The Elizabethan Jesuits and Religious Toleration

Abstract

Whether writing for or against religious toleration, English Roman Catholic controversialists of the sixteenth- and seventeenth centuries used their most artfully rhetorical language. The Jesuit priest Robert Parsons, for instance, often employed verbal ambiguity and rhetorical devices to accommodate plural audiences and to express views on toleration that shifted according to polemical purpose and political exigency. English Roman Catholic writings reflected the cultural paradoxes of religious toleration, a concept that, in the early modern period, held deeply negative connotations. In the militant view of Parsons and the Jesuits, settling for mere toleration was a less-than-favorable option, but the idea nevertheless had many rhetorical uses. Even the most fulsome Roman Catholic appeals for toleration often contained veiled criticism of the English government. By looking at English Catholic polemical works through the lens of religious toleration, one can see how precisely these authors were writing to plural audiences and the flexible ways they manipulated language to engage with this vexed concept. Although their perceived sophistry lent to the negative stereotype of Jesuit duplicity, this essay seeks to appreciate English Roman Catholic writings on toleration as excellent examples of advanced polemical artistry.