Get help with access Institutional accessĪccess to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. The book concludes with the paradoxical reflection that the religious and cultural problem represented by the dead could be both a force for radical change, and for cautious conservatism, and that the necessity of dealing with the dead was a profound influence on the complex character of the English Reformation as a whole. Yet the Reformation did not lead to a compete ‘separation’ of the living and the dead, and substantial continuities remained. Against the suggestion of some literary critics and post-revisionist historians - that the space left by the demise of purgatory was readily filled with functional substitutes - it argues that purgatory's disappearance represented a cultural change of profound significance. This concluding chapter emphasises how changing attitudes towards the dead represented a revolution of sensibilities, and led to the creation of new patterns of church life new forms of public and civic commemoration new uses of ritual space new possibilities for cultural expression.
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