Jason Robert Ladick's Roots of Reform explores the evolution of medieval and early modern church fittings in the county of Norfolk. The central question—how and why some parish church fittings survived for over more than a century amid the public and private iconoclasm of successive reformations—highlights the role of governance and authority; the changing nature of religious, regional, and national identities; and the effect of “communal” and “familial” memory maintained through the “physical touchstones” of the church (160). Ladick's granular, archaeological approach provides a nuanced picture of church space in transition from a Catholic past to a space more reflective of Protestant doctrine. Importantly, the author traces his study of the county's religious material culture to the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, providing a broad window through which to examine the effects of a longer English Reformation of church interiors across not only sixteenth-century Tudor alterations but also across those that occurred amid seventeenth-century doctrinal conflict under the early Stuarts and subsequent civil wars and Interregnum.
Ladick applies a regional approach to his study of Norfolk, selecting three rural areas based on the boundary lines of the hundreds and one urban sample centered on the populous capital city of Norwich. With a focus on baptismal fonts, rood screens, wall paintings, sculptures, communion rails, and, in Norwich Cathedral, roof bosses, the author examines three categories: survivals of works that pre-dated the beginning of the Reformation (here, dated to the Act of Supremacy in 1534); those that suffered deliberate iconoclasm; and those refashioned or newly created between 1534 and 1660. In addition to a wealth of visual evidence, the author relies primarily on churchwardens’ accounts with a focus on periods of transition, Inventories of Norfolk Church Goods commissioned by the Privy Council under Edward VI, and local wills.
Roots of Reform is organized in eight chapters. Chapter I consists of a brief introduction to the study, Chapter II examines the research questions and methodologies employed, and Chapter III includes a literature and historical review. Chapters IV through Chapter VI form the heart of Ladick's study. These lavishly illustrated chapters are devoted to the quantitative data and qualitative case studies of the sites of church fittings serving a more Protestant church. Chapter VII provides a helpful interpretation of the results of the case studies and Chapter VIII features the conclusion with suggestions for future research.
Building on landmark studies focused on the material effects of the Reformation such as Margaret Aston's England's Iconoclasts (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1988), Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), and Roberta Gilchrist's and David Gaimster's edited collection The Archaeology of the Reformation (Leeds, UK: Maney Publishing, 2003), Ladick provides a noteworthy contribution. The strength of his analysis lies in his densely researched, regional study of changing religious material culture across an expansive period of 126 years.
Ladick's findings suggest a nuanced picture of change. Iconoclasm was selective, with the survival of religious artwork dependent upon its fit within Protestant orthodoxy, the supremacy of the bible, and adherence to sola scriptura as governing factors. Imagery tied to local agrarian and folk identities, as well as that connected to English identity in the form of St. George, also survived. By comparison, extrabiblical religious figures suffered extensive iconoclasm (Figures 12, 14, and 16). Newly created, reused, or refashioned fonts, screens, sculpture, and paintings followed a similar pattern. Some rood screens were retained, their medieval, sacral function altered to reflect the liturgical needs of the Book of Common Prayer. At Attleboro, Ladick's case study highlights the fifty-two-foot rood screen, with patterns of alterations and reuse evolving across a century of change: from original, late medieval Catholic imagery, to whitewashed Tudor Protestant alterations and application of biblical text, and, finally, to Stuart Anglican hierarchical representations of twenty-four coats of arms of English and Welsh bishoprics. On the one hand, the refashioning of such artifacts reflects a pragmatic approach, the reuse of valuable materials, employed within a new religious context. On the other, as Sarah Tarlow has noted, the meaning of the survival and incorporation of Catholic material culture into Protestant settings can be ambiguous. Religious materials carried “symbolic weight,” with “old meanings” potentially affecting the new (see “Reformation and Transformation: What Happened to Catholic Things in a Protestant World?” in Gilchrist and Gaimster, The Archaeology of the Reformation, London: Routledge, 2018, 108, 115). Ladick's reflection on such objects as “physical touchstones of communal and familial memory” enhances our understanding of both change and continuity in the religious material culture of the churches of Norfolk and of the uneven path and pace of the English Reformation more broadly (160).
The trajectory and pace of England's Reformation has been hotly debated. The duration of a Long Reformation, as Nicolas Tyacke, Jeremy Gregory, and others have helpfully pointed out, may reside in one's definition of Protestant (N. Tyacke, ed. England's Long Reformation. London: Routledge, 1997). Ladick concurs, noting that by the seventeenth century, fragmentation among Protestants left the “godly reformer who sought to strip the altars bare” and the “Anglican who desired to restore the liturgical glory of the medieval church within a distinctly English fashion” continuing to engage with reform (25). Ladick observes that the “poor and uneven spread of Protestantism” renders determining an end date difficult and sees the chronological conclusion in 1660 of his current study as perhaps too limiting (25). He proposes instead future research through the overthrow in 1688 of James II as an appropriate bookend, the “spectre of Roman Catholicism being restored by predilection of a monarch” offering “historical symmetry” with Henry VIII (163). Ladick's close reading of the church fittings of Norfolk offers a welcome opportunity to study continuity and change and to consider “regional disparity or some degree of commonality in regards to how the Reformation unfolded” over the course of extended periods of reform within the early modern English church (163).
