Patrick J. McGrath’s scientific contributions

This study posits asceticism as an integral component of the Laudian Church of England, c. 1625–45. Laudian asceticism consists of valorizing bodily mortification, monasticism, spiritual, and physical virginity. The existence of a Laudian ascetic has relevance to historiographical debate about the continuity – or lack thereof – between the Jacobean and Caroline churches. As this study will show, Laudian asceticism diverges from Jacobean Calvinism. That divergence partly explains Calvinists' rejection of it. The intensity of the rejection is best explained, though, by how ascetic Laudianism troubles an institution of post-Reformation Protestantism: the sanctity of marriage. With its emphasis on the piety of bodily virginity, the solitariness of monasticism, and the world-denying severities of mortification, Laudian asceticism challenges post-Reformation Protestantism's belief in the centrality of procreation and marriage in Christian life.