Invisible Worlds

How did traditional beliefs about the supernatural change as a result of the Reformation, and what were the intellectual and cultural consequences? Following a masterly interpretative introduction, Peter Marshall traces the effects of the Reformers’ assaults on established beliefs about the afterlife. He shows how debates about purgatory and the nature of hellfire acted as unwitting agents of modernization. He then turns to popular beliefs about angels, ghosts and fairies, and considers how these were reimagined and reappropriated when cut from their medieval moorings.