English Catholic Networks and the System of Patronage in a Post-Reformation Context

• In Event: Strategies for Protecting Catholic Practices and Culture

Abstract

This paper will explore the networks associated with English Catholic literature published in the early modern period by investigating the interrelationship between writer/translator, religious books, and the system of patronage. Utilizing a selection of devotional texts published in the closing decades of the 16th century and the first decades of the seventeenth century, this paper will examine the dedicatory epistles that appear at the beginning of these texts in order to consider the wider significance of English Catholic devotional literature. This talk will analyse the texts’ connection to the question of religion and politics, suggesting that the relationship between these texts and their prefaces must be placed within the wider context of the intra-Catholic politics of the period in which they were published, thereby encouraging reflections on the broader and multi-layered intensions of these works.

Author

• Elizabeth Ferguson, University of Toronto