Death, Religion, and the Family in England, 1480-1750 (Oxford Studies in Social History) - Softcover

exhaustive research and a wealth of illustrative detail with a sensitivity to the complexities of change. It seems unlikely that the job will need to be done again, and other historians will mine his book for evidence on a host of related subjects, from the history of religion and the family to the history of embalming and undertakers ... There are points where the historian can go no further, and we must be grateful to Ralph Houlbrooke for taking us so far. His is the kind of acute and measured scholarship which shows what can be examined and imagined in the past ― and what cannot. (Paul Slack, Times Literary Supplement)

There are points where the historian can go no further, and we must be grateful to Ralph Houlbrooke for taking us so far. His is the kind of acute and measured scholarship which shows what can be examined and imagined in the past ― and what cannot. (Paul Slack, Times Literary Supplement)

The interest and importance of the social history of death have been increasingly recognized during the last thirty years. Ralph Houlbrooke examines the effects of religious change on the English `way of death' between 1480 and 1750. He discusses relatively neglected aspects of the subject, such as the death-bed, will making, and the last rites. He also examines the rich variety of commemorative media and practices and is the first to describe the development of the English funeral sermon between the late Middle Ages and the eighteenth century. Dr Houlbrooke shows how the need of the living to remember the dead remained important throughout the later medieval and early modern periods, even though its justification and means of expression changed.