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From Monopoly to Minority: Catholicism in Early Modern England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Christopher Haigh
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Extract

Robert Parsons, the Jesuit, compiled his account of the transition of English Catholicism from monopoly to minority status in 1599–1600, and called it ‘A story of domestical difficulties which the Catholic cause and promoters thereof hath had in defending the same, not only against the violence and persecution of the heretics but also by sundry other impediments among themselves, of faction, emulation, sedition and division, since the change of religion in England’. This version of Tudor ecclesiastical history supplements Nicholas Sander's attention to evil Protestants and politicians by an examination of the Catholic response to the Reformation. The Parsons story has two groups of villains, the bishops and the parish clergy, who betrayed their faith to hold on to their livings; it has two groups of heroes, who rescued the faith by their self-sacrifice, the Jesuits and the seminary priests they inspired, and the Elizabethan Catholic gentry; and it goes something like this. The early Tudor monopolistic Church was weakened by spiritual decadence and mere conformism, and its leadership divided by ambition and faction, so it could not resist the challenge of heresy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 31 , December 1981 , pp. 129 - 147
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1981

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References

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