This is the first comprehensive study of one of the most important aspects of the Reformation in England: its impact on the status of the dead. Protestant reformers insisted vehemently that between heaven and hell there was no 'middle place' of purgatory where the souls of the departed could be assisted by the prayers of those still living on earth. This was no remote theological proposition, but a revolutionary doctrine affecting the lives of all sixteenth-century English people, and the ways in which their Church and society were organized.
This book illuminates the (sometimes...

This is the first comprehensive study of one of the most important aspects of the Reformation in England: its impact on the status of the dead. It explores attitudes towards the dead in pre-Reformation religious culture, and traces the uncertain progress of the 'reformation of the dead' attempted by Protestant authorities who sought to stamp out belief in purgatory and associated rituals. It also provides detailed surveys of Protestant perceptions of the afterlife, of the cultural meanings of the appearance of ghosts, and of the patterns of commemoration characteristic of post-Reformation...

Although much has been published on the social history of death, this is the first book to give a comprehensive account of attitudes toward the dead--above all the "placing" of the dead, in physical, spiritual and social terms--in order to reveal the social and religious outlook of past societies. The contributions range widely geographically, from Scotland to Transylvania, and address a spectrum of themes: attitudes toward the corpse, patterns of burial, forms of commemoration, the treatment of dead infants, the nature of the afterlife, and ghosts.