Was it only the chance of Constantine’s personal conversion which made the Roman empire Christian?

Christianity began as a schism of Judaism in the 1^st century AD and while the number of followers increased within the Roman Empire, it did not have the recognition and prominence its leaders desired by the beginning of the 4^th century, in fact it remained illegal. However Christianity became the state religion by the end of the century and all other religions were to be illegalised. Such a process was stimulated by the reign of Constantine I who personally converted to Christianity and legalised it. The impact of Constantine’s conversion will be the central theme of this essay and whether or not it was the primary reason for the Christianisation of the Roman Empire. Other dynamics will also be assessed such as the Christian church and community itself and the roles of successor Emperors. The degree to which the territory under the Roman Empire became Christianised will also be taken into account in order to vindicate the claim there ever was a Christian Empire or to find out such a title is an artificial one.

Before the end of his reign Constantine had embraced the Christian faith and had dropped any former alliance to his old pagan beliefs, writing to King Saphur II of the Sassanid Empire, ‘this (one) God I invoke with bended knees and recoil with horror from the blood of sacrifice’¹. The most renowned contemporary sources on the subject of Constantine’s conversion are two of his fellow Christians and supporters Eusebius of Caesarea (ca.263-339) and Lactantius (ca.240-ca.320), both depict a sudden conversion in 312 at the Battle of Milivian Bridge. Both wrote their accounts several decades after said event and have come under scrutiny amongst scholars over the centuries, due to their absence of such an event and the nature by which such a miracle occurred. Lactintius’s account lays the motive for conversion in a dream:

‘Constantine was advised in a dream to mark the heavenly sign of God on the shields of his soldiers and then engage in battle. He did as he was commanded and by means of a slanted letter X with the top of its head bent round, he marked Christ on their shields.’²

Barnes analysis of the source ends with the conclusion that while Lactantius is not excessively bias his perspective of the event is too distant in time and was most likely acquired via rumour as opposed to asking Constantine himself, he also brands the dream explanation as an ancient religious stereotype of conversion stories and therefore easily believed by contemporary gossipers.³ Barnes however tries to provide a scientific explanation behind the occurrence of the miracle described by Eusebius which gave Constantine faith in Christianity:

‘He (Constantine) said that about noon, when the day was already beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription, CONQUER BY THIS. At this sight he himself was struck with amazement, and his whole army also, which followed him on this expedition, and witnessed the miracle.’⁴

Barnes tries to legitimise such claims by saying such an astronomical event known as a ‘halo phenomenon’ occurred which was viewed by Constantine and his army with faith as opposed to reason which made them feel they were witnessing something divine⁵. Barnes however feels that the true cause of Constantine’s conversion was not as sudden but due to the man’s increasing interest in biblical theology, combined with his religious tolerance and that he felt he could acquire political advantage by appealing to the significant, but by no means dominant, Christian community in Rome⁶. Drake notes how Eusebius and Lactantius feel that Constantine was searching for a divine protector and champion for the battle and to legitimise his rule, this was due to the common Roman belief that deities often became involved in worldly affairs and would offer support to certain individuals in times of conflict and governance⁷.

The reason for why Constantine’s conversion was so significant was due to the nature of the society he was to govern before his conquests. Christianity was by no means the dominant religion in this religiously tolerant, polytheist society; local, social memory and Gods which represented components of the natural world had more of an impact on the nature of one’s beliefs, which Christians simply branded as paganism⁸. This was a society that Emperors like Diocletian wished to maintain:

‘The ancient religion ought not to be censured by a new one. For it is the height of criminality to reverse that which the ancestors had defined, once and for all, things which hold and present their recognised place and course’⁹

Christianity was not about to Christianise the Empire by itself, as while Christianity maintained several diverse and healthy communities in cities around the Mediterranean Sea and made attempts to reach out to people from all social backgrounds with the promise of salvation, Christians only accounted for 10% of the Empire’s population¹⁰. In fact in the previous half-century Christianity had been the victim of numerous persecutions, most notably the Great Persecution of 303 under Diocletian, which were largely in response to turbulent local affairs involving Christians that resulted in outbreaks of violence¹¹. However Diocletian did contribute to the Empire’s Christianisation unintentionally; by reforming the Empire’s political system he gave more direct and central control of the Empire to Rome’s imperial court and the Emperor by administering local areas around the Empire’s numerous cities¹². This was an Empire that Constantine was set to take over entirely by 324 at a time when he clearly favoured Christianity.

In 313 a letter, commonly referred to as the ‘Edict of Milan’, Constantine immediately improved the status of Christianity by legalising it and restoring the property Christian Church’s had lost during the persecution¹³. Constantine was determined to convert the Empire, as this letter to his imperial subjects after his victory over Licinius in 324 illustrates:

‘We, indeed, strive as much as possible to fill the uninitiated with such words of good hope, calling on God to be our help in the enterprise. For it is no easy task to turn the minds of our subjects to the service of God.’¹⁴

In order to achieve this Constantine was willing to change the personnel of the political system and the relationship the system had with Christianity. As Emperor, Constantine held the authority to appoint men to the imperial court and various other high administrative office positions¹⁵. Constantine wished further advance the lot of Christianity, so he began to appoint new men as senators and office-holders, especially Christians to help him carry out such policies and symbolise the direction he wished to take the Empire¹⁶. Most of the new men appointed were not part of the traditional, Italian, pagan, aristocratic families but from upcoming men from the provinces, they realised that to improve their social and political mobility they should become Christians too in order to please a Christian Emperor¹⁷.

Like with traditional Roman religions, Constantine sought to have a direct relationship with the Christian Church. He was able to do this by calling numerous councils, starting with the Council of Nicene in 325 where he brought all of the Bishops throughout the Empire together; this provided a framework for Christianity to regularize itself within the Empire¹⁸. Within this framework Constantine and successive Emperors were able to intervene in order to provide the Church with resources, financial contributions and to help it settle internal matters like the divisive debate over Donatism, which enabled Christianity to stay united and for Christian communities to grow¹⁹. This framework also elevated the Church and its Bishop’s political power and status as now they could act as a sounding board for Emperors within such councils, which pressured Emperors to be committed to Christian policies and principles in order to affirm their legitimacy to such Councils²⁰. However while Constantine was willing to favour Christianity and encourage it to expand he was unwilling to use coercive means to achieve Christianization according to Eusebius’s account:

However let no one use what he has received by inner conviction as a means to harm his neighbour. What each had seen and understood, he must use, if possible, to help the other; but if that is impossible, the matter should be dropped. It is one thing to take on willingly the contest for immortality, quite another to enforce it with sanctions.²¹

This is one of the reasons that Constantine was unable to create a Christian Roman Empire in his time, despite its expansion in Roman society.

Constantine had begun the process of admitting more Christians into high office and the Senate but pagans still were the majority under him²². It would be under the supervision of successive Emperors like Constantius II and Valentinian II that Christians would come to dominate high-office and begin to pursue more extensive pro-Christian policies²³. Only with such support could Emperors go about destroying paganism to create an entirely Christian community under the Roman Empire. While Constantine did attack pagan rituals by banning sacrifices his successors inflicted more fatal wounds to the religion such as closing temples and stopping financially supporting pagan cults²⁴. Christianity finally became the state religion under Theodosius I (379-395) in a move that resulted in all other forms of religion being made illegal in the Theodosian Code XVI.1.2:

According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one deity of the father, Son and Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title Catholic Christians; but as for the others, since in out judgment they are foolish madmen.²⁵

However despite the efforts of the Codex Theodosius paganism did not disappear within the Empire even by 425 as it was impossible to persuade or coerce all regions, especially rural provinces into accepting orthodox Christianity²⁶. Urban areas were largely under the control of the Emperor or Bishops which meant their populace was easy to manipulate or control, but in rural areas pagan traditions continued to exist and radical Christian beliefs like the followers of Manichaeism continued to flourish²⁷. Paganism also continued to persist in areas of influence, the old pagan families that made up the Roman senatorial landowning aristocracy continued to hold the majority of senate and civic roles within government despite the slip towards Christianity in the latter half of the 4^th Century²⁸. Coupled along with the notion that paganism existed independently it also remained in the minds of many Christian followers like the congregations led by St Augustine of Hippo who continued to believe that, ‘the physical world and of our present time belong to the daemones and to the invisible powers.’²⁹. Paganism was a long way from death and the society under the Roman Empire would never be entirely Christianised despite its official position.

There is very little doubt that it was Constantine’s conversion that enabled for the Christianization of the Roman Empire. While Christianity did have a stable community of followers and was steadily spreading throughout the Mediterranean world, it would have remained one religion in a polytheist Empire. Theological fragmentation was to be caused by trying to bring together the various Christian community leaders in Councils, however at the same time Constantine elevated the influence and power the Christian doctrine and church had on Roman society. Constantine did not necessarily oversee the creation of a Christian Empire and he was unwilling to do everything in his power to carry out such a process; however he set the preconditions for such a process from the choice of religion for the Emperor’s to the position and frameworks of government and the Church. It would take the legislative and administrative favouritism of successors to make the Empire become dominated by Christianity, despite this various forms of paganism continued to exist in high places as well as in the vast Roman Empire.

Footnotes

1.       Eusebius, ‘The Life of Constantine 4.10’, translated from Cameron and Hall (1999)

2.       Lactanius, ‘Of the Manner in which the Persecutors Died 44.5’, translated from Creed (1984)

3.       T.D. Barnes, ‘The conversion of Constantine’, Classical views  4(Calgary, 1985), pp.383-389

4.       Eusebius, ‘The Life of Constantine 2.18’ , translated from Cameron and Hall (1999)

5.       Barnes, ‘Conversion’, pp383-389

6.       Ibid., pp.371-382

7.       H.A.Drake, ‘The impact of Constantine on Christianity’, in N.Lenski (eds), The Cambridge companion to the Age of Constantine (Cambridge,1998), p.115-116

8.       Peter Brown, ‘The rise of western Christendom: triumph and diversity A.D. 200-1000’ (Oxford,2003), pp.21-22

9.       Diocletian, ‘Collatio Legum Romanarum et Mosaicarum 15.3’, translated from M.Dodgeon (London,1991)

10.   Brown, ‘Rise Christendom’, pp24-25

11.   Ibid., p.23

12.   Ibid., pp.19-20

13.   Drake, ‘Impact’, pp.121-123

14.   Constantine, ‘Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 3.3-4’, translated from H.A.Drake (Cambridge,1998)

15.   M.R.Salzman, ‘How the West was won: the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy’, Collection Latomus 217 (Brussels, 1992), pp.465-473

16.   Ibid., pp.465-473

17.   Ibid., pp.465-473

18.   Drake, ‘Impact’, pp.125-132

19.   Drake, ‘Impact’, pp.125-132

20.   T.D.Barnes, ‘Athanasius and Constantius: theology and politics in the Constantinian Empire’ (Cambridge,1993), p.174

21.   Eusebius, ‘Life of Constantine 2.60’, translated from Cameron and Hall (1999)

22.   Salzman, ‘Christianization’, pp.465-468

23.   Ibid., pp.465-468

24.   Brown, ‘Rise Christendom’, p.35

25.   ‘Theodosian Code XVI.1.2’, in H.Bettenson (eds), Documents of the Christian Church (London, 1943), p. 31

26.   Peter Brown, ‘Christianization and religious conflict’, in A.Cameron and P.Garnsey (eds), The Cambridge ancient history - Vol. XIII: The late empire, A.D. 337-425 (Cambridge, 1998), pp.632-664

27.   Brown,’Rise Christendom’, p.41

28.   Salzman, ‘Christianization’, pp.465-473

29.   St Augustine of Hippo, ‘Ennaratio 1 in Psalm 34.7’, translation from S.Hebgin and F.Corrigon (London,1961)

What difficulties did English Catholics face after the Elizabethan settlement, and how successfully did they respond to them?

The Elizabethan Settlement of 1559 involved two Parliamentary Acts which ended Catholicism’s monopoly over the Church of England. The Act of Supremacy re-established the Church’s independence from Rome, with Parliament conferring the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England to the reigning monarch, while the Act of Uniformity set the order of prayer to be used in the English Book of Common Prayer and that abstaining from weekly sermons would result in a 12d fine.¹ The Marian Bishops who refused to submit to the settlement were removed from their position of authority, effectively removing any nationwide Catholic leadership.²Pope Pius IV  was hoping Elizabeth may abandon such heretical policies, which is why it took till 1563 for him to decree the Church of England services as heretical which was a message that was not to reach the English public until 1566.³ Catholicism continued to exist and be practiced in Elizabethan England, especially in areas where government authority was least effective like Wales.⁴ However without the support of the state Scarisbrick notes that the Marian clergy’s, ‘fatal shortcoming was that they had no way of replacing themselves.⁵ ’English Catholics were therefore without substantial leadership, limited in their devotional prospects and being obliged to conform to a heretical faith of their sovereign.

This study will consider the multiple ways in which English Catholics responded to negative impacts of the settlement by referring to contemporaries like Robert Parsons and historians like Walshman, Bossy and Haigh. Church Papistry, recusancy, persecution and loyalty to the realm will all be subjects under scrutiny in order to assess what role each played in the state of Catholicism during the English Reformation.

A recusant was a person who did not attend church sermons, and due to the fact such an act was a fineable offense resulted in many Catholics initially becoming Church Papists who attended sermons but privately kept their Catholic beliefs.⁶ Most saw their consciousness as determining their faith, a matter that was not simply expressed by what Church one attended because there their level of conformity could be minimal, for instance by refusing to partake in the communion.⁷ Not taking communion was not a civil offence, spiritual punishments like excommunication could be meted  out by the Church of England, but as Catholics saw this church as illegitimate they were not that threatened by it.⁸ As a result many did not see much trouble with attending services because they could ignore its heretical messages while avoiding being penalised. There was also the fact that the ideals of the Reformation such as iconoclasm were only slowly introduced by unsympathetic local churchwardens in places like Lancashire and Essex, resulting in few noticing any real difference.⁹ For instance a visitor to a parish in Cheshire in 1578 described it as a den of popery where, ‘Ther is in the church an altare standing undefaced. There lacketh a lynnon clothe and a covering for the communion table a chest for the poore and keeping the Register in.’ and it was run by, ‘Jane...an old no one (nun) is an evell woman and teacheth false doctrine. They refuse to communicate with usuall breade. None  come to the Communion iii tymes a yeare.’¹⁰

Marshall notes that in the 1560s there was indeed a continued use of pre-Reformation things like altars, the sign of the cross and even communions for the dead mainly in peripheral regions like the north, but even in southern communities like Suffolk and Sussex.¹¹ To many Church Papists in these regions the Reformation cannot of appeared to be too well entrenched which may have led some to feel that their outward conformity was a temporary compromise, which would be eventually resolved by the Church of England returning under papal supervision.¹² Even some Marian bishops like Langdale and Pursglove said that to show outward conformity by being a church papist was fine for Catholics to do, because by attending services a lot of stress and conflict was avoided and if once there they did not fully embrace this heretical faith their consciousness would be clear.¹³ Church Papists felt by outwardly conforming to the statutes of the Elizabethan settlement, Catholics were able to live lives unmolested by the state, and by not acknowledging its spiritual legitimacy their consciences’ were free of sin.

However the seminary priests felt differently, Jesuit preacher Campion condemned both Langdale and Pursglove for their endorsement of Church Papistry.¹⁴ Fellow Jesuit Robert Parsons also decried the idea of Catholics attending these heretic’s ‘naughty service’ and that to do so would leave such people open to the ‘infection’ of heresy. ¹⁵ These seminary priests were trained abroad in English Colleges like Douai and Rome and had returned to England in order to work as missionaries in a land under a heretical church, thus prolonging the presence of Catholic priests many decades after the Marian clergy had died out.¹⁶ These seminary priests wanted to take a different approach than what they felt the Marian clergy was doing, which was surviving within the enemy’s religious framework. Bossy feels these priests wanted to create a Catholic community completely separate from the Church of England.¹⁷ Parsons would write in 1600 that he felt the seminaries had saved Catholicism from conforming completely with the heretical Church of England, whereas the Marian Church with its feeble, pre-Reformation hierarchy was allowing it to happen.¹⁸ The seminary priests were not trying to physically rebuild what had been lost, but were in fact on an evangelical mission to build up the faith, unity and integrity of English Catholics, something they felt the community had lost.¹⁹ These priests were reformers who realised the need to confront Protestantism head on in order to strengthen Catholicism. They preached and distributed an English translation of the bible in order to counter the Book of Common Prayer, because Cardinal Allen realised that without a Catholic version, the laity was only left with the ‘corrupt version’ which would certainly lead them astray.²⁰ Priests in the country were there to ensure that people understood the correct faith and to make sure their spiritual needs were satisfied by holding things like masses. In order to do this they needed to try and evade the authorities, which they did via things like disguises and a well established safe house system from the pre-Elizabethan period.²¹ The grand aim of many seminary priests, especially the Jesuits, was to convert England, as is evident from an account Parsons wrote about a meeting of himself and other Catholic exiles in Rome in 1575, ‘all these wished well the conversion of their country, but agreed not well in the meanes or manner of consultation.’²² Carrafiello feels this led to a kind of Holy War discourse  against the heathen persecutors of Elizabeth’s government, who would one day fall to their Catholic victims.²³ Jesuits and other seminary priests responded to the Elizabethan settlement by openly rejecting it and spread a message of its heretical tendencies and inevitable destruction. They opposed church papistry because they saw it as a sign of surrender, which is why they appealed to Catholics to become recusants because this showed that they were fully opposed to the Church of England.²⁴

It would be incorrect to suggest the seminary priests began the Catholic response of recusancy to the Elizabethan Settlement, there had been former members of the Marian clergy who outwardly conformed but actually performed masses in secret for their congregation in the 1560s.²⁵ Haigh notes that by the 1570s there were approximately around fifty Marian priests leading recusant masses.²⁶ In truth recusancy was not continuously enforced by the authorities and Questier feels the authorities were quite selective in who they targeted and when.²⁷ For example one observer noted how if somebody was deemed a ‘good fellow’ in the community he saw  'no pursevante in Ingland would ever lay handes on such a man for a recusant.'²⁸ Thus showing there were places that valued their community harmony over their religious purity. There were other methods to avoid punishment such as only turning up occasionally to services in order to show outward conformity, while the rest of the time is spent as a recusant, such a practice was used to great effect by families like the Trollopps of Thornley and the Stapletons of Carleton.²⁹ However the separatist expression of the seminary priests certainly had some impact because the amount of recorded cases of recusancy rose during the 1570s and 1580s which is either an indication that they were encouraging more of it or were making the authorities more vigilant.³⁰ The Jesuits had established recusancy as the definition of opposition to the Church of England, but instead of being left without devotional guidance the Jesuits tried to serve these recusants spiritual needs.

In order to bring about the conversion of England, the seminary priests seem to have taken a top-down approach, mainly looking to serve the needs of the gentry because they were influential allies to have in the conversion process. John Gerard told the first Jesuit missionaries in 1580, ‘The way I think, to go about making converts is to bring the gentry over first and then their servants, for Catholic gentlefolk must have Catholic servants.’³¹ Carrafiello has also made the point that by appealing to the gentry, seminaries felt they may be able to influence them into working to politically undermine the government.³² The gentry would often try to employ priests as household chaplains, there was a ready supply of seminary priests to employ and many were more than willing to serve as chaplains as it provided them with security and comfort.³³ Gentlemen would certainly be able to furnish their homes for all they needed in Catholic devotion, which is why gentlemen like Lord Vaux commented that his house was his parish.³⁴ However Haigh feels this actually undermined the mission of trying to preserve English Catholicism. Haigh notes that the south, in particularly London, was overrepresented by Catholic priests while other regions like Wales and northern counties with high Catholic populations had a limited amount of priests.³⁵ In 1586 Robert Southall commented on this disparity:

‘there are many counties, each containing not a few Catholics, in which there is not a single priest, while the priests actually working in the harvest betake themselves in great numbers to one or two counties, leaving the others devoid of pastors.’³⁶

This disparity continued to be a problem for decades, as Christopher Lee’s comment on Oxfordshire in 1633 suggest, ‘there are so many priest in this county it is difficult to find shelter for them all.’³⁷ Haigh does acknowledge the work of seminary priests who did serve the needs of the poor such as John Leyton in 1620s Lancashire, but notes that such priests were an overworked minority who were not numerous enough to reach out to every Catholic. Haigh feels that in expense for securing priests to serve the needs of the gentry, popular Catholicism in areas without Catholic priests steadily gave way to full conformity with the Church of England.³⁸

Increasingly harsh legislation was introduced by the government in the 1570s and 1580s; such as increasing recusancy fines to £20 and making it a treasonable offence to be a priest who was ordained abroad, or to harbour such people. This legislation was to result in the executions of 123 seminary priests and 59 lay Catholics between 1577 and 1603. Such legislation was deemed necessary in a time when the Pope and Spanish King were calling for Elizabeth’s deposition and when treacherous plots were being discovered domestically.³⁹ A language of unity under persecution was created by Catholics like Thomas Hide who felt that this was actually a good thing:

‘Notwithstanding all this, Gods Churche hath her faythfull flocke that confesseth the catholike trueth openly, mauger the divell, heresie, and tyrannie. And notwithstanding all worldly disgraces, overthwarts injuries, persecution amd execution, yet it is there left some good number that never bowed their knees to Baal, never received the breaded Communion, neither went to the schismaticall service. Yea somenumber that be ready to render their goods to the world, and their soules to God, as willing in this quarrel to dye as to live... It is the blessed wil of God that the glory of his militant church should multiply in persecution, should increase under oppression.’  ⁴⁰

It is for this reason that condemned Catholics made such an effort to show they were Catholic martyrs before they were executed by wearing their vestments, stressing their conviction and even publicly forgiving and converting other condemned prisoners.⁴¹ However it seems that others did not maintain the same resilience, with many returning to the show outward conformity by attending sermons again due to the increased risk of disobeying the regime. There were Catholics who remained loyal to the state and there were those who feared its ability to punish, as a result many Catholics kept their beliefs private, thus undermining the Jesuits attempt to confront the regime as it created divisions within the English Catholic Community.⁴² However Aveling thinks instead of this being a sign of surrender, ‘It was the Church-papists who saved the Catholic Community.’ This is due to the fact the recusants and their money had been depleted by state oppression; the conformists preserved their numbers and capital and were even able to move Catholicism towards accepting its position in Reformation England, as a quiet, minority faith.⁴³ Thus the calls of the secular clergy and Appellant Party became more popular amongst lay Catholics who were weary of rebellious activism, because these groups wanted a future for Catholicism where it was an organised and tolerated group within society.⁴⁴

Under James I, Catholicism continued to grow despite attempts to stop it doing so by exiling all Catholic priests in 1604 and by making non-communicating in church a penal offence. This is because James was willing to accept a subject’s outward conformity as a substantial enough sign of loyalty, which is why Church Papists like Henry Howard were able to be attendants at the royal court.⁴⁵ With the exception of a few Catholics like Catesby, most were willing to stay loyal to this merciful monarchy, who did not rigorously hunt Catholicism down and was even willing to grant concessions like the Episcopal position for Appelant William Bishop in 1623.⁴⁶ However this loyalty was conditional, with the majority of Catholic priests and members of the laity rejecting James’s Oath of Allegiance statute, an oath which recusants would take in which they proclaimed their loyalty to the monarchy and rejected any papal attempts to depose him as unjust. Most rejected this because they felt such an oath put them in a tentative position between their spiritual and sovereign leader.⁴⁷ The growing number of seminary priests under James led to more Catholics spiritual needs being met and the idea of household religion with chaplains became firmly established for Catholic gentlemen, but despite this growth several sections of the English Catholic society were still left unattended to.⁴⁸

The seminary priests, who gradually replaced the Marian clergy as the main providers of Catholic preaching under the reign of Elizabeth, were dependent on the capital and hospitality provided by lay Catholics. The Catholic gentry were able to easily secure their services and were therefore able to preserve their faith, but for other laymen it was largely out of their control and as Haigh has already indicated the spiritual needs of all English Catholics weren’t fulfilled. Such people would receive no Catholic teaching at a time when many were obliged to attend Church of England services where it is likely they would undergo, ‘not rapid conversion but grudging conformity.’⁴⁹ Although these people were deprived of such devotional structures and personnel by the government, it also should be acknowledged that some of the seminary priests made themselves unavailable by targeting the government by becoming martyrs and trying to encourage open defiance to the Church of England. This encouraged greater government persecution and penalties, which many of the laity felt unable to confront despite the rhetoric of the persecuted Godly and therefore felt obliged to conform.  Despite the prominence of Catholic gentlemen, this group was largely unwilling to participate in any form of regicide in order to convert the nation either due to their loyalty to the monarch or their fear of being destroyed.⁵⁰ English Catholicism was able to survived in its minority status and in places it did evolve into an evangelical form of worship, however due to the failure of political intervention and effective government legislation meant that Catholicism would never be anything more.

Endnotes

1.       P. Marshall, Reformation England 1480-1642 (London, 2003), pp.115-119

2.       J.J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984), pp.138-140

3.       Marshall, Reformation, p.171

4.       C. Haigh, 'From Monopoly to Minority: Catholicism in Tudor England', TRHS 31 (1981), p.132

5.       Scarisbrick, English People, pp.141-145

6.       Marshall, Reformation, pp.169-171

7.       J. Bossy, 'The Character of Elizabethan Catholicism' in Crisis in Europe 1560-1660, ed. Aston, T., (London, 1965), p.226

8.       A. Walsham, Church Papists (Woodbridge, 1994), p.86

9.       Ibid., pp.14-17

10.    K.R. Wark, Elizabethan Recusancy in Cheshire (Manchester, 1971), pp.80-81

11.    Marshall, Reformation, p.171

12.    P. Holmes, Resistance and Compromise (1982), pp.108-124

13.    A. Walsham, '"Yielding to the extremity of the time": conformity, orthodoxy and the post-Reformation Catholic community', in Conformity and orthodoxy in the English church, c.1560-1660, ed. Lake, P., and Questier, M., (Woodbridge, 2000), p.229

14.    M. Questier, 'What happened to English Catholicism after the English Reformation?', History 85 (2000), p.30

15.    R. Parsons, [A] brief discours contaying certayne reasons why Catholiques refuse to goe to church (1580), ed. L. Hicks (London, 1942).

16.    Bossy, ‘Character’, p.231

17.    J. Bossy, The English Catholic Community 1570-1850 (London, 1975), p.114

18.    R. Parsons, Story of Domesticall Difficulties, ed. J.H. Pollen (London, 1906).

19.    Questier,  What happened, p.39

20.    Letter of Cardinal Allen to Dr. Vendeville dated 16 September 1578, trans. in The First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay, ed. T. F. Knox (London, 1878), p. xli.

21.    P. Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution and Conformity in Early Modem Europe (Cambridge, 1990), p.189

22.    Parsons, Domesticall

23.    M. Carrafiello, 'English Catholicism and the Jesuit mission of 1580-1581', HJ 37 (1994), pp.765-768

24.    C. Haigh, 'The Fall of a Church or the Rise of a Sect? Post-Reformation Catholicism in England', HJ 21 (1978), p.184

25.    A. Walsham, Church Papists (Woodbridge, 1994), p.15

26.    C. Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1975), p.256

27.    Questier, What happened, p.35

28.    Verstegan, R., An Advertisement written to a Secretarie of my L. Treasureres of Ingland (Antwerp, 1592), p.44

29.    Questier, What happened, p.36

30.    Marshall, Reformation, p.178

31.    J. Gerard, Autobiography of an Elizabethan, ed. P. Caraman (London, 1951), p.33

32.    Carrafiello, ‘Jesuit’, pp.771-772

33.    Haigh, Monopoly, p.137

34.    Bossy, Community, p.225

35.    Haigh, Monopoly, pp.133-134

36.    J.H. Pollen, Unpublished documents relating to the English martyrs (London, 1908), p.309

37.    Haigh, Monopoly, p.134

38.    Ibid., pp.144-146

39.    Marshall, Reformation, pp.173-180

40.    T. Hide, A consolatorie epistle to the afflicted catholikes (Louvain, 1580).

41.    P. Lake, and M. Questier, 'Agency, appropriation and rhetoric under the gallows: Puritans, Romanists and the state in early modern England'. Past & Present 153 (1996), pp.100-107.

42.    Walshman, Papists, pp.69-77

43.    J.C.H. Aveling, The Handle and the Axe: The Catholic Recusants in England from Reformation to Emancipation (London, 1976), p.162

44.    Bossy, J., ‘'The English Catholic Community 1603-1625' in The Reign of James VI and I, ed. Smith, A.G.R. (London, 1973), pp.93-105.

45.    LaRocca, J.J., "'Who Can't Pray with Me, Can't Love Me": Toleration and Early Jacobean Recusant Policy', JBS 23 (1984), pp.26-35.

46.    Marshall, Reformation, pp.185-188

47.    LaRocca, ‘Can’t Love me’, pp.32-35

48.    Bossy, ‘1603-1625’, pp.101-104

49.    Walshman, Papists, p.7

50.    Bossy, ‘Character’, p.246