Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books During the Reign of Philip II by Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez

Abstract

Reviewed by: Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books During the Reign of Philip II by Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez Spencer J. Weinreich Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books During the Reign of Philip II. By Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2020. Pp. xi, 264. $106.95. ISBN: 9780271086019). The recusants—those early modern British Catholics who kept the faith despite the best efforts of Tudor and Stuart regimes to dislodge them—are familiar figures in the study of the Reformation. But what of those who chose exile? Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez’s thoughtful study centers the experiences, ideas, and especially books of these Catholics, specifically those who operated out of Habsburg Spain. Radicals in Exile homes in on the polemical battles waged in the heady years between 1585, when the Armada began to take shape, and 1598, when Philip II died, taking English Catholicism’s most immediate hopes with him. This decade and a half constituted a period in which “the most radical efforts to re-Catholicize England seemed to match Habsburg willingness to do so” (p. 16). Part I, “History in Action,” examines the life and afterlives of Nicholas Sander’s De schismate Anglicano, a scabrous history of the English Reformation that sensationally claimed Anne Boleyn was Henry VIII’s own daughter. Domínguez closely tracks the text’s transformations through subsequent editions, as its editors used it to demonize Elizabeth I and Protestantism, and to promote Spanish military action against Elizabeth. The section concludes with the Jesuit Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s Spanish adaptation of De schismate Anglicano, by which “an exile version of the English past [. . .] became deeply rooted in the Spanish world” (p. 92). The seamlessness with which Domínguez can integrate Spanish protagonists alongside English ones, as well as translations and adaptations in multiple languages, showcases the power of centering books, rather than authors. The second part, “The King’s Men,” further pursues the Spanish digestion of the English exiles’ polemical fare. In the wake of the Armada, English Catholic writers carved out relevance for themselves within Spain—promoting the English seminary at Valladolid, flattering and admonishing the king, linking heresy and rebellion to shore up the regime in restive Aragon—and abroad, as propagandists defending Philip II and his policies against Protestant attacks. The king himself cannily exploited this abundant literature, favoring those portions of Joseph Cresswell’s Exemplar literarum that identified the monarch with his nation, for example, [End Page 204] while deprecating the second part of Ribadeneyra’s history that dwelt upon Spanish (and royal) sins. In Part III, “(Habsburg) England and Spain Reformed,” Domínguez examines the public component of the exiles’ campaign for a second invasion attempt, through two texts by the Jesuit Robert Persons reimagining the English political and religious settlement. The Conference vindicated Habsburg claims to the English throne, while the Memorial set out a program for the re-Catholicization of the kingdom once it had been conquered. Throughout, Domínguez places these texts in a rich intellectual landscape, as the project to reclaim England adapted to shifting geopolitical realities, intra-Catholic tensions, and disparate audiences in Spain and abroad. A brief, forceful conclusion emphasizes the exiles’ success in influencing early modern Spanish thought, while arguing against the prevailing assumption “that early modern secular and spiritual matters were hopelessly intertwined” (p. 209). Quite the contrary: Domínguez interprets his authors as deeply concerned to delineate the distinct logics of state and church, of politics and piety. This is strong and persuasive stuff, fostering a greater respect for the clarity of our subjects’ thinking; it is unfortunate that it remains an “ideological undercurrent” in Radicals in Exile (p. 209), rather than an explicit claim, articulated upfront in what is otherwise a lucidly organized book. Domínguez handles the textual and political complexities of his sources with aplomb, deftly drawing out theological implications and hidden tensions. Radicals in Exile is a compelling study of texts as instruments of political action in the Reformation, of the close relationship between writing and invading. Spencer J. Weinreich Harvard Society of Fellows, Harvard University Copyright © 2023 The Catholic University of America Press ...