Eamon Duffy

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Eamon Duffy

Duffy in 2010

Born 9 February 1947 (age 79)

Dundalk, Ireland

Academic background
Alma mater
Doctoral advisor
Academic work
Discipline History
Sub-discipline History of Christianity
Institutions Magdalene College, Cambridge
Doctoral students Paul C. H. Lim
Notable works The Stripping of the Altars (1992)
The Voices of Morebath (2001)

Eamon Duffy FSA FBA KSG (born 9 February 1947) is an Irish historian. He is the emeritus professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow and former president of Magdalene College.[1]

Duffy was born on 9 February 1947,[citation needed] in Dundalk, Ireland.[2] He describes himself as a “cradle Catholic”.[2] He was educated at St Philip’s School and the University of Hull. He undertook postgraduate research at the University of Cambridge, where his doctoral advisers were Owen Chadwick and Gordon Rupp.[3]

Duffy specialises in 15th- to 17th-century religious history of Britain.[4] He is also a former member of the Pontifical Historical Commission.[5] His work has done much to overturn the popular image of late-medieval Catholicism in England as moribund, and instead presents it as a vibrant cultural force[6][7] which needed a multi generational Long Reformation to reshape Britain into a Protestant society.[8]

He was president of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain from 2002-2004. [9]

On weekdays from 22 October to 2 November 2007, he presented the BBC Radio 4 series 10 Popes Who Shook the World[10] – those popes featured were Peter, Leo I, Gregory I, Gregory VII, Innocent III, Paul III, Pius IX, Pius XII, John XXIII, and John Paul II.

Duffy moved to Magdalene College in the University of Cambridge in 1979, and was professor of the history of Christianity from 2003 to 2014. Since 2014 he has been emeritus professor.[11] In 2004 he was elected as a fellow of the British Academy.[12]

  • “Eamon Duffy in Conversation with Raymond Friel”, in The Hope That Is Within You (Audio CD, 2017)