By placing human relations at the centre of his interpretation of religion, Bossy transformed our understanding of the transition from medieval to modern Christianity. His focus on the social history of the sacraments caused him to argue for a profound shift from Christianity being conceived as a community of believers to its being understood in terms of rival confessions of belief. However, he began as a conventional ‘political’ historian of Elizabethan Roman Catholicism, and was later to return to this theme in two books on how the English state used espionage to monitor the threat posed by this minority.
Posted to Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy, 23