The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England,1400-1580

Product Information

On Maundy Thursday, after the Mass of the Last Supper and procession with the Host to the Altar of Repose, the other altars in the church were ritually stripped of their altar cloths and ornaments in preparation for the stark liturgy of Good Friday, while the ministers and choir recited Psalm 21, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? The people then processed round the church carrying lighted candles, and the “Nunc Dimittis” was sung. A wooden cross sits in front of the bare chancel for the veneration of the cross ceremony, which occurs during the United Methodist Good Friday liturgy. A] vigorous and eloquent book, a work of daring revision and a masterpiece of the historical imagination. The Stripping of the Altar or the Stripping of the Chancel is a ceremony carried out in many Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, and Anglican churches on Maundy Thursday.

The Stripping of the Altars - The Catholic Thing The Stripping of the Altars - The Catholic Thing

It commences by examining their understanding of mendacity, which provides the standard for our analysis of their ministry. Despite such reservations, the critical response to the book was, with few a exceptions, overwhelmingly positive. It is the reason Pride is the queen bee in the hive of the deadly sins; and in humility, Love becomes its opposite, theological virtue. Instead they embedded their views on violence and nonviolence within their apologetic stances on worship and doctrine.It is more than mnemonic; the Last Supper itself is not merely “remembered” in the liturgical events of the Triduum, or in the repetitions of the daily Mass. While its title suggests a focus on iconoclasm, with an allusion to the ceremony of stripping the Altar of its ornaments in preparation for Good Friday, its concerns are broader, dealing with the shift in religious sensibilities in English society between 1400 and 1580.

The Stripping of the Altars by Eamon Duffy | Waterstones The Stripping of the Altars by Eamon Duffy | Waterstones

Angels gave the dreamer a candle to offer in her turn to the priest, according to custom, but she refused to part with so great a relic: the angel tried to wrest it from her grip, and she awoke to find the broken stump in her hand.I am very grateful to Eamon Duffy for writing such a detailed account, and for making it all such a great read. Now I understand how the reformers and the monarchs who supported them managed to change the church of England from the Catholic church it was into a very different, and very protestant organisation. In addition to the stripping of the altar at the conclusion of the Maundy Thursday liturgy in Lutheran Churches, the "lectern and pulpit are [also] left bare until Easter to symbolize the humiliation and barrenness of the cross.

The stripping of the altars : Eamon Duffy : Free Download

In this extract, Duffy explores the feast of Candlemas, the festival commemorating the presentation of Jesus at the Temple. In common with conservative Christians generally, since the inauguration of the Atlantic Theological Conferences, participants have habitually complained about secularization as one of the chief enemies to living an authentic Christian life. The next section looks at the Reformed traditions tentative steps towards an ideology of religious tolerance in Calvin's early years as an outcast from France and Beza's elder years following the St. Here in the Prefatory Address to the 1536 edition of the Institutes, in the course of a defence against the charge 'that we falsely make the Word of God our pretext, and wickedly corrupt it,' Calvin's 'very clear rule' sounds disarmingly simple. While saying this, he began reciting passages from that Psalm, dwelling with special emphasis on, “The assembly of the wicked have inclosed me.

The candles so offered were part of the laity’s parochial dues, and were probably often burned before the principal image of the Virgin in the church.