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the evangelisation of Catholics. Women religious conceived of their authority in terms of mission. Power was exercised in the convent, guided by an accepted organisational structure, often set down in writing and democratic in some ways. By the end of the nineteenth century, women’s congregations were an organised, centralised, standardised, bureaucratic entity whose mission was focused, whose functions were regularised, and which had a specific place in English Catholic social life. Yet women religious embodied the Victorian ideal of femininity. They believed and
Conclusion . T he surviving papers of William Blundell provide a unique window into the activities and worldview of a seventeenth-century English Catholic. Through an examination of this material, this book has shown that the carefully choreographed pose of a politically quiescent yet unquestioningly committed Catholic, with which Blundell sought to delude his contemporaries, disguised the innovative ways in which he exerted agency and the convolution of his belief structure. Although Blundell was clearly an apt political operator with a talent for survival
. They appealed against his appointment Chambers_O’Connor_Printer.indd 142 08/09/2017 09:53 SEMINARY COLLEGES, CONVERTS AND RELIGIOUS CHANGE 143 and his authority. This episode is referred to in the literature as the Archpriest, or Appellant, controversy (in which a well-organised cadre of seminary clergy condemned the Jesuits, offered their support to James VI against Presbyterians and, at the same time, urged a toleration of the majority of English Catholics), and it spawned a not unsophisticated and quite extensive printed literature.9 These late sixteenth- and
literature or drama, they are no substitute for thoroughly researched work by professional historians which shows even the so-called facts of the Reformation, and certainly the interpretation of the Reformation, to be contested ground. 331 4035 The debate.qxd:- 9/12/13 08:37 Page 332 THE DEBATE ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 John Vidmar, English Catholic Historians and the English Reformation, 1585–1954 (Brighton, 2005), p. 13. Vidmar, English Catholic Historians, pp. 44–5 has an interesting discussion about Butler’s and
Verstegan in Antwerp, detailing the increased torturing of Catholic prisoners to raise awareness abroad of the desperate need of the English Catholics. 4 He had used almost the same words to engage the heart of Britannia as to raise anger against her in the hearts of her enemies abroad. In the private as in the public sphere, Southwell seemed to be struggling against the current. He had arrived in England
he seek to alleviate the sufferings of English Catholics by offering both religious and practical support, but at risk to himself and his family he also provided charity for Irish Catholics. Furthermore, Blundell was a zealous supporter of English religious houses on the continent and by 1660 he was entrusted with vast sums of money to farm out on behalf of the Poor Clares of Rouen and became one of their foremost financial agents in England. Finally, in his writings he provided arguments for the removal of the penal laws and the admission of Catholics into every area
; but who was Weston’s superior, and what was his agenda? This was becoming a confused picture. Cardinal Allen, the only senior Englishman in episcopal orders now able to speak for the English Catholics in Rome, was given faculties as ‘Prefect of the English Mission’, in 1581. Although subject to the Cardinal Protector in Rome, he was effectively the ecclesiastical superior until his death in 1594
built to the nationalist right out of fear of communism and for their traditional world and their inability to oppose the antisemitic right not only within their own ranks but on a national level. The comparison with the English Catholic Church, acting in a free (i.e., not totalitarian or occupied) society, offers the chance to contribute to the discussion about a ‘silent Church’ in the face of antisemitism and genocide. The end of the Second World War marks the end of this study in order to explain Catholic reactions to the persecution and murder of European Jews
societal issues. Despite the progress made in research on religious women, the history of early modern English nuns so far remains relatively under studied – unsurprisingly so, since so many factors played to their disadvantage. As women, they belonged to that half of humankind which was for so long deemed unworthy of study; as enclosed nuns, they were believed, like their Continental Sisters, to have nothing to offer to our understanding of society. And finally, as English Catholics, they were deliberately kept out of the historiography and literary canon of early
of Anne, chimes with the attitude of Catholic exiles on hearing that ‘England expects a new Queen and another Cecil’. 27 The ‘Lady’ wooed by ‘the Toad’ was Arbella Stuart, neice of Mary Queen of Scots and the next-best hope of English Catholics after Ferdinando. ‘Sir R. Cecil intends to be King by marrying Arabella and now lacks only the name