Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: That there was a paradigm shift from recusants and martyrs to church papists and degrees of conformity, and a rise in interest in the survival and revival of Catholicism in Elizabethan and Stuart England, is largely due to the work of Alexandra Walsham-as represented by the familiar but revised essays in this compilation.From about the 1970s, led by the works of John Bossy and Christopher Haigh, Catholicism in England was viewed as a shrinking pool of idle bystanders unwilling or unable to follow the lead of heroic Jesuit missionaries and brave priests combatting the spiritual infection of Protestantism.Walsham (with Shagan, Questier, and others) re-examined the full range of available materials and found instead an interesting and unique duality to real Catholic endurance.Neither apolitical nor apathetic, English (British) Catholics pursued varied strategies (including recusancy) and consequently the faith, patronage, and political networks survived.An extensive and historiographical introduction reveals the context underlying the revisions looking at the relationship between events in Britain and in the wider world of Catholic rejuvenation, as Counter-Reformation forces like Trent and the Jesuits intersected Catholic Reformation forces like revised monasticism, individual piety, and national political compromises.And, as part and parcel of the revised paradigm, Walsham demonstrated the real mutual influences that existed between Catholicism and Protestantism in England and traced the changes made necessary in pursuit of the faith as a result of its transformation from state church to minority sect.The eleven essays of the collection are divided into four themes, each of which could easily generate further books, articles, and research.Part 1 delves into questions of conscience and conformity through focused attention on occasional and nuanced conformity (as advanced in the works of Thomas Bell), on the importance of Nicodemites, and on the consequent rise of personal conscience, mutual toleration, and compromise between the faiths.English Catholics faced charges of spiritual perjury and heresy from Continental authorities (e.g., Jesuits) but they also stood as pre-cursors to the inter-confessional peace and coexistence that blossomed much later.In part 2, Walsham examines the work of missionaries and the careful adaptation of popular cultural
Source: Renaissance and Reformation
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W644565187