Catholicism in Reformation England

This paper explores the Jesuit Mission to England from 1580-81, with a focus on the impact of Edmund Campion and Robert Parsons to reconvert English subjects to Catholicism. The Jesuit mission to Elizabethan England is a fascinating and important form of outreach and evangelization that would change many lives and later lead to religious choice in a nation that at the time wanted only a state religion to prevail.

This paper studies the interaction between clerical and lay English Catholics on the Continent in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In contrast with Protestant exiles, who established separate exile churches, Catholic expatriates did not create churches specifically for the exiled laity. Catholics abroad did nonetheless get support from the religious convents, colleges, and monasteries, where they received some pastoral care, and liturgical nourishment. How this interaction gained particular features in the context of expatriate Catholics is discussed in three cases which are attributed great importance in Counter-Reformation Catholicism: sodalities, preaching, and saint veneration.

By presenting a Catholic case of confessional mobility, this essay contributes to scholarship on early modern exiles, which is dominated by work on Protestant migration. It also speaks to the study of the Catholic Reformation, by examining how this was shaped in a situation of mobility. In both cases, and more generally, it nuances the study of institutional and localised confessional lives. The evidence discussed in this article suggests that much of the exiles devotional and liturgical lives, and their sense of belonging, is to be found in informal networks and communal understanding, rather than in focused clear-cut institutions. This has bearing upon the records that have been created and passed on to this day, and their visibility in historical research.

From 10-12 September, the Reformation Studies Colloquium will be held in Cambridge. We are hoping to get many people (both at the conference and outside) involved in the discussions through twitter. Use the hashtag #RefStud to live-tweet (if the speaker does not object!), follow the proceedings from outside Cambridge, make thoughtful observations, ask questions afar, exclaim general enthusiasm, etc.


Programme is online for the  next Reformation Studies Colloquium: http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/research/conferences/reformation-studies.

The colloquium will be held at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, 10-12 September 2014. The plenary speakers will be Prof. Benjamin Kaplan (UCL), Dr Mary Laven (Cambridge), and Prof. Alec Ryrie (Durham). There will also be a final round table discussion to mark the retirement of Eamon Duffy from the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge, involving Professor Duffy himself.

Artículo de revisión sobre la primera traducción al inglés de esta crónica de Ribadenadeneyra, en el contexto de los Recusant studies y del interés hispánico por la labor cultural de los recusantes. ** Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s Ecclesiastical History of the Schism of the Kingdom of England. A Spanish Jesuit’s History of the English Reformation
Editado y traducido por Spencer J. Weinreich
Leiden/Boston, Brill, The Netherlands, 2017
(xxvi + 839 págs.) ISBN 978-90-04-32395-7