Updated. BBC: “Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Henry VIII and the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Was Henry’s decision to destroy monastic culture in this country a tyrannical act of grand larceny or the pious destruction of a corrupt institution? When he was an old man, Michael Sherbrook remembered the momentous events of his youth:
“All things of price were either spoiled, plucked away or defaced to the uttermost…it seemed that every person bent himself to filch and spoil what he could. Nothing was spared but the ox-houses and swincotes…”
He was talking about the destruction of Roche Abbey, but it could have been Lewes or Fountains, Glastonbury, Tintern or Walsingham, names that haunt the religious past as their ruins haunt the landscape.
These were the monasteries, suddenly and for many shockingly, destroyed during the reign of Henry VIII. The conflict was played out with a mix of violence, heroism, political manoeuvring and genuine theological disputation. But what was lost in terms of architecture, painting, treasure and in the religious habits of the monasteries themselves and of the common people who lived with them? With Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University; Diane Purkiss, Fellow and Tutor at Keble College, Oxford; George Bernard, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Southampton”
Link: Holy Mass daily from Walsingham (Mass begins at approx 4 min. 55 Sec)
— A Walk Through Walsingham with Joseph Pearce
— The Scholar, the Skull and the Abbott
— Carlo Carretto on the Pain of Failing
The Rise And Growth of The Anglican Schism
First published around 1573, and known as the “earliest; most trustworthy account” of the Reformation in England. Later finished by Fr. Rishton, the whole ghastly story of the Protestant revolt in England—with all its unsavory characters—is told through 1587 and the murder of Mary Queen of Scots (rightful heir to the throne) under Elizabeth I. — Get the book
— Dr. David Starkey on the Martyrdom of Thomas More
Catholic Critique 