Wholesome milk and strong meat: Peter Canisius's catechisms and the conversion of Protestant Britain
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Authors
Publication Date
2015-05Journal Title
British Catholic History
ISSN
2055-7973
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Volume
32
Issue
3
Pages
293-314
Type
Article
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Walsham, A. (2015). Wholesome milk and strong meat: Peter Canisius's catechisms and the conversion of Protestant Britain. British Catholic History, 32 (3), 293-314. https://doi.org/10.1017/bch.2015.3
Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>This article examines the vernacular translations of the famous catechisms prepared by the Dutch Jesuit Peter Canisius which circulated in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain. The various editions and adaptations of Canisius produced for English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish readers are texts in which anti-Protestant identity formation converges with the task of basic indoctrination. These include Laurence Vaux’s popular catechism of 1567, the traditionalist character of which is reassessed. Shedding light on the reception and domestication of the literature of the European Counter Reformation, these books illustrate how catechesis was revived and harnessed as a clerical tool for cultivating polemical resistance and as a device for inculcating saving knowledge and redeeming piety in those young in faith as well as in years. Recusant clergy, seminary priests and Jesuits tackled the task of restoring England to its traditional allegiance to Rome as if they were planting the faith in a pagan land and they utilised the same techniques and strategies as their colleagues in the newly discovered world. A study of Canisius’s catechisms highlights the fluid boundary between conversion and reconciliation in contemporary minds; illuminates the intertwining of the histories of evangelical mission and confessionalisation in the context of the British Isles; and helps to reintegrate minority Catholic communities back into our picture of the global movement for religious outreach and renewal.</jats:p>
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/bch.2015.3
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/283529
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