The English Church at the Frontier of Early Modern Catholicism

Abstract

The Restoration of English Catholicism in the mid-1550s came at a fateful moment—familiar currents of medieval religion as partially reshaped by Humanist reform had begun to fade, but Early Modern Catholicism was only beginning to take form, and had not yet been given its ultimate Tridentine direction. The English Church under Mary I was post-Protestant, but pre-Catholic reform. In this difficult environment of sweeping religious change, popular Catholic writers created a new English Catholic identity intended to consolidate the recent Catholic Restoration, support widely held religious values and make sense of ordinary people’s religious experience. This identity arose through a creative synthesis of several disparate themes important to Marian Catholics (Catholic unity, English heritage and traditionalism). The English Catholic identity of popular Marian literature de-emphasised contemporary, international Catholicism, stressing instead the historic component of Catholic unity through shared commitment to the beliefs and practices of the Early Church, which allowed English people to celebrate their own national identity as Catholics while coming to terms with the recent heterodox past.