First published 2013 by Ashgate Publishing.
In spite of an upsurge in interest in the social history of the Catholic community and an ever-growing body of literature on early modern 'superstition' and popular religion, the English Catholic community's response to the invisible world of the preternatural and supernatural has remained largely neglected. Addressing this oversight, this book explores Catholic responses to the supernatural world, setting the English Catholic community in the contexts of the wider Counter-Reformation and the confessional culture of early modern England. In so doing, it fulfils the need for a study of how English Catholics related to manifestations of the devil (witchcraft and possession) and the dead (ghosts) in the context of Catholic attitudes to the supernatural world as a whole (including debates on miracles). The study further provides a comprehensive examination of the ways in which English Catholics deployed exorcism, the church's ultimate response to the devil. Whilst some aspects of the Catholic response have been touched on in the course of broader studies, few scholars have gone beyond the evidence contained within anti-Catholic polemical literature to examine in detail what Catholics themselves said and thought. Given that Catholics were consistently portrayed as 'superstitious' in Protestant literature, the historian must attend to Catholic voices on the supernatural in order to avoid a disastrously unbalanced view of Catholic attitudes. This book provides the first analysis of the Catholic response to the supernatural and witchcraft and how it related to a characteristic Counter-Reformation preoccupation, the phenomenon of exorcism.
Author(s): Francis Young
Series: Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 320
City: London
Series Editor's Preface
Abbreviations
Preface
Introduction
Church, Community and Reformation
Catholics and the Supernatural
Sources
Structure
1. Early Modern Catholics and ‘Superstition’
Supernaturalism, ‘Superstition’ and the Roots of Scepticism
Catholic and Sub-Catholic
Mystical Recusancy
English Catholics and the Devil
Catholic Aristotelianism and Scepticism of the Supernatural
2. Catholicism, Enlightenment and ‘Superstition’
Jesuits, Jansenists and the Supernatural
Pope and the Supernatural
English Catholics and the ‘New Philosophy’
The Supernatural and the Birth of Emancipation, 1778–1829
3. Ghosts and Apparitions in the English Catholic Community
The Early Modern Ghost Narrative
English Catholic Commentary on Ghosts
Ghosts and Purgatory
Oral Traditions
Catholic Ghost Narratives of the Reformation
Catholic Ghost Narratives of the Eighteenth Century
English Catholics and the Romantic Ghost Story
4. Catholics, Witchcraft and Magic in Reformation England
Catholic and Protestant on Witchcraft
Catholics as Witches in Reformation England
Witchcraft versus Recusancy: The Case of the Samlesbury Witches
Witchcraft and the Catholic Mission
Catholics, Magic and Astrology
5. Catholics and Witchcraft in the Age of Enlightenment
Jacobitism and Witchcraft
Catholics and Witchcraft in England
Witchcraft and English Catholics Abroad
‘This Uncommon Subject’: Gregory Greenwood’s Three Discourses
6. Dealing with the Devil: Catholic Exorcisms
The Reformation and the Evolution of Exorcism
Catholic Exorcisms through Protestant Eyes
Exorcism and the Catholic Mission
‘The Devil in the Convent’: Exorcism in Religious Communities
Catholic Exorcisms of Haunted Houses
The Legacy of Folklore
Sceptical Responses
Decline and Revival: Exorcism in the Age of Enlightenment
Appendix 1: Documented Catholic Exorcisms in England, 1577–1815
Appendix 2: ‘Three Discourses of Witches and Witchcraft’ by Gregory Greenwood
Bibliography
Index
