The Trials of Margaret Clitherow
Subtitle: persecution, martyrdom and the politics of sanctity in Elizabethan England
Publisher: Continuum
Published: 2011
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 244
ISBN-13: 9781441104366
Description: The story of Margaret Clitherow represents one of the most important yet troubling events in post-Reformation history. Her trial, execution and subsequent legend have provoked controversy ever since she became a cause celebre in the time of Elizabeth I. Through extensive new research into the contemporary accounts of her arrest and trial the authors have pieced together a new reading of the surrounding events. The result is a work which considers the question of religious sainthood and martyrdom as well as the relationship between society, the state and the Church in Britain during the sixteenth century. They establish the full ideological significance of the trial and demonstrate that the politics of post-Reformation British society cannot be understood without the wider local, national and international contexts in which they occurred. This is a major contribution to our understanding of both English Catholicism and the Protestant regime of the Elizabethan period. - Publisher.
Table of contents: title: The controversial Mrs. Clitherow; title: The radicalization of the mid-Elizabethan Catholics; title: Mrs. Clitherow, her Catholic household and her (both Protestant and Catholic) enemies; title: The quarrels of the English Catholic community.; title: Recusancy and its discontents; title: Thomas Bell and his critics; title: Christianity sans eglise : the religion of the heart among Catholics and Puritans; title: Fainthearted Catholics and real Catholics : Mrs. Clitherow and the local politics of conformity; title: The reckoning : arrest, trial and execution.; title: Mad, bad and dangerous to know?; title: Arrest; title: Trial; title: Awaiting death in the prison; title: Appealing to the court of public opinion; title: Endgame : from life to death; title: Mrs. Clitherow and the English Catholic community after 1586.; title: After the execution; title: The tyrant and the Quisling; title: Between resistance and compromise?; title: Thomas Bell's revenge and the 1591 Proclamation.; title: Thomas Bell changes sides; title: Acting on information received; title: Reading against the grain; or what Thomas Bell had really been doing in Lancashire; title: Mrs. Clitherow vindicated?; title: The Church under the cross and the resort to the public; title: Thomas Bell and the politics of failure; title: Mrs. Clitherow entirely vindicated as the epitome of Catholic order; title: Aftermath : the English Catholic community tears itself apart in the archpriest controversy; title: Epilogue : Margaret Clitherow and the English Reformation