The ‘beauty of holiness’ revisited: an analysis of investment in parish church interiors in Dorset, Somerset, and Wiltshire, 1560-1640

[摘要] This analysis of the extant material evidence of the interiors of parish churches in Dorset, Somersetand Wiltshire, 1560 -1640, challenges traditional assumptions about who decorated them, and whatmotivated them. Local studies show that what might appear as compliance to externally imposedrequirements could also be a more complex story of parochial priorities and of local catalysts; someradical changes could appear traditional. Whilst donors' religious and secular motives were ofteninterwoven, this study will show that there was no clear alignment between confessional positions anddecoration, and that Protestantism continued to embrace the visual in parish churches. It will be arguedthat the enhancing of churches predated the 1630s, and anything that could be called Laudian. It is acentral argument that Laudian should not be used as the reference point for church decoration, whenProtestants of many hues, and some of no evidenced confessional position, were materialising 'thebeauty of holiness'. In displaying layered identities, it will be shown that investors used similar imagesin domestic and public spaces. It will bring a new analysis of the furniture, fittings and fabric of parishchurches which develops an understanding of the changed worshipping experience in those eightyyears.

[发布机构] University:University of Birmingham;Department:School of History and Cultures, Department of History

[关键词] D History General and Old World;DA Great Britain