Treasonous Reconciliations: Robert Southwell, Religious Polemic, and the Criminalization of Confession

Abstract

In early modern England, a series of parliamentary acts and royal proclamations identified reconciliation to the Church of Rome as high treason. These laws were designed to counter the expansion of Catholicism in England and to ensure conformity to the English Church and loyalty to the monarch. In the process, however, Elizabethan treason legislation effectively criminalized the traditional relationship between clergy and laity by transforming the sacrament of confession, particularly the rite of absolution, into a demonstration of political disobedience. This essay examines polemical and literary strategies that Catholics used to oppose the expansion of state authority over spiritual matters and to establish political and religious identity in post-Reformation England. As both poet and polemicist, Robert Southwell provides an important perspective on Catholic sites of resistance to the criminalization of confession. He not only registers the spiritual and psychological benefits of the sacrament for individuals, but also underscores its centrality for preserving the communal fabric of England. Southwell turns to the social memory of pre-Reformation England to comfort the Catholic community and to criticize the nation's political and religious decline.