Stylianou, Anastasia (2018) Martyrs' blood in Reformation England. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis analyses how martyrs’ blood was constructed in sixteenth-century English martyrological writings, confessional apologetics and polemics, c. 1520-c. 1625. It uses the topic of martyrs’ blood as a lens onto wider confessional constructions of both martyrdom and confessional theologies. It argues that, despite superficial similarities, Protestants and Catholics constructed martyrs’ blood in very different ways, and that this calls into question recent scholarly trends towards seeing the confessions as having a common conception of martyrdom.

Chapter One surveys the treatment of blood and martyrdom from the Bible to the medieval West, demonstrating the main threads on which early-modern constructions of martyrdom drew. Chapter Two discusses Henrician Protestant constructions of martyrs’ blood. Chapter Three focuses on John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. Chapter Four examines the relatively unbloody rhetoric of English Catholic discussions of martyrdom, from the 1520s to 1570s. Chapter Five looks at the emergence of a rich rhetoric of martyrs’ blood in English Catholic writings from the 1580s to the 1620s. Authors examined include William Tyndale, John Bale, John Foxe, Thomas More, Reginald Pole, Robert Persons and William Allen. The thesis focuses particularly on five key elements relating to the texts’ treatment of martyrs’ blood: Eucharistic theology; materiality; temporal worldview; bloody enemies; martyrs’ blood as witness

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BR Christianity D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Christian martyrs -- England -- History -- 16th century, Martyrdom -- Christianity -- History, Blood -- Religious aspects -- Christianity, Blood in the Bible, Reformation -- England, England -- Church history -- 16th century
Official Date:	February 2018
Dates:	Date Event February 2018 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Earle, Rebecca ; Marshall, Peter, 1964 October 26-
Sponsors:	Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain)
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	309 leaves
Language:	eng

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