Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s 'Ecclesiastical History of the Schism of the Kingdom of England'

Download or read book Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s 'Ecclesiastical History of the Schism of the Kingdom of England' written by Spencer J. Weinreich and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-03-06 with total page 865 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1588, the Spanish Jesuit Pedro de Ribadeneyra published a history of the English Reformation, which he continued to revise until his death in 1611. Spencer J. Weinreich’s translation is the first English edition of the History, one fully alive to its metamorphoses over two decades. Weinreich’s introduction explores the text’s many dimensions—propaganda for the Spanish Armada, anti-Protestant polemic, Jesuit hagiography, consolation amid tribulation—and assesses Ribadeneyra as a historian. The extensive annotations anchor Ribadeneyra’s narrative in the historical record and reconstruct his sources, methods, and revisions. The History, long derided as mere propaganda, emerges as remarkable evidence of the centrality of historiography to the intellectual, theological, and political battles of early modern Europe.