Professor Alec Ryrie, Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University
Annual Becket Lecture
The second martyrdom of Thomas Becket
Wednesday 10 March, Old Sessions House 0g46, North Holmes Campus, Canterbury
The suppression of Thomas Becket's cult in 1538 was more than a matter of demolishing his shrine. This lecture will explore how it was entangled with King Henry VIII's bitter battle with another defiant English prince of the Church, and how it made itself felt in every monastery and parish church in the land.
Biography
Professor Ryrie is an expert on the history of the Reformation era, and his specialism is the emergence of Protestant beliefs, identities and spiritualities in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England and Scotland. He is the author of The Age of Reformation: The Tudor and Stewart Realms, 1485-1603. Pearson, 2009); The Origins of the Scottish Reformation. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006; The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation. Cambridge University Press, 2003.