the past that resonates in the present. History Today In this wise and superbly illustrated book, Alexandra Walsham recalls the world where Calvinism met medieval religion ... Walsham pleasingly eschews postmodern indulgence of the fatuousness of past belief. She writes with a sure grasp of Reformation theology, and clearly had great fun with this book ... we can never again think of Protestantism as dour and dull, now that Alexandra Walsham has introduced us to a pamphlet alerting the godly public to the discovery of A most strange and wonderful herring. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Times Literary Supplement

`This is a brilliant book by an outstanding young scholar' American Historical Review `This extraordinarily rich and subtle book represents a major addition to a burgeoning scholarship on the inculturation of the English Reformation. The specificity of the subject matter belies the scope of the treatment.' Peter Marshall, University of Warwick, Ecclesiastical History Vol 51/4 `In the course of an extremely broad-ranging discussion, various cultural paradigms of medieval Christianity are shown emerging in a new Protestant guise ... Most impressive is Walsham's remarkable forensic work on Protestant encyclopedias of providential punishments.' Peter Marshall, University of Warwick, Ecclesiastical History Vol 51/4 `Walsham's footnotes display an awesome command of contemporary printed sources and of modern scholarship in a variety of disciplines. The importance of particular episodes in shaping and exemplifying an understanding of the workings of providence is brought out with great skill.' Peter Marshall, University of Warwick, Ecclesiastical History Vol 51/4 `Despite the force and clarity of the thesis, there is throughout a welcome absence of dogmatism, and an openness to alternative readings.' Peter Marshall, University of Warwick, Ecclesiastical History Vol 51/4 `Superbly written, and refreshingly free of modish jargon and intrusive theorising, Walsham's book is a model for those historians still struggling to say something meaningful and comprehensible about the patterns of cultural change in early modern England.' Peter Marshall, University of Warwick, Ecclesiastical History Vol 51/4 `Dr Walsham has produced an excellent study, learned, bold, sensitive, fluent, controlled, rich and astonishingly widely-researched.' Christopher Haigh, EHR Sept. 00. Vol.115, No.463. `chapters packed with densely detailed information yet with never a dull page.' Janet L. Nelson, History Today, May 2000. `readers will keep turning the pages eagerly with mingled awe, fascination, and, yes, a keen sense of timeliness. This is a book about the past that resonates in the present.' Janet L. Nelson, History Today, May 2000. `Waltham has written a religious and cultural history of Early Modern England that is inclusive and alternative at the same time. It's an extraordinarily ambitious work, with a humanity, wisdom, and balance.' Janet L. Nelson, History Today, May 2000. `In this wise and superbly illustrated book, Alexandra Walsham recalls the world where Calvinism met medieval religion ... Walsham pleasingly eschews postmodern indulgence of the fatuousness of past belief. She writes with a sure grasp of Reformation theology, and clearly had great fun with this book ... we can never again think of Protestantism as dour and dull, now that Alexandra Walsham has introduced us to a pamphlet alerting the godly public to the discovery of A most strange and wonderful herring.' Diarmaid MacCulloch, Times Literary Supplement `Walsham pleasingly eschews postmodern indulgence of the fatuousness of past belief. She writes with a sure grasp of Reformation theology, and clearly had great fun with this book.' Diarmaid MacCulloch, Times Lit. Sup. 7th July 2000. `an extraordinarily ambitious work...readers will keep turning the pages eagerly with mingled awe, fascination, and, yes, a keen sense of timeliness. This is a book about the past that resonates in the present.' History Today

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