Decalogue Boards and Popular Belief in post-Reformation England

Presented by Dr. Jonathan Willis, University of Birmingham

This paper aims to do two things. Firstly, it will introduce an oft-neglected but important piece of post-reformation visual and material culture: the Decalogue board; or, more accurately, it will provide an overview of the wide range of different approaches to presenting the text of the Ten Commandments within English parish churches in the period c.1560-1660.  Secondly, it will suggest that the form of the Decalogue board itself strongly influenced the ways in which ordinary people interpreted the theological significance of the Ten Commandments and applied them to their own belief and practice. The paper concludes that post-reformation popular religious identity was shaped by the visual and material culture of the parish just as much as was the case in the late-medieval church; however, the messages that people took from such objects were not always ones of which learned divines would have approved.