There is only a week until Lucy Underwood's virtual lecture "Preaching the Counter-Reformation in England" on June 7!
Register today to join us live or receive a link to the recording later.
Lecture abstract:
"After the accession of Elizabeth I, Catholicism became a prohibited religion in England. Yet, from the 1570s onwards, the project of the ‘English Mission’ was to bring the Catholic Reformation, which in this case may be properly called a ‘Counter-Reformation’, to England. Like proponents of Catholic Reform elsewhere, they knew the value of preaching, but like other Catholic practices, Catholic preaching happened in the shadows, passing unnoticed except when people got caught. It is therefore difficult for historians to trace: we know it happened, but when, where, how often and – crucially – what was preached has been very difficult to know. There has been more scholarly focus on the practices Catholics used to substitute for preaching and sacraments, when access to a priest was dangerous and infrequent – the printed word becoming especially important.
However, sources on Catholic preaching do exist. This lecture will trace those clues, and will examine the texts of Catholic sermons which survive from the century following the Protestant Reformation – some preached in English Catholic institutions in exile, others, it seems, in England itself. What missionary priests preached, and what English Catholics heard from them, are key to understanding how the Counter Reformation helped to create Catholic communities which could survive in Protestant England."
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