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Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain . Edited by Jessica Martin and Alec Ryrie . St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Surrey, U.K. : Ashgate , 2012. xi + 285 pp. $134.95 cloth.
Book Reviews and Notes
This collection of essays is the second produced by an interdisciplinary research network that Jessica Martin and Alec Ryrie, along with Judith Maltby and Natalie Mears, have assembled for the purpose of examining "the whole question of worship and devotion in the early modern period" (3). The first, Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain (Surrey, U.K: Ashgate, 2008), centered on devotion in the public sphere. This one addresses the spiritual habits of individuals, families, and small group gatherings. Martin and Ryrie refer to the early modern period as "shifting and fluid" in their introduction (3), and indeed, a theme running through these twelve articles is the shifting and fluid quality of private and domestic devotion in Britain following the Reformation. Leaders of every major confession and persuasion sought to influence the religious habits of the faithful at home, as with public worship. Catholics were forced to adapt traditional practices to the constraints of a new status quo, while Protestants sought a thoroughgoing reformation of the early modern household, breaking new and uncertain ground in the process.
Accessing the private devotional experiences of past ages is a formidable research task, the editors acknowledge. This explains why there have been relatively few attempts, and why a volume like this one is needed. While the...