Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England

Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England PDF

Author: Professor Victor Houliston

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2013-06-28

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 1409479803

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During his lifetime, the Jesuit priest Robert Persons (1546–1610) was arguably the leading figure fighting for the re-establishment of Catholicism in England. Whilst his colleague Edmund Campion may now be better known it was Persons's tireless efforts that kept the Jesuit mission alive during the difficult days of Elizabeth's reign. In this new study, Person's life and phenomenal literary output are analysed and put into the broader context of recent Catholic scholarship. The book bridges the gap between historical studies, on the one hand, and literary studies on the other, by concentrating on Persons's contribution as a writer to the polemical culture of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. As well as discussing his wider achievements as leader of the English Jesuits – founding three seminaries for English priests, corresponding regularly with Catholic activists in England, writing over thirty books, holding the post of rector of the English College in Rome, and being a trusted consultant to the papacy on English affairs – this study looks in detail at what is arguably his greatest legacy, The First Booke of the Christian Exercise (more commonly known as the Book of Resolution). That book, first published in 1582, was to prove the cornerstone of Persons's missionary effort, and a popular work of Catholic devotion, running to several editions over the coming years. Although Persons was ultimately unsuccessful in his ambition to return England to the Catholic fold, the story of his life and works reveals much about the ecclesiastical struggle that gripped early modern Europe. By providing a thorough and up-to-date reassessment of Persons this study not only makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the polemical context of post-Reformation Catholicism, but also of the Jesuit notion of the 'apostolate of writing'. This book is published in conjunction with the Jesuit Historical Institute series 'Bibliotheca Instituti Historici Societatis Iesu'.

The Barbarian Conversion

The Barbarian Conversion PDF

Author: Richard A. Fletcher

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 598

ISBN-13: 9780520218598

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"An investigation of the process by which large parts of Europe accepted the Christian faith between the fourth and the fourteenth centuries and of some of the cultural consequences that flowed therefrom." In a work of splendid scholarship that reflects both a firm mastery of difficult sources and a keen intuition, one of Britain's foremost medievalists tells the story of the Christianization of Europe. It is a very large story, for conversion encompassed much more than religious belief. With it came enormous cultural change: Latin literacy and books, Roman notions of law and property, and the concept of town life, as well as new tastes in food, drink, and dress. Whether from faith or by force, from self-interest or by revelation, conversion had an immense impact that is with us even today.

Shakespeare's Religious Language

Shakespeare's Religious Language PDF

Author: R. Chris Hassel Jr.

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2005-03-12

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 1847142214

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Religious issues and religious discourse were vastly important in the sixteenth and seventeenth century and religious language is key to an understanding of Shakespeare's plays and poems. This dictionary discusses just over 1000 words and names in Shakespeare's works that have some religious denotation or connotation. Its unique word-by-word approach allows equal consideration of the full religious nuance of each of these words, from 'abbess' to 'zeal'. It also gradually reveals the persistence, the variety, and the sophistication of Shakespeare's religious usage. Frequent attention is given to the prominence of Reformation controversy in these words, and to Shakespeare's often ingenious and playful metaphoric usage of them. Theological and religious commonplaces also assume a major place in the dictionary, as do overt references to biblical figures, biblical stories and biblical place-names; biblical allusions; church figures and saints. Entries include: angel, baptism, catechism, cross, death's-head, devil, equivocation, evil, fool, Saint George, GOd, grace, heaven, idolatry, Jove, Lutheran, merit, Navarre, obsequy, Pope, pray, reform/reformation, sanctify, scripture, sin, soul, troth, unction, vice, and York.

The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1535–1603

The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1535–1603 PDF

Author: Anne Dillon

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 1351892398

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Between 1535 and 1603, more than 200 English Catholics were executed by the State for treason. Drawing on an extraordinary range of contemporary sources, Anne Dillon examines the ways in which these executions were transformed into acts of martyrdom. Utilizing the reports from the gallows, the Catholic community in England and in exile created a wide range of manuscripts and texts in which they employed the concept of martyrdom for propaganda purposes in continental Europe and for shaping Catholic identity and encouraging recusancy at home. Particularly potent was the derivation of images from these texts which provided visual means of conveying the symbol of the martyr. Through an examination of the work of Richard Verstegan and the martyr murals of the English College in Rome, the book explores the influence of these images on the Counter Reformation Church, the Jesuits, and the political intentions of English Catholics in exile and those of their hosts. The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1535-1603 shows how Verstegan used the English martyrs in his Theatrum crudelitatum of 1587 to rally support from Catholics on the Continent for a Spanish invasion of England to overthrow Elizabeth I and her government. The English martyr was, Anne Dillon argues, as much a construction of international, political rhetoric as it was of English religious and political debate; an international Catholic banner around which Catholic European powers were urged to rally.

Fabricating Founders in Early Modern England

Fabricating Founders in Early Modern England PDF

Author: Lauren Horn Griffin

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-09-14

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 9004514368

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This book argues that in order to understand nationalisms, we need a clearer understanding of the types of cultural myths, symbols, and traditions that legitimate them. Myths of origin and election, memories of a greater and purer past, and narratives of persecution and mission are required for the production and maintenance of powerful national sentiments. Through an investigation of how early modern Catholics and Protestants reimagined, reinterpreted, and rewrote the lives of the founder-saints who spread Christianity in England, this book offers a theoretical framework for the study of origin narratives. Analyzing the discursive construction of time and place, the invocation of forces beyond the human to naturalize and authorize, and the role of visual and ritual culture in fabrications of the past, this book provides a case study for how to approach claims about founding figures. Serving as a timely example of the dependence of national identity on key religious resources, Griffin shows how origin narratives – particularly the founding figures that anchor them – function as uniquely powerful rhetorical tools for the cultural production of regional and national identity.