Seventeenth-century female rigorists have received little archival study since the nineteenth century, when they were at once mythologized as beautiful luminaries or 'precieuses' who monopolized the salons, and reduced to the 'Belles Amies' of the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. This study attempts to show that they have been misinterpreted. It shows that by neglecting the correspondence of these women, historians have missed some of the richest descriptions of how female piety evolved after the devot generation pioneered the Catholic Reformation in France. This thesis proposes that within the seventeenth-century Parisian rigorist movement there was an aristocratic friendship network comprised of women who socialized and worshipped together. It argues that within this group a socially and spiritually exclusive devotional culture developed, which it terms Pious Sociability. It seeks to show how Pious Sociability was characterized by intimate 'spiritual friendships', an aversion towards the licentious culture of an increasingly libertine royal court, and distinctive, anti-Baroque devotional practices. It suggests that the Pious Sociability of rigorist penitents may have informed, and been informed by, their perception of themselves as God's spiritual elite with an affinity with the early Christian community. Drawing upon manuscript and printed sources, this study demonstrates the significance of female pious networks to the history of the Catholic Reformation in France. It aims to offer an organic approach to the study of elite female culture, nuancing existing histories of post-Tridentine devotion and plotting the unfolding of feminine sociability beyond the salon.

The thesis investigates the ways in which Catholics in late medieval Italy (c. 1200-1600) conceptualised their interactions with God. Drawing on a wide range of primary evidence and informed by contemporary anthropological theory, it argues that objects were used within religious settings to instantiate the divine. Within these contexts, religious artefacts such as Madonna statues, crucifixes and comforting tavolette were important because they enabled people to directly interact with the sacred while on earth. The assumption that material artefacts could make immanent the divine is apparent in the interactions of Christians with votive sculptures and images; pilgrims journeyed far to pray directly to miracle-working images in the hope that a ’face-to-face' meeting might hasten a divine response. Key to the investigation is the corporeal Franciscan theology which underpinned the religious activities undertaken by the confraternities, as well as accusations of 'idolatry' by reformers. The thesis concludes with an assessment of post-Tridentine conceptions of Catholic piety with reference to a range of religious and secular image-making practices.

This thesis demonstrates that I have made a sustained, original, coherent, and significant contribution to scholarly research on post-Reformation English Catholicism by presenting and discussing a series of publications that cover the period from the Elizabethan Reformation to the eve of the Second Vatican Council. The Introduction argues that although English Catholics became a separate recusant community that increased, it was never more than a small minority. The Introduction also outlines my contributions to the field. It goes on to discuss the historiography of the subject: Bossy’s contribution, the emphasis on Church Popery by Walsham and Questier, and the Ultramontane and Liberal approaches to the later modern period. The Critical Essay demonstrates my contribution to the study of the emergence and development of recusancy in much of the North of England. My work was used by other historians of Catholicism. I pioneered and developed the study of popular Catholicism, and made an important contribution to the understanding of the development of its spirituality, using familiar sources to answer new questions. I also argued that the failure of the policies of King James II demonstrated the weakness of English Catholicism after a century of persecution. The Critical Essay then goes on to discuss emancipated Catholicism’s continued growth in the later modern period, subject to the Industrial Revolution and its social effects. It shows that I led the way in the study of the priest and historian, John Lingard, and made a significant contribution to the study of the Catholic congregationalism. Finally, I broke new ground in both Catholic and Ruskin studies by showing how the Catholic community adopted the artistic and social teaching of Ruskin. The Conclusion discusses my work’s limitations in the light of recent research, and goes on to suggest ways in which it might be further developed.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis explores the responses of different groups within the English Catholic community to the civil war, interregnum and restoration, with close attention to Catholic political theory. The English Catholic community were not mere observers of the constitutional and religious changes made during this period but manoeuvred within shifting political frameworks, continually adjusting their politics to meet new requirements. After the defeat and the execution of Charles I, members of the community made a series of compromises with political parties to secure toleration. Until the Restoration these were almost all to the exclusion of the Stuarts. Catholic political theorists engaged with the pro-sectarian, tolerationist principles of the parliamentary Independents during the first part of the Interregnum, but after the failure of the Cromwellian Church settlement in 1655 began to interact with anti-sectarian proepiscopal groups during the decline of the Protectorate. Further, the community’s membership of an international church, their ideological assumptions and patronage from, and allegiances to, European courts meant that English Catholics had to be an integral part of Cromwellian foreign policy. The 1650s did not signify a break in the politics and ambition of the community but instead saw a continuation of the divisions, back-biting and intolerance that Catholics had shown during the 1620s and 1630s. Due to the factional nature of both the politics of the interregnum and the community itself however, English Catholics stood to gain more from the Protectorate than they did from the Stuart monarchy. This thesis therefore reintegrates English Catholicism into the existing historiography of mid-seventeenth century British history.

This thesis examines the transition from the Roman republic to the Principate of Augustus through the lens of the pontifex maximus, the office of the head of the pontifical college. Despite burgeoning interest in this role, current scholarship still regards the elevation of the chief pontiff to a politically significant position as a by-product of Caesar’s ambition and, subsequently, Octavian’s quest for both power and legitimacy. It is my contention that the trajectory of this priesthood’s ascendancy has been incorrectly plotted and that a proper understanding of the pontificate requires an analysis of the events surrounding the politically motivated murder of a tribune by the chief pontiff in 133 and subsequently over the next century. After a survey of literature and a summary of the key features of the office, the thesis argues that the position of chief pontiff had long since conferred a stable prominence which was unique in the Roman republic. This prominence brought with it a particular kind of power which interacted with the auctoritas of the men who occupied the priesthood: in this way, the holders of an office which was bound up with some of the most revered traditions of the city were empowered to improvise courses of action which further enhanced the standing and influence of the chief pontiffs. It was through this cycle of action and perception that the pontifex maximus became a mechanism of political change – and was itself transformed in the process. In considering this cycle, particular emphasis is placed on the phenomenon of ‘sacro-political’ violence which, as a novelty instigated by one chief pontiff, became a recurrent motif in Roman political life thereafter. I argue that Scipio Nasica Serapio made deliberate use of his office to sanction an intervention which would have serious consequences for the republic and which radically altered how the Romans saw this priesthood. The thesis then explores how subsequent holders of the office either negotiated or exploited this ‘legacy’ to further their careers, to respond to unprecedented constitutional crises or simply to stay alive. Although all the pontifices maximi from 141 B.C. to 14 AD are considered, this thesis focuses on the lives and times of Nasica Serapio, Quintus Scaevola, Julius Caesar and Augustus as their tenures are particularly emblematic of the tensions between the mos maiorum and an increasingly extreme political climate. I argue that the new dispensation established by the first princeps, with all the restorationist rhetoric which accompanied it, relied decisively on Augustus’ assumption of the role. Even if Augustus had absorbed virtually all of the available priesthoods, the long wait he had to endure for the office of chief pontiff says a great deal about the nature of the pontificate and its strategic value to the heir of Caesar. Two case-study Appendices discuss the disputed pontificate of Q. Servilius Caepio and the relationship between Cicero, Clodius and the pontifical college. These studies exemplify the prosopographical challenges in reconstructing republican priesthoods (even the most prominent) and the interaction between law, religion and politics in the mid first century B.C.

Traditionally, the historical study of the Catholic community in the Archdiocese of Glasgow has centred on the building of the Catholic community and the implications of its ethnic background. Little or no attention has been made to the intellectual contribution of Catholics to the questions of identity, Catholic politics and devotional trends. Similarly, the previous study of Catholicism in Scotland has been based on local issues with little or no reference to the place of Scottish Catholicism in the mainstream of European developments in the Roman Catholic Church. This work seeks to redress the balance through a comprehensive examination of four themes. Firstly, the impact of Catholic social teaching on the senior Catholic lay organisation, the Catholic Union of the Archdiocese of Glasgow. Secondly, an examination of the distinctive contribution of Catholics in the Archdiocese to piety and devotion, focussing on the Lourdes Grotto at Carfm and the Legion of Mary. The third theme i s an assessment of the role played by the Glasgow Circle of the Newman Association, in the post Second World War years, in the mobilisation of the Catholic intelligentsia, through the development of a devolved Scottish Council of the Newman Association and the promotion of reform within the Catholic Church leading up to the Second Vatican Council in 1962. The fourth theme is a discussion of the writing of Scottish history and the contributions made by Catholic scholars to a revision of the orthodoxies on the role of Catholicism in Scotland. Through the examination of these themes, this work argues that there was a coherent attempt to remake the image and character of Catholicism in the Archdiocese of Glasgow, which had implications for the overall standing of Catholicism in Scotland. It is argued that, far from being divorced from trends in Catholicism in continental Europe, developments in Scottish Catholicism, though distinctive, must be seen in the light of changes in Catholic thinking in Europe.