Catholic and Reformed

About this book

Catholic and Reformed transcends the current boundaries of the historical debate concerning the role of religious conflict in the politics of the early Stuart period. While earlier studies have focused more narrowly on the doctrine of predestination, Dr Milton analyses the broader attitudes which underlay notions of religious orthodoxy in this period. He achieves this through the first comprehensive analysis of how contemporaries viewed the Roman and foreign Reformed Churches in the early Stuart period. Milton's account demonstrates the way in which an author's choice of a particular style of religious discourse could be used either to mediate or to provoke religious conflict. This study challenges many current historical orthodoxies. It identifies the theological novelty of Laudianism, but also exposes significant areas of ideological tension within the Jacobean Church. Its wide-ranging conclusions will be of vital concern to all students of early Stuart religion and the origins of the English civil war.