Inferior Office?: A History of Deacons in the Church of England

"In spite of the centrality of the threefold orders of bishop, priest and deacon to Anglicanism, deacons have been virtually invisible in the contemporary Church of England. ‘Inferior Office?’ is the first complete history of this neglected portion of the clergy, tracing the church’s changing theology of the diaconate from the Ordinal of 1550 to the present day. Francis Young skillfully overturns the widely held belief that before the twentieth century, the diaconate was merely a brief and nominal period of probation for priests, revealing how it became an integral part of the Elizabethan defense of conformity and exploring the diverse range of ministries assumed by lifelong deacons in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Lifelong deacons often belonged to a marginalized ‘lower class’ of the clergy that has since been forgotten, an oversight of considerable importance to the wider social history of the clergy that is corrected in this volume.'Inferior Office?' tells the story of persistent calls for the revival of a distinctive diaconate within the Victorian Church of England and situates the institution of deaconesses and later revival of the distinctive diaconate for women, as well as subsequent developments, within their wider historical context. Set against this backdrop, Young presents a balanced case both for and against the further development of a distinctive diaconate today, offering much to further discussion and debate amongst clergy of the Church of England and all those with an interest in the rich tapestry of its history."

Religion & Spirituality

Young, Francis

Christian Books & Bibles

James Clarke & Co.

Religious Studies

English Catholicism 1558–1642 (Seminar Studies)

Product Description Newly revised and updated, the second edition of English Catholicism 1558–1642 explores the position of Catholics in early modern English society, their political significance, and the internal politics of the Catholic community.The Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559 ostensibly outlawed Catholicism in England, while subsequent events such as the papal excommunication of Elizabeth I, the Spanish Armada, and the Gunpowder Plot led to draconian penalties and persecution. The problem of Catholicism preoccupied every English government between Elizabeth I and Charles I, even if the numbers of Catholics remained small. Nevertheless, a Catholic community not only survived in early modern England but also exerted a surprising degree of influence. Amid intense persecution, expressions of Catholicism ranged from those who refused outright to attend the parish church (recusants) to ‘church papists’ who remained Catholics at heart. English Catholicism 1558–1642 shows that, against all odds, Catholics remained an influential and historically significant minority of religious dissenters in early modern England.Co-authored with Francis Young, this volumehas been updated to include recent developments in the historiography of English Catholicism. It is a useful introduction for all undergraduate students interested in the English Reformation and early modern English history. About the Author Alan Dures is the author of nine textbooks and was a school head of History for 25 years, as well as a tutor for the Open University. Francis Young is the author of 14 books, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a former Volumes Editor for the Catholic Record Society.

History

Dures, Alan

Europe

Routledge

Exorcism is more widespread in contemporary England than perhaps at any other time in history. The Anglican Church is by no means the main provider of this ritual, which predominantly takes place in independent churches. However, every one of the Church of England dioceses in the country now designates at least one member of its clergy to advise on casting out demons. Such `deliverance ministry' is in theory made available to all those parishioners who desire it. Yet, as Francis Young reveals, present-day exorcism in Anglicanism is an unlikely historical anomaly. It sprang into existence in the 1970s within a church that earlier on had spent whole centuries condemning the expulsion of evil spirits as either Catholic superstition or evangelical excess. 
This book for the first time tells the full story of the Anglican Church's approach to demonology and the exorcist's ritual since the Reformation in the sixteenth century. The author explains how and why how such a remarkable transformation in the Church's attitude to the rite of exorcism took place, while also setting his subject against the canvas of the wider history of ideas.

A History of Anglican Exorcism: Deliverance and Demonology in Church Ritual

T&T Clark

About the Author\nFrancis Young is Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and achieved his PhD in History from the University of Cambridge, UK. He is the author of The Gages of Hengrave and Suffolk Catholicism, 1640-1767 (2015) and The Abbey of Bury St Edmunds: History, Legacy and Discovery (2016), amongst others.\nTreason and magic were first linked together during the reign of Edward II. Theories of occult conspiracy then regularly led to major political scandals, such as the trial of Eleanor Cobham Duchess of Gloucester in 1441. While accusations of magical treason against high-ranking figures were indeed a staple of late medieval English power politics, they acquired new significance at the Reformation when the 'superstition' embodied by magic came to be associated with proscribed Catholic belief. Francis Young here offers the first concerted historical analysis of allegations of the use of magic either to harm or kill the monarch, or else manipulate the course of political events in England, between the fourteenth century and the dawn of the Enlightenment. His book addresses a subject usually either passed over or elided with witchcraft: a quite different historical phenomenon. He argues that while charges of treasonable magic certainly were used to destroy reputations or to ensure the convictions of undesirables, magic was also perceived as a genuine threat by English governments into the Civil War era and beyond.

Magic as a Political Crime in Medieval and Early Modern England: A History of Sorcery and Treason

Bloomsbury Academic

For almost 250 years the Gages of Hengrave Hall, near Bury St Edmunds, were the leading Roman Catholic family in Suffolk, and the sponsors and protectors of most Catholic missionary endeavours in the western half of the county. This book traces their rise from an offshoot of a Sussex recusant family, to the extinction of the senior line in 1767, when the Gages became the Rookwood Gages. Drawing for the first time on the extensive records of the Gage family in Cambridge University Library, the book considers the Gages as part of the wider Catholic community of Bury St Edmunds and west Suffolk, and includes transcriptions of selected family letters as well as the surviving eighteenth-century Benedictine and Jesuit mission registers for Bury St Edmunds. Although the Gages were the wealthiest and most influential Catholics in the region, the gradual separation and independent growth of the urban Catholic community in Bury St Edmunds challenges the idea that eighteenth-century Catholicism in the south of England was moribund and "seigneurial". The author argues that in the end, the Gages' achievement was to create a Catholic community that could eventually survive without their patronage. Francis Young gained his doctorate from the University of Cambridge.

The Gages of Hengrave and Suffolk Catholicism, 1640-1767 (Catholic Record Society: Monograph Series, 8)

Catholic Record Society

A Medieval Book of Magical Stones is the first translation of the longest and most comprehensive medieval English treatise on the occult powers of stones and gems, the Peterborough Lapidary. Lapidaries (encyclopaedias of the 'virtues' of stones and minerals) were an essential resource for practitioners of natural and ritual magic as well as medicine. This late fifteenth-century manuscript from the library of Peterborough Cathedral describes 145 stones, portraying them as living beings whose properties range from giving the bearer the power to command spirits and foretell the future to healing numerous illnesses and communicating with spirits and the dead, along with instructions on how to release latent occult power from within stones. Many of the proposed uses of stones resemble the concerns of medieval necromancers, such as invisibility, love magic, power over animals and the creation of magical mirrors. pp. xliii+106; 2 column text; introduction; bibliography; analytical index; 8 b/w illustrations

A Medieval Book of Magical Stones: The Peterborough Lapidary

Texts in Early Modern Magic

The stained glass of a French cathedral is cursed by dark magic; an Icelandic rune raises a terrifying revenant; a fossil triggers an incursion from the fairy otherworld; three men are mysteriously burnt to death in an open field; a mysterious book haunts the dreams of three people over decades. Featuring seven stories of the supernatural and macabre, including 'This Is My Book' (winner of a prize in the 2018 'Ghosts in the Bookshop' short story competition), historian F. K. Young's début collection of ghost stories explores the terrors that await incautious delvers into the unquiet past...

Yellow Glass and Other Ghost Stories

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

St Jurmin Press

Peterborough Folklore

Mythology & Folk Tales

Lasse Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Young, Francis. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Young, Francis