Catholic Communities in Protestant States - Britain and the Netherlands c.1570-1720 - Grand Format

This volume is the first to compare the position of Catholic minorities in Britain and the Dutch Republic. Looking beyond the tales of persecution that have dominated traditional historiography, the contributors focus on the realities of Catholic existence. Thematically organised, the book explores Catholicism as a minority culture that resorted to unorthodox means, both to retain its own identity and to survive in a hostile political environment.
It examines ritual, material culture, international networks and above all relations between laity and clergy, men and women, Catholics and Protestants. Much of Baroque Europe was dominated religiously by the Roman Catholic Church, a Church Militant. Not so seventeenth-century Britain or the Dutch Republic, where Catholicism was a minority religion. In these two officially Protestant lands, Catholics practiced their faith in secret and were excluded from public life.
Political pamphlets reviled them as a fifth column that plotted to bring foreign domination and overthrow the Protestant establishment. For Rome, meanwhile, Britain and the Dutch Republic became mission territories that proved difficult to staff and even more difficult to manage. By highlighting differences as well as similarities between the British and Dutch experiences, Catholic communities in Protestant states will help both undergraduate readers and specialists to rethink the history of Catholicism and the consequences of minority status for religious communities.