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The Virgin Mary and Religious Conflict in Victorian Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

John Singleton
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Extract

The Virgin Mary was a powerful and evocative figure around whom the competing religious parties of Victorian Britain arrayed their forces. She was at the forefront of controversy whenever Scottish and English Protestants clashed with Irish Catholics, and whenever evangelicals attempted to purge the Church of England of ritualism. Roman Catholic leaders placed the cult of the Virgin at the centre of their campaign to evangelise Britain after 1840. This article analyses the development of Marian Catholicism in Victorian Britain, and considers Anglo-Catholic and Protestant responses to the growth of the Marian cult.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , January 1992 , pp. 16 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

This paper is a condensed version of my BD dissertation, ‘The Virgin Mary and Victorian Sectarianism’, University of Edinburgh, 1989. I am grateful to Wendy Atkinson, to the referee who advised this JOURNAL, for valuable comments on earlier drafts and to participants at the 1989 Scottish Universities Ecclesiastical History Conference. Above all I would like to thank my supervisor Jay Brown for his interest, advice, and encouragement.

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