Month: April 2022

Manon Lenormand and Klaudia Porucka, both MA students with us, read Arthur Marotti’s ‘Alienating Catholic: Recusant Women, Jesuits, and Ideological Fantasies’, in Religious Ideology & Cultural Fantasy. Catholic and Anti-Catholic Discourses in Early Modern England (University of Notre Dame, 2005), pp. 32-63. Below is their reflexive work, which they chose to present as a piece of creative writing inspired by pamphlets such as The Jesuits Intrigues (London, 1669), which pretended to be genuine guide books for the conversion of virtuous English subjects to the Roman faith. 

A (not so) Early Modern Pamphlet: The Popish Plague.

In the manner of Thomas Scott or Henry Compton, this blogpost is written in the form of an anti-recusancy pamphlet such as it was custom during the Early Modern Period. It focuses on the alienation of recusant women and Jesuits with links to common myths surrounding their practices and goals. The following four chapters were based on Arthur F. Marotti’s book Religious Ideology & Cultural Fantasy. Catholic and Anti-Catholic Discourses in Early Modern England (University of Notre Dame, 2005)

The Double Deliverance 1588-1605 [1]

Chap. I. Find the devil in disguise

It is commonly known that those who dare to challenge the Church are willing to challenge the state. After all, if you were to diminish the magnificence of our supreme leader, could we call you English? Was the Book of Common Prayer not made to unify our nation and to help us celebrate our uniqueness?  We have published 39 articles of faith^[2] to explore what it means to be part of our mighty Anglican Church and it is obvious to the most humble of eyes that the popish vermin cannot align their virtues to ours. Those half subjects preaching in a foreign tongue, unleashing threats of purgatory, and accusing us of heresy^[3]… those foreign snakes are what lurks in the darkest hole waiting to poison our nation. In past times, the English held grudges against several nations, but the true black sheep is hiding among loyal English citizens. How can we show their real face to humanity?

The first thing that English Protestants can do, is to expose them for what they are! We have suffered because of them and are in great danger of losing everything that our great nation has accomplished with our Majesties divine help. Milton[4] warns us in his work of the archtraitor and of their use of female charm. Catholic missionary priests, especially those of the Jesuit kind, are known to work with recusant women, trying to lure more English subjects into their net. They are in allegiance with the Catholic Church in Rome and are committed to foreign powers.Women play a particular role in this game, as they trick their husbands into following their faith and bring into this world popish offspring that is to be educated outside of our English home. Those strange dangers are only the tip of this heinous mountain of doom.

Chap. II. Devilish snakes spewing their Popish venom

Ever since the arrival of the first Jesuits in our dear country in 1580,[6] things have not been the same. Our nation is in great danger, they are rotting the very core of our civilisation. They are trying to rip us of our institutions. How, you may ask? Like snakes, they are slithering into our towns and within our very homes. First, they send their offspring to foreign countries where they are taught to worship the heresy of the papish order, they send them our money so that they can spend it on the continent.[7] Then, once their offspring has been acquainted enough with these popish heresies, they send them back to our country so they can spew their poison within our homes.^[8] Our wives, who are weaker than us because of their sex, are the first prey these devils target. They seduce them into Catholicism, and once seduced, they seduce their good Protestant husbands in  their turn. They poison our weak women’s minds and render them seductresses who manipulate men. They shift the natural and good order of things, our women no longer abide by their loving husbands or by our loving Monarch, but by their perversities. They become wicked Popish women, who let those vipers into their bed to practise spiritual adultery.[9] Widows and married women alike, Jesuits use the weakness of their sex and mind to control their estates and their money in the name of their mission for the romische Pope.

What have they brought to our nation? They are trying to rot our institutions. Plot after plot, we discover the extent of their deceitfulness. Like devils, they disguise themselves as good citizens, only for us to find them in Parliament, plotting to burn our institutions with their hellish fires,^[10] or trying to kill our dear monarch Charles II[11] so they can have their Catholic King.[12]

Chap. III. Take the burden back to Rome!

For our sake, the sake of our country and the survival of our monarchy, we must kick these devils out of our kingdom! Let’s not give them an opportunity to kick us out of our own homes! We must protect our dearest monarch and government. The Jesuits and the recusant Catholic women who give them shelter have declared themselves as enemies of the state by not complying to the oath of allegiance. More than that, they befriend our greatest enemy: the Spaniards.[13]We must therefore treat them as traitors of the state. We must not let them plot against our dear nation together. They have tried putting the Spanish infanta, their Catholic offspring, by the side of our future monarch,^[14] to have that dry-Nurse pretend to be a mother to our country…[15] We must continue to forbid them to poison our society. We must continue to reveal their true devilish nature to the world, and to uncover them from their disguises.

They have no place in our homes or in our towns. The first thing is to not let them have a say in the important decisions of our community, whether they want to participate in the light of the day or behind closed doors without us knowing, plotting behind our backs. That is why we must deny them any position in our society.

Chap. IV. Unite and pluck the rotten weed by its roots!

To facilitate the disposal of these traitors one must pluck the rotten weed by its roots. We must prevent the spread of Catholicism and show our unity in the conformity of our national Protestant church. How can you serve two leaders at once? Lay bare their affiliation and make them vow loyalty to our Queen Majesty! If they wish to continue in recusancy, they ought to pay fines and endure more severe sentences depending on their crimes. Jesuits, those treacherous, wandering rats, seducing women into roman degeneracy and other Machiavellian activities, must be ripped out of the holes that they are being harboured in. And those whores of Babylon, traitors to their state, will be condemned for their paganist behaviour. Their Mass, golden trinkets, and confessions only ever showed their greed for other people’s secrets and their lust. This generation of vipers has been plotting against our Monarch since 1605. Traitors and naughty wilful women preach idolatrous, superstitious, and carnal acts. We shall expose their true face and shed a light on the horns that they are trying to conceal underneath a martyr’s halo. For even when given the chance to show affection for our Protestant Church, they prefer to recite romish nonsense! They are a firebrand in the ruin of both king and country!

Our holy mission will be accomplished, be it through fines, exile, or death. We must protect what is dearest to our entire country’s well-being, the pure and benevolent power of our monarch and their state!

 

Chap. V. Loyal subjects bathing in God’s grace

Imagine, in a land freed of venomous vipers, our people will flourish and be united. All that will be left for those popish degenerates will be a lost paradise, with Satan walking amongst his followers. The diabolical agency of their world stems from feminine power, seduction, and idolatrous activities. Ours, will be a world reconciled with God. For our monarch works on His behalf and shall guide us towards what is good and just.

‘The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.’ [17]

 

Notes

[1] British Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, “The Double Deliverance 1588 1605” last modified May 8, 2020, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Double_Deliverance_1588_1605_(BM_1847,0723.11_1).jpg?fbclid=IwAR00BPtyw5BvLiQYk0FE59PI-riVIXL4bcTO57TcHqJkx5wkxS1EYDqzXmU
^[2] In 1563 the 39 Articles of faith were published and later put in the Book of Common Prayer. They defined what it meant to be part of the Anglican Church.
^[3] In 1570 Pious V’s Bull Regnans in Excelsis, he excommunicates Elizabeth, describes her as “the pretended queen of England and the servant of the crime”, as a heretic, and an illegitimate heir to the throne, releasing her subjects from the oath of allegiance.
[4] Marotti Arthur, ‘Alienating Catholics.  Recusant women, Jesuits, and ideological fantasies’, in his Religious ideology and cultural fantasy. Catholic and Anti-Catholic discourses in early modern England, Notre Dame 2005, 64.
[5] Marotti Arthur, ‘Alienating Catholics.  Recusant women, Jesuits, and ideological fantasies’, in his Religious ideology and cultural fantasy. Catholic and Anti-Catholic discourses in early modern England, 33.
[6] Ibid, 48.
[7] John Gee, New Shreds of the Old Snare (London, 1624), 113.
^[8] Catholic families would send their children to the continent so they could attend Catholic schools where they would become Jesuits. The daughters were also sent to the continent to go to Nunneries that their families had to pay for.
[9] Marotti Arthur, ‘Alienating Catholics.  Recusant women, Jesuits, and ideological fantasies’, in his Religious ideology and cultural fantasy. Catholic and Anti-Catholic discourses in early modern England, 39.
^[10] This is a reference to the Gunpowder Plot on the 5th November 1605, also referred to as the Jesuit Plot. It was a failed attempt at assassinating King James I. The aim was to blow up the House of Lords. The plot was led by Robert Catesby who wished to restore the Catholic monarchy. They were closely linked to the Spanish.
[11] This refers to the Popish Plot, a fictitious plot invented by Titus Oates. He declared that the Jesuits were trying to kill King Charles to replace him with his brother James, Duke of York, who was a Catholic. This led to the Exclusion Bill Crisis and the assassination of 22 men.
[12] Marotti Arthur, ‘Alienating Catholics.  Recusant women, Jesuits, and ideological fantasies’, in his Religious ideology and cultural fantasy. Catholic and Anti-Catholic discourses in early modern England, 48.
[13] Ibid, 43.
^[14] This is a reference to the Spanish Match, a supposed marriage between Charles II and the Spanish Infanta. It created many tensions in England since the King was a Protestant and the Spanish royal family was Catholic. Negotiations took place between 1614 to 1623 but failed.
[15] Marotti Arthur, ‘Alienating Catholics.  Recusant women, Jesuits, and ideological fantasies’, in his Religious ideology and cultural fantasy. Catholic and Anti-Catholic discourses in early modern England, 36.
[16] British Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, “This Burden backe to Rome…” last modified May 8, 2020, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:This_Burden_backe_to_Rome_…_(BM_Ee,2.101_1).jpg?fbclid=IwAR1WFCYGr3NBBQdeLyMguaTshU-C30P3YJowJ2kIraQvNWaelSQxy-vDaTU
[17] John Milton, Paradise Lost (London: Penguin Group, 2003), 288.

Taking The Veil: Catholic Nuns in 17^th-century Early Modern England

As part of their MA course, students Jean-François Carvin, Justine Radojcic and Catherine Roux read Frances E. Dolan’s seminal article, ‘Why are Nuns Funny? Huntington Library Quarterly 70, no. 4 2007: p.509–35. This served as a springboard for deeper reflexion and study around the theme of the representations of Catholic nuns in early modern England. 

 

When the monarch was designated as the only Head of the Church of England, religious conformity and loyalty to the monarch became bound.
The 16th and 17th centuries were periods of nationwide religious disturbances in England. From the reign of Queen Elizabeth I onwards, the eradication of Catholicism became part of national ideology.  Being Catholic was a punishable offense and was associated with treason to the Crown and to the ‘true religion’. Parliament began passing penal laws that discriminated against non-Anglicans, and particularly Catholics, since they acknowledged the Pope’s authority. Those Catholics who refused to attend the Anglican Church services became known as recusants. The anti-Catholic sentiment was exacerbated by various crises and threats, such as the Gunpowder Plot (1605).
Intolerance regarding Catholics forced many of them to hide, convert to Protestantism or move abroad as exiles to practise their faith free from oppression. The survival of English Catholics was ensured, for instance, through the training of priests on the Continent and the Jesuit mission.

Based on the article of Professor Frances E. Dolan ‘Why Are Nuns Funny?’ (2007), the following analysis will discuss how the figure of the nun does allow us to understand what it was to be a woman of Catholic faith in 17th-century reformed England, through three main notions: representations of women and religiousness, anti-Catholic propaganda, and the political role of nuns during their exile on the continent.

Women and sexuality: representations of the holy and the body

 

‘And Adam said, This [is] now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ [1]

The early modern period portrayed women as frivolous and irrational creatures of lust. That belief came from Genesis in the Bible and is related to the story of the original sin. According to that view, women were seen as either prostitutes (Mary Magdalene) or young virgins (the Virgin Mary) in a patriarchal society. More than this, they had to remain discreet and obedient. The education of young women was based on detachment and acceptance which were supposed to be fundamental qualities guiding their future attitude towards sexuality.[2]
In England, the Protestant reform changed everything for Catholic women. As Judith Bennett explains in her article,[3] recusant women were targeted for their faith (the religion of the ‘Whore of Babylon’). They were also associated with ‘carnality’ and Protestantism viewed the female body in religious practices as dangerous, because Catholic women led Protestants to their spiritual downfall by seducing them. On the other hand, they were also seen as fragile creatures being seduced into Catholicism. But why were nuns the target of Protestants?

That question can be partly answered by looking at the way the Catholic Church viewed nuns in the medieval area. Indeed, the Council of Trent, held in three sessions from 1545 to 1563, drew a specific line between nuns and monks, gendering the religious and reducing nuns to ‘women’. They could not give the sacraments, leave the enclosure of the convent, much less go on the mission. The argument given was that the nun’s special role was to be the bride of Christ. Chastity, in this discourse, became the nun’s primary feature. Consequently, binding spiritual marriage to being the bride of Christ carried a sexual resonance that resulted in sexualizing the nun’s body and its virginity in the eyes of its detractors.

Moreover, because the Council of Trent adopted strict enclosure to cut off nuns from the outside world and male supervision of the religious houses of women, Protestants’ distrust of Catholics grew even more as they saw convents as secret places where the Catholic clergy was performing profane acts. From that point of view, convents could be compared to brothels: ‘Nuns and prostitutes wore special clothes, eschewed matrimony, and inhabited separate institutional spaces.’.[4] Since the ‘naughty nun’ became a trope in the rhetorical Protestants’ discourse, the supposedly immoral Catholic cloisters provided empirical proof for their doctrinal allegations.

Furthermore, the architectural structures of the cloisters, as Frances Dolan pinpoints in her essay, were ‘made literal symbolism for describing the female body […] for nuns the external carapace of the convent walls might have served as an extreme reification of a symbolism many women used to describe and defend their chastity’. [5]

Popular representations of nuns in literature

Nuns were also seen as sexual beings because of the large body of printed material that was produced through the seventeenth century. Several works of literature like Venus in the Cloister: Or, The Nun in her Smock [6] in 1683, Putanism de Roma, or, The History of the whores and whoredoms of the Popes Cardinals and Clergey of Rome, discovered by a Conclave of Ladies, convened for the Election of a new Pope [7] in 1630 or even The Anatomie of the English Nunnery at Lisbon [8] in 1622.
Such literature or anti-Catholic pamphlets served the purpose of discrediting both women and Catholics, linking sexual flagellation and sexual pleasure – for instance – to one of the most known Catholic acts of asceticism, portraying a hypocritical and unchaste Church.
By contrast, for many, nuns were not to be taken seriously, like in Aphra Behn’s The History of the Nun Or the Fair Vow-Breaker (1689) in which nuns ‘sing, dance, play instruments, and make ‘little plays’ to ‘divert themselves’ [9] or a ‘waste’ because some young women were too beautiful to take the veil such as Olivia and Rosaline in Shakespeare’s plays Twelfth Night (1602) and Romeo and Juliet (1597). Additionally, plays like The Convent of Pleasure (1668) by Margaret Cavendish can be interpreted today as a feminist examination of the roles of women in the 17^th-century patriarchal English society but could be seen, at that time, as a model of women disrupting public order by rejecting marriage, and enjoying the single life.

Anti-Catholic propaganda: the alleged perversity of the Catholic Order

As explained in the first part, the aim of such Protestants’ texts was to prove that Catholics were either manipulators or easily influenced, or using God’s forgiveness as a false pretext to justify sinful acts. Edmund Curll, a publisher of the second English edition of Venus in the Cloister (1725), summarises it as ‘to lay open the Abuses and Corruptions of the Church of Rome…’ Though the actions described in such texts may have existed to some extent, they happened to a degree far inferior to the one that is told in such literature.
While such texts often claim to be reliable sources[10] by indicating precise locations and names of religious personnel, they can easily be exposed as uncertain.

However, the nuns’ actual activities and duties were well registered and can counter such anti-Catholic propaganda, as stated in Walker’s article: ‘the nuns had to develop income-generating activities to supplement their customary revenues; and this had to be done within the narrow cultural space imposed by their gender and social status’[11].

Beyond the walls: the political role of nuns in exile on the continent

Women were given a central place in the Catholic resistance. What is most striking to consider is the task performed by exile nuns on the continent, ‘some dispossessed nuns joined convents abroad or banded together to attempt to continue a contemplative life; some daughters of English exiles entered local cloisters’[12]. Their cloistered nature did not prevent them from having contacts with the outside world and the political context of Britain during the 17th century. Indeed, they actively participated in the Catholic resistance by creating an early modern ‘underground railroad’, collaborating with missionaries and with the Stuarts monarchs. As explained by Claire Watkinson, ‘the period from the founding of the first English convent in exile, the Brussels Benedictines, in 1594 to the start of Charles I’s reign in 1625 marks a period where the English convents in exile emerge as highly politicized institutions’[13].

Nuns and Charles II would regularly exchange letters and nuns appeared as significant supporters of the Stuart cause. Their status as both religious and cloistered women emerged as the perfect cover. Claire Watkinson asserts that ‘On the restoration of the King in 1660 the English nuns were hopeful of securing gains from Charles II on account of their support during the English civil war’[14]. As years passed and in anticipation of a possibility of Catholicism being tolerated once again in England, these women organized themselves into various houses dedicated to the religious education of other English exiles.

As Claire Walker points out in her article, ‘monastic houses for English women proliferated rapidly during the early decades of the seventeenth century. There were thirty-six in existence by 1700, and these comprised most of the pre-Reformation orders of Benedictines, Augustinians, Franciscans, and Dominicans, as well as the reformed Carmelites, and a newly created English congregation, the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary’[15].

Mary Ward, the founder of the institute, worked in secret to preserve the Catholic faith before establishing a community of active sisters in St. Omer, Belgium. Without a cloister, she and her followers educated young women, assisted persecuted Catholics, and spread the word of God. The Sisters lived and worked openly on the continent while clandestinely nurturing the faith in England. Mary Ward travelled throughout Europe and established schools in the Netherlands or Italy. Nevertheless, since the convents remained in exile, the shaping of a British monarchy tied to the exiled convents had to be maintained through epistolary networks.

On his accession to the throne, James II also made it clear that he intended to offer toleration for Catholics as well. According to Watkinson, the King converted to Catholicism on his deathbed and this decision would have been influenced by a nun’s advice in Flanders’. The period that Charles II had spent associating with the exiled cloisters had been crucial in shaping his faith. James’ accession to the throne appeared as a hope for the revival of Catholicism, and more particularly, a national English Catholicism. The exiled nuns on the Continent were crucial contributors to shaping a sense of Englishness. The first means to do so was through perpetuating an English Catholic education. English Catholic nuns purposefully maintained a national identity within the walls of their convents. Nuns deconstructed this well-known belief that shaped the English identity from the 17th century onwards by preserving the English identity.

Dolan’s analysis places both the notions of being a woman and being Catholic back into the context of 17th-century reformed England by showing that nuns were often reduced to their gender – which was linked to their bodies – and therefore depicted as sexual beings in both Protestant and Catholic discourses. Moreover, the different printed materials of that time indicate that Protestants used this as a means to spread anti-Catholic propaganda by turning the figure of the nun into a laughable stock character. Traces of those peculiar views remain to this day, as can be illustrated by a simple image search using the keywords ‘nuns’ on the internet. Finally, the last part of our study focuses on the important role of nuns in political matters. However, it would be relevant to add real epistolary testimonies of nuns such as Angela of Foligno (13th-century), Teresa of Ávila (16th-century) or Catherine Wigmore (17th-century) to our research in the future to distinguish fact from fiction and understand that even while they were women and religious, they still managed to influence the larger society.

 

[1] The Holy Bible, Genesis 2:23

[2] Sarah Toulalan, Imagining Pornography and Bodies in Seventeenth-Century England, Oxford University Press, 2007. ‘The young woman is taught […] that passivity and receptivity are central to her sexuality and that these must be core aspects of her future sexual behaviour.’ p. 137.

[3] Judith Bennett, “‘Lesbian-Like’ and the Social History of Lesbianisms.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 9, no. 1/2 (2000): 1–24.

[4] Ulrike Strasser, State of Virginity: Gender, Religion, and Politics in an Early Modern Catholic State, University of Michigan Press, 2004. p. 70.

[5] Frances E. Dolan, ‘Why Are Nuns Funny?’ Huntington Library Quarterly 70, no. 4 2007: p.509–35, p. 517.

[6] Barrin, Venus in the Cloister: Or, The Nun in her Smock.

[7] Leti, Putanism de Roma, or, The History of the whores and whoredoms of the Popes Cardinals and Clergey of Rome, discovered by a Conclave of Ladies, convened for the Election of a new Pope.

[8] Thomas Robinson, The Anatomie of the English Nunnery at Lisbon in Portugal dissected and laid open by one that was sometime a yonger brother of the covent. who (if the grace of God had not prevented him) might have growne as old in a wicked life as the oldest amongst them. London, 1624.

[9] Dolan, ‘Why are nuns Funny?’, p. 513.

[10] Ibid., p. 517.

[11] Claire Walker, ‘Combining Martha and Mary: Gender and Work in Seventeenth-Century English Cloisters’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 30, no. 2. 1999: p.397-418, p. 398.

[12] Dolan, ‘Why are Nuns Funny?’, p. 510.

[13] Claire Watkinson, Engaging nuns: Exiled English convents and the politics of exclusion, 1590-1829, PhD thesis, University of Westminster, 2016, p. 62.

[14] Ibid., p. 67.

[15] Walker, ‘Combining Martha and Mary’, p. 398.