In this book a reformation historian takes us inside the mind and heart of Morebath, a remote and tiny sheep farming village on the southern edge of Exmoor. The bulk...

The reign of Mary Tudor has been remembered as an era of sterile repression, when a reactionary monarch launched a doomed attempt to reimpose Catholicism on an unwilling nation. Above all, the burning alive of more than 280 men and women for their religious beliefs seared the rule of "Bloody Mary" into the protestant imagination as an alien aberration in the onward and upward march of the English-speaking peoples.

In this controversial reassessment, the renowned reformation historian Eamon Duffy argues that Mary's regime was neither inept nor backward looking. Led by the queen's...

In this richly illustrated book, religious historian Eamon Duffy discusses the Book of Hours, unquestionably the most intimate and most widely used book of the later Middle Ages. He examines surviving copies of the personal prayer books which were used for private, domestic devotions, and in which people commonly left traces of their lives. Manuscript prayers, biographical jottings, affectionate messages, autographs, and pious paste-ins often crowd the margins, flyleaves, and blank spaces of such books. From these sometimes clumsy jottings, viewed by generations of librarians and art...

The Bishops of Rome have been Christianity's most powerful leaders for nearly two millennia, and their influence has extended far beyond the purely spiritual. The popes have played a central role in the history of Europe and the wider world, not only shouldering the spiritual burdens of their ancient office, but also in contending with - and sometimes precipitating - the cultural and political crises of their times. In an acclaimed series of BBC radio broadcasts Eamon Duffy explored the impact of ten popes he judged to be among 'the most influential in history'. With this book, readers may...

'The richness of the Church's past is a liberation, not a straitjacket. It is a source of confidence in launching into and uncharted future.' Eamon Duffy is both a practising Roman Catholic and distinguished historian, whose writings have changed the course of English Reformation studies. In Faith of Our Fathers, Duffy considers the range of Catholic belief and practice, from prayer for the dead and veneration of the Eucharist, to the place of Mary and the authority of the Pope. In the process he explores the ways in which religious tradition can be a vital Christian resource in the...

J.A. Froude was one of the finest English literary stylists of the Victorian age. But he was highly critical of Mary Tudor, whose reign he viewed as something of a disaster. Eamon Duffy takes a very different view and so this book will spark off even more controversy about this most maligned of English monarchs.

"Duffy enlivens the long march through church history with anecdotes that bring the different pontiffs to life. . . . Saints and Sinners is a remarkable achievement."--Piers Paul Read, The Times (London)

"A distinguished text . . . offering plenty of historical facts and sobering, valuable...