Over the last thirty years, historians have made several important contributions to our understanding of the short but dramatic restoration of Catholicism in 1550s England. United by a shared rejection of the hitherto dominant interpretation of Mary I's reign as a retrograde and unfortunate interlude in the history of the English Reformation, so-called ‘revisionists’ have convincingly argued that Mary in fact presided over a remarkably dynamic and innovative revival of Catholicism. Whilst this scholarship has been extremely valuable in tackling the teleological assumption that Marian Catholicism was predestined to fail, this review suggests that the revisionist programme continues to be preoccupied by somewhat ill-conceived and unhelpful questions about how ‘successful’ Mary's church was in providing for a Catholic future. Such questions demonstrate just how far the historiography of Marian religion continues to operate within a framework still subtly shaped by sixteenth-century, confessionally charged polemic. This review suggests that, rather than debates about ‘successes’ or ‘failures’, we need to start working outwards from the valuable findings of revisionists regarding the dynamism of Marian religion, exploring their broader implications for how we understand the long-term development of Catholicism in England, as well as the Marian church's place within European Christendom more broadly.

在过去的三十年里，历史学家为我们理解 1550 年代英格兰短暂而戏剧性的天主教复兴做出了几项重要贡献。由于一致反对迄今为止对玛丽一世统治的主流解释是英国宗教改革史上倒退和不幸的插曲，所谓的“修正主义者”令人信服地认为玛丽实际上主持了一场非常有活力和创新的复兴天主教。虽然这项奖学金在解决玛丽安天主教注定要失败的目的论假设方面非常有价值，但这篇评论表明修正主义计划继续被一些考虑不周和无益的问题所困扰，这些问题关于玛丽的教会如何“成功”提供天主教的未来。这些问题表明，玛丽安宗教的历史编纂在一个仍然由 16 世纪、充满忏悔的论战巧妙地塑造的框架内继续运作到什么程度。这篇评论表明，与其争论“成功”或“失败”，我们需要从修正主义者关于玛丽安宗教活力的宝贵发现开始向外工作，探索它们对我们如何理解长期发展的更广泛影响。英国的天主教，以及更广泛的欧洲基督教世界中玛丽安教会的地位。