The ‘beauty of holiness’ revisited: an analysis of investment in parish church interiors in Dorset, Somerset, and Wiltshire, 1560-1640

Orlik, Susan Mary (2018). The ‘beauty of holiness’ revisited: an analysis of investment in parish church interiors in Dorset, Somerset, and Wiltshire, 1560-1640. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This analysis of the extant material evidence of the interiors of parish churches in Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire, 1560 -1640, challenges traditional assumptions about who decorated them, and what motivated them. Local studies show that what might appear as compliance to externally imposed requirements could also be a more complex story of parochial priorities and of local catalysts; some radical changes could appear traditional. Whilst donors' religious and secular motives were often interwoven, this study will show that there was no clear alignment between confessional positions and decoration, and that Protestantism continued to embrace the visual in parish churches. It will be argued that the enhancing of churches predated the 1630s, and anything that could be called Laudian. It is a central argument that Laudian should not be used as the reference point for church decoration, when Protestants of many hues, and some of no evidenced confessional position, were materialising 'the beauty of holiness'. In displaying layered identities, it will be shown that investors used similar images in domestic and public spaces. It will bring a new analysis of the furniture, fittings and fabric of parish churches which develops an understanding of the changed worshipping experience in those eighty years.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):