Birth, Marriage, and Death : Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England

Couverture
OUP Oxford, 29 mai 1997 - 658 pages
From childbirth and baptism through to courtship, weddings, and funerals, every stage in the life-cycle of Tudor and Stuart England was accompanied by ritual. Even under the protestantism of the reformed Church, the spiritual and social dramas of birth, marriage, and death were graced with elaborate ceremony. Powerful and controversial protocols were in operation, shaped and altered by the influences of the Reformation, the Revolution, and the Restoration. Each of the major rituals was potentially an arena for argument, ambiguity, and dissent. Ideally, as classic rites of passage, these ceremonies worked to bring people together. But they also set up traps into which people could stumble, and tests which not everybody could pass. In practice, ritual performance revealed frictions and fractures that everyday local discourse attempted to hide or to heal. Using fascinating first-hand evidence, David Cressy shows how the making and remaking of ritual formed part of a continuing debate, sometimes strained and occasionally acrimonious, which exposed the raw nerves of society in the midst of great historical events. In doing so, he vividly brings to life the common experiences of living and dying in Tudor and Stuart England.
 

Table des matières

Introduction
1
The Management of Childbirth
35
Childbed Attendants
55
Mother and Child
80
Baptism as Sacrament and Drama
97
55
116
80
122
Crosses in Baptism
124
Prohibitions and Impediments
298
Clandestine and Irregular Marriages
316
Nuptial Vows
336
Wedding Celebrations
350
Death Comes for All
379
Ritual and Reformation
396
Funerals and Burials
421
106
447

The People with the Children
149
Changes and Challenges
173
Purification Thanksgiving and the Churching
197
Courtship and the Making of Marriage
233
Espousals Betrothals and Contracts
267
Holy Matrimony
285
The Geography of Interment
456
Conclusion
475
Notes
483
Bibliography
587
Index
625
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À propos de l'auteur (1997)

David Cressy is Professor of History at California State University, Long Beach. His recent books include Religion and Society in Early Modern England and Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England.

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