Robert Persons S.J., The Christian Directory (1582): The First Booke of the Christian Exercise, Appertayning to Resolution

Robert Persons S.J., The Christian Directory (1582): The First Booke of the Christian Exercise, Appertayning to Resolution
Author: Robert Persons S.J.
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2021-11-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004474501

This volume presents a critical edition of the immensely influential and popular first version of The Christian Directory, by the notorious Elizabethan Jesuit leader, Robert Persons. It was written during and immediately after the English Mission of 1580-1, which ended with the martyrdom of his companion Edmund Campion. Persons's work, originally entitled The First Booke of the Christian Exercise, appertayning to Resolution, attempts to persuade the reader to be resolved in the service of God. It deals with the motives and obstacles to such resolution. This edition includes a full apparatus of the alterations made to Persons's work by the Edmund Bunny, whose Protestant edition became an Elizabethan bestseller. It will be particularly useful to historians of the Catholic reformation and students of early modern English prose.

De persecutione Anglicana by Robert Persons S.J.

De persecutione Anglicana by Robert Persons S.J.
Author: Victor Houliston
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2023-11-30
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1350379360

Presenting the text of a notorious Jesuit attack on Queen Elizabeth I's treatment of her Catholic subjects, this volume highlights the European context of the English Reformation and Robert Persons's role as propagandist. In De persecutione Anglicana, Robert Persons (1546–1610) graphically describes the conditions in prisons, the harassment of Catholics at home and the gruesome manner of execution for treason. The work culminates in the arrest of the famous Jesuit martyr Edmund Campion, with rapidly revised versions bringing the narrative up to date after Campion's execution on 1 December 1581. Written in Latin to appeal to readers throughout Europe, it was translated into French, Italian and German, making it arguably the most important Latin martyrological work by an English Catholic of the Elizabethan period. This critical edition comprises the Latin text, English translation and commentary, and a textual history, appending additional material from the revised versions. Persons was actively involved in the drive to restore Roman Catholicism in England, as missionary strategist, controversialist and founder of English colleges abroad. He worked closely with the superior general of the Society of Jesus, Claudio Acquaviva, negotiating with Philip II of Spain, the Duke of Guise, the Duke of Parma and successive popes. Thanks to the growth of early modern British Catholic studies, his prolific and provocative English writings attract increasing scholarly attention, but his Latin texts have often been glossed over.

Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England

Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England
Author: Professor Victor Houliston
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2013-06-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1409479803

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'.

Law and Conscience

Law and Conscience
Author: Stefania Tutino
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2017-03-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351922939

This book examines the Catholic elaboration on the relationship between state and Church in late Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Among the several factors which have contributed to the complex process of state-formation in early modern Europe, religious affiliation has certainly been one of the most important, if not the most important. Within the European context of the consolidation of both the nation-state entities and the state-Churches, Catholicism in England in the 16th and 17th centuries presents peculiar elements which are crucial to understanding the problems at stake, from both a political and a religious point of view. Catholics in early modern England were certainly a minority, but a minority of an interestingly doubled kind. On the one hand, they were a "sect" among many others. On the other hand, Catholicism was a "universal", catholic religion, in a country in which the sovereign was the head - or governor - of both political and ecclesiastical establishments. In this context, this monograph casts light on the mechanisms through which a distinctive religious minority was able to adapt itself within a singular political context. In the most general terms, this book contributes to the significant question of how different religious affiliations could (or might) be integrated within one national reality, and how political allegiance and religious belief began to be perceived as two different identities within one context. Current scholarship on the religious history of early modern England has considerably changed the way in which historians think about English Protestantism. Recent works have offered a more nuanced and accurate picture of the English Protestant Church, which is now seen not as a monolithic institution, but rather as complex and fluid. This book seeks to offer certain elements of a complementary view of the English Catholic Church as an organism within which the debate over how to combine the catholic feature of the Church of Ro

Robert Parsons and English Catholicism, 1580-1610

Robert Parsons and English Catholicism, 1580-1610
Author: Michael L. Carrafiello
Publisher: Susquehanna University Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 1998
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781575910123

Instead, his legacy can be measured by the importance of his ideas in the context of late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century England. Those ideas, and the machinations they inspired, were ultimately an integral part of the ongoing struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism in religion and between constitutionalism and absolutism in politics.

Reformation Reputations

Reformation Reputations
Author: David J. Crankshaw
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 493
Release: 2020-11-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 3030554341

This book highlights the pivotal roles of individuals in England’s complex sixteenth-century reformations. While many historians study broad themes, such as religious moderation, this volume is centred on the perspective that great changes are instigated not by themes, or ‘isms’, but rather by people – a point recently underlined in the 2017 quincentenary commemorations of Martin Luther’s protest in Germany. That sovereigns from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I largely drove religious policy in Tudor England is well known. Instead, the essays collected in this volume, inspired by the quincentenary and based upon original research, take a novel approach, emphasizing the agency of some of their most interesting subjects: Protestant and Roman Catholic, clerical and lay, men and women. With an introduction that establishes why the commemorative impulse was so powerful in this period and explores how reputations were constructed, perpetuated and manipulated, the authors of the nine succeeding chapters examine the reputations of three archbishops of Canterbury (Thomas Cranmer, Matthew Parker and John Whitgift), three pioneering bishops’ wives (Elizabeth Coverdale, Margaret Cranmer and Anne Hooper), two Roman Catholic martyrs (John Fisher and Thomas More), one evangelical martyr other than Cranmer (Anne Askew), two Jesuits (John Gerard and Robert Persons) and one author whose confessional identity remains contested (Anthony Munday). Partly biographical, though mainly historiographical, these essays offer refreshing new perspectives on why the selected figures are famed (or should be famed) and discuss what their reformation reputations tell us today.

Radicals in Exile

Radicals in Exile
Author: Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2020-02-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0271086777

Facing persecution in early modern England, some Catholics chose exile over conformity. Some even cast their lot with foreign monarchs rather than wait for their own rulers to have a change of heart. This book studies the relationship forged by English exiles and Philip II of Spain. It shows how these expatriates, known as the “Spanish Elizabethans,” used the most powerful tools at their disposal—paper, pens, and presses—to incite war against England during the “messianic” phase of Philip’s reign, from the years leading up to the Grand Armada until the king’s death in 1598. Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez looks at English Catholic propaganda within its international and transnational contexts. He examines a range of long-neglected polemical texts, demonstrating their prominence during an important moment of early modern politico-religious strife and exploring the transnational dynamic of early modern polemics and the flexible rhetorical approaches required by exile. He concludes that while these exiles may have lived on the margins, their books were central to early modern Spanish politics and are key to understanding the broader narrative of the Counter-Reformation. Deeply researched and highly original, Radicals in Exile makes an important contribution to the study of religious exile in early modern Europe. It will be welcomed by historians of early modern Iberian and English politics and religion as well as scholars of book history.

Jesuit Intellectual and Physical Exchange between England and Mainland Europe, c. 1580–1789

Jesuit Intellectual and Physical Exchange between England and Mainland Europe, c. 1580–1789
Author: James E. Kelly
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2018-11-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004362665

Jesuit Intellectual and Physical Exchange between England and Mainland Europe, c. 1580–1789: ‘The World is our House’? offers new perspectives on the English Mission of the Society of Jesus. It brings together an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars to explore the Mission’s role and wider impact within the Society, as well as early modern European Catholicism. Building on recent movements within the field to decentralise the Catholic Reformation, the volume seeks to change perceptions of the English Mission as peripheral, bringing the archipelagic experience of Jesuits working in the British Isles in line with work on their European confreres and the broader global network of the Society of Jesus.

Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans

Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans
Author: Brian C. Lockey
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2016-03-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 131714709X

Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans considers how the marginalized perspective of 16th-century English Catholic exiles and 17th-century English royalist exiles helped to generate a form of cosmopolitanism that was rooted in contemporary religious and national identities but also transcended those identities. Author Brian C. Lockey argues that English discourses of nationhood were in conversation with two opposing 'cosmopolitan' perspectives, one that sought to cultivate and sustain the emerging English nationalism and imperialism and another that challenged English nationhood from the perspective of those Englishmen who viewed the kingdom as one province within the larger transnational Christian commonwealth. Lockey illustrates how the latter cosmopolitan perspective, produced within two communities of exiled English subjects, separated in time by half a century, influenced fiction writers such as Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Anthony Munday, Sir John Harington, John Milton, and Aphra Behn. Ultimately, he shows that early modern cosmopolitans critiqued the emerging discourse of English nationhood from a traditional religious and political perspective, even as their writings eventually gave rise to later secular Enlightenment forms of cosmopolitanism.