English Catholic Research Articles

Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory and Counter-Reformation, ed. James E. Kelly and Susan Royal

This book is the outcome of the first international bi-annual symposium on early modern Catholicism that was jointly run by the University of Durham and the University of Notre Dame in 2013. The two editors, James E. Kelly and Susan Royal, state in the introduction that the purpose of the collection is to establish that early modern English Catholicism can be defined through three key themes—identity, memory and counter-reformation—and this aim is generally achieved throughout the volume. The first part of the book deals with how English Catholics sought to preserve their religious and national identity. Brad Gregory’s essay on situating early modern English Catholicism asserts that English Catholic identity was affected by chronology, geography and the sociological and theological aspects of Catholicism in the early decades after the Reformation, affirming that ‘English Catholicism’ included Welsh, Irish and Scottish Catholics. Gregory’s central claim is that English Catholicism can only be understood by seeing it as a part of European history, and he disputes John Bossy’s hypothesis that post-Reformation English Catholicism did not exist until 1570. Gabriel Glickman’s chapter examines how Catholics explored the concept of British identity in the long eighteenth century. Glickman convincingly demonstrates that, despite the complex relationship between England, Scotland and Ireland which pre-dated the Reformation, mutual cultural relations between these countries allowed networks, commerce and devotional ideas to be exchanged domestically and internationally. The other two chapters scrutinise the ways in which religious orders constructed English Catholic identity. James E. Kelly’s chapter describes English convents in Europe offering an avenue for nuns to preserve their English Catholic identity by acting as receptacles for the growing demand in relic collecting; he provides numerous examples of nuns rescuing relics from destruction, which they then used as aids to memorialise the Catholic Church’s history. Thomas M. McCoog’s chapter on the Society of Jesus and the vicars apostolic contends that the English secular clergy exploited the suppression of the Jesuits in Liège and St Omers for the benefit of their own seminaries, which showed how these fractious relationships had an impact on English Catholic identity.

George Errington and Roman Catholic Identity in Nineteenth-Century England. By Serenhedd James

Archbishop George Errington is one of the shadowy figures of nineteenth-century English Catholicism who stands behind the main characters, such as Wiseman, Newman, and Manning. He has long been regarded as something of an enigma, and unravelling ‘the Errington case’ has been a task from which historians have shied away. Serenhedd James, however, first in his doctoral thesis and then in this monograph, has taken on the challenge of investigating the evidence in forensic detail. Errington, while being at the centre of a controversial conflict with his old friend Wiseman, was evidently a man who stirred strong loyalty in his friends. Those friends must now include the author of this study, who, while recognizing the difficulties, concludes that Errington was a victim of circumstance, rather than the author of his own downfall. He has done a stalwart job in restoring Errington to the forefront of the often difficult and complex network of episcopal leadership in Victorian England, and persuasively argued that he ‘does not deserve the scant (and in many instances defamatory) attention that successive scholars have paid to his life and career’ (p. 249).

A ‘fownde patrone and second father’ of the Marian Church: Antonio Buonvisi, religious exile and mid-Tudor Catholicism

AbstractDespite receiving particular praise from a range of early modern commentators, from Nicholas Sander to Pedro de Ribadeneyra, most historians have seen the Italian merchant Antonio Buonvisi playing a fairly negligible role in the history of mid-Tudor Catholicism. This article challenges this interpretation. After reassessing some rather simplistic assessments of Buonvisi’s religious beliefs, this article explores his actions and activities following his self-imposed exile from England in 1549. Using research conducted in both the State Archives of Lucca and the Vatican City, it suggests that Buonvisi played a far more significant role in ensuring the survival of English Catholicism over the first decades of the Reformation than is usually acknowledged. Indeed, it argues that Buonvisi may have helped lay core foundations for the Catholic restoration of Mary I’s reign, the success of which has recently been highlighted by historians such as Eamon Duffy.

More English than the English, more Roman than Rome? Historical signifiers and cultural memory at Westminster Cathedral

ABSTRACTWestminster Cathedral, the Metropolitan church of English Roman Catholicism since 1903, occupies an ambivalent space in the heart of the modern metropolis. It was intended as a repository and symbol of a national, very English, Catholic heritage in central London, replicating and re-using medieval signs and rituals to lay claim to a history that stretched back to the original conversion of England in the late 6th century. Drawing on studies of cultural memory, the authors examine how successive Cardinals of Westminster from the late 19th century onwards designed, constructed, and used the Cathedral to define Catholic identity in the first decades of the 20th century. In this they steered a difficult and often contested course between twin loyalties to the nation and to Rome. The limits of institutional power to reshape cultural memory are also explored through a case study of the Cathedral's resident martyr-saint, John Southworth, acquired in 1930 and similarly revealing the uneasiness of English Catholicism regarding its ‘otherness’ within a national culture.

Milner and the Miraculous in Post-Enlightenment England

In post-Enlightenment England Catholic Bishop John Milner wrote repeatedly about miracles. He defended the continuation of miracles in contrast to Protestant thinkers who believed that miracles had ceased after the apostolic age. Milner held that miracles supported the truth of Catholicism, distinguished it from Protestantism and provided consolation to Catholics. Milner criticised a report in which fellow Catholic Joseph Berington rejected the miraculous nature of events at Ancona, Italy in 1796 where a painting of the Virgin Mary purportedly moved its eyes. Upon becoming a bishop he investigated a cure that occurred at St Winefrid's Holywell and found that the cure was miraculous. Milner participated in the debate over the miracles of Prince Hohenlohe, the wonder-working German priest, and found in the priest's favour. Given that Protestants for three hundred years had attacked post-scriptural miracles, and that modern philosophers rejected all miracles, Milner's views appeared to be reactionary. Nevertheless, his views were not immune to historical developments, and he thought of himself as a sharp critic of excessive belief in miracles. Although his views anticipated a revival of miracle piety in English Catholicism, he could not prevent the long-term decline of the miracle apologetic.

"Defensio fidei" de Francisco Suárez y su conflicto con Jacobo I

La “conjuración de la pólvora” sirvió a Jacobo I para argumentar el Juramento de fidelidad de los católicos ingleses. La reflexión al respecto se introduce, a un mismo tiempo, por los vericuetos de la reflexión teológica y del pensamiento político. En concreto, la condena de Suárez por parte del Parlamento de París, en 1614, es vista -desde el contexto inglés y francés-, como una intromisión de este en los intereses del Estado. Suárez, por su parte, pretende hacer dialogar la Apología del rey con la situación a la que tendrán que enfrentarse los católicos ingleses y la negativa por parte del papa a la misma. Se entrecruzan dos visiones y comprensiones opuestas: una de índole político, frente a una posición de carácter más amplio, sustentada en un pensamiento, que será la del Doctor Eximio. Suárez, lejos de defender simplemente la postura del papado, intenta poner las bases de lo que más tarde podrá denominarse como libertad de conciencia.

The Harkirk graveyard and William Blundell ‘the Recusant’ (1560-1638): a reconsideration

This article revisits a locus classicus of British Catholic History, the interpretation of the coin-hoard found in 1611 by the Lancashire squire William Blundell of Little Crosby.1 This article offers new information, approaching the Harkirk silver from several perspectives: Mark Blundell offers a memoir of his ancestor William Blundell, as well as lending his voice to the account of the subsequent fate of the Harkirk silver; Professor Jane Stevenson and Professor Peter Davidson reconsider the sources for William Blundell’s historiography as well as considering wider questions of memory and the recusant community; Dr Dora Thornton analyses the silver pyx made from the Harkirk coins in detail, and surveys analogous silverwork in depth.

The English Catholic New Left: Battling the Religious Establishment and the Politics of the Cold War

In the 1960s there appeared in England a group of young university educated Catholics who sought to merge radical Catholic social teachings with the ideas of Karl Marx and the latest insights of European and American sociologists and literary theorists. They were known as the English Catholic New Left (ECNL). Under the inspiration of their Dominican mentors, they launched a magazine called Slant that served as the vehicle for publishing their ideas about how Catholic theology along with the Social Gospels fused with neo-Marxism could bring a humanistic socialist revolution to Britain. The Catholic Leftists worked in alliance with the activists of the secular New Left Review to achieve this objective. A major influence on the ECNL was the Marxist Dominican friar Laurence Bright and Herbert McCabe, O. P. Slant took off with great success when Sheed and Ward agreed to publish the journal. Slant featured perceptive, indeed at times brilliant, cutting-edge articles by the Catholic Left’s young Turks, including Terry Eagleton, Martin Redfern, Bernard Sharratt, and Angela and Adrian Cunningham, among others. A major target of the Slant project was the Western Alliance’s Cold War strategy of nuclear deterrence, which they saw to be contrary to Christian just war theory and ultimately destructive of humankind. Another matter of concern for the Slant group was capitalist imperialism that ravaged the underdeveloped world and was a major destabilizing factor for achieving world peace and social equality. Despite their failure to achieve a social revolution “baptized by Christianity,” the English Catholic New Left broke new ground in terms of showing how a traditional religion with a highly conservative and sometimes reactionary history had the capacity to offer new paths forward and remain an inspiration to progressive thinking Christians trying to navigate the shoals of a post-modern world.

Sir Tobie Matthew's Flaming Hart: Translating St Teresa for the English Catholic Exiles

This article examines The Flaming Hart (1642), the English translation of St Teresa of Ávila's Vida, produced by Sir Tobie Matthew at the behest of the Antwerp English Carmelites. A brief discussion of the translation's influence is followed by an analysis that demonstrates how Matthew's tendencies as translator subtly but decisively distort Teresa's distinctive autobiographical voice. Compared to the Spanish original, the English Teresa sounds more self-assured and belligerent; her voice is confessionalized and formalized. It is suggested that this distortion can be linked to the historical circumstances from which the translation emerged. Upon the outbreak of the civil war, Matthew wanted his englished Teresa to inspire hope and confidence in his community of English Catholic exiles.

Faith in the Family: A Lived Religious History of English Catholicism, 1945‐1982. By AlanaHarris. Pp. x, 310, Manchester,Manchester University Press, 2013, £65.00.

Faith in the Family: A Lived Religious History of English Catholicism, 1945‐1982. By AlanaHarris. Pp. x, 310, Manchester,Manchester University Press, 2013, £65.00.

Objects, Emotions and an Early Modern Bed-sheet

This article offers a methodological framework for a purposeful interrogation of ‘emotional objects’ – material objects that fostered, shaped and sustained an assortment of emotional practices that, in turn, had dramatic historical consequences. It examines the production, use and meanings of an ordinary household object: a single English bed-sheet dating to the early eighteenth century. The locations, hands and regimes of value through which the sheet travelled are a core focus, alongside the practical and emotional dimensions of the sheet’s creation in the early eighteenth century; its perception and use as a politicized holy relic; its commercialization among nineteenth-century antiquarians; and its adoption as a commemorative political object in a twenty-first-century museum collection. The bed-sheet’s history uncovers a hidden chapter of Jacobite resistance and reveals the vital activism of women and household objects in sustaining the political and religious sensibilities of early modern English Catholicism.

Entre la France et l'Angleterre : la campagne catholique pour la conversion de l'Angleterre, des années 1830 jusqu'à la Grande Guerre

The utopian hope of its time, the theme of the "conversion of England'' structured many missionary initiatives of English Catholicism between the 1830s and the 1990s. This article focuses in particular on the campaign for such a conversion between 1838 and 1914, and on the connections that united French and English Catholicisms around that objective. It studies the two great archconfraternities of prayer that mounted this campaign before ending with a study of the reasons which led to its revival at the end of the Great War.

Neither Cisalpine nor Ultramontane: John Carroll's Ambivalent Relationship with English Catholicism, 1780-1800

Enlightenment-influenced English Catholic priests and laymen, members of the "Cisalpine" network, had a significant impact on Archbishop John Carroll (1735-1815), first bishop of Baltimore, and in turn the Church in the United States. Though Carroll had ambivalent relationships with the "Cisalpines" and links with that movement's conservative critics, particularly Charles and Robert Plowden, his close friends, the Cisalpine network supported many of the same reforms as Carroll, including religious liberty and liturgical reform, and they were irenic towards Protestants. However, Carroll consistently sought to stay on the sidelines of the "Cisalpine stirs," the controversies pitting the progressive Cisalpines against the conservative party led by the vicars apostolic (bishops consecrated for the "English mission"). Carroll's intense interest and occasional participation in these controversies illuminate important elements of this thought, as do the reasons why he became increasingly critical of the Cisalpines.

A School of Others: Jean-Nicholas Jager, Richard Hurrell Froude, Benjamin Harrison, and John Henry Newman's Turn to the Development of Doctrine

A School of Others:Jean-Nicholas Jager, Richard Hurrell Froude, Benjamin Harrison, and John Henry Newman's Turn to the Development of Doctrine Michael J. G. Pahls (bio) John henry newman penned his public Letter to the Duke of Norfolk on 27 December 1874 in response to Prime Minister William Gladstone's own published attacks regarding the doctrine of papal infallibility. Gladstone had argued that the newly defined doctrine would require a "renunciation of moral and mental freedom," provoking "civil disloyalty" among English Catholics.1 In response, Newman ventured a more winsome presentation for the new dogma, mitigating implications so as to allay fears that a foreign pope might subvert the English monarchy by infallible fiat. More intriguing in his defense, however, was Newman's appeal to the ongoing interpretive work of the Schola Theologorum—the "school of theologians." Considering that Gladstone had committed himself to "a representation of ecclesiastical documents which will not hold."2 Newman declared, "None but the Schola Theologorum is competent to determine the force of Papal and Synodal utterances, and the exact interpretation of them is a work of time."3 Shorn of [End Page 5] this necessary process of theological reception, Newman judged that Gladstone's reading was precipitous and at least potentially inaccurate. Gladstone's understanding of the dogma, like his understanding of the English Catholic faithful, was thereby "neither trustworthy nor charitable."4 While numerous treatments of the Catholic Newman's mature conception of the Schola Theologorum have appeared over the years, few have noticed how his regard for the ongoing, collaborative, and interpretive work of theologians finds an important, embodied precedent in the work of the Anglican Newman and in the Oxford Movement of which he was a principal figure.5 This article will explore a discrete period in that broader story wherein the failure of Newman's via media—a proposal constructed in the context of debate with the Catholic Abbé Jean-Nicholas Jager—was brought home to him under the sometimes-painful interrogations of fellow Oxford Movement collaborators, Hurrell Froude and Benjamin Harrison. I argue here that this ongoing theological reception of Anglican doctrine ultimately pressed Newman to acknowledge both the actuality and permissibility of doctrinal development and so anticipated what Newman envisioned for the Schola Theologorum in embodied practice. ENTANGLED IN CONTROVERSY WITH A FRENCH ABBÉ Since 1832, Newman had been at work as a Tractarian, working to buttress the Church of England's flagging high church hegemony in the face of Lord Charles Grey's Whig Government reforms.6 Fully expecting eventual [End Page 6] disestablishment, Newman sought to arm himself and his growing Association of Tory churchmen against the "systematic hatred … borne by Romanists, Sectarians, Liberals, and Infidels" by "poking into the Fathers with a hope of rummaging forth passages of history which may prepare the imaginations of men for a changed state of things, and also be precedents for our conduct in difficult circumstances."7 Those labors evolved into an effort to prioritize an older apostolicity over the Church of England's Elizabethan preoccupation with monarchical establishment. Resigned to life without royal preferment, Newman imagined that the national church's cause could be entrusted to the English faithful directly—"thrown on the people," as he put it, in both an economic and a theological sense.8 Here, the commonplaces of the Oxford Movement's popular Tracts for the Times—defending the apostolic succession of bishops, the liturgical stability of the Book of Common Prayer, the sacramental powers of the clergy, and the divinely established jurisdiction of the church—developed into Newman's more comprehensive via media theory of the English Church when a chance encounter grew into a fervid epistolary debate. It is well-known that the 1837 Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church represent Newman's attempt to realize an only-theoretical via media as the "very truth of the Apostles" amid the competing "real" religions of "Protestantism and Popery."9 This work grew out of his "lectures on Romanism," delivered orally [End Page 7] in Adam de Brome chapel of Saint Mary the Virgin in the summer of 1836, but those lectures were immediately preceded by a months-long correspondence...

Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory and Counter-Reformation. James E. Kelly and Susan Royal, eds. Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700. Leiden: Brill, 2017. xiv + 260 pp. $150.

Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory and Counter-Reformation. James E. Kelly and Susan Royal, eds. Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700. Leiden: Brill, 2017. xiv + 260 pp. $150. - Volume 71 Issue 2

The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1598–1606. "Lest Our Lamp be Entirely Extinguished." by Thomas M. McCoog

Reviewed by: The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1598–1606. "Lest Our Lamp be Entirely Extinguished." by Thomas M. McCoog Freddy C. Dominguez The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1598–1606. "Lest Our Lamp be Entirely Extinguished." By Thomas M. McCoog, S.J. [Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700; Bibliotheca Instituti Historici Societatis Iesu, Volume 78.] (Leiden and Rome: Brill and Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu. 2017. Pp. xiv, 612. $160.00. ISBN: 978-90-04-33044-3.) Thomas McCoog, S.J., has achieved two historical feats in his books on Elizabethan Jesuits. First, he has provided the most thoroughly researched, even-handed account of early modern English Jesuit activities to date. Second, and just as importantly, his work hearkens back to (unfortunately) bygone days of history-writing that was meticulous, exhaustive, and confident in its ability to describe events as they were, or better put, as the sources suggest they were. His "trilogy" on Elizabethan Catholicism is a testament to McCoog's exemplary scholarship steeped in a rich mix of secondary sources and an unmatched intimacy with Jesuit primary sources, especially those at the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu. The third installment of his magnum opus under review here only confirms that his work should be essential reading for anyone interested in early modern (English) Catholicism, Jesuits, and Elizabethan political culture. Here McCoog starts where he left off in a previous volume, in 1598, when Philip II of Spain died, and describes Jesuit activities in Ireland, England, and Scotland through the third year of James I's reign in 1606. Eight years are covered in over five hundred pages of lucid prose and leisurely summary of (mostly) Jesuit letters, memorials, and printed polemic. The book focuses on two large themes. First, it tells of the many and varied tensions within the English Catholic community centering on arguments for and against Jesuit efforts in England. These tensions [End Page 551] were not new to the period in question, but they reached a fever pitch during the so-called Appellant Controversy, a moment of polemical viciousness between secular priests and Jesuits that spread in print, manuscript, rumor, and face-to-face quarrels throughout England, Flanders, and Rome among several different English Catholic factions. Second, the book studies in great detail the politics of succession leading up to James I's accession to the English throne and the ways in which a range of wary Catholics dealt with that reality after years of wrangling over whom to support when Elizabeth died. A prominent thread used to tie these two themes comes in the form of the indefatigable and perennially controversial figure of Robert Parsons, whose various historical personae as inveterate politico and man of solid faith inspired awe and disdain in equal measure from different quarters. McCoog's contribution is essential amid a historiography that until recently has been confessionally motivated. A thorough reading of the sources has revealed just how lacking black and white portraits (or caricatures) of the past have been. Just as scholarship on Jesuits in general has moved away from a simplified corporate or even military model of the Society, McCoog has shown that British members of the order often disagreed among themselves and that their responses to British questions were varied. In describing this, the author takes issue with one of the great historians of English Catholicism: John Bossy. While Bossy ultimately emphasized the stagnation of "Elizabethan Catholicism," McCoog emphasizes dynamism. Throughout, McCoog ably shows that instead, the sources on Jesuits reveals "flexibility and adaptability more than inertia" (p. 542). There is no greater example of this than Parsons who, though knee deep in political contrivances of all sorts, was nevertheless quite malleable and far from the monochromatic schemer of legend. Each subsequent volume in McCoog's (mostly) Elizabethan trilogy has been bigger than the last. What each has gained in rich description and scholarly rigor has, however, been at the expense of other elements. McCoog, from the first volume of this series, has admitted that there would be an English focus to his work, as demanded by the sources and the importance of the English story for a broader British one. Here, however, sections...

Материальная культура английского католического сообщества XVI—XVII вв.: источники и перспективы исследования

Материальная культура английского католического сообщества XVI—XVII вв.: источники и перспективы исследования

Politicizing Thomas More's Utopia in restoration England

Following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, England faced several decades of political and social turmoil. In an era of political questioning, dreams about alternate systems of life and culture were not simply thought-provoking exercises, but were often perceived as being dangerously subversive. Within this context, this essay examines the dominant rhetorical responses in Restoration England to Thomas More's Utopia. Utopia was often brought up in polemics directed against Protestant nonconformists, whom, it was feared, sought the return of an English commonwealth. Nonconformists, alternatively, referred to Utopia in anti-Catholic polemics in an attempt to link English Catholics with the desire to overthrow the monarchy and subvert the English Church. Some Protestant authors went even further and embraced More's Utopia precisely because they were dissatisfied with the restored establishment and hoped to see English society fundamentally reformed.

Counties without borders? Religious politics, kinship networks and the formation of Catholic communities

This article examines the formation of Catholic communities and the roles played by religious politics and kinship networks within that process. It contributes to historiographical debates about early modern English Catholics' self-identification in religio-political terms, suggesting that intra-Catholic feuds were not the sole preserve of the Catholic missionary clergy. It uses the Petre family, barons of Writtle in Essex, as a case study by which to argue that these seemingly inward-looking debates were actually about how the community understood itself in relation to the state and, as such, were fundamental in the process of English Catholic community construction.

When did the Schism begin, and why? Views on the English Reformation amongst Catholic polemicists

For Catholic polemicists, the Break with Rome and the establishment of the Church of England did not signal the arrival of religious truth and renewal, with a clear start date and a point of completion; rather it was a schism, a breaking from the true church. Its dating and origins were intimately connected with the moral failings and lust of Henry VIII. Marian authors were able to reflect on this scenario from the position of an England restored to Catholicism, but they were bookended by those in the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, whose explanations of the English Reformation were shaped by their own experience of displacement and dispossession. This article outlines the ways in which the ‘losers’ of the Reformation portrayed the timing and origins of England’s schism to their fellow English Catholics, and to the wider Catholic world. The potential of their narrative to puncture the myth of inevitable Protestant triumph was such that Protestant regimes in England were eager to take action against writers and their work. For contemporaries, this was not just an academic exercise in history writing; this Catholic version of the Reformation story was intended to spur on action against an illegitimate and heretical regime. Discussion of the timing and reasons for the Break with Rome could thus also be a call to arms.