Faith,philanthropy and the aged poor in nineteenth-century England and Wales

In the last half of the nineteenth century, Victorians grappled with welfare issues regarding the aged poor as social investigators sought to explain their dependency and poverty. Elderly men and women who were unable to care for themselves, and without a family or community to attend to their needs, had few alternatives outside the workhouse in nineteenth-century England and Wales. Catholic homes for the elderly managed by communities of women religious such as the Sisters of Nazareth provided an important option to the aged poor who often needed both accommodation and medical care. These homes provided a unique form of social welfare which attracted the attention of Protestants as well as Catholics as benefactors. Protestant reformers, looking for different approaches to maintaining the aged poor, inspected these Catholic homes in order to develop their own institutional solutions. Perhaps more pointedly, this interaction between Protestants and Catholics offers a counter narrative to the usual histories that emphasise anti-Catholicism, sectarianism and conflict. Despite the anti-Catholic tenor of the times, the homes for the aged of the Sisters of Nazareth were recognized and funded by both Catholics and Protestants as they were seen as providing a much needed form of charitable aid for the aged poor. As an alternative to poor law workhouses, the institutions created and managed by Catholic women religious formed an integral part of the mixed economy of welfare in the nineteenth century.     

“The Cockroaches of Canada”: French‐Canada,Immigration and Nationalism,Anti‐Catholicism in English‐Canada, 1905–1929

This article examines the central influence of anti‐Catholicism upon English‐Canadian nationalism in the first third of the twentieth century. Anti‐Catholicism provided an existing rhetorical and ideological tradition and framework within which public figures, intellectuals, Protestant church leaders and other Canadians communicated their diverse visions of an ideal Canada. The study of anti‐Catholicism problematises the rigid separation that many scholars have posited between a conservative ethnic nationalism and a progressive civic nationalism. Often times these very civic values were inextricable from a context of Britishness. In addition, anti‐Catholicism was not simply about theological differences between Protestants and Catholics. Instead this theological thread often intersected with the perceived socio‐political problems that Catholics and Catholicism posed. Hostility to Catholicism was not limited only to fraternal organisations such as the Orange Order; indeed the importance of anti‐Catholicism as a component of Canadian nationalism lies in its presence across the political and intellectual spectrum. Catholicism was perceived to inculcate values antithetical to British traditions of freedom and democracy.     

The Hornby Castle Estates: Agrarian change from the 1582 Survey to the 1751 Sederunt

Abstract

English Catholicism has generally been ignored by mainstream historiography. In the last decade work on the early seventeenth century has shown that English Catholics actively engaged in ensuring their own survival and played a prominent part in national politics. Catholicism in the latter half of the century has received no such attention. Using a case study of the Lancashire Catholic, William Blundell, from the Civil War period to his death in 1698, it will be argued that by manipulating existing power structures and creating networks of both Protestants and Catholics who protected him, he was able to avoid the extremes of the penal laws and assert an influence on local and national affairs. Despite his professions of loyalty, many of his activities in support of English Catholicism and religious houses abroad posed a direct threat to the Protestant regimes under which he lived.     

Catholic Relief and the Political Awakening of Irish Catholics in Nova Scotia, 1780–1830

Over the course of the eighteenth and early-to-mid-nineteenth centuries the Irish, who moved throughout the British Empire, helped to build the social, political and economic structures that would enable the success of countless colonial settlements. They were merchants, traders, fishers and labourers, and a significant proportion of them were Catholic. While many would go on to play pivotal roles in the development of Catholicism in the colonies, the Irish were not alone and often joined or were joined by other Catholic groups such as the French, Spanish and Scottish Highlanders. That the Irish achieved greater political and economic success, though, had a knock-on effect for the other Catholic groups could then use the foundation that the Irish established for their own progress and development. This article considers the place of Catholics on Britain’s expanding colonial landscapes by examining the political awakening of Irish Catholics in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, two of Britain’s north Atlantic colonies, between 1780 and 1830. These two colonies, like many others, witnessed the growth of an Irish Catholic laity that was ambitious, pragmatic and adept at using the political structures available to reframe their legal status. The election of Laurence Kavanagh, a second-generation Irish Catholic merchant from a tiny fishing outpost on Cape Breton Island, to Nova Scotia’s legislative assembly in 1820, is offered as an example of how this process actually worked on the ground and opens up a broader discussion about the importance of minority populations like Catholics to Britain’s imperial programme.     

The Elusiveness of Protestantism: The Last Expatriations for “Apostasy” from the Church of Sweden (1858) in a European Perspective*

By studying the responses to the last expulsion for “apostasy” from the Swedish National Church in 1858, this article examines how an international Protestant identity was constructed in mid‐nineteenth‐century Europe. It is the argument of this study that a comprehensive identity — including both evangelicals and theological progressives — could be built around the notion of religious liberty. The advocacy of religious freedom became a line of demarcation that separated this group from the Roman Catholic Church, as well as from those Protestants that were firmly attached to an exclusivist position. In order to manufacture this unity, strategies that had been used to fortify the Catholic–Protestant divide were now also used to establish distinctions between different forms of Protestant belief. It is the argument of this article that this unity definitely broke with the theological disputes of the 1860s.     

Finding Antichrist: Apocalypticism in Nineteenth‐Century Catholic England and the Writings of Frederick Faber

The article discusses the apocalyptic beliefs of the nineteenth‐century English Oratorian and devotional writer, Frederick Faber, though initially providing a context among earlier and contemporary English Catholic apocalyptic writers. It proceeds, by means of a consideration of Faber's conscious de‐secularisation of language, to give an account of his identification of the elements of a transvalued contemporary popular concept of modernity as the signs of apocalyptic crisis. The article as a whole is intended to provide an aid to the perception and understanding of a pervasive apocalypticism in nineteenth‐century English‐speaking Catholicism.     

William the Conqueror's Campaign in Cheshire in 1069–70: Ravaging and Resistance in the North-West

Abstract

'Catholics, Conformity and the Community in the Elizabethan Diocese of Durham'. This article explores the development of Elizabethan Catholicism, challenging historical divisions between 'missionary' and 'traditional' Catholicism. By examining contrasting patterns of conformity among Durham Catholics, the article highlights divisions within the Catholic community about the implications of recusancy, showing that religious nonconformity reflected political, as well as pious, considerations. Challenging the traditional emphasis on the role of missionary priests in shaping English Catholicism, this article argues that the evolution of Catholicism — including patterns of worship and relationships with the State — was driven by the social, political and economic legacies of the local societies from which Elizabethan Catholic communities emerged.     

Using What's at Hand: English Catholic Reinterpretations of the Rosary, 1559–1642

This article investigates changes in rosary worship in England after Elizabeth I's insistence on Protestant conformity in 1559. It addresses how Catholics, faced with Protestant restrictions on traditional forms of worship, might have re-conceptualized religious rituals, symbols, and objects to satisfy their devotional needs. The rosary — understood as both a material object and a set of prayers — was (and is) the Catholic Church's most popular Marian devotion. Examining the prayers attached to the rosary offers insight into how English Catholics — often lacking access to priests and sacraments — understood their appeals to Mary, now portrayed as a strong, warrior-like advocate for believers' souls. Since material objects such as rosaries have long played an integral part in Catholic religious culture, examining the evolving roles of such objects opens a window through which to view the new experiences in piety available within European Catholicism, in general, and within English Catholicism, in particular, during the Reformation era.     

Martin Luther in Nineteenth‐Century France

French‐language readers had little available about Martin Luther before the French Revolution. A few Catholic authors had written about him from a confessional perspective. At the beginning of the nineteenth century interest was aroused by an essay competition, but the topic had to do with political influence rather than with Luther's life. In 1835 there began a series of publications which addressed the life of the reformer, and included vast amounts of quoted material from the letters and table talk. One of these early works, by Michelet, was from a Romantic but nonsectarian perspective, that by Merle was Romantic and providential, while another by Audin was from an arch‐Catholic point of view. Over the course of the century both Catholics and Protestants continued to write essays about Luther, from confessional points of view, but there was a growth of works which achieved a greater degree of non‐partisanship, even if appreciative of his contributions. Toward the end of the century there was a treatment of Luther which recognised explicitly that he belonged to a bygone era which was increasingly inaccessible to contemporary French readers.     

The disillusionment of Robert Dell: the intellectual journey of a Catholic socialist

ABSTRACT

This article considers attempts in the late nineteenth century to bring about a confluence of Catholicism and Socialism in Britain by examining the writing and correspondence of one man, the art critic and Fabian socialist Robert Dell. Beginning with Dell’s involvement as a young man in London-based radical politics, the article examines his efforts to bring his socialist politics and Catholic faith together. Dell attempted this through stressing a narrative of Catholic collectivism, under the aegis of a benevolent Church, contrasted with a post-Reformation Protestant individualism leading to the inequities of capitalism. The appeal of Catholicism in a Victorian Britain undergoing a collective crisis of faith is addressed. The second part of the article documents the failure of these attempts and Dell’s disillusionment with the Catholic hierarchy that by 1908 had led to a complete break on Dell’s part with the Catholic establishment. The catalyst for this break was the brutal treatment of Catholic Modernists such as George Tyrrell, Maude Petre and St George Mivart by the Vatican and the English Catholic leadership. Dell’s final rejection of organised Catholicism is charted through pamphlets, newspaper articles and personal correspondence. Ultimately, the article considers how Dell’s early political and theological career reflects on the relative positions of Catholicism and socialism at the turn of the twentieth century, and more broadly the dynamics of personal belief and political allegiances.     

Huguenot Belief and Practice in Eighteenth‐Century Paris

Protestantism was illegal in eighteenth‐century France, yet many French Reformed Protestants, better known as Huguenots, managed to maintain their religion and identity until the French Revolution granted religious freedom. Several thousand of them lived in Paris, but remained a tiny minority in a very Catholic city. Given this context, and little access to pastors or collective worship, what kind of Protestantism did they observe? This article suggests that, like other minority groups, their religious practice and thinking were influenced both by the Catholic environment in which they lived and by the culture of the late eighteenth‐century city. By 1789 they had moved away from certain Calvinist traditions, and some of them had adopted a surprising ecumenism.     

"A Troubled Godless Place": Catholic Practice and Local Politics in the Communes of the Central Vaucluse, 1830–1905

In the final quarter of the nineteenth century, men and women in the French communes of the central Vaucluse began to defer or neglect vital Catholic rites of passage. Against a backdrop of turbulent regional politics and economic upheaval, formal adherence to church doctrine declined sharply, never again to regain its previous levels. This article assesses the religious gestures of individuals and communities through the analysis of their sacramental participation, the only recorded response of Catholics to the church's presence in their lives. The implementation of the lay republic in the community by means of both local and national secularizing policy from 1878 to 1905 was the primary precipitant of general, dramatic decreases in formal Catholic practice. It was only upon the official secularization of communal society and politics that significant numbers of central Vauclusiens began to relinquish their attachment to Catholic rites of passage surrounding birth, marriage, and death.     

Benedicto Kiwanuka and Catholic Democracy in Uganda

In this article, I introduce Benedicto Kiwanuka (1922–72), Uganda’s first prime minister and most prominent modern Catholic politician, and explore how his religious and political sensibilities — especially his vision of democracy — intersected with Catholic thought and historical experience in Buganda and Uganda. Far from turning him into a “Catholic tribalist” looking to empower Catholics vis à vis other religious groups, Kiwanuka’s Catholic identity was a core component of his political commitment to non-sectarian democracy, the common good, and pan-ethnic nation-building. He saw in Catholicism the possibility of envisioning political solidarity during a moment of social rupture, and he and his Democratic Party used Catholic and biblical discourse and theology to help undergird a broader political commitment to liberal democratic nationalism during Uganda’s transition to independence (1958–62). At the same time, Kiwanuka’s prophetic commitment to principle — an uncompromising dogmatism often expressed in religious and theological language — also helped cost him the opportunity to lead Uganda into and beyond independence.     

British Catholics’ commercial strategies in times of international warfare (1688–1705)

This article investigates the British Catholic merchants’ commercial strategies during the Nine Years War (1689–1697) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1713). By focusing on the tactics deployed by John Aylward and his partners in France and England, I argue that Catholicism fundamentally sustained Aylward’s trade by ensuring access to various markets and safer commercial plans. Catholicism had not only an economic dimension and Catholics in trade proved non-communal, working with co-religionists, family but also with non-Catholics in order to pursue profits. This article tells us how Catholicism, despite being a political and social impairment, was the key to success in commerce. It contributes to recent scholarship on religious minorities in trade and on how commerce functioned in the English Channel and in European waters at times of warfare.     

Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century Catholic Charity: Categories of Difference in the Discourses and Practices of the Belgian Vincentians

During the nineteenth century, Catholic charity was an important source of poor relief in Belgium, as well as a means for Catholics to practice and express their devotion. Driven by a renewed religious fervour, men and women actively engaged in lay charitable organisations with the purpose of serving God through the poor and working towards self-sanctification. Historical research has especially noted women's charitable fervour, furthering the idea that the nineteenth century was characterised by a feminisation of religion. Recent studies have shown, however, that men did not become estranged from religion, and that multiple religious identities and practices existed at the same time across different contexts. Charity attracted both men and women, but the various masculinities and femininities that existed in the charitable space have seldom been explored. This study examines how gender roles were defined in the discourses of Catholic charities and the ways in which these roles structured social interactions among charitable actors, and between them and their recipients. To this end, two lay charities are taken as a case study: the Society and the Ladies of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, both committed to the practice of poor visits.     

Discreet Proto‐Pentecostals: The Catholic Apostolic Church in North America

Much recent work has been undertaken on the beginnings of Pentecostalism in North America, and its antecedents in the nineteenth century. These efforts have outlined the theological contributions of the Holiness movement, revivalism, and nineteenth‐century healing movements. One group that has been largely overlooked is the Edward Irving influenced Catholic Apostolic Church, which has been seen as making a minimal contribution as a precursor to Pentecostalism in general; it has especially been seen as peripheral in the Americas. This article will use contemporary newspapers and recently digitised primary sources to argue that the Catholic Apostolic Church was a significant force in the pre‐history of American and Canadian Pentecostalism, with hundreds of followers in key cities, regularly exhibiting prophecy and glossolalia throughout the second half of the nineteenth century.     

Can Christianity Save Civilisation?: Liberal Protestant Anti‐Secularism in Interwar America

This article explores the geopolitics of liberal evangelicalism, Christian Realism, and the ecumenical movement as collective responses to the rise of “secularism” after World War I. Alternatively, it considers how liberal Protestants looked to Roman Catholicism for support in their defence of the Christian identity of the United States and the West more generally. The long history of Christian anti‐secularism in America complicates familiar portraits of liberal Protestants as agents of secularisation.     

The curious case of Catherine Mary Hewitt and U.S. Major General of Volunteers John Fulton Reynolds: bodies,mourning the dead,and religion in the era of the American Civil War

ABSTRACT

At the time of his death at the Battle of Gettysburg, General Reynolds was the highest-ranking Union officer killed in the American Civil War. The return of the General’s body from the battlefront represented an uncommon feature of a war noted for its industrial scale and for the casualties it produced. How loved ones grieved Reynolds illustrates mourning practices among middle- to upper-class women in the Civil War North and underscores the centrality of death in nineteenth-century America. The death of Reynolds also occasioned the introduction of Reynolds’s sisters to the General’s secret fiancée, a Roman Catholic convert. Writers have attributed the clandestine nature of the engagement, and the General’s reluctance to introduce his fiancée to family, to Catherine Hewitt’s Roman Catholicism. But Catholics in the North received greater accommodation in mainline Protestant society than previously imagined, and the many kindnesses that the Reynolds family showed Hewitt point to an increasing acceptance of Catholics among Protestants in established social settings. Finally, Reynolds’s loved ones mourned him in religious and Victorian overtones, but it is not altogether clear that for them religion functioned as the predominant paradigm from which they elicited a transcendent meaning of the General’s death. In this local context, the responses of Reynolds’s loved ones to his death suggest the waning of religious belief in the era of the American Civil War.