Objects, words, and religion: Popular belief and Protestantism in Early Modern England
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Date
2017
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Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract
This article deals with selected aspects of popular belief in post-Reformation England as compared
to the pre-Reformation popular tradition of the fourteenth and fifteenth century. Through a
discussion of the politics of superstition and religiously-shaped concepts of reason in Early Modern
England, this article discusses medicinal magic, and the power of objects and words in the context
of religion and popular belief, focusing in particular on leprosy and exorcism. By examining the
Protestant understanding of the supernatural as well as its polemical importance, the article
investigates the perseverance of popular belief after the Reformation and outlines some of the
reasons and politics behind this perseverance, while also examining the role of the supernatural in
the culture of belief in Early Modern England by tracing the presence and importance of particular
beliefs in popular imagination and in the way religion and confessional rhetoric made use of popular
beliefs.
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Sponsor
This research is supported by the generous funding of the Polish National Science Centre, project
no. 2013/09/N/HS2/02213.
Keywords
Early Modern England, Protestant, magic, exorcism, leprosy, medicine, pre- Reformation, belief, religion
Citation
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 52.1(2017), pp. 103-145