ABSTRACT
Marian Catholic views of the Last Things – death, judgement, hell and heaven – remained largely rooted in the legacy of medieval theology. Eamon Duffy has delineated the prominent role prayer to the saints held in late-medieval England, and the vigorous assault on this element of Catholicism in the twenty years before Mary's accession. Due to their holiness and therefore proximity to God, saints served as powerful intercessors. Despite the many continuities of Marian devotion to the saints with medieval piety – especially the underlining of saints as intercessors and models of virtue – the role of the saints in the Marian church nevertheless appears to have altered both in response to Protestant attacks and shifting emphases in early modern Catholic devotion. Purgatory was the other supposedly enduring victim of the religious revolution which was of borderline interest to Marian authors. Yet most writers chose to elucidate the means to aid the dead, rather than discuss the nature of purgatory.
