Wholesome milk and strong meat: Peter Canisius’s catechisms and the conversion of Protestant Britain

Abstract

Abstract 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.