Alec Ryrie
Biographic Data
| ID | 1011314 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alec Ryrie |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alec |
| FAMILY NAME | Ryrie |
| SIGNATURE | RYRIE A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 16 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 30 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Living the Puritan Life
Puritans were wary of routine or of regular piety, as their theology convinced them that the Christian life ought to consist of steady and observable progress towards godliness. This created a distinct fear of ‘backsliding’ or of religious stasis, and could produce anxiety if their lives failed to match this ideal. The essay explores various ways puritans tried to manage this problem, from ‘pacing’ their moral progress to attempts to shock themse…
David Lindenfeld, World Christianity and Indigenous Experience
Four Axes of Mission
This article offers a framework for historical analysis of the goals of Protestant missionary projects. ‘Conversion’ in Protestantism is not clearly defined, is liable to be falsified and may (in some missionary views) require preparatory work of various kinds before it can be attempted. For these reasons, Protestant missionaries have adopted a variety of intermediate and proxy goals for their work, goals which it is argued can be organised onto …
Contesting Orthodoxies in the History of Christianity
Christianity is a hugely diverse and quarrelsome family of faiths, but most Christians have nevertheless set great store by orthodoxy - literally, 'right opinion' - even if they cannot agree what that orthodoxy should be. The notion that there is a 'catholic', or universal, Christian faith - that which, according to the famous fifth-century formula, has been believed everywhere, at all times and by all people - is itself an act of faith: to recon…
Contesting Orthodoxies in the History of Christianity
Seeking the Seekers
The Seekers, a supposed sect which flourished in late 1640s England, have generally been neglected by historians, with the exception of Quaker historiography, in which the Seekers play a pivotal but supporting role. This article argues that the Seeker phenomenon is worth attending to in its own right. Perhaps deriving from spiritualist, radical and Dutch Collegiant roots, it also represents the logical outcome of English Baptists and other radica…
A Half-Century Retrospect
The Unsteady Beginnings of English Protestant Martyrology 1
The Reformation's first martyrs burned in Ant-werp in July 1523, and the following year Martin Luther wrote a ballad hailing them as martyrs and narrating their sufferings. Protestant martyrologists were of course heirs both to the martyrology of the primitive church and to the medieval hagiographic tradition. In his 1533 commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, William Tyndale avoids the numerous opportunities which his text offers him to make mar…
Moderate Voices in the European Reformation
Contents: Introduction: Between coercion and persuasion, Luc Racaut and Alec Ryrie Diplomacy, evangelism and dynastic war: the brothers Du Bellay at the service of Francis I, Alexandra Kess A diagnosis of religious moderation: Matthew Parker and the 1559 settlement, Louise Campbell A mini-'colloquy of Poissy' in Brittany: inter-confessional dialogue in Nantes in 1562, Elizabeth Tingle Immanuel Tremellius and the avoidance of controversy, Kenneth …
The Age of Reformation
The Age of Reformation charts how religion, politics and social change were always intimately interlinked in the sixteenth century, from the murderous politics of the Tudor court to the building and fragmentation of new religious and social identities in the parishes. In this book, Alec Ryrie provides an authoritative overview of the religious and political reformations of the sixteenth century. This turbulent century saw Protestantism come to En…
The Ethics of Atheism
The history of a sect can scarcely avoid dancing with sectarianism. Even if the sect has vanished from the earth, it is difficult not to become either a defender or a critic, and when there are controversies still living, history cannot help but feed them and feed off them. The only certain way to avoid this is to retreat inside the sect entirely, becoming part of a world where it is the only and obvious subject of interest. And so the histories …
Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain
Contents: Introduction: worship and the parish church, Natalie Mears and Alec Ryrie Teaching in praying words? Worship and theology in the early modern English parish, Hannah Cleugh Special nationwide worship and the Book of Common Prayer in England, Wales and Ireland, 1533-1642, Natalie Mears The Elizabethan Primers: symptoms of an ambiguous settlement or devotional weaning?, Bryan D. Spinks The fall and rise of fasting in the British Reformatio…
Protestantism’ as a Historical Category
The term ‘Protestant’ itself is a historical accident, but the category of western Christians who have separated from Rome since 1517 remains a useful one. The confessionalisation thesis, which has dominated recent Reformation historiography, instead posits the two major Protestant confessions and Tridentine Catholicism as its categories, but this can produce a false parallelism in which the nature of the relationship between the confessions is o…
Sister Reformations II - Schwesterreformationen II
The authors of this volume deal with the similarities and differences between the Reformation in England and in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in regard to Christian ethics. Although it was understood by all sides that ethics was part of the Christian life, its place in theology was a matter of dispute, not only between the Reformation and its opponents but also among the various schools of thought in the Reformation. The articles in …
Moderation, Modernity and the Reformation
Those of us who argue about the history of the Reformation tend to maintain that we are arguing about history. Yet the peculiar fascination of the early modern period is that it is both distant enough to be alien and close enough to be bound up with the present. It is hard to write thoughtful scholarship on the period that does not raise questions about how the contemporary world arose from the early modern one. In particular, those who like to i…
Being Protestant in Reformation Britain
Provides a comprehensive account of what it meant to live a Protestant life in England and Scotland between 1530 and 1640.
Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain
Martin, Jessica and Alec Ryrie (eds.). Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain. An article from journal Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme (Volume 36, Number 3, Summer 2013, pp. 5-200), on Érudit
Eamon Duffy, Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition
Puritanism
One of the little inconsistencies of modern Western popular culture and history is that ‘the Reformation’ is broadly viewed as a Good Thing; but Puritanism, one of its most purebred offspring, is unquestionably a Bad Thing. The need to deal with those twin perceptions determines the shape of these two books in Oxford University Press's Very Short Introductions series. Unlike early modern publishers, who were perfectly capable of calling a brick-s…
The Psalms and Confrontation in English and Scottish Protestantism
Article The Psalms and Confrontation in English and Scottish Protestantism was published on October 1, 2010 in the journal Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte - Archive for Reformation History (volume 101, issue 1).
Patents, Pictures and Patronage
Paths Not Taken in the British Reformations
Traditional historiographies of the Reformation, seeing it as a unified, directed transition from Catholicism to Protestantism, seem increasingly untenable. This article looks in detail at three individuals from the British Reformation whose careers did not fit this pattern: a Scotsman, John Eldar, and two Englishmen, John Proctor and John Redman. Enthusiasts for Henry VIII's Reformation, they found themselves alarmed, but disempowered and compro…
The Reinvention of Devotion in the British Reformations
The ideal Protestant life was built around two critical events: conversion and death. At the first, the believer received justification and the assurance of salvation; at the second, the promise once received came into its fullness. This pattern was implicit from the earliest days of the Reformation, and when the English Puritans of William Perkins’ school mapped out a schematic for the Protestant life they made it explicit. Theologically, this p…
Congregations, Conventicles and the Nature of Early Scottish Protestantism
Journal Article Congregations, Conventicles and the Nature of Early Scottish Protestantism Get access Alec Ryrie Alec Ryrie University of Birmingham Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 191, Issue 1, May 2006, Pages 45–76, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtj006 Published: 01 May 2006
An Antidote to the English
Reform without Frontiers in the Last Years of Catholic Scotland
Journal Article Reform without Frontiers in the Last Years of Catholic Scotland Get access Alec Ryrie Alec Ryrie Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume 119, Issue 480, February 2004, Pages 27–56, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/119.480.27 Published: 01 February 2004
The Strange Death of Lutheran England
A Lutheran settlement was the natural outcome for a politically imposed Reformation such as that of Henry VIII . Some aspects of his settlement pointed in that direction, and English evangelicalism during his reign leaned more towards Lutheranism than has been hitherto appreciated. Reformed views only came to dominate the movement at the very end of the reign. This shift reflects the waning influence of German Lutheranism in England, and arguably…
Protestantism’ as a Historical Category
The term ‘Protestant’ itself is a historical accident, but the category of western Christians who have separated from Rome since 1517 remains a useful one. The confessionalisation thesis, which has dominated recent Reformation historiography, instead posits the two major Protestant confessions and Tridentine Catholicism as its categories, but this can produce a false parallelism in which the nature of the relationship between the confessions is o…
Paths Not Taken in the British Reformations
Traditional historiographies of the Reformation, seeing it as a unified, directed transition from Catholicism to Protestantism, seem increasingly untenable. This article looks in detail at three individuals from the British Reformation whose careers did not fit this pattern: a Scotsman, John Eldar, and two Englishmen, John Proctor and John Redman. Enthusiasts for Henry VIII's Reformation, they found themselves alarmed, but disempowered and compro…
Seeking the Seekers
The Seekers, a supposed sect which flourished in late 1640s England, have generally been neglected by historians, with the exception of Quaker historiography, in which the Seekers play a pivotal but supporting role. This article argues that the Seeker phenomenon is worth attending to in its own right. Perhaps deriving from spiritualist, radical and Dutch Collegiant roots, it also represents the logical outcome of English Baptists and other radica…
Congregations, Conventicles and the Nature of Early Scottish Protestantism
Journal Article Congregations, Conventicles and the Nature of Early Scottish Protestantism Get access Alec Ryrie Alec Ryrie University of Birmingham Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 191, Issue 1, May 2006, Pages 45–76, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtj006 Published: 01 May 2006
Divine Kingship and Royal Theology in Henry VIII's Reformation
The nature of Henry VIII's religious policy in the last decade of his life remains contentious. He cannot convincingly be described either as a religious conservative or as a quasi-Protestant reformer. His attempted settlement must instead be considered on its own terms. However, it was more coherent than some have allowed. The king's personal religious outlook is central to this: it did not determine his regime's policies, but it was the hub aro…
The Rough Wooings
Mary Queen of Scots was a daughter of debate from the week of her birth. The Rough Wooings for her hand in marriage were the last major war between Scotland and England. This is the story of her beginning, which involves the major figures of early modern history - such as Henry VIII and Francois I
Power and Protest in England 1525-1640
Between 1525 and 1632 England faced the usual human tragedies of war, epidemic, and food shortages, and the unusual strains of dynastic crises, religious revolutions, and the novelty of constant inflation. The efficiency of government and the cohesion of society were severly tested but, with the occasional disruptions, they were sustained. Unlike many of their neighbours, the English were not an ungovernable people - until the 1640s, that is. How…
The Strange Death of Lutheran England
A Lutheran settlement was the natural outcome for a politically imposed Reformation such as that of Henry VIII . Some aspects of his settlement pointed in that direction, and English evangelicalism during his reign leaned more towards Lutheranism than has been hitherto appreciated. Reformed views only came to dominate the movement at the very end of the reign. This shift reflects the waning influence of German Lutheranism in England, and arguably…
The Gospel and Henry VIII
During the last decade of Henry VIII's life, his Protestant subjects struggled to reconcile two loyalties: to their Gospel and to their king. This book tells the story of that struggle and describes how a radicalised English Protestantism emerged from it. Focusing on the critical but neglected period 1539–47, Dr Ryrie argues that these years were not the 'conservative reaction' of conventional historiography, but a time of political fluidity and …
Geography, Science and National Identity
Stephen Gardiner and the Making of a Protestant Villain
Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester 1531-55, is familiar as Wily Winchester, the villain of Foxe's Actes and Monuments. Foxe, however, was building on a long evangelical tradition which cast Gardiner as Antichrist's chief agent in England. This reputation was grounded less on Gardiner's own conduct than on the reformers' need for a scapegoat to explain the failure of their early hopes and to exonerate Henry VIII. Beginning in the late 1530s, t…
An Antidote to the English
A Kindly Place? Living in Sixteenth-Century Scotland
How did people survive in an age of private wars, foreign invasion and political uncertainty, of economic hardship and insecurity, of dislocation in religious and cultural life? How did they cope from day to day - lairds and tenants, merchants and craftsmen, rural labourers, urban-dwellers in service jobs, wives, widows and unmarried women? This book focuses on the people of 16th-century Scotland as individuals, families and communities, the peop…
Reform without Frontiers in the Last Years of Catholic Scotland
Journal Article Reform without Frontiers in the Last Years of Catholic Scotland Get access Alec Ryrie Alec Ryrie Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume 119, Issue 480, February 2004, Pages 27–56, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/119.480.27 Published: 01 February 2004
Congregations, Conventicles and the Nature of Early Scottish Protestantism
Journal Article Congregations, Conventicles and the Nature of Early Scottish Protestantism Get access Alec Ryrie Alec Ryrie University of Birmingham Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 191, Issue 1, May 2006, Pages 45–76, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtj006 Published: 01 May 2006
The Reinvention of Devotion in the British Reformations
The ideal Protestant life was built around two critical events: conversion and death. At the first, the believer received justification and the assurance of salvation; at the second, the promise once received came into its fullness. This pattern was implicit from the earliest days of the Reformation, and when the English Puritans of William Perkins’ school mapped out a schematic for the Protestant life they made it explicit. Theologically, this p…
Paths Not Taken in the British Reformations
Traditional historiographies of the Reformation, seeing it as a unified, directed transition from Catholicism to Protestantism, seem increasingly untenable. This article looks in detail at three individuals from the British Reformation whose careers did not fit this pattern: a Scotsman, John Eldar, and two Englishmen, John Proctor and John Redman. Enthusiasts for Henry VIII's Reformation, they found themselves alarmed, but disempowered and compro…
The Psalms and Confrontation in English and Scottish Protestantism
Article The Psalms and Confrontation in English and Scottish Protestantism was published on October 1, 2010 in the journal Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte - Archive for Reformation History (volume 101, issue 1).
Patents, Pictures and Patronage
Puritanism
One of the little inconsistencies of modern Western popular culture and history is that ‘the Reformation’ is broadly viewed as a Good Thing; but Puritanism, one of its most purebred offspring, is unquestionably a Bad Thing. The need to deal with those twin perceptions determines the shape of these two books in Oxford University Press's Very Short Introductions series. Unlike early modern publishers, who were perfectly capable of calling a brick-s…
Being Protestant in Reformation Britain
Provides a comprehensive account of what it meant to live a Protestant life in England and Scotland between 1530 and 1640.
Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain
Martin, Jessica and Alec Ryrie (eds.). Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain. An article from journal Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme (Volume 36, Number 3, Summer 2013, pp. 5-200), on Érudit
Eamon Duffy, Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition
Sister Reformations II - Schwesterreformationen II
The authors of this volume deal with the similarities and differences between the Reformation in England and in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in regard to Christian ethics. Although it was understood by all sides that ethics was part of the Christian life, its place in theology was a matter of dispute, not only between the Reformation and its opponents but also among the various schools of thought in the Reformation. The articles in …
Moderation, Modernity and the Reformation
Those of us who argue about the history of the Reformation tend to maintain that we are arguing about history. Yet the peculiar fascination of the early modern period is that it is both distant enough to be alien and close enough to be bound up with the present. It is hard to write thoughtful scholarship on the period that does not raise questions about how the contemporary world arose from the early modern one. In particular, those who like to i…
Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain
Contents: Introduction: worship and the parish church, Natalie Mears and Alec Ryrie Teaching in praying words? Worship and theology in the early modern English parish, Hannah Cleugh Special nationwide worship and the Book of Common Prayer in England, Wales and Ireland, 1533-1642, Natalie Mears The Elizabethan Primers: symptoms of an ambiguous settlement or devotional weaning?, Bryan D. Spinks The fall and rise of fasting in the British Reformatio…
Protestantism’ as a Historical Category
The term ‘Protestant’ itself is a historical accident, but the category of western Christians who have separated from Rome since 1517 remains a useful one. The confessionalisation thesis, which has dominated recent Reformation historiography, instead posits the two major Protestant confessions and Tridentine Catholicism as its categories, but this can produce a false parallelism in which the nature of the relationship between the confessions is o…
Moderate Voices in the European Reformation
Contents: Introduction: Between coercion and persuasion, Luc Racaut and Alec Ryrie Diplomacy, evangelism and dynastic war: the brothers Du Bellay at the service of Francis I, Alexandra Kess A diagnosis of religious moderation: Matthew Parker and the 1559 settlement, Louise Campbell A mini-'colloquy of Poissy' in Brittany: inter-confessional dialogue in Nantes in 1562, Elizabeth Tingle Immanuel Tremellius and the avoidance of controversy, Kenneth …
The Age of Reformation
The Age of Reformation charts how religion, politics and social change were always intimately interlinked in the sixteenth century, from the murderous politics of the Tudor court to the building and fragmentation of new religious and social identities in the parishes. In this book, Alec Ryrie provides an authoritative overview of the religious and political reformations of the sixteenth century. This turbulent century saw Protestantism come to En…
History (28 works) · Philosophy (23 works) · Political science (20 works) · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity (19 works) · Religious studies (17 works) · Art (16 works) · History (16 works) · Law (16 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Protestantism (12 works)