Within the past generation, the English Reformation has undergone a sort of reformation of its own. Scholarly consensus has shifted from understanding England's turn to Protestantism as a relatively quick and easy transition, to the acknowledgement that Protestant reform was slow, uneven, and resisted with some vigor by some segments of the population. Robert Whiting certainly has played a role in this paradigm shift; his The Blind Devotion of the English People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) argued effectively that Protestantism often failed to engage the laity on any significant level even as traditional Roman Catholicism declined, and Local Responses to the English Reformation (New York: St. Martin's, 1998) chronicled a wide array of geographically specific reactions to Protestant reform.
In this current volume, Whiting turns his attention to the ways in which the parish church in England—“the primary focus of communal life” (xvi)—changed during England's gradual turn to Protestantism (the book focuses on the time period between 1530 and 1630). Drawing upon both material and documentary evidence from hundreds of churches in England—with particular focus on Yorkshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Devon, and Cornwall—Whiting catalogues the physical changes that occurred within parish churches, and offers insight into the theological as well as the socioeconomic underpinnings and implications.
The book is divided into two sections: “Ritual Requirements” and “Additional Components.” “Ritual Requirements” further divides into seven chapters, each addressing a particular material tool of the pre-Reformation liturgy: screens, altars, fonts, plate, cloth, books, and receptacles. The seven chapters in “Additional Components” focus on religious expression found in paintings, stained glass, images, music, church furniture, galleries, and memorials. Each chapter in the book offers a brief description of the particular topic under investigation, its function within pre-Reformation Christianity, and the modifications wrought by Protestant reform.
In some respects, this is territory already well traveled. It is hardly revelatory to note that Protestants replaced the altar with the communion table, or that with the coming of Protestantism, Latin service books all but disappeared. No one will be surprised to read that visual images were de-emphasized and/or destroyed, or that articulations of biblical authority began to supersede expressions of clerical power. Whiting rehearses regionally specific reactions to Protestant reforms that already have been well documented (much of it his own documentation). He also relies heavily on scholarship from the beginning of the twentieth century, most notably Francis Bond's work on English church architecture (Whiting graciously acknowledges Bond in the introduction, along with several other scholars).
This is not to say, however, that this book has nothing to offer. This book's contribution lies in the way that Whiting synthesizes and contextualizes the information at hand. In his discussion of altars versus communion tables, for example, he not only offers a detailed description of the physical pieces and how they would have been constructed, but also analyzes the socioeconomic conditions of those who would have constructed them (and, in some cases, destroyed them). Into this narrative he also weaves a cogent summary of the Eucharistic controversies that persisted throughout most of the time period under investigation. In the section on the role that church bells played in pre- and post-Reformation worship, Whiting reports with precision on the manufacture, purchase, and installation of bells, but also manages to evoke the sounds of a medieval Catholic world with his great descriptions of how bells functioned within traditional Roman Catholicism. Also, Whiting is careful to include contemporary voices on the various topics whenever possible, a strategy that lends welcome nuance to the narrative. It is one thing to learn that 75 percent of thirty parishes in Cornwall and Devon invested in church plate between the years 1535 and 1541; it is another to read about the parishioner in Essex who threatened (and made good on this threat) to break a piece of plate over the church clerk's head.
Written in polished and lucid prose, The Reformation of the English Parish Church will appeal to the non-specialist as an accessible introduction to Protestant reform in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While Whiting does not offer the specialist much in the way of original knowledge or insight, the book is organized in such a way that it can serve as a valuable reference work. It is clearly organized and offers an exhaustive index, as well as eight appendices that present Whiting's specific data. In addition, there are over seventy black-and-white and color photos (all taken by the author), that serve further to support the author's findings. The publishers are to be commended for producing an elegant and user-friendly edition.
