The Rule of Moderation: Violence, Religion and the Politics of Restraint in Early Modern England

ISBN-13: 9780521119726 / Angielski / Twarda / 2011 / 396 str.

Ethan H. Shagan

Opis

Why was it that whenever the Tudor-Stuart regime most loudly trumpeted its moderation, the regime was at its most vicious? With the answer to this fundamental question at its heart, The Rule of Moderation comprehensively rewrites the history of early modern England, showing that many of its key developments the via media of Anglicanism, the rise of the 'middle sort', the idea of political liberty, the development of empire, the rise of religious toleration were defined and defended as instances of coercive and aggressive moderation, producing the 'middle way' through the forcible restraint of apparently dangerous excesses in Church, state and society. Ethan Shagan draws on literary and historical sources to illuminate the subtle violence of English history and explain how, paradoxically, England came to represent reason, civility and moderation to a world it slowly conquered. The quintessentially English quality of moderation was, at heart, an ideology of control."

Recenzje

'A profound and important book, which deserves to be widely discussed and debated. Shagan issues a provocative challenge to complacent acceptance of claims about the intrinsic or relative 'moderation' of England's church, system of government, and empire, from pre-modern into modern times.' Peter Marshall, University of Warwick

Spis treści

Part I. Moderate Foundations: Introduction; 1. The bridle of moderation; Part II. Moderate Churches: 2. Violence and the via media in the reign of Henry VIII; 3. Conformist moderation; 4. Puritan moderation; Part III. Moderate Rule: 5. English expansion and the empire of moderation; 6. Social moderation and the governance of the middle sort; 7. Moderate freedom in the English Revolution; 8. Toleration became moderate in seventeenth-century England; Conclusion.