Abbreviations
Introduction: Memory, Uses of the Past, and the New History
1: Education: The Study of History and Theology
2: Apprenticeship: The Holy Warre and Impending Conflict
3: Ordeal: The Holy State, Peacemaking, and Revolution
4: Scholar and Controversialist: Seeking Order amidst Radical
Change
5: Writing History: The European and English Contexts
6: Church Historian: The Church-History of Britain
7: Contemporary Historian: The Church-History of Britain
8: The Final Challenges: Restoration and Reaction
9: Social Historian: The History of the Worthies of England
Conclusion: Reputation and Significance
Bibliography
W. B. Patterson, Professor of History (Emeritus) at the University
of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, has written widely on British
and European history and religion. His publications include King
James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge University
Press, 1997), which won the Albert C. Outler Prize in ecumenical
church history from the American Society of Church History. He is
an active member of the Ecclesiastical History Society of Great
Britain and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Patterson puts Fuller's achievements on a par with the great Dr
Samuel Johnson and his eighteenth-century dictionary; given this
detailed, scholarly biography, few would argue with that
*Andrew Foster, Ecclesiology Today*
In all, this is a fascinating study that brings to life both a man
and the milieu in which he lived and worked.
*Helen Nicholson, Cardiff University, UK, Sixteenth Century
Journal*
This is a study of the author of the first biographical dictionary
for England and Wales, a scholar who wrote for a general
readership, and a clergyman whose Church-History of Britain set the
framework for future church histories of this island and which
remains the foundation for the Protestant tradition of the history
of Christianity in Britain. W. B. Patterson gives us both an
analysis of Thomas Fuller's life (1608-61) and career as a scholar,
churchman, and family man, and a detailed study of his major works,
rooted in the context of historical writings in both Britain and
the European continent, Catholic and Protestant, in the
post-Reformation period. . . . In all, this is a fascinating study
that brings to life both a man and the milieu in which he lived and
worked.
*Helen J. Nicholson, Sixteenth Century Journal*
Spanning the scope of Fuller's life, Brown Patterson has written an
intellectual biography that also offers considerable insight into
how a highly educated clergyman negotiated the rapidly shifting
political terrain of Caroline England.... With Thomas
FullerPatterson has drawn the map for future Fuller studies while
making a crucial contribution to the study of seventeenth-century
English historiography.
*Benjamin M. Guyer, Anglican and Episcopal History*
Thomas Fuller accessible to today's historians. I highly recommend
this book as a text which the non-specialist in early modern
theology can use to quickly navigate around Fuller's writings so as
to find his viewpoint on a wide range of social and historical
issues that were pertinent to his day whilst, for the student of
the history of theology, this book is simply indispensable... by
being a historian who largely suppressed his theological bias in
his historical works, Fuller can be seen as a morning star of the
Rankean historical method which two centuries later would see
history fully separate from theology as an academic discipline. In
this way, Patterson has aptly defended his book's main thesis that
Thomas Fuller was a pioneer historian.
*Lawrence Rabone, University of Manchester, Reviews in History*
Thomas Fuller's ... is a life badly in need of a thorough and
generous assessment. He is fortunate in his biographer. Thomas
Fuller: Discovering England's Religious Past is impressively
detailed, unabashedly admiring and (given British and
ecclesiastical history's current absorption in memory studies, as
well as its ongoing interest in the history of historiography) very
timely.
*Lori Anne Ferrell, The American Historical Review*
[The book] is thoroughly researched, convincingly argued, and
clearly written. Students of the history of the English Church
simply cannot afford to ignore it.
*Matthew Payne, Journal Of Ecclesiastical History *
Patterson effectively sketches Fuller's gregarious, yet deeply
introspective, personality, which personalizes both his work as a
historian and the unsettled times in which he lived. Patterson's
work is a convincing reassessment of one of the major early modern
English historians and a nuanced account of the social,
theological, and political unrest of 17th-century England.
*Jonathan Badley, Reading Religion*
In Thomas Fuller: Discovering England's Religious Past, W. B.
Patterson has written a thoughtful, insightful, and generally
interesting account of Thomas Fuller, who had a unique position in
the seventeenth century to view the chaotic political changes that
accompanied his age. Patterson's ability to weave this intellectual
biography between a micro and macro-historical study speaks to his
ability as a writer and researcher ... I would recommend Thomas
Fuller: Discovering England's Religious Past to any individual
interested in the seventeenth century or in British history
generally. It would also make a great addition to a graduate-level
reading seminar or even as a reading for an advanced undergraduate
course in the Tudor-Stuart era.
*Seventeenth-Century News*
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