College communities abroad: Education, migration and Catholicism in early modern Europe 9781526105929

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ollege communities abroad addresses the histories of colleges established abroad by Catholics from Protestant and Muslim jurisdictions in the early modern period. The colleges are considered in a transnational framework for the first time, with up-to-date research on different national groups presented in one volume.

Thomas O’Connor is Professor of History at Maynooth University Cover illustration: Engraving of the Collegium Germanicum in Giuseppe Vasi’s Delle magnificenze di Roma antica e moderna, libro nono (Rome, 1759), facing p. xiv. Via Archive.org

edited by

Liam Chambers

and

Thomas O’Connor

O’Connor ( e d s )

Liam Chambers is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of History at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick

Education, migration and Catholicism in early modern Europe

and

College communities abroad will be essential reading for academics and researchers in early modern European history but will also appeal to the general reader interested in the history of Catholicism.

College communities abroad

Cha mb ers

Irish, English and Scots Catholics founded more than fifty colleges in France, Flanders, Spain, Portugal, the Papal States and the Habsburg Empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Meanwhile Catholics in the Dutch Republic, the Scandinavian states and the Ottoman Empire faced comparable challenges and created similar institutions. Until their decline in the late eighteenth century, tens of thousands of students passed through the colleges. Drawing together a group of established scholars and new voices, this collection of essays highlights the similarities between colleges which developed in familiar patterns, faced similar challenges and served analogous functions. Different national groups, it emerges, established colleges following parallel models. The essays illustrate that the colleges were significant not only in the formation of clergy destined to return to the challenges of their home missions (the emphasis in traditional accounts), but also in the education of the Catholic laity, the facilitation of social mobility, the overseas extension of domestic networks, the development of migrant communities and the encouragement of cultural transfer. 

College communities abroad

STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY

ISBN 978-1-7849-9514-0

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

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College communities abroad

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STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN EURO P EA N HIS TORY This series aims to publish challenging and innovative research in all areas of early modern continental history. The editors are committed to encouraging work that engages with current historiographical debates, adopts an interdisciplinary approach, or makes an original contribution to our understanding of the period. series editors Joseph Bergin, William G. Naphy, Penny Roberts and Paolo Rossi Also available in the series Jews on trial:The papal inquisition in Modena, 1598–1638 Katherine Aron-Beller Sodomy in early modern Europe ed. Tom Betteridge Princely power in the Dutch Republic: Patronage and William Frederick of Nassau (1613–64) Geert H. Janssen, trans. J. C. Grayson Representing the King’s splendour: Communication and reception of symbolic forms of power in viceregal Naples Gabriel Guarino The English Republican tradition and eighteenth-century France: between the ancients and the moderns Rachel Hammersley Power and reputation at the court of Louis XIII: the career of Charles d’Albert, duc de Luynes (1578–1621) Sharon Kettering The anxiety of sameness in early modern Spain Christina H. Lee Absolute monarchy on the frontiers: Louis XIV’s military occupations of Lorraine and Savoy Phil McCluskey Catholic communities in Protestant states: Britain and the Netherlands c.1570–1720 eds Bob Moore, Henk van Nierop, Benjamin Kaplan and Judith Pollman Daum’s boys: Schools and the Republic of Letters in early modern Germany Alan S.Ross Orangism in the Dutch Republic in word and image, 1650–1675 Jill Stern The great favourite: the Duke of Lerma and the court and government of Philip III of Spain, 1598–1621 Patrick Williams Full details of the series are available at www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

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College communities abroad Education, migration and Catholicism in  early modern Europe edited by LIAM CHAMBERS and THOMAS O’CONNOR

Manchester University Press

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Copyright © Manchester University Press 2018 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altricham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 1 7849 9514 0 hardback First published 2017 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset in Perpetua with Albertus display by Koinonia, Manchester

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Contents

Notes on contributors Preface Map

page vi vii x

1 Introduction – college communities abroad: education, migration and Catholicism in early modern Europe  Liam Chambers 1 2 The Society of Jesus and the early history of the Collegium Germanicum, 1552–1584  Urban Fink 34 3 Colleges and their alternatives in the educational strategy of early modern Dutch Catholics  Willem Frijhoff 55 4 The domestic and international roles of Irish overseas colleges, 1590–1800 Thomas O’Connor 90 5 The Scots colleges and international politics, 1600–1750 Adam Marks 115 6 Seminary colleges, converts and religious change in post-Reformation England, 1568–1688  Michael Questier 142 7 The Maronite college in early modern Rome: Between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Letters  Aurélien Girard and Giovanni Pizzorusso 174 8 English women religious, the exile male colleges and national identities in Counter-Reformation Europe  James E. Kelly 198 Index

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Notes on contributors

Liam Chambers is senior lecturer and head of the Department of History at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. He is joint editor of Irish Historical Studies. Willem Frijhoff is emeritus professor in early modern history at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and G.Ph. Verhagen professor of Cultural History at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. Urban Fink is a historian and theologian specialising in church history, including Swiss Catholicism and the history of the Collegium Germanicum. He holds a doctorate from the University of Fribourg and is a member of the university’s Hochschulrat. Aurélien Girard is assistant professor in early modern history and co-director of the Department of History at the Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne. James E. Kelly is St Cuthbert’s Society Senior Research Fellow in early modern British and Irish Catholicism at Durham University, as well as principal investigator on the AHRC-funded ‘Monks in Motion’ project. Adam Marks completed a PhD dissertation on ‘England, the English and the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648)’ at the University of St Andrews in 2012 and has published on early modern history. Thomas O’Connor is professor of history at Maynooth University and editor of Archivium Hibernicum. Giovanni Pizzorusso is assistant professor in early modern history in the Department of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences at the Università degli Studi ‘G. d’Annunzio’ Chieti – Pescara. Michael Questier is Leverhulme Research Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London.

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Preface Liam Chambers and Thomas O’Connor

This book results from an ‘Irish in Europe Project’ conference, which took place at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, in June 2014.1 The conference brought together an international group of scholars working on colleges established abroad by Catholics from Protestant and Islamic jurisdictions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For the first time, Irish, English and Scots colleges were considered alongside Dutch, Scandinavian and Maronite institutions. The conference reflected advances in scholarship on early modern migration, higher education and Catholicism and applied these to the history of the colleges as institutions and as human communities. This resulted in a robust historiographical discussion. It also encouraged a re-consideration of the role and significance of the abroad colleges, in their regional, national and transnational contexts. The present volume draws together eight substantial essays which present up-to-date research on different regional and national groups set in their international and transnational frameworks. The book is intended to draw attention to similarities between colleges which developed in familiar patterns, faced parallel challenges and served analogous functions. The introductory essay, by Liam Chambers, traces the evolution of the abroad colleges, draws ­connections between them and assesses the impact of changes in recent scholarship on the subject. He argues that the obvious next step is to examine the colleges in transnational and comparative perspectives. He also illustrates how the Irish colleges, for instance, had obvious parallels in English and Scots institutions, but at the same time operated in tandem with Dutch colleges, Scandinavian papal seminaries and centres for German, Balkan and Middle Eastern C ­ atholics. This discussion provides the context to a series of chapters dealing with ‘national’ colleges, set in their regional and transnational frameworks. Urban Fink provides an important point of departure in his consideration of the first post-­ Reformation abroad college, the Collegium Germanicum in Rome. The author assesses the challenges faced by the Society of Jesus as they struggled to develop the college from the 1550s until its future was secured under the pontificate

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viii

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of Gregory XIII (1572–1585). Fink’s concentrated study of this crucial institution illustrates how the Collegium Germanicum experienced problems which would impact on almost all of the abroad colleges throughout the early modern period. Willem Frijhoff examines the educational strategies employed by Dutch Catholics, who faced challenges closely related to those of their confessional colleagues across the North Sea. He illustrates how colleges in Cologne, Louvain and other centres operated within a system of connivance, compromise and co-existence which helped ensure their future. Thomas O’Connor re-considers the Irish colleges as multifaceted educational institutions, which provided the domestic church with clergy but also acted as way stations on longer migrant journeys to permanent residence abroad. He argues that through the colleges specific Catholic communities in Ireland preserved and sometimes strengthened not only their domestic position but also their transnational and international interests. As the introduction points out in more detail, the English and Scots colleges have a rich historiography. Michael Questier’s chapter on the English examines a central issue for all of the abroad colleges: the role of the collegetrained clergy who returned to the domestic churches. His chapter exposes the range of political opinions held by the clergy and how various clerical interests reacted to changing conditions for Catholics, particularly under the Stuarts. In doing so, he underlines how internally contested recusant survival strategies were and how crucial a role recusancy played in the general political evolution of early modern England. Adam Marks’ chapter on the Scots addresses the political significance of the colleges, at home and abroad, in particular through their relationships to the Stuart monarchy. This complements traditional treatments of the Scots colleges, which tended to concentrate almost exclusively on their priestly output, to the neglect of their political activity and significance. Aurélien Girard and Giovanni Pizzorusso’s study of the Maronite college in Rome uncovers similar social and cultural themes to the other abroad colleges, in particular the decisive role played by papal politics, curial interests and, later, Propaganda Fide in the foundational phase of the Roman-based colleges in particular. Finally, James Kelly breaks new ground by addressing the relationship between male and female English Catholic institutions abroad. He explores the levels of contact and cooperation between the various ‘national’ groups in Britain and Ireland, outlining how Catholic internationalism interacted with sectional, regional and national particularism. The editors express their thanks to colleagues at Mary Immaculate College (particularly in the Department of History) and Maynooth University. They also gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the Irish Episcopal Conference and the Catholic Historical Society of Ireland, which made the initial conference possible. Finally, they thank the staff of Manchester University Press for their assistance and professionalism.

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ix

Note

1 Collegial communities in exile: new histories of the Irish, English, Scots, Dutch and other colleges founded on the continent in the early modern period. The conference website may be accessed at: https://colleges2014.wordpress.com. For the ‘Irish in Europe Project’ see: www.irishineurope. com.

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Map of college locations, c.1700 Chambers_O’Connor_Printer.indd 10

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1 Introduction – college communities abroad: education, migration and Catholicism in early modern Europe Liam Chambers College communities abroad From the mid-sixteenth century, Catholics from Protestant jurisdictions established colleges for the education and formation of students in more hospitable Catholic territories abroad. The Irish, English and Scots colleges founded in France, Flanders, the Iberian peninsula, Rome and the Holy Roman Empire are the best known, but the phenomenon extended to Dutch and Scandinavian foundations in southern Flanders, the German lands and Poland, as well as to colleges founded in Rome and other Italian cities for a wide range of national communities, among whom the Maronites are a striking example from within the Ottoman Empire. The first colleges were founded in the 1550s and 1560s, and tens of thousands of students passed through them until their suppression in the 1790s. Only a handful survived the disruption of the French Revolutionary wars to re-emerge in the nineteenth century and a few endure today. Historians have long argued that these abroad colleges1 played a prominent role in maintaining Catholic ecclesiastical structures and practices by supplying educated clergy equipped to deal with the challenges of their domestic churches. Indeed, the colleges have been viewed as important agents for the spread of a new, Counter-Reformation Catholicism through the clergy formed within their walls. This has ensured that the Irish, English, Scots and German colleges in particular have a rich historiography. Until recently, however, their histories were considered largely within isolating confessional and national frameworks, with a firm focus on institutional history and surprisingly little attempt to examine commonalities or connections across the colleges. Recent research has begun to open up the topic by investigating the social, economic, cultural and material histories of the colleges and their students. Meanwhile renewed interest in the history of early modern migration has encouraged historians to place the colleges more firmly within the vibrant migrant communities of Irish, English, Scots and others on the continent. One obvious path for the study of

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the Irish, English and Scots colleges is to adopt a ‘three kingdoms’ approach and while this would have undoubted merits, the purpose of this book is to point to a wider comparative canvas.2 The argument presented here is that the abroad college phenomenon must be viewed within a broader European context. The Irish, English and Scots colleges should be examined alongside the experiences of Dutch, German, Scandinavian, Swiss, Balkan and Middle Eastern Catholics who established parallel structures in precisely the same period.3 To further research, the book begins the process by presenting a series of essays on Irish, English, Scots, German, Dutch and Maronite colleges, which provide up-todate research by leading historians in the field and point to the possibilities for future research on this exciting topic. This introductory chapter offers the first substantial survey of the abroad colleges as a whole, it then assesses briefly their historiographies before making a case for further research along comparative and transnational lines. Foundations The abroad colleges established in the sixteenth century had significant medieval roots in academic and religious mobility. Peregrinatio academica was a familiar feature of higher education in late medieval and Renaissance Europe.4 In the main centres of migration, students from abroad banded together to form corporate structures for their security and advancement. The resulting ‘nations’ and ‘colleges’ were quickly subsumed into the complex configurations of medieval universities from as early as the twelfth century. The University of Bologna provides a striking example, with faculties divided into universitas citramontanorum and universitas ultramontanorum, the latter consisting of students from outside Italy grouped in turn into a series of ‘nations’. At Paris, the English (later German) Nation of the Faculty of Arts provided a corporate home for many students from outside France.5 Colleges eclipsed nations in importance in the course of the Middle Ages. In Paris, for example, which attracted a substantial number of foreign students, the first half of the fourteenth century witnessed an expansion of college foundations, including one college for Scottish students, drawn on revenues from land purchased by David, bishop of Moray, at GrisySuines outside Paris.6 Moray’s investment was intended to fund four students and it allowed a small, elite group to attend the university over the following two centuries. Indeed, the funding endured and provided the basis for a new kind of abroad college in the sixteenth century. In 1556 Patrick Hepburn, the bishop of Moray, nominated Thomas Wynterhop to a vacant bursary. Following litigation with rival claimants, Wynterhop set about reforming the revenues and generating new income. He was operating, of course, in the shadow of the Scottish

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Reformation, which transformed the modest Grisy foundation into a lifeline for Scottish Catholics who found themselves excluded from home universities in the 1560s.7 To celebrate his achievement and underline its significance, Wynterhop had a number of detailed vellum documents drawn up, with elaborate drawings, and later bound them together in a cartulary known as the ‘Book of Grisy’. These paid particular attention to the benefactions emanating from Mary, Queen of Scots, but one document was an address from the University of Paris to King Charles IX of France. Among the images on this document is one of a group of international students at the university, with their origins specifically marked out: Scots, Irish, English, Greeks, Hungarians, Poles and Norwegians among others.8 The inference was clear: for Wynterhop the universities of Catholic Europe would play a crucial role for those Catholics who found themselves under pressure in Protestant and even Ottoman Europe. And, ultimately, the college structures which had emerged in the universities in the medieval and Renaissance periods would provide a vital means by which they could reorganise.9 Wynterhop’s ‘Book of Grisy’ reveals the impact of religious change on university life and on the peregrinatio academica occurring in the sixteenth century. As Hilde de Ridder-Symoens has commented: ‘[The existing] pattern of student mobility was shattered and remoulded towards the mid-sixteenth century by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, which besides changing the character of universities profoundly affected the choice of universities and disciplines.’10 Confessionalisation was an important stimulant to further university foundation, which peaked between the mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, with the creation of forty-seven new universities between 1551 and 1600 alone.11 The Society of Jesus played an increasingly prominent role in university education in this period, as new universities emerged ‘on the fringe areas threatened by Protestantism’.12 Although the number of universities grew, this did not necessarily mean greater choice for students. Increasingly in the second half of the sixteenth century, European states and universities themselves imposed confessional restrictions on higher education.13 This produced new patterns of student mobility as thousands of young men sought out confessionally congenial university education, frequently in defiance of state regulations regarding student movement. Among the more important Counter-Reformation universities in the west were pre-Reformation centres like Paris, Cologne and Louvain, as well as newer foundations like Douai and Pont-à-Mousson. Vienna, Graz, Dillingen and Würzburg were important focuses for student mobility in central Europe. To the south, Rome attracted thousands of Catholics students, while movement to Iberian universities like Salamanca and Lisbon occurred on a smaller scale.14 From the mid-sixteenth century, a complex network of abroad colleges for migrant Catholic students slowly emerged. Far from an orderly develop-

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ment, this occurred in a piecemeal, even haphazard, manner over more than half a century. Central planning, individual endeavour and organic developments within existing migrant communities all played a part. The earliest initiative was proposed and executed from the heart of Counter-Reformation Rome and it proved one of the most enduring. On the initiative of Cardinal Giovanni Morone, the Society of Jesus established the Collegium Germanicum, with the foundation confirmed by Pope Julius III’s bull Dum sollicita in 1552. The college was envisaged for the formation of elite German students who would return to leadership positions in the Protestant territories of the north. The college quickly accommodated students from a wide geographical range, including Swiss, Hungarians, Dutch, Irish, Scots and Scandinavians.15 The college did not provide classes. Rather students attended another even more significant educational foundation of the early 1550s, the Jesuit Collegio Romano.16 The ­Collegium Germanicum, in collaboration with the Collegio Romano, provided one means of training clergy for the re-evangelisation of territory lost to Rome, but outside the Eternal City the initiative for the creation of colleges fell to the migrants themselves. For English and Irish Catholics, the reign of Mary I witnessed the re-establishment of the formal connection with Rome and it was only in the early years of the reign of Elizabeth that the need to form colleges overseas was felt. The centralising tendency evident in the foundation of the Collegium Germanicum contrasted sharply with the manner in which the first English college on the continent was established. Elizabeth’s accession propelled a substantial number of Marian partisans to the continent, particularly as the new monarch’s supporters purged England’s two universities at Oxford and Cambridge of those deemed too closely aligned with Rome.17 Many of the displaced removed themselves to Flanders, attracted by the CounterReformation educational centres and the prospect of Spanish patronage in the university towns of Louvain and Douai (the latter founded in 1559 and inaugurated three years later). In 1568 William Allen, a former Oxford don, gathered some of the dispersed English students together in a college founded at Douai.18 There has been some debate about Allen’s intentions for the college. John Bossy suggested that he envisaged Douai as an orthodox Catholic alternative to the heretical universities of Oxford and Cambridge, while awaiting a change of fortune at home.19 Eamon Duffy, by contrast, points to evidence for the intended missionary function of the college from the start, with the English college envisaged more as a Collegium Germanicum for the west.20 In any event, Douai quickly became central to the English Catholic mission, though financing the college was a constant challenge and the ongoing conflict in Flanders forced it to move to Reims in 1578 before returning to Douai in 1593.21 These earliest examples underline the basic point that the establishment of colleges did not guarantee their future or their efficacy. In the first twenty years

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of its existence, the Collegium Germanicum was under-funded and provided little more than one hundred graduates.22 A decisive shift occurred with the election of Ugo Boncompagni as Pope Gregory XIII in 1572. In the aftermath of the 1575 Jubilee, a remarkable success that brought thousands of visitors to Rome, Gregory poured resources into existing and newly established colleges for foreigners.23 He ensured a stable annual income for the Collegium Germanicum which, along with other reforms, resulted in 800 students passing through the college by the end of the century.24 Gregory’s pontificate also saw the development of new colleges in Rome for foreign students from across Europe. In 1577 Gregory approved the establishment of a Greek college, to counter the twin threats of Ottoman and Protestant expansion to the east. Similar concerns informed the creation of Collegio dei Neofiti in 1577, an Illyrian college at Lorteo (outside Rome) in 1580 and a Maronite college in 1584. A Hungarian college was established in 1579, but united to the existing German institution shortly after to create the Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum.25 In the 1570s, the number of English Catholics migrating to the continent intensified in the aftermath of the promulgation of Regnans in Excelsis by Gregory’s predecessor Pius V.26 This increased pressure in Rome to support an English college, along the lines of the Collegium Germanicum. In 1579 the existing English hospice in Rome, a medieval foundation created like many similar institutions to cater for foreign pilgrims, was re-constituted as an English college. The hospice had been controlled by a group of Welsh students and priests since the 1560s, under the leadership of Owen Lewis and Morys Clynnog, who was elected warden for a second term in 1576. Clynnog, with the support of William Allen, lobbied successfully for the transformation of the hospice into a college. The creation of the college, however, sparked a significant quarrel among the English and Welsh priests and students, with the former aggrieved at the perceived preference given to the admission of Welsh students by Clynnog. Gregory’s bull Quoniam divinae bonitati (1579) handed authority in the college to the Society of Jesus and their takeover effectively toppled the Welsh hegemony.27 Like students resident at the other nascent foreign colleges in Rome, the English attended classes at the Collegio Romano, which also developed considerably under the patronage of Gregory XIII.28 The expansion of Roman colleges for foreign students during the pontificate of Gregory XIII was mirrored in similar developments to the north. At the University of Bologna, colleges were established for Hungarian and Illyrian students. Meanwhile at the University of Milan, the Collegium Helveticum was founded for students from Switzerland.29 For students from the far north of Europe, the problem of second and third level education in a Catholic setting was even more pressing. The Catholic sympathies of King John III of Sweden, whose reign overlapped with the pontificate of Gregory XIII, eased some of the pressure with the establishment of the

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Collegium Regium Stockholmense. The college was placed under the direction of the Jesuit Laurentius Norvegus in 1576, though his room for manoeuvre was ultimately limited by the secret nature of his mission to the Swedish royal court.30 By this stage, the option of foreign university education had already enticed Scandinavian students to western Germany and the Spanish Netherlands, but the numbers involved were tiny.31 More promising for Swedish Catholics was their control of a medieval Roman hospice, the Hospitale S. Birgittae, but this was too modest to cater for more than a handful of students.32 In Rome, the Collegium Germanicum proved more significant, attracting twenty-seven northern students up to 1622.33 Under Gregory XIII, a new plan was hatched to provide educational opportunities in central and northern Europe for Scandinavian students using funding from the papal treasury. This plan was conceived and carried through by the Jesuit Antonio Possevino, with the pope’s strong support. As new Jesuit colleges and universities opened in the second half of the sixteenth century, they provided ideal bases within which to create ‘papal seminaries’ for Scandinavian students.34 They were, stresses Oskar Garstein, not separate colleges, but ‘study units within a Jesuit college’.35 The most important papal seminary was established within the Jesuit college at Braniewo ­(Braunsberg) in modern Poland in 1578. The older college dated to 1565, part of the CounterReformation initiative spearheaded by Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius. Between 1578 and 1622, 131 Swedes, forty-eight Danes, twenty Norwegians, fourteen Finns and four students from Schleswig-Holstein passed through this ‘Swedish seminary’, 217 in total.36 Possevino was also responsible for establishing a seminarium­pontificium at the University of Olomouc in 1578, which attracted 108 Scandinavian students before 1622.37 Both institutions were designed to fulfil the essential needs of Catholic students who would return home, encompassing clergy and also lay students hoping to enter the civil service of the Scandinavian states. The pontifical seminary at Vilna, created by Possevino in 1583, provided a more elevated educational experience and attracted a smaller, more specialised, range of students.38 Garstein’s detailed research has illustrated that the period of heaviest student movement to the pontifical seminaries occurred between the late 1570s and the 1610s, at which point a decline was already evident.39 While neither the Scots nor Irish established a Roman college under Gregory XIII’s pontificate, he did provide funding for the Scots college which moved from Paris to Pont-à-Mousson in 1581 and increased the amount three years later on the condition that it also admit Irish students.40 The decision to fund a Scots college at Pont-à-Mousson temporarily ended the plans for one in Rome, but the proposal re-emerged in the later 1590s as part of Rome’s interest in James VI of Scotland’s possible (ultimately unrealistic) Catholic sympathies. Like its English counterpart the college was established from the existing medieval Scots hospice in Rome, with a papal endowment, and opened in the Jubilee year

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of 1600. Like their English, German and other colleagues, Scots students also attended class at the Collegio Romano and the Jesuits formally took charge in 1615.41 While the Irish had no hospice in Rome, leading Irish clergy resident there, including archbishops of Armagh, Richard Creagh in the 1540s and Peter Lombard after 1599, had assisted individual students.42 Indeed, an early­h­ istorian of the college went out of his way to explain why Gregory XIII ‘pass[ed] over the Irish nation’ during the foundation of so many exile colleges. He noted that the pope had in fact allocated funding for an Irish college, but re-directed it to support the ill-fated military effort of James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald.43 The appointment of Ludovico Ludovisi as Cardinal Protector of Ireland in 1623 led to renewed activity towards the foundation of an Irish college for secular students. Initially, Ludovisi provided funding for Irish students who were to reside at the existing English and Maronite colleges. Inevitably, this created problems and Luke Wadding, a prominent and well-connected Irish Franciscan, persuaded him to establish a separate college, which opened in 1628 and, much to Wadding’s dismay, was taken under Jesuit administration like so many of the other colleges, in 1635.44 The early history of the Scots college at Pont-à-Mousson illustrates just how fragile the nascent colleges actually were. Funded from the French estate of Mary, Queen of Scots, as well as papal resources, the monarch’s execution in 1587 resulted in the collapse of revenue and it closed by the end of the decade. In 1593 the Jesuit priest William Crichton oversaw the transfer of the defunct Scots college to Douai, though a brief period in Louvain followed until the college finally settled permanently back in Douai in 1597.45 The 1590s were, in fact, a crucial decade for the foundation of abroad colleges in Spanish Flanders. One of those to assist Crichton was the pivotal English Jesuit figure Robert Persons. The setbacks suffered by the Jesuit mission to England in which Persons participated in the early 1580s convinced him that continental education was essential to the future of the English mission. In 1582 he arranged for the opening of a small school for lay students at Eu in northern France. Later plans to transfer the Eu foundation were abandoned and a new project was initiated, resulting in the establishment of a college at St Omer.46 Irish migration to Spanish Flanders was more pronounced in the later sixteenth century, so it is unsurprising that Irish students associated with the English and Scots colleges at Douai. In 1594, Christopher Cusack, an Irish priest, established an Irish college in Douai, mainly for students from Leinster, which established itself over the next two decades. An influential cohort of reforming students with strong connections to other Irish colleges in Flanders and France passed through its doors, among them David Rothe, Thomas Dease, Thomas Messingham and Henry Fitzsimon. Cusack was also instrumental in establishing three smaller, inter-related Irish colleges at Antwerp, Tournai and Lille in the first decade of the seventeenth century.

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­ nusually, the Irish college at Lille accepted both secular and Capuchin students U and operated under the aegis of the Irish Capuchin Francis Nugent. With the exception of the Irish college at Douai, these colleges did not expand, but they worked successfully together as a network. As with many similar ventures, the founder’s role was significant and Cusack’s move back to Ireland in 1619 unleashed latent tensions, which threatened their administrative and financial futures.47 This seems to have encouraged Eugene Matthews, archbishop of Dublin, to pursue the establishment of a new Irish college in Louvain, which had been attracting a steady stream of Irish students since the mid-sixteenth century. As the remarkable work of Jeroen Nilis has shown that flow had dwindled to almost nothing as a result of the conflict raging in Flanders in the late 1570s and 1580s, but the number of students grew again from the 1590s, reaching new levels in the late 1610s. The college was, ­therefore, an organic development and Matthews provided funding along with local monies and support from the newly established Congregation of Propaganda Fide.48 The Irish, English and Scots arrived in Habsburg Flanders along with migrants from the Northern Netherlands, the subject of recent reassessment by Geert Janssen.49 Dutch Catholics too established colleges to the south and the parallels with migrant students from across the North Sea are striking. The Dutch, like the Irish, had a long history of student mobility before the establishment of Leiden University in 1575 as an intellectual rival to the southern, Catholic powerhouse at Louvain. Dutch and Irish college structures arose out of similar refugee and episcopal coteries, against the backdrop of intermittent domestic military conflict.The Dutch college at Louvain was formally established in Cologne in 1603, but moved first to Huissen in 1675 and then to Louvain in 1680. Louvain had, of course, long attracted students from the north and two colleges for Dutch students already existed when the Cologne college eventually settled there. The Pope college, established by Adrian VI in 1523, developed into a significant centre for Catholic students as confessional divisions widened, while the Collegium Pulcheriae Mariae Virginis was a much later foundation, created in 1617 under the leadership of Cornelius Jansen. As Willem Frijhoff makes clear in his contribution to this volume the Dutch colleges in Cologne and Louvain functioned alongside extensive student mobility directed at Catholic universities and seminaries to the south as well as a broader series of strategies aimed at consolidating Catholicism in the Protestant-dominated Northern Netherlands.50 The dense network of exile colleges in Spanish Flanders and its hinterland reflected proximity to home, the growth of migrant communities and, of key significance, the inter-relationship between Dutch, English, Irish and Scots Catholics and the Spanish Empire of Philip II. It was therefore understandable that a substantial network of colleges would also emerge in Iberia at the same

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time. As in Rome, the Jesuit influence was paramount among the English, Irish and Scots colleges in Spain and Portugal. Trading and migration links between Ireland and Portugal ensured that a small but dynamic Irish Catholic community emerged in the sixteenth century. The Irish college in Lisbon probably pre-dated Salamanca by at least two years, established as a result of the work of an Irish Jesuit, John Howling, and the support of local Jesuits and patrons.51 Spain was an even more important destination for migrants from the three kingdoms since the mid-sixteenth century, with growing numbers of clergy and students present in Spanish university cities by the 1580s and 1590s. The crucial figure in turning the loosely affiliated student groups into more weighty institutional centres was the English Jesuit Robert Persons. His mission to Philip II on behalf of the Society of Jesus provided an ideal platform from which to arrange for the establishment of an English college at Valladolid in 1589 extending the Spanish funding which already applied to the colleges in Philip’s Flanders ­territories.52 As Thomas McCoog has commented the foundation was ‘an accidental, almost chaotic establishment’.53 Like other early English and Scots foundations, it also housed some Irish students and when Philip II visited ­Valladolid in 1592, the Irish priest Thomas White petitioned him for the establishment of a separate Irish college in the city. This was greeted positively and funding was promised, but the Irish students were relocated to Salamanca and placed under Jesuit stewardship.54 From these early foundations, a number of other colleges emerged. Persons quickly looked to extend his Iberian network, establishing a second English college at Seville in 1592 and negotiating local financial support.55 When a second Irish college opened in Santiago de Compostella in 1605, which catered to both lay students and clerics, particularly those who had followed Domnall Cam O’Sullivan Beare to Spain after defeat at Kinsale, Philip III placed it initially under the leadership of Eugene McCarthy, a secular priest. The Spanish monarchy transferred it, however, to Jesuit control in 1612 much to the annoyance of some of the local Irish migrant community.56 In the same year Thomas Stapleton established a small college in Seville, which also came under Jesuit control in 1619.57 Stapleton was also central to the foundation of a college at Madrid in 1629, though it failed to develop into a substantial institution, something it had in common with the English (1610) and Scots (1627) colleges in the same city.58 Two further colleges remained free from Jesuit control: the small Irish college at Alcalá de Henares and the English college established at Lisbon in 1622 (despite its roots in a Jesuit English residence in the city stretching back to 1594).59 The Roman and Spanish networks of colleges reflected papal concerns about Protestant territories as well as existing migration patterns to Spain and Spanish Flanders which intensified in the course of the sixteenth century.To some extent they also reflected the geopolitical concerns of Rome and Madrid, but

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the colleges did not emerge from a coherent diplomatic strategy and while papal and Spanish funding was rooted in both political and pastoral concerns, this was beset by frequent problems. Ultimately, the foundations cohered into networks only in the long term. Something similar may be observed in the foundation of colleges in France, where the religious conflicts of the late sixteenth century initially stunted the potential for development. Of course, the University of Paris had a long tradition of attracting international students on the peregrinatio academica, including students from what would become Protestant territory in England, Scotland, Ireland and the Northern Netherlands. As noted already, the Scots had a strong connection with the university and though the Paris resident and archbishop of Glasgow, James Beaton, had thrown his support behind the college for Scots Catholics at Pont-à-Mousson, his estate provided the basis for a new Scots college in the French capital in 1603.60 A small English college was also established in the seventeenth century.61 Irish students may have come together as a community as early as 1578, though an actual college emerged only in the early seventeenth century. In fact, the college endured a precarious existence even after official recognition in the 1620s, especially between the 1630s and 1660s, before prominent Irish migrants acquired the vacant Collège des Lombards in 1676, which would become the centre for the most important Irish institution on the continent.62 Thomas O’Connor has argued that the Irish college in Paris developed as an offshoot from the Cusack network in Flanders, accommodating Meath clergy in particular.63 To the south, in contrast, the Irish colleges founded in Bordeaux (1603) and Toulouse (1659) emerged from Munster interests and had strong connections to their equivalents across the Pyrenees.64 Crucially, none of the French institutions was administered by the Jesuits, though as Laurence Brockliss has argued Jesuit educational and formation thinking permeated the creation of colleges throughout Europe in the period.65 Alongside the colleges established primarily for the formation or education of secular clergy and lay students were those founded specifically for regular clergy, a re-grouping abroad of structures destroyed by the closure of friaries and monasteries in the three kingdoms. These colleges were, in effect, confined to Catholics from Ireland, England and, in a more unusual manner, Scotland. Of course, the regular clergy from the three kingdoms already participated in international networks, which they were able to use to create new and alternative structures on the continent, though resistance to exile colleges was also evident in many cases. The Scottish example is the least typical. In 1575, Bishop John Lesley of Ross, accompanied by the Scottish priest and scholar Ninian Winzet, undertook a mission to Rome on behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots. While there, they were made aware of the group of German Benedictine monasteries known collectively as Schottenklöster, notably at Regensburg, Erfurt and Würzburg. The Schottenklöster traced their origins to Irish monastic foundations in the

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twelfth century but by the fifteenth century the Irish connection was increasingly precarious and the confused understanding of the collective term for the Irish founders (scoti) permitted ambitious Scots clergy (backed by the substantial Scottish merchant community in Regensburg) to move in. Scots successfully gained control of the three abbeys between 1578 and 1595.66 Over the next two centuries at least 100 Scots entered these Benedictine communities. Few returned to Scotland and while Tom McInally is correct to point out that ‘of the regular orders only they managed to retain a clear Scottish identity as a religious community’, their connection to the wider Scottish community, either at home or abroad, was ultimately modest.67 The revived English Benedictine congregation founded new monasteries on the continent, which took on educational work and operated not unlike the colleges for the secular clergy. A burst of activity in the early seventeenth century witnessed the establishment of new foundations at Douai, Dieulouard, St Malo and Paris between 1607 and 1615. The English Benedictine Abbey at Lamspringe, a medieval German foundation, was incorporated into the English congregation in 1643, though it had more in common with the Schottenklöster than the other English institutions.68 Unlike the Schottenklöster, however, the English Benedictine communities maintained a strong connection with the English mission, though the relationship between them was necessarily complex and changed over the course of two centuries.69 The Irish mendicant orders also witnessed an assault on their infrastructure from 1539–1540, but they were better positioned to resist than the monastic orders and a network of friaries continued to operate at home throughout the sixteenth century. The Irish Franciscans had an advanced system of studia in Ireland, but the lack of a studium generale meant that the most promising students had travelled regularly to England or the continent, either provided with free places by their order or funded by their Irish confreres. Oxford, Cambridge and Paris were all important destinations in the medieval period.70 Under pressure in the second half of the sixteenth century, the number of friars travelling abroad increased, the range of their destinations expanded and the pressure to establish institutions abroad rose. Franciscan misgivings about the management and theological direction of the early Irish colleges established in Spain and Spanish Flanders led Fláithrí Ó Maol Chonaire to mount a successful campaign for the creation of St Anthony’s college, Louvain, in 1607. Ó Maol Chonaire and his colleagues ensured that the college was deeply embedded in the networks of the émigré Irish community in Spanish Flanders, as well as the theologically rigorist and anti-Jesuit circles within the university, but it struggled financially in its early years and attempts to expand south to Paris amounted to very little. The Irish Franciscan college network developed only in the 1620s, when Luke Wadding established St Isidore’s in Rome and Malachy Fallon founded the College of the Immaculate Conception in Prague. The pressure of numbers

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encouraged the Irish Franciscans to expand further, but despite the promising development of a friary at Weilun in 1645, it lasted less than decade.71 Like their Franciscan brothers, Irish Dominicans moved to Europe as their ecclesiastical structures diminished in the later sixteenth century. The emergence of a full college network was, however, slower than for the Franciscans. In the 1610s plans for Irish Dominican colleges were advanced with the support of Peter Lombard, the Roman-based archbishop of Armagh. Initiatives directed towards Spain and France ultimately failed, but a college did open in Lisbon in 1615, though it took more than four decades before the building of Corpo Santo solidified the position of the Irish Dominicans in the Portuguese capital. By this stage, the Irish Dominicans also had an important college at Louvain, dated to 1624, and would add a college in Rome, the church of San Clemente, in 1677.72 The Irish Augustinians, numerically smaller than the Franciscans and Dominicans, established their own college in Rome in 1656.73 Developments The number and complexity of abroad colleges established by the mid-­seventeenth century, coupled with the current state of their historiography, ensures that it is not possible to present a coherent single narrative of their development in the succeeding century and a half. A number of important issues are, however, evident. The Irish colleges were the most numerous among the abroad colleges and, given their scale, are better thought of as a collection of networks rather than a single, unified group. As we have seen, the colleges for the education of secular clergy and lay students were concentrated in Spain, Spanish Flanders and France. Most of the colleges in Spanish territory were relatively small in scale, with finance a recurring issue. The expansion of the colleges across the border in France occurred during the seventeenth century, particularly from the 1660s. As noted already, the Irish college in Paris acquired a permanent home in the 1670s and developed over the succeeding half century into a genuine national institution, with more than 150 students packed into overcrowded accommodation by the mid-eighteenth century.74 Meanwhile, an Irish college founded in the strategically significant migration centre of Nantes in the later seventeenth century assumed a growing importance, with around eighty students by the eighteenth century.75 Bordeaux’s Irish college was much smaller, but it remained important for Munster students.76 France’s importance for the Irish abroad colleges was bolstered as a result of Louis XIV’s wars, which brought the colleges at Douai and Lille inside the borders of the French state. To the north, the other Irish colleges in Flanders for secular students had always been modest institutions and they failed to expand. Among the regulars, the Franciscan and Dominican

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networks, in Louvain, Prague, Lisbon and Rome, retained significant numbers. Indeed, they became increasingly significant in the eighteenth century as the regulars came under sustained pressure first from penal legislation enacted in 1697 and subsequently from the Roman decision to close their Irish novitiates in 1751.77 In the case of the Irish colleges, then, the shift of focus to France was the crucial development. The English and Scots networks also exhibited specific characteristics. The three Scots colleges under Jesuit control, at Douai, Rome and Madrid, quickly constructed an unstated but clear relationship. Douai’s geographical position meant that it became the primary destination for Scots students, catering over time as the first destination for a majority, with a small proportion of moving on to further study in Rome or Madrid. The Paris college, run by secular Scottish clergy, expanded less fully than Douai, but in 1665 a new large college opened on rue Cardinal Lemoine, which not only took in students, but also experienced missionaries as well as providing ‘training for all ordained priests about to go on the Scottish mission’.78 As McInally has recently pointed out, this placed Paris at the heart of the Scots college network and ensured that the small network of Scots colleges worked with more coherence. The incorporation of Douai into France also had the unintended consequence of placing most of the Scots college network firmly in French territory.79 The English college network was concentrated in the Low Countries. While the English college at Douai experienced difficulties concerning governance, finances and the relationship with the English mission, it remained the most important college for the formation of secular clergy on the continent with a peak student and staff population of 164 in October 1784.80 The Jesuit college at St Omer, meanwhile, operated as a boarding school for the children of the English Catholic elite and from 1614 it separated from the Walloon Jesuit college which students had been attending.81 The English Jesuits developed their own ‘coherent and organisational infrastructure to support the missionary and educational work’ under Richard Blount, with the creation of a novitiate in Watten, a centre for philosophy and theology at Liège and a base for final training at Ghent.82 At its educational and intellectual peak in the seventeenth century, Whitehead contends that the St Omer curriculum fossilised in the course of the eighteenth century.83 Compared to Douai and St Omer, the other English colleges were modest institutions. At Valladolid, recruitment declined from the 1620s and from 1663 a new intake of students from St Omer was accepted only every seven years, though the sequencing did not operate so neatly in practice.84 At Seville, the difficulties were even more marked and the decline in student recruitment was so severe that the last English student was ordained in 1693 and when the college re-opened from 1710 it took in up to six Irish students to fill the vacant places.85 The colleges in Lisbon and Rome also

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suffered recurring problems, frequently connected to difficulties on the English mission, but they continued to attract small but sufficient numbers of students throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.86 The English Benedictine foundations at Douai, Lamspringe and Dieulouard operated important schools, which educated the lay elite but also acted as ‘seminaries’ both for the ­Benedictines themselves and for other English colleges.87 In a familiar pattern, student recruitment was healthiest in the seventeenth century, with a fall off discernible in the­­eighteenth.88 In comparison with the dispersed networks of English, Scots and Irish colleges, the abroad institutions for other national groups were more concentrated. The Dutch colleges, as we have seen, effectively consolidated in Louvain, though students were more widely dispersed in reality.89 The Collegium Germanicum was unable to maintain the historically high numbers of the 1570s (306 students) and 1580s (299 students), possible only with the exceptionally generous patronage of Gregory XIII, but it continued to admit more than a dozen students a year, so that 4,762 students had passed through its doors by 1797, of whom 621 were Hungarians.90 The other national colleges in Rome and indeed elsewhere in Italy were, by definition, much smaller operations though their influence in connecting peripheral Catholics to the centre was ultimately more important than their actual intake.91 In all of these cases, despite the challenges they faced, the abroad colleges established in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries endured into the eighteenth century. The same cannot be said for the pontifical seminaries established for northern Catholics in Braniewo, Olomouc and Vilna. These institutions, so heavily identified with the northern Counter-Reformation, came under intense pressure in the early seventeenth century. The armies of Gustavus Adolphus accounted for the most important of them – in Braniewo and Olomouc – in 1626 and 1642 respectively, shipping the contents of their libraries back to Sweden to cater for the growing needs of the University of Uppsala.92 In the course of the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the abroad colleges slowly came under new pressures. Jansenism and Jacobitism placed ­significant strains on college communities, particularly in France, but also in Flanders and Rome.93 As these receded in importance in mid-century, new challenges emerged from reforming tendencies within the ecclesiastical and educational politics pursued by European states. For example, the reforms of Joseph II in Austria ultimately led to the closure the Irish Franciscan college in Prague and threatened the existence of the colleges in the Austrian Netherlands.94 The most spectacular manifestation of this reforming impulse was, of course, the expulsion of the Jesuits from successive European states, most importantly Spain and France, and the eventual suppression of the Society in 1773. This obviously had a profound impact on the colleges maintained by the

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Society of Jesus, forcing the closure and dispersal of Irish, English and Scots colleges in Portugal, Spain and France. In Spain, for instance, the Irish college network, already in decline, was ultimately reduced to the single college at Salamanca.95 The Jesuits were compelled to abandon the English college at St Omer, which was transferred to the custodianship of the secular clergy at Douai, while the Jesuits re-grouped across the border in Bruges before moving again, this time to their base in Liège.96 The suppression of 1773 impacted heavily too on the colleges in Rome. The Collegio Romano was taken over by local secular clergy and the Jesuit administrators of the abroad colleges were replaced, though controversy over the appointment of Italian administrators remained a feature of college life.97 For the Collegium Germanicum, Joseph II’s decree forbidding education of his subjects in Rome created a further problem.98 On one reading, the abroad colleges weathered the storms of the later ancien régime with success, mainly because they were sufficiently flexible to adapt to shifting circumstances. The pressures of the later eighteenth century, however, occurred in tandem with the emergence of potentially more tolerant regimes at home, particularly in the case of the Irish, English and Scots, which accounts for the evidence that some college investors and administrators were beginning to consider the possibility of establishing educational structures at home. In the Irish case, this certainly emerges in the 1780s.99 All of this is important because it casts the impact of the French Revolution in a new light. In traditional accounts, the Revolution was identified as the single force which closed the abroad colleges in France and later across the continent. In reality the abroad colleges were already under serious strain in the decades before the Revolution. Moreover, they accommodated themselves to the early, moderate Revolution with relative ease.The increasingly radical direction of the Revolution from 1792 onwards posed a more intractable set of challenges and the intense suspicion of foreign clergy ensured that in the heartlands of the abroad college networks in France, Flanders and the Italian states the colleges were forcibly closed and their properties seized.100 When the revolutionary dust settled, a small number of colleges in Paris, Salamanca, Lisbon and Rome remained or re-opened following what had amounted to a dramatic and unwelcome rationalisation. Historiography The scale, longevity and impact of the abroad colleges ensured that they produced a rich historiography. Though a controversial ‘history’ of the English college at Douai appeared from the pen of Charles Dodds as early as 1713, the recovery of the history of the abroad colleges occurred largely from the later nineteenth century.101 In this respect, the parallels between the colleges are remarkable. The

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publication of material from college archives began in earnest from the 1870s, with the appearance of Thomas Knox’s The First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay in 1878, accompanied by a lengthy ‘Historical Introduction’, which paved the way for a series of similar works mainly under the guiding hand of the Catholic Record Society.102 Between 1911 and 1930, the society published further archival material from Douai, as well as from Valladolid, Seville, Paris and Madrid.103 Simultaneously, the New Spalding Club, and especially their secretary P. J. Anderson, produced the Records of the Scots Colleges at Douai, Rome, Madrid, Valladolid and Ratisbon:Volume I, Registers of Students (Aberdeen, 1906). Archival material from the Irish colleges, meanwhile, began to appear in the pages of Archivium Hibernicum from 1912, later joined by Recusant History, the Innes Review and Collectanea Hibernica in the 1950s. The publication of primary sources laid the groundwork for a series of early college histories, frequently written by clergy who administered surviving colleges and therefore had unique access to source materials. Steinhuber on the Germans in Rome, Gasquet on the English in Rome and M’Donald and Boyle on the Irish in Spain and France respectively all wrote influential histories of their respective institutions from the inside with a firm emphasis on the significance of their colleges for the maintenance of Catholicism in hostile territory through the provision of an educated clergy for missionary work.104 Mid- and even later twentieth-century college histories were marked frequently by the confessional and institutional approaches sketched out by the pioneering insiders, but subsequent historians brought more professional ­historical standards to bear on their subject matter. The history of the Scots colleges is especially well covered, through the work of Maurice Taylor on the Scots in Spain (written while he was rector at Valladolid), Mark Dilworth on the Schottenklöster, Brian Halloran on Paris and Raymond McCloskey on Rome. Most recently Tom McInally’s major work, The Sixth Scottish University, has drawn all of this material together to argue for the existence of a strong Scottish network which effectively operated as his eponymous ‘sixth university’.105 The English colleges have also attracted historians, notably Michael William’s history of the English college, Rome, published in 1979, which updated the story of this central institution taking it into the twentieth century. Williams also produced a full history of the English college at Valladolid, while Chadwick’s work on St Omer, Murphy’s work on Seville and, most recently, Johnson’s book on Lisbon all provided valuable contributions.106 Meanwhile, the work of David Lunn and Geoffrey Scott on the early modern English Benedictines outline the h­ istories of their monasteries and schools on the continent.107 The historiography of the Irish colleges, given their number, is more complex. The poor archival survival rates from the early modern French colleges explains something of the patchy nature of the scholarship. Almost nothing remains, for example, of the

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pre-revolutionary archive of the important Irish college at Nantes, but even where the records are strong, as is the case for the Spanish colleges, the historio­ graphy remains strikingly underdeveloped.108 The journals Archivium Hibernicum and Collectanea Hibernica certainly provided important outlets for continental material relating to the colleges. Indeed, the latter attests to the Irish Franciscan commitment to recover their continental past.The order re-opened St Anthony’s college, Louvain in 1927 and placed the historian Brendan Jennings in charge as guardian. Jennings produced a series of important works on the Irish Franciscan colleges, along with a remarkable group of colleagues, including Gregory Cleary, Canice Mooney, Cathaldus Giblin and Benignus Millet.109 The expanding work on the German, English, Scots and Irish colleges was joined by new scholarship on parallel abroad colleges for Hungarians and, in the important research of L. Lukács in the mid-1950s, on the pontifical seminaries established in central and eastern Europe.110 The manner in which the historiography of the colleges developed should not surprise us, for it reflected developments in ecclesiastical but also university history. The strong focus on institutional history, along with the commitment to publication of primary sources, mirrored preoccupations in the history of higher education more generally. From the 1970s, the focus of university history shifted decisively towards the quantitative and social, as pioneering work by Laurence Stone, Richard Kagan, Laurence Brockliss and Willem Frijhoff drew on detailed student and curricula analysis to provide new histories of university attendance and study.111 This, in turn, impacted on work on the abroad colleges. The contrast between Steinhuber’s early history of the German college and the modern interpretation of Peter Schmidt, which appeared in 1984, makes this clear. Schmidt’s work placed a major emphasis on the quantitative, drawing from this a new social history of the college with a strong emphasis on patterns of student attendance.112 Schmidt was one of the few historians to connect the abroad colleges with the papal seminaries. The latter received detailed consideration in Oskar Garstein’s monumental work Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia. The third volume, which appeared in 1992, contained a forensic consideration of Scandinavian students at the seminaries established by Possevino in Braniewo, Vilna and Olomouc, as well as their presence in Graz, Prague and Rome, all reflecting the quantitative methodology so evident in university history since the 1970s.113 For Irish, English and Scots Catholic students, the work of Laurence Brockliss introduced quantitative methods and a social history of the colleges.The publication of Laurence Brockliss and Patrick Ferté’s study of Irish clerics in Paris and Toulouse proved particularly important, for it illustrated that a large proportion of the students who passed through the Irish colleges in France did not return to the Irish mission, thereby challenging long-held assumptions about what the colleges were for and why they were

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significant, which had their roots in the work of the pioneering insiders of the late nineteenth century.114 It should be clear from these brief comments on the historiography of the abroad colleges that they have produced a wealth of detailed and valuable scholarship. Under the impetus of social history models from the 1970s, recent decades have witnessed considerable scholarly attention. Alongside the quantitative methodologies, historians have attempted to integrate the abroad college histories into wider migration stories of which they were a part. This has been especially evident in Irish and Scottish historiography. The greater accessibility to and use of continental archives has permitted Irish and Scottish historians to re-write the history of early modern migration and, in so doing, to re-interpret the place of student mobility and college foundations.115 The dramatic increase in scholarship on the ‘Irish in Europe’ has shown among other things that student and college networks on the continent were closely linked with other migrants, particularly soldiers and merchants.116 Parallel research on early modern Scottish migration, notably by Steve Murdoch and David Worthington, has also drawn connections between Scots Catholic networks and broader migration patterns.117 This shift has been less evident among historians of English colleges, but the networks uncovered by the pioneering ‘Who were the nuns?’ project which examined English convents on the continent anew, has illustrated what should be possible for the colleges and male religious networks.118 Indeed, this has informed the major study of English Benedictine migration now ongoing at the University of Durham.119 Migration history, then, provides a suitable means for the recalibration of the study of the abroad colleges. In a stimulating recent essay on the Catholic ‘exile experience’, primarily focused on the sixteenth century, Geert Janssen has commented on the general neglect of early modern Catholic exile as well as the tendency of scholars working on the subject to remain firmly entrenched behind imagined national boundaries. Instead, Janssen has argued that historians should ‘approach the Catholic exile experience from a transnational angle that allows a comparison of strategies and responses across national divides’.120 In respect of the colleges, this transnational approach is already evident on a modest scale. The Roman colleges for foreigners present an obvious set of parallels, which were self-evident to contemporaries and have not escaped the attention of historians.121 The Jesuit roots of many of the English, but also Irish and Scots, colleges make comparison sensible, as a recent essay by Thomas McCoog emphasises.122 More general studies of Irish, Scots and English migration in both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have connected national colleges, such as Laurence Brockliss’ work on Irish, English and Scots students in Paris or Nathalie Genet Rouffiac’s work on Jacobites in France.123 David Worthington provides an even more striking example by drawing attention to

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Scots ­connections with Possevino’s papal seminaries in the early seventeenth century.124 As Worthington also points out, interaction between institutions and national groups abroad is another obvious transnational angle. The early history of the Irish, English and Scots colleges all provide examples of mixed groups of students, as does the first decades of the Collegium Germanicum. Irish students, with fewer colleges available to them in the late sixteenth century, attended a range of different institutions. At least seven Irish students attended the Collegium  Germanicum between 1562 and 1612, along with Scottish, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Swiss, Czech, Croatian, Polish and, of course, Hungarian students.125 The student populations at Possevino’s papal seminaries were also unquestionably international. In the eighteenth century, Irish students, particular those from well-off families, regularly attended English colleges in Flanders.126 We should, however, be cautious about the apparent cosmopolitanism of the abroad colleges. In the case of the Irish, English and Scots colleges tensions between national groups (and indeed ethnic and provincial rivalries within national groups) were strong. The Welsh–English tussle for control of the English hospice, later college, at Rome is a good example. While Robert Persons’ network was important in securing an Irish college in Spain, it is significant that pressure was directed at the Irish to locate themselves in Salamanca rather than Valladolid.127 When Matthew Kellison compiled his report on the abroad colleges in Flanders in 1622 he noted tellingly that: ‘As regards the houses of other nations I have less to say, since custom and necessity bind us less closely together; but in this city [Douai] each has its own communities.’128 A number of attempts to unite the Irish, English and Scots colleges in Rome were resisted fiercely. In 1704, a Scots commentator underlined his opposition to a proposed union of the Scots and English colleges by arguing that: ‘Cette union seroit regardée par tous Ecossais dans les pays tant Catholiques que Protestans comme un deshonneur et un affront publique fait a la nation.’129 When the Irish, English and Scots colleges in France were united into a single entity called the ‘British Establishments’ under Napoleon’s imperial regime, the move was strongly opposed by everyone involved and broke down quickly with the Bourbon Restoration.130 None of this is surprising. The conflicts between different national groups rested ultimately on the necessity to secure patronage and financial security. This explains why John Bourk, one of the administrators of the Collège des Lombards, argued his case for papal funding in the 1730s by pointing out that less deserving English and Scottish institutions already enjoyed the bounty of papal largesse.131 The abroad colleges were, from the outset, competitors as much as Counter-Reformation cooperators. If interaction between the abroad colleges offers a less fruitful avenue for research than might be expected, a comparative, transnational approach is long overdue. A number of essential themes may be quickly sketched out in the

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remaining space, all of them reflecting the transformation of university history in the past half century, as social and cultural concerns have driven research. At the most basic level, a comparative study of the administrative and financial structures of the colleges would illuminate their histories. As the essays in this book make clear, the colleges ranged widely in size and structure from tiny hostels with fewer than a dozen students to large, complex institutions with more than 150 students, notably the Irish college in Paris, the English college in Douai and the Collegium Germanicum in Rome. The term ‘college’ was actually rather ambiguous and covered a range of sometimes competing functions. By widening the historical lens from the Irish, English and Scots colleges, to take in Dutch, German, Scandinavian and eastern colleges, historians will be able to re-consider the development of administrative structures. The role of the Society of Jesus is especially significant, not only in the foundation and direction of colleges, but also, as Laurence Brockliss has pointed out, in providing a model emulated across the college system in the early modern period.132 The colleges obviously fulfilled an educational and ecclesiastical need for Catholics from Europe’s reformed lands, but in their administrative structures they frequently disrupted standard church structures. In many cases, notably in Paris, Douai and Louvain, colleges operated as semi-autonomous units while they negotiated complex relationships with local ecclesiastical, university and municipal authorities.Where domestic episcopal authority was weak or even non-existent, college administrators emerged as powerful figures with control over formation and educational provision which should, in theory at least, have come under the remit of bishops. This disrupting influence was reflected in recurring tensions between the abroad colleges and domestic missions, which took different forms across national groups.133 Their anomalous position also meant that finances and patronage networks were especially important for the colleges. Taken as a whole, the colleges drew upon a formidable array of income, from papal pensions to domestic donations. Matthew Kellison’s 1622 report on the Irish, English and Scots institutions in Flanders provides a useful snapshot of funding and patronage networks across a range of institutions to draw out this point. The English college at Douai, for example, was funded from papal sources while a Spanish pension paid under Philip II and Philip III had dried up: ‘nothing of this pension has been paid for many years, thereby causing great loss and almost destruction to the college … the seminary is heavily in debt’.134 In sharp contrast, Kellison (no friend to the Jesuits) believed that the college at St Omer continued to receive funding from the Spanish crown. The Irish college at Douai also faced difficulty extracting a promised pension from Madrid and was funded ‘from the pensions of the gentlemen who are in it, and by the help and industry of friends’.135 The other Irish institutions in Flanders derived support from a range of sources: ‘From it

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[i.e. from Douai], by their own industry, with a small pension, namely 300 florins a year, given by the kindness of the state, they [the Irish] have got ready a house for themselves at Lille. At Antwerp too they have a house for priests supported by offerings for masses and the charity of the people. They have a house for students at Tournay, kept partly by pensions, partly by alms received from the people there or from Ireland. In all about 100 persons are supported.’136 The Irish Franciscans, he noted, ‘have a pension from Spain, and live on alms from their own people living in Ireland or in Belgium’. The Scots college, according to Kellison, was funded from an endowment provided by a wealthy Scottish Jesuit.137 This range of financing arrangements was common across the abroad colleges during their early histories, though by the eighteenth century income from migrants and home populations was becoming increasingly significant, at least in the Irish case, as a wealthy Catholic ‘middle class’ emerged.138 One of the more significant developments in university historiography since the 1960s has been the increasing attention devoted to the student experience, an elaboration of the ‘history from below’ approach which has been so influential in social history.139 From the lists of students published by the Catholic Record Society and the New Spalding Club in the late nineteenth century to the more sophisticated prosopographical studies, particularly of Irish students, which have appeared in recent years, the abroad colleges (where the records permit) have produced a wealth of valuable quantitative information.140 The challenge now is to present and analyse this material in a comparative manner. The work of the Irish in Europe Project, using material from Paris, Toulouse and Louvain, has indicated how this might be achieved. However, much work remains to be done to convert the published lists into more user-friendly formats. As quantitative historians realise, one risk with this kind of investigation is that the student experience is reduced to statistical patterns and profiles. And, however much this will reveal, without strong qualitative evidence the texture of the lives of abroad students will remain hidden. By their very nature, the colleges have left fewer records detailing the lived daily experiences (as opposed to the imagined experience recorded in schedules and related sources) but careful use of existing sources is necessary.141 The recent work of Lucy Underwood on the responsa scholarum of the English colleges at Rome and Valladolid illustrates their value for the history of youth, providing an exciting new angle on a reasonably well-known source.142 Of course, not all abroad students were young. In the Irish case, the widespread use of antecedent ordination ensured that many if not most Irish college students were mature men, aged in their late twenties and early thirties, thus differentiating them from the younger students around them. The implications of this increasingly anomalous system have not been sufficiently recognised by historians, for it ensured that Irish students must have been drawn from a much broader social base than the majority of their English,

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Scottish and continental colleagues in abroad colleges. This system also means that simplistic arguments about the role of the abroad colleges in the production of a ­‘Tridentine’ clergy must be made with care and qualification.143 Ultimately, the student experience raises fundamental questions about the very nature or purpose of the abroad college networks, which brings us back to the most essential historiographical shift of recent decades. The historians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries emphasised, understandably, the place of the abroad colleges in their respective missions. Of course, this line of interpretation had roots in the early modern period, notably in the cult of martyrdom, which found strongest expression in the English colleges at Rome and Douai, some of whose early students were included in the beatification process for a selected group of English and Welsh martyrs from the 1880s, including Cuthbert Mayne, the proto-martyr of Douai who died in 1577.144 In short, early college historians assumed that the colleges accounted for the endurance of Catholicism in the three kingdoms. The connection made between college and mission retains validity, of course, but recent work has re-directed attention to the importance of mobility per se. The work of Brockliss and Ferté on Irish students in Paris and Toulouse illustrated that a large proportion of students, possibly even a majority, never returned to Ireland on completion of their studies. For the children of middling sort families, they argued, ‘it can be safely assumed that students coming to Paris at an early age had been deliberately sent abroad to become permanent expatriates. Certainly they had been sent to France with the intention that they should enter the church, but the Church in France, not in Ireland.’145 As Brockliss further argued, Scots students followed a similar pattern, while English students were more likely to return home.146 For the Scots, the tendency towards permanent migration on the part of students may be discerned across the colleges. Figures compiled byTom McInally show that while 166 of the 237 secular priests ordained from the Scots colleges returned to the Scottish mission, overall only 248 of the 561 clergy produced by the colleges made the return journey to Scotland (among them a minority of Jesuits and even fewer Benedictines).147 A similar pattern emerged at the Maronite college in Rome. For the Irish and Scots, in particular, the colleges and the access that they frequently provided to European universities must be understood not simply in terms of preparation for their respective missions, but as a significant aspect of the migration process experienced by both Irish and Scots Catholics in the early modern period. Indeed, a range of recent studies has illustrated that the colleges were embedded within migrant communities, providing services and in turn receiving donations and patronage. Further work is necessary on Irish, English and Scots student mobility and comparison with the other continental abroad colleges will permit historians to investigate the social history of the colleges in the manner suggested by some Irish and Scottish studies.

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Finally, a comparative and transnational approach will advance scholarship on the cultural and intellectual histories of the abroad colleges. Inevitably, the colleges developed from the sixteenth century onwards as significant centres for individual and collaborative erudition. The Irish Franciscans provide a striking and much studied example, with their commitment to history, hagiography, language, philosophy and theology.148 As the case of the Irish Franciscans also illustrates, missionary expectations and the practical consequences of migration both fostered a willingness to engage in pioneering forms of cultural exchange. Many colleges amassed considerable libraries and engaged directly and indirectly in continental print networks.The English colleges, for example, quickly became focal points for recusant publication in Flanders.149 The Irish Franciscan colleges, at Louvain, Rome and Prague, pioneered Irish language publication.150 The ­pontifical seminary at Braniewo made use of the printing press ‘in much the same manner as contemporary English recusants’.151 Unsurprisingly, Rome developed as an important intellectual centre for Catholic students and migrants from the European peripheries to the west, north and east.The Maronite college in Rome accumulated an impressive library and engaged in similar cultural exchange to other abroad colleges in the city.152 While the function of the abroad colleges as cultural mediators is clear, the intellectual implications for the students who passed through remains uncertain. The challenge facing historians is to combine scholarship on student mobility with pioneering work on university curricula in order to understand how Irish or Swedish or Maronite students comprehended what they heard in the classrooms either of their colleges or the university halls they attended. As recent scholarship on early modern university curricula has illustrated, the surest guides to classroom activity are professorial manuals in combination with student notebooks and dissertations.153 For the abroad colleges which did not provide classes (beyond the kind of revision classes designed to complement lectures attended elsewhere) student notebooks and dissertations are especially revealing. Few studies of this nature currently exist, but Thomas O’Connor and Priscilla O’Connor’s work on theology dissertations sustained by Irish students in early eighteenth-century Paris illustrates their value.This reveals that Irish students maintained surprising anti-Gallican (and anti-Jansenist) positions, much in the face of university and parlementaire hostility.154 Their work also demonstrates that further investigation of this nature is necessary to detail how the students of the abroad colleges received and, ultimately, transmitted what they heard. This is especially important for the eighteenth century, which has generally received less attention than the earlier period in respect of the history of scholarship at the colleges, particularly in the light of recent research on the Catholic Enlightenment.155 The English Benedictine community in Paris certainly engaged with Enlightenment thought, for example, even creating a shortlived academy, the ‘Society of St Edmund’ which met regularly in the 1750s.156

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The cultural history of the abroad colleges was not, of course, restricted to the ideas encountered in classrooms. The colleges also imparted material, visual and aural cultures, especially in the larger institutions where a more elaborate attention to architecture, art and music was possible. The material culture of the English and Scots colleges, for example, reflected the significance of Jacobitism for much of the eighteenth century. James II’s body was placed in the chapel of the English Benedictines in Paris after his death in 1701, while his brain was sent to the Scots college in the same city and his bowels to the English at St Omer.157 More generally, the architecture of the colleges largely reflected local tastes, though it varied greatly in proportion to their size. The physical development of colleges frequently occurred in a piecemeal manner as properties were purchased and buildings constructed or renovated over decades and even centuries.158 Within the colleges, attention was paid to the visual, particularly in areas reserved for devotional and other communal activity, though studies of the artistic history of the colleges are not plentiful.159 In relation to the soundscape of the colleges, practically nothing has been written about the Irish or Scots colleges largely because of the apparent lack of source material, but major studies of music at the German college in Rome and the English colleges on the continent have appeared.160 Conclusion Ultimately, the challenge for historians of the abroad colleges is to understand them within three main interconnecting milieux: domestic populations, migrant communities and host constituencies (ecclesiastical, university, municipal and state). The pioneering historians of the late nineteenth century concentrated understandably on one aspect of the colleges’ relationship with their domestic populations: their missionary dimension. Patrick Boyle, for example, argued bluntly that the Irish Catholic Church would have withered and died without the clergy formed in the abroad colleges.161 The reality was, of course, more complex and the manner in which the colleges related to Catholic communities at home is now better understood. One of the outcomes of Brockliss’ research, for instance, is an increasing acknowledgement of both the lay and clerical functions of the colleges. As Thomas O’Connor argues in this book, this ensured that lay patrons at home influenced the historic development of the Irish colleges. In parallel, the historical understanding of the relationship between the colleges and migrant communities has been illuminated by new research on migration in early modern Europe. The third milieu in which the colleges operated, the host society, has admittedly attracted less attention from historians. Recent work on the history of universities (so often an influence

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on the study of the abroad colleges) has illustrated that renewed attention to the local and urban dimensions of higher education institutions is necessary to re-balance the overwhelming focus on national and state themes.162 A similar re-consideration in relation to the abroad colleges is overdue for their survival depended on a careful and practical management of home, migrant and host concerns. Indeed, when fundamental changes in the three milieux occurred in the late eighteenth century, as domestic populations were afforded a new kind of toleration, as migrant communities dwindled and as host populations turned increasingly hostile, the foundations on which the abroad colleges had been constructed in the sixteenth century crumpled. The argument made here for a comparative and transnational approach to the history of the abroad colleges reflects a broader historiographical tendency. Geert Janssen’s suggestions on the ‘exile experience’ or Benjamin Kaplan’s recent edited work comparing Catholic communities in Britain, Ireland and the Dutch Republic are, therefore, significant reference points.163Without ignoring the risks inherent in too broad a canvas, it is the argument of this book that the abroad colleges should be considered not only within national historiographies, but as a European phenomenon among Catholics forced to confront the r­ealities of non-Catholic political authorities. Irish, English and Scots historians have much to learn from scholarship on Dutch, Scandinavian, Maronite and other parallels. As James E. Kelly’s contribution illustrates, dense networks connected male and female abroad institutions. Indeed, the choices made by Catholics also bear comparison with those made by Jews, Protestants and others in ­analogous situations.While the European canvas presents an opportunity to develop further the growing scholarship on the abroad colleges, we must be careful not to lose sight of the fact that there is much about these institutions that we simply do not know. Therefore, individual case studies, full colleges histories and the kind of comparative and transnational investigations championed here are all necessary.164 Notes

My thanks to Dr Thomas O’Connor and Dr James E. Kelly for comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 1 The term ‘abroad colleges’ is preferred here to possible alternatives, including ‘exile colleges’. 2 J. Ohlmeyer, ‘Seventeenth-century Ireland and Scotland and their wider worlds’, in T. O’Connor and M. A. Lyons (eds), Irish Communities in Early Modern Europe (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005), pp. 465–6. 3 For the broader context, see: T. Ó hAnnracháin, Catholic Europe, 1592–1648: Centre and Peripheries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 4 A. Tervoort, The Iter Italicum and the Northern Netherlands: Dutch Students at Italian Universities and their Role in the Netherlands’ Society (1426–1575) (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 5 P. Nardi, ‘Relations with authority’, in H. de Ridder-Symoens (ed.), A History of the University in Europe,Volume I: Universities in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 77–107, at pp. 109–10, 114–16. 6 A. Perrault, L’Architecture des collèges parisiens au Moyen Âge (Paris: Presses de l’Université ParisSorbonne, 2009), pp. 38–41.

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7 B. M. Halloran, The Scots College Paris, 1603–1792 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1997), pp. 1–6. 8 Scottish Catholic Archives, CA 1/1, The Book of Grisy, fo. 66; D. Thomson and J. Bouniort, ‘Les Images parlantes de Thomas Wynterhop’, Revue de l’Art, 98:1 (1992), 29–38; G. A. Wanklyn and J. Bouniort, ‘Etienne Delaune et les dessins du cartulaire du college d’Écosse’, Revue de l’Art, 98:1 (1992), 39–43. 9 See: Ó hAnnracháin, Catholic Europe. 10 H. de Ridder-Symoens, ‘Mobility’, in H. de Ridder-Symoens (ed.), A History of the University in Europe,Volume II, Universities in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 416–48, at p. 419. See also: M. Asche, ‘Peregrination academica in Europa im Konfessionellen Zeitalter: Bestandsaufnahme eines unübersichtlichen Forschungsfeldes und Versuch einer Interpretation unter migrationsgeschichtlechen Aspkten’, Jahrbuch fuer europaeische Geschichte, 6 (2005), 3–33. 11 W. Frijhoff, ‘Patterns’, in de Ridder-Symoens (ed.), A History of the University in Europe,Volume II, pp. 43–110, at p. 71. 12 Ibid., p. 72. 13 De Ridder-Symoens, ‘Mobility’, pp. 421–6. 14 Ibid., pp. 424–6. 15 P. Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum in Rom und die Germaniker. Zur Funktion eines römischen Ausländerseminars (1552–1914) (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1984), pp. 12–21, 189–94. See also Urban Fink’s chapter in this volume. 16 R. García Villoslada, Storia del Collegio Romano dal suo inizio (1551) alla soppressione della Compagnia di Gesù (1773) (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1954). 17 J. Bossy, The English Catholic Community, 1570–1850 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1975), pp. 12–13. 18 W. Allen, An Apologie and True Declaration of the Institution and Endeuours of the two English Colleges, the one in Rome, the other now resident in Rhemes: against certain sinister information giuen up against the same ([Rheims: Jean de Foigny?], 1581), pp. 21v–24v; P. Guilday, The English Catholic Refugees on the Continent 1558–1795,Volume 1, The English Colleges and Convents in the Catholic Low Countries (London: Longmans, 1914), p. 7. 19 Bossy, The English Catholic Community, pp. 12–19. 20 E. Duffy, ‘Allen, William (1532–1594)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–14). 21 Guilday, English Catholic Refugees, pp. 106–7. 22 Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum, pp. 68–70. 23 M. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 123. 24 Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum, pp. 68–70. 25 P. G. Liverani, ‘I college ecclesiastici stranieri a Roma’, Capitolinum, 41 (1966), 566–73; 42 (1967), 118–25, 142–8; A.Veress, Matricula et acta alumnorum Collegii Germanici et Hungarici ex regno Hungariae oriundorum (1559–1917) (Budapest: Typis Societatis Stephaneum Typographicae, 1917); A. Fyrigos (ed.), Il Collegio Greco di Roma: Ricerche sugli allunni, la direzione, l’attività (Rome: Pontificio Collegio Greco S. Atanasio, 1983). 26 For a useful discussion see: K. Gibbons, English Catholic Exiles in Sixteenth-Century Paris (Wood­­­ bridge: Boydell Press, 2011), pp. 28–35. See also K. Kesselring, The Northern ­Rebellion of 1569: Faith, Politics and Protest in Elizabethan England (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010), pp. 118–43. 27 J. A. Nice, ‘Being “British” in Rome: The Welsh at the English college, 1578–1584’, Catholic Historical Review, 92:1 (2006), 1–24; M. E.Williams, TheVenerable English College Rome: A History, 1579–1979 (London: Associated Catholic Publications, 1979), pp. 1–6, 209–19; A.  J. Kenny, ‘From hospice to college, 1559–1579’, The Venerabile: Sexcentenary Issue, 22 (1962), 218–73. 28 García Villoslada, Storia del Collegio Romano, pp. 142–54. 29 G. P. Brizzi, ‘The university colleges of Bologna and the Hungaro-Illyrian college’, in L. Szögi and J. Varga (eds), Universitatis Budensis, 1395–1995 (Budapest: Eötvös Lóránd Tudományegyetem, 1997), pp. 143–50; C. Carlsmith, ‘Siam Ungari!: honour, nationalism and student conflict in seventeenth-century Bologna’, History of Universities, 26:2 (2012), 113–49; G. Vittani, ‘Il collegio Elvetico di Milano’, Humilitas, 4 (1931), 840–87.

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30 O. Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia,Volume 1 (1539–1583) (Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1963), pp. 94–112. 31 O. Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia: Jesuit Educational Strategy, 1553–1622 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 83, 387 32 Ibid., pp. 88–102. 33 Ibid., pp. 103–29. 34 Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia,Volume 1, pp. 165–72. These formed part of a larger group of ‘papal seminaries’ at Vienna, Prague, Graz, Fulda, Dilligen. See: L. von Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages (40 vols, London: Hodges et al, 1891–1953), vol. 19, chapter 6; Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia, Volume 1, pp. 130–74. 35 Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia: Jesuit Educational Strategy, p. 84. 36 Ibid., pp. 175–210, 387 37 Ibid., pp. 211–33, 387. 38 Ibid., pp. 234–65. Scandinavian students also attended the Possevino foundation at Tartu (Dorpat), but ‘they had priority only after Estonians, Moscovites, Ruthenians and Lithuanians’ (Ibid., p. 266). 39 Ibid., pp. 392–3. 40 H. Chadwick, ‘The Scots college, Douai, 1580–1613’, English Historical Review, 56:224 (1941), 571–85, at 579–80. 41 M. Dilworth, ‘Beginnings, 1600–1707’, in R. McCluskey (ed.), The Scots College Rome, 1600–2000 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2000), pp. 19–42, at pp. 19–22. 42 T. O’Connor, ‘The Irish college, Rome, in the age of religious renewal’, in The Irish College, Rome, 1628–1678: An Early Manuscript Account of the Foundation and Development of the Ludovisian College of the Irish in Rome (Rome: Pontifical Irish College, 2003), pp. 13–32, at p. 16. 43 The Irish College, Rome, 1628–1678, pp. 48–51. 44 O’Connor, ‘The Irish college, Rome’, pp. 16–21; P. J. Corish, ‘The beginnings of the Irish college, Rome’, in D. Keogh and A. McDonnell (eds), The Irish College, Rome, and itsWorld (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008), pp. 1–13. 45 Chadwick, ‘The Scots college, Douai, 1580–1613’, pp. 580–3; T. McInally, The Sixth Scottish University:The Scots Colleges Abroad, 1575–1799 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 20–1. 46 L. Hicks, ‘The foundation of the college of St Omers’, Archivium Romanum Societatis Iesu, 19 (1950), 146–80; H. Chadwick, St Omers to Stonyhurst (London: Burns and Oates, 1962), pp. 10–42; T. McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland and England, 1589–1597: Building the Faith of Saint Peter upon the King of Spain’s Monarchy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 130–4. 47 J. Brady, ‘Father Christopher Cusack and the Irish college of Douai, 1594–1624’, in S. O’Brien (ed.), Measgra I gCuimhne Mhichíl Uí Chléirigh (Dublin: Assisi Press, 1941), pp. 98–107; T. O’Connor, Irish Jansenists, 1600–70: Religion and Politics in Flanders, France, Ireland and Rome (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008), pp. 78–84. For the Irish Capuchin foundations on the continent at Charleville (1615) and later Bar-sur-Aube and Wassy: F. X. Martin and A. De Meijer, ‘Sources for the history of the Irish Capuchins’, Collectanea Franciscana, 26 (1956), 67–79; F. X. Martin, ‘ “So manie in the verie prime and spring of their youth, manie of them heirs of lande”: the friars of the Irish Capuchin mission in northern France and the Low Countries, 1591–1641’, in B. Hayley and C. Murray (eds), Ireland and France, a Bountiful Friendship: Literature, History and Ideas: Essays in Honour of Patrick Rafroidi (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1991), pp. 7–16; F. X. Martin, Friar Nugent: A Study of Francis Lavalin Nugent (1569– 1635), Agent of the Counter-Reformation (London: Meuthen, 1962). 48 F. M. Jones, ‘Documents concerning the Collegium Pastorale Hibernicum of Louvain, 1624’ Archivium Hibernicum, 16 (1951), 40–61; O’Connor, Irish Jansenists, pp. 85–8; J. Nilis, ‘Irish students at Leuven University, 1548–1997’, Archivium Hibernicum, 60 (2006–7), 1–304, at 10–12. 49 G. H. Janssen, ‘The Counter-Reformation of the refugee: exile and the shaping of Catholic militancy in the Dutch Revolt’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 63:4 (2012), 671–92; G. H. Janssen, The Dutch Revolt and Catholic Exile in Reformation Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

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50 W. Frijhoff’s chapter in this volume. 51 P. O Connell, The Irish College at Lisbon, 1590–1834 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 22–5. 52 M. E. Williams, St Alban’s College,Valladolid: Four Centuries of English Presence in Spain (London: C. Hurst & Company, 1986), pp. 1–13. 53 T. McCoog, ‘  “Replant the uprooted trunk of the tree of faith”: the Society of Jesus and the continental colleges for religious exiles’, in R. Armstrong and T. Ó hAnnracháin (eds), Insular Christianity: Alternative Models of the Church in Britain and Ireland, c.1570–c.1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 28–48, at p. 30. 54 O’Connor, Irish Jansenists, p. 96. 55 M. Murphy (ed.), St Gregory’s College, Seville, 1592–1767, Catholic Record Society (hereafter C.R.S.), vol. 73 (London, 1992), p. 7. 56 For a recent discussion, see: C. O’Scea, ‘The Spanish court, ecclesiastical patronage and the Jesuit takeover of the Irish college in Santiago de Compostela (1611–17)’, in L. Chambers and T. O’Connor (eds), Forming Catholic Communities: Irish, Scots and English College Networks in Europe, 1568–1918 (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). 57 W. M’Donald, ‘Irish ecclesiastical colleges since the reformation: Alcala, Seville, Lisbon’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 8 (1872), 307–13, 465–73. 58 M. Kearny Walsh, ‘The Irish college of Madrid’, Seanchas Ardmhacha, 15:2 (1993), 39–50; M. Taylor, The Scots College in Spain (Valladolid: no publisher, 1971), pp. 2–45; Williams, St Alban’s College,Valladolid, pp. 29–33. 59 Ó. Recio Morales, Irlanda en Alcalá: La comunidad irlandesa en la Universidad de Alcalá y su proyección europea, 1579–1785 (Alcalá de Henares: Fundación Colegio del Rey, 2003), pp. 101–42; M. Williams, ‘The origins of the English College, Lisbon’, Recusant History, 20 (1991), 478–92; S. Johnson, The English College at Lisbon,Volume 1, From Reformation to Toleration (Bath: Downside Abbey Press, 2014), pp. 24–99. 60 Halloran, The Scots College Paris, pp. 28–35. 61 A. F. Allison, ‘The Origins of St. Gregory’s, Paris’, Recusant History, 21 (1992), 11–25. 62 P. O’Connor, ‘Irish clerics in the University of Paris, 1570–1770’ (PhD thesis, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 2006), pp. 10–141. 63 O’Connor, Irish Jansenists, pp. 88–95. 64 On Bordeaux and Toulouse: T. J. Walsh, The Irish Continental College Movement: The Colleges at Bordeaux, Toulouse and Lille (Dublin: Golden Eagle Books, 1973), pp. 88–119; Patrick Ferté, ‘The counter-revolution and Franco-Irish solidarity: Irish clerical refugees at the universities of Toulouse and Cahors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, in O’Connor and Lyons (eds), Irish Communities, pp. 32–68. 65 L. W. B. Brockliss, ‘The Irish colleges on the continent and the creation of an educated clergy’, in T. O’Connor and M.A. Lyons (eds), The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe: Refashioning Irish Identities, 1600–1800 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010), pp. 142–65. The exception was the Irish college established by the Jesuits at Poitiers, which operated as a fee-paying school. See: F. Finegan, ‘The Irish college of Poitiers, 1674–1762’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 5th series, 104 (1965), 18–35. 66 M. Dilworth, The Scots in Franconia: A Century of Monastic Life (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1974), pp. 23–49. 67 McInally, The Sixth Scottish University, p. 165. 68 A. Cramer (ed), Lamspringe: An English Abbey in Germany, St Laurence Papers VII (Ampleforth: Ampleforth Abbey, 2004). 69 D. Lunn, The English Benedictines, 1540–1688: From Reformation to Revolution (London: Burns & Oates, 1980); G. Scott, Gothic Rage Undone: English Monks in the Age of Enlightenment (Bath: Downside Abbey, 1992). The English mendicants also made foundations on the continent, notably the Franciscans at Douai and the Dominicans at Louvain. See Guilday, English Catholic Refugees, pp. 284–306, 400–20. 70 C. Ó Clabaigh, The Friars in Ireland, 1224–1540 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012), pp. 271–80.

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71 M. A. Lyons, ‘The role of St Anthony’s College, Louvain in establishing the Irish Franciscan college network, 1607–60’, in E. Bhreathnach, J. MacMahon and J. McCafferty (eds), The Irish Franciscans, 1534–1990 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009), pp. 27–44; T. O’Connor, ‘Irish Franciscan networks at home and abroad, 1607–1640’, in D. Worthington (ed.), British and Irish Emigrants and Exiles in Europe, 1603–1688 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 279–96; B. Millet, The Irish Franciscans, 1651–1665 (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1964), pp. 105–201, 209–23. For an important new history of the Prague college see: J. Pařez and H. Kuchařová, The Irish Franciscans in Prague, 1629–1768: History of the Franciscan College of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary in Prague (Prague: Karolinum Press, 2015). 72 T. S. Flynn, The Irish Dominicans, 1536–1641 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1993), pp. 189–230; L. E. Boyle, San Clemente Miscellany I:The Community of SS. Sisto e Clemente in Rome, 1677–1977 (Rome: Apud S. Clementum, 1977), pp. 15–36. 73 C. O’Reilly and F. X. Martin (eds), The Irish Augustinians in Rome, 1656–1994 and Irish Augustinian Missions throughout the World (Dublin: Augustinian House of Studies, 1994). 74 Archives of San Clemente, Rome, Codex II, Volume 2, fos. 418–19v., Toby Bourk to [Cardinal Imperiali?], 5 October 1732. 75 Walsh, The Irish Continental College Movement, p. 83; J. C. Noel, ‘Daily life at the Irish college in Nantes (1775–1780)’, Cahiers du Centre d’Études Irlandaises, 7 (1982), 81–7; J. Mathorez, ‘Notes sur les prêtres irlandais réfugiés à Nantes aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles’, Revue d’Histoire de l’Église de France, 3:14 (1912), 164–73. 76 P. Loupès, ‘Les Ecclésiastiques irlandais dans le diocese de Bordeaux sous l’ancien régime’, Revue Historique de Bordeaux et du département de la Gironde, 22 (1974), 181–200. 77 The Irish Franciscans created another college at Boulay in Lorraine to cope with the consequences of the banishment of regular clergy from Ireland in 1698: C. Schmidt, ‘Le Couvent des Récollets irlandais de Boulay: dossier de fondation (1700)’, Mémoires de l’Académie Nationale de Metz, série 5, 12 (1966–67), 121–54. 78 McInally, The Sixth Scottish University, p. 46. 79 Ibid., pp. 43–7. 80 Guilday, English Catholic Refugees, pp. 307–45; P. R. Harris (ed.), Douai College Documents, 1639–1794, C.R.S., vol. 63 (St Albans, 1972), p. 382. 81 M.Whitehead, English Jesuit Education: Expulsion, Suppression, Survival and Restoration, 1762–1803 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), p. 26. 82 Ibid., p. 26. 83 Ibid., p. 37. 84 Williams, St Alban’s College,Valladolid, pp. 46–7, 54. 85 Murphy, St Gregory’s College, Seville, pp. 25–30. 86 Williams, The Venerable English College Rome, pp. 25–67; Johnson, The English College at Lisbon, pp. 172–356. 87 Scott, Gothic Rage Undone, p. 171. 88 Ibid., p. 172. 89 See the chapter by W. Frijhoff in this volume. 90 The figures are laid out in: Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum, p. 181. 91 See the chapter by A. Girard and G. Pizzorusso in this volume. 92 Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia: Jesuit Educational Strategy, pp. 69–71. 93 For the impact on the Irish and Scots in early eighteenth-century Paris, see: Halloran, The Scots College Paris, pp. 80–149; James F. McMillan, ‘Scottish Catholics and the Jansenist controversy: the case re-opened’, Innes Review, 32 (1981), 22–33; James F. McMillan, ‘Thomas Innes and the bull “Unigenitus” ’, Innes Review, 33 (1982), 23–30; T. O’Connor, ‘The role of Irish clerics in Paris University politics’, History of Universities, 15 (1999), 193–226. 94 Pařez and H. Kuchařová, The Irish Franciscans in Prague, pp. 151–60; H. Fenning, The Undoing of the Friars of Ireland: A Study of the Novitiate Question in the Eighteenth Century (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1972), pp. 358–9. 95 W. M’Donald, ‘Irish ecclesiastical colleges since the Reformation: Salamanca VI’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 11 (1874), 101–14, at 110.

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96 Whitehead, English Jesuit Education, pp. 41–142. 97 See, for example, C. Carroll, ‘ “The spiritual government of the entire world”: a memorial for the Irish college, Rome, January 1783’, in Keogh and McDonnell (eds), The Irish College, Rome, pp. 64–82. 98 Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum, pp. 31–2. 99 Archives du Collège des Irlandais, Paris, MS B2.r1, Copie du 1 septembre 1818 de l’acte de foundation Mallone du 2 novembre 1783; MS B1.e1, Acte de foundation Daly, 9 mars 1785. 100 This argument is made in detail in L. Chambers, ‘Revolutionary and refractory? The Irish colleges in Paris and the French Revolution’, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, 2:1 (2008), 29–50. Further case studies include: M. Rapport, ‘A community apart? The closure of the Scots College in Paris during the French Revolution, 1789–1794’, Innes Review, 53:1 (2002), 79–107; K. J. Harvey, ‘Religion and money: Irish regular colleges in the Roman Republic of 1798–99’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 9 (1993), 73–82. For the impact to the north, see: Harris, Douai College Documents, 1639–1794, pp. 147–56; Whitehead, English Jesuit Education, pp. 165–79. For the impact in Rome: Williams, The Venerable English College Rome, pp. 68–75; J. F. McMillan, ‘Development, 1707–1820’, in McCluskey (ed.), The Scots College Rome, pp. 43–66, at 59–61. 101 C. Dodds, The History of the English College at Doway (London: Bernard Lintott, 1713). See also E. Petre, Notices of the English Colleges & Convents Established on the Continent after the Dissolution of Religious Houses in England (Norwich: Bacon and Kennebrook, 1849). 102 T. F. Knox, The First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay (London: David Nutt, 1878). 103 E. H. Burton and T. L. Williams (eds), The Douai College Diaries, Third, Fourth and Fifth, 1598–1654, with the Rheims Report, 1579–80, C.R.S., vols 10–11 (London, 1910–11); J. H. Pollen (ed.), ‘Fr Robert Persons, S.J. – Annals of the English College at Seville, with accounts of other foundations at Valladolid, St Lucar, Lisbon and St Omers’, in Miscellanea IX, C.R.S, vol. 14 (London, 1914), pp. 1–25; E. H. Burton (ed.), ‘The register book of St Gregory’s College, Paris, 1667–1786’, in Miscellanea XI, C.R.S., vol. 19 (London, 1917), pp. 93–160; R. Trappes-Lomax (ed.), The English Franciscan Nuns, 1619–1821, and the Friars Minor of the Same Province, 1618–1761, C.R.S., vol. 24 (London, 1922); E. H. Burton and E. Nolan (eds), The Douai College Diaries: The Seventh Diary, 1715–78, C.R.S., vol. 28 (London, 1928); E. Henson (ed.), The English College at Madrid, 1611–1767, C.R.S., vol. 29 (London, 1929); E. Henson (ed.), The Registers of the English College at Valladolid, 1589–1862, C.R.S., vol. 30 (London, 1930) The publication of college archival material continued apace throughout the twentieth century, notably with: W. Kelly (ed.), Liber Ruber Venerabilis Collegii Anglorum de Urbe, C.R.S., vol. 40 (London, 1943); A. Kenny, The ‘Responsa Scholarum’ of the English College, Rome, C.R.S., vols 54–5 (Newport, 1962–3); Harris, Douai College Documents, 1693–1794; G. Holt (ed.), St Omers and Bruges Colleges, 1593–1773, C.R.S., vol. 69 (Thetford, 1979); M. Sharratt (ed.), Lisbon College Register, 1628–1813, C.R.S., vol. 72 (Southampton, 1991); Murphy, St Gregory’s College, Seville. 104 W. M’Donald’s first contribution was ‘Irish Ecclesiastical colleges since the Reformation: Salamanca I’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 10 (1873), 353–66; P. Boyle, The Irish College in Paris from 1578 to 1901, with a Brief Account of the Other Irish Colleges in France: viz., Bordeaux,Toulouse, Nantes, Poitiers, Douai and Lille; and a Short Notice of the Scotch and English Colleges in Paris (London, 1901); P. Boyle, ‘Irish colleges on the Continent’, Catholic Encyclopedia (15 vols, New York, 1907–12), vol. 8, pp. 158–63; A. Steinhuber, Geschichte des Kollgium Germanikum et Hungarikum in Rom (2 vols, Freiburg: Herder, 1906); F. A. Gasquet, A History of the Venerable English College, Rome (London: Longmans, Green, 1920). Cf. Guilday, English Catholic Refugees, which appeared in 1914. 105 Taylor, The Scots College in Spain; Dilworth, The Scots in Franconia; Halloran, The Scots College Paris; McCluskey, The Scots College Rome; McInally, The Sixth Scottish University. 106 Williams, TheVenerable English College Rome; Williams, St Alban’s College,Valladolid; Chadwick, St Omers to Stonyhurst; Murphy, St Gregory’s College, Seville; Johnson, The English College at Lisbon. 107 Lunn, The English Benedictines; Scott, Gothic Rage Undone. 108 While the histories of the colleges have been dealt with in numerous essays, few monographs

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have been written, particularly for the larger institutions, including the Irish colleges in Rome, Paris and Salamanca or St Anthony’s College, Louvain. For the material on the Spanish colleges: R. Whelan Richardson, ‘The Salamanca Archives’, in A. Neligan (ed.), Maynooth Library Treasures (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1995), pp. 112–47. 109 M. Daly, ‘A second golden age: the Irish Franciscans, 1918–63’, in Bhreathnach, MacMahon and McCafferty (eds), The Irish Franciscans, pp. 132–51. 110 Veress, Matricula et acta alumnorum Collegii Germanici et Hungarici; L. Lukács, ‘Die Nordischen päpstlichen Seminarien und Possevino, 1577–1587, Archivium Romanum Societatis Iesu, 24 (1955), 33–94. 111 For an overview, see: D. Julia, ‘L’Historiographie des universités françaises à l’époque moderne’, in Les Universités en Europe (1450–1814) (Paris: Press de l’université Paris-Sorbonne, 2013), pp. 13–54, at pp. 22–3. 112 See also: I. Bitskey, Il Collegio germanico-ungarico di Roma: contributo alla storia della cultura ungherese in età barocca (Roma: Viella, 1996). 113 Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum, pp. 1–10 contains a useful discussion of the historiography of the Roman colleges and the Collegium Germanicum in particular; Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia: Jesuit Educational Strategy. 114 L. W. B. Brockliss, ‘The University of Paris and the maintenance of Catholicism in the British Isles, 1426–1789: a study in clerical recruitment’, in D. Julia et J. Revel (eds), Les Universités européennes du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle: Histoire sociale des populations étudiantes (2 vols, Paris: Éditions de l’École des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, 1986–89), vol. 2, pp. 577–616; L.W. B. Brockliss and P. Ferté, ‘Irish clerics in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: a statistical study’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, section C, 87:9 (1987), 527–72. 115 See P. Ferté, ‘Introduction: étudier allieurs et malgré tout’, dans P. Ferté et C. Barrera (eds), Étudiants de l’exil: Migrations internationales et universités refuges (XVIe–XXe s.) (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2009), pp. 7–15. 116 For good examples: G. Henry, The Irish Military Community in Spanish Flanders, 1586–1621 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1992), pp. 98–113; P. O’Connor, ‘Irish clerics and Jacobites in early eighteenth-century Paris, 1700–30’, in T. O’Connor (ed.), The Irish in Europe, 1580–1815 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 175–90. 117 A. Grosjean and S. Murdoch (eds), Scottish Communities Abroad in the Early Modern Period (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Worthington, British and Irish Emigrants and Exiles in Europe. 118 C. Bowden and J. E. Kelly (eds), The English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800: Communities, Culture and Identity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). 119 J. E. Kelly (Principal Investigator), ‘Monks in Motion: a prosopographical study of the English and Welsh Benedictines in exile, 1553–1800’, University of Durham (ongoing). 120 G. H. Janssen, ‘The exile experience’, in A. Bamji, G. H. Janssen and M. Laven (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 73–90, at, p. 88. 121 G. Martin, Roma Sancta, ed. G. Bruner Parks (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1969), pp. 109–31; A. D. Wright, ‘Introduction: Rome, the papacy and the foundation of national colleges in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries’, in McCluskey (ed.), The Scots College Rome, pp. 1–18. 122 McCoog, ‘“Replant the uprooted trunk of the tree of faith”’, pp. 28–48. 123 Brockliss, ‘The University of Paris and the maintenance of Catholicism’, pp. 577–616; N. Genet Rouffiac, Le Grand Exil: Les Jacobites en France, 1688–1715 (Mercuès: Service Historique de la Défense, 2007), pp. 213–69. 124 D. Worthington, British and Irish Experiences and Impressions of Central Europe, c.1560–1688 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 151–86; especially, pp. 155–8; S. Murdoch, Network North: Scottish Kin, Commercial and Covert Associations in Northern Europe, 1603–1746 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 93–9. 125 Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum, pp. 189–95. 126 Irish names figure regularly in Burton and Nolan (eds), The Douai College Diaries: The Seventh Diary, 1715–78; Harris, Douai College Documents, 1693–1794; Holt, St Omers and Bruges Colleges, 1593–1773.

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127 McCoog, The Society of Jesus, p. 119. 128 Burton and Williams (eds), The Douai College Diaries, Third, Fourth and Fifth, 1598–1654, vol. 1, p. 398. 129 Scottish Catholic Archives, CA 3/12/2, ‘Raisons des Ecossois contre l’Union de leur College avec celui des Anglois a Rome, en reponse au Memoire de M. le Card. Paulucci donné par la Reine a M. le Nonce Gualterio pour estre envoye a Rome 1704’; Dilworth, ‘Beginnings, 1600–1707’, pp. 19–42; M. E. Williams, ‘A British college in Rome?’, in McCluskey (ed.), The Scots College Rome, pp. 145–50. 130 L. Swords, The Green Cockade:The Irish and the French Revolution, 1789–1815 (Dublin: Glendale, 1989), pp. 139–234. 131 Archives of San Clemente, Rome, Codex II, Volume 2, fos. 392–393v., John Bourk to [Toby Bourk], 5 October 1732. 132 McCoog, ‘ “Replant the uprooted trunk of the tree of faith” ’, pp. 28–48; Brockliss, ‘The Irish colleges on the continent’, pp. 142–65. 133 For a case study: L. Chambers, ‘Rivalry and reform in the Irish college, Paris, 1676–1775’, in O’Connor and Lyons (eds), Irish Communities, pp. 103–29. 134 Burton and Williams (eds), The Douai College Diaries, Third, Fourth and Fifth, 1598–1654, vol. 1, p. 391. 135 Ibid., p. 399. 136 Ibid. 137 Ibid. 138 L. Chambers, ‘Irish fondations and boursiers in early modern Paris, 1682–1793’, Irish Economic and Social History, 35 (2008), 1–22; C. Begadon, ‘Laity and clergy in the Catholic renewal of Dublin, c.1750–1830’ (PhD thesis, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 2009), pp. 196–7. 139 Julia, ‘L’Historiographie des universités françaises’, p. 22. 140 Important examples include: L. W. B. Brockliss and P. Ferté, ‘A prospography of Irish clerics in the universities of Paris and Toulouse’, Archivium Hibernicum, 58 (2004), 7–16; Nilis, ‘Irish students at Leuven University, 1548–1797’; H. Fenning, ‘Irishmen ordained at Rome, 1698–1759’, Archivium Hibernicum, 50 (1996), 29–49; H. Fenning, ‘Irishmen ordained at Rome, 1760–1800’, Archivium Hibernicum, 51 (1997), 16–37. 141 Williams, St Alban’s College,Valladolid, pp. 235–51. 142 L. Underwood, ‘Youth, religious identity, and autobiography at the English colleges in Rome and Valladolid, 1592–1685’, Historical Journal, 55:2 (2012), 349–74. 143 See the chapter by T. O’Connor in this volume. On social background cf. Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum, pp. 78, 198. 144 C. Richardson, ‘The English college church in the 1580s: Durante Alberti’s altarpiece and Niccolo Circignani’s Frescoes’, in The Church of the English College in Rome: Its History, Its Restoration (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2009), pp. 34–51; C. Richardson, ‘Durante Alberti, the Martyrs’ Picture and the Venerable English College, Rome’, Papers of the British School at Rome, 73 (2005), 223–63; A. Dillon, The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1535–1603 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2003). 145 Brockliss and Ferté, ‘Irish clerics in France’, p. 550. 146 Brockliss, ‘The University of Paris and the maintenance of Catholicism’, pp. 596–7. 147 McInally, The Sixth Scottish University, pp. 152–73. 148 Bhreathnach, MacMahon and McCafferty (eds), The Irish Franciscans, 1534–1990, in particular the contributions by Cunningham, Ó Riain, Ryan and Mac Craith. 149 P. Arblaster, Antwerp & The World: Richard Verstegan and the International Culture of Catholic Reformation (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 2004), pp. 50–65; M. J. Walsh, ‘The publishing policy of the English college press at St Omer, 1608–1759’, in K. Robbins (ed.), Religion and Humanism (Studies in Church History, vol. 17) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), pp. 239–50. 150 R. Gillespie, ‘The Louvain Franciscans and the culture of print’, in R. Gillespie and R. Ó hÚiginn (eds), Irish Europe, 1600–1650 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), pp. 105–20. 151 Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia: Jesuit Educational Strategy, p. 201.

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152 See the chapter by A. Girard and G. Pizzorusso in this volume. 153 L. W. B. Brockliss, ‘Curricula’, in de Ridder-Symoens (ed.), A History of the University in Europe, Volume II, pp. 563–620. 154 O’Connor,‘The role of Irish clerics in Paris University politics’, History of Universities, 15 (1999), 193–226; P. O’Connor, ‘Irish students in the Paris Faculty of Theology: aspects of doctrinal controversy in the Ancien Régime, 1730–60’, Archivium Hibernicum, 52 (1998), 85–97. 155 U. L. Lehner and M. Printy (eds), A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2010); J. D. Burson and U. L. Lehner (eds), Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014). 156 Scott, Gothic Rage Undone, pp. 154–9. Cf. U. L. Lehner, Enlightened Monks:The German Benedictines, 1740–1803 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). The college library catalogue is now available online at http://fjmblom.home.xs4all.nl/st-edmund/about.html (accessed 4 April 2017). My thanks to Dr James E. Kelly for this reference. 157 G. Scott, The English Benedictines and the Cult of James II (London: Royal Stuart Society Papers, xxiii, 1984). 158 Important studies include: The Church of the English College in Rome; Williams, The Venerable English College Rome, pp. 192–208; J. McDonnell, ‘From Bernini to Celtic Revival: a tale of two Irish colleges in Paris’, Irish Arts Review, 18 (2002), 164–75; A. C. Santamaria and N. R. Almajano, ‘The Real Colegio de San Patricio de Nobles Irlandeses of Salamanca: its buildings and properties, 1592–1768’, in O’Connor and Lyons (eds), The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe, pp. 223–41. 159 McDonnell, ‘From Bernini to Celtic Revival’, pp. 164–75; Richardson, ‘The English college church in the 1580s’, pp. 34–51; Richardson, ‘Durante Alberti, the Martyrs’ Picture and the Venerable English College, Rome’, pp. 223–263; Williams, St Alban’s College, Valladolid, pp. 259–60. Cf. G. Scott, ‘Cloistered images: representations of English nuns, 1600–1800’, in Bowden and Kelly (eds), The English Convents in Exile, pp. 191–208. 160 T. D. Culley, Jesuits and Music: I, A Study of the Musicians connected with the German College in Rome during the 17th Century and of their Activities in Northern Europe (St Louis: Jesuit Historical Institute, St. Louis University, 1970); P. Leech (with M. Whitehead), ‘ “In paradise and among angels”: music and musicians at St. Omers English Jesuit College, 1593–1721’, Tijdschrift van der Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 61 (2011), 57–82. 161 P. Boyle, ‘Irish colleges on the Continent’, p. 163. 162 T. Amalou and B. Noguès, ‘Hic et ubique terrarium: Ecrire une histoire de l’université a l’échelle de la ville’, in T. Amalou and B. Noguès (eds), Les Universités dans la ville, xvie–xviiie siècles (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2013), pp. 7–21. 163 Janssen, ‘The exile experience’, pp. 73–90; B. J. Kaplan, B. Moore, H. Van Nierop and J. Pollmann (eds) Catholic Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands c.1570– 1720 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009). 164 See Chambers and O’Connor, Forming Catholic Communities.

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2 The Society of Jesus and the early history of the Collegium Germanicum, 1552–1584 Urban Fink

Introduction The Collegium Germanicum in Rome was the first abroad college established for the formation of Catholic students from territories under the authority of Protestant reformers. The college opened in the late summer of 1552, the result of an initiative spearheaded by Cardinal Giovanni Morone and the Society of Jesus. The Germanicum occupies a central place in the history of the abroad colleges because it provided an influential model, most importantly for a network of abroad colleges in Rome, but more generally for similar institutions located across the continent. This chapter assesses the history of the Collegium Germanicum, with a particular focus on the formative early period from the college’s foundation until the amalgamation of the Collegium Hungaricum in 1580 and the creation of new regulations for the college in 1584. The chapter examines the challenges encountered by the Society of Jesus as it accepted responsibility for a novel and uncertain undertaking. Most significantly, perhaps, the Collegium Germanicum, in facing the same kind of financial pressures that afflicted almost all of the later abroad colleges, was obliged to develop various survival strategies, some of which were widely copied. Under the pontificate of Gregory XIII (1572–1585) the future of the college was secured and by the time of his death the model of the Collegium Germanicum had inspired a series of other abroad colleges in Rome. In the longer term, it would influence, to a significant extent, the development of higher level educational structures for Catholics in Protestant, Orthodox and Islamic territories stretching from Ireland to the Ottoman Empire. The context to the establishment of the Collegium Germanicum lies in the growing involvement of the Society of Jesus in the formation of secular clergy who would be some of the most effective agents of the Counter-Reformation church. According to John W. O’Malley, it was Ignatius’s contribution to the establishment of a vigorous, disciplined and adaptable form of religious commu-

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nity that formed the centrepiece of his achievement. In this context, O’Malley continues, Ignatius’s life and achievement should not be viewed primarily in relation to him as an individual historical agent, however brilliant, but rather in the context of the apostolic community life he inspired and the network of human agents produced, inspired and supported by these spiritual ideals.1 The establishment and very rapid growth of the Society of Jesus can best be understood as a consequence of this new style of religious life, flexible enough to be deployed in a variety of concrete historical situations. By 1565, the year of the second Superior General, Diego Lainez’s, death, the Society was already 3,500 strong, and growing.2 Its numerical size quickly outdistanced its infrastructure. Given the Society’s emphasis on and success in setting up dynamic religious communities it was inevitable, perhaps, that the Jesuits would be drawn to answering the challenges thrown up by Trent’s ambitious guidelines for the formation of diocesan clergy. Jesuits rapidly assumed responsibility for clerical formation adapting spiritual principles and pedagogical techniques to situations beyond the order itself.3 This commitment of Ignatius and his companions formed part of their contribution to the internal reform of the Catholic Church and its external engagement with the Protestant reform, an engagement begun in 1544 with the establishment of their community in Cologne, a key factor in the failure of the Protestant reform in the city.4 The mid-sixteenth century emergence of new models of clerical formation occurred in response to the ever sharper realisation that the largely arbitrary nature of priestly training inherited from the medieval church was inadequate. Traditionally formed clergy were ill-equipped to provide the level of pastoral care now demanded by the laity and were insufficiently trained to administer the sacraments, especially penance, appropriately or to answer the theological objections of rival churches. Until the middle of the sixteenth century, clerical recruitment and training did not take place according to uniform standards, and, in many areas, such formation as was imparted, was delivered haphazardly at a local level. Although the Third Lateran Council in 1179 stipulated a cathedral school for every diocese, the repetition of this stipulation at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 indicates that implementation was deficient.5 The main obstacle, of course, was the lack of dedicated financial resources to set up and maintain such cathedral schools by providing for their staff and students. Who would staff and who would support these institutions? When financial reforms to help support schools were mooted, they were poorly supported, largely because they impacted negatively on clerical coffers and those of existing clerical institutions. Consequently, before the mid-sixteenth century, few individual dioceses had standardised training courses for aspirant priests. For the vast majority, an ‘apprenticeship’ with a serving priest was considered sufficient, given the relatively low-level literacy skills required by most late medieval

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clerics to administer the sacraments. Hence the large numbers of ‘Mass-priests’, so derided by the sixteenth-century reformers. Further compromising pre-early modern efforts to improve clerical education was the large number of ‘vagrant priests’, who, prior to the diocesan affiliation requirement of Trent, commonly administered the sacraments outside the jurisdiction of any ordinary.6 For late medieval students, academic theological training at a university was, of course, a possibility, but only for a small minority of candidates. The old monastic orders and the mendicants sent their brightest students to the theology faculties of European universities, while among the secular clergy higher-level education was of interest only to those who would later become members of a cathedral or collegiate chapter. They were for the most part from noble or patrician families and were deemed ‘higher clergy’, and destined for collegiate chapters, chancelleries and dioceses. In addition, there was the more numerous ‘lower clergy’ of more diverse social background and generally ministering on the parochial level.7 Only in exceptional areas, such as St Gallan, was a significant proportion of the clergy (up to 40 per cent) university trained.8 In the period directly before the Reformation, there was a very small number of seminary-like institutions funded by patrons interested in clerical education. The Georgianum in Ingolstadt, for instance, founded in 1492 by George the Rich, duke of Bavaria-Landshut, was perhaps the only clerical formation institution in the German-speaking world that had an impact beyond the local diocesan level. It was later described as ‘the oldest German and secondoldest seminary of the Catholic world’,9 and was subsequently recognised by the Bavarian bishops as equivalent to their diocesan seminaries.10 The ‘Almo Collegio Capranica’, founded in Rome in 1457, was the oldest seminary. It housed candidates for the priesthood who completed their studies at the Roman universities, and, from the mid-sixteenth century, at the Collegio Romano founded in 1551, run by the Jesuits and the forerunner of the Pontifical Gregorian University.11 In the Netherlands, the College of the Holy Spirit in Louvain, set up in 1445 and intended for the formation of priests, was a token of early Dutch interest in organised clerical provision.12 Apart from exceptional institutions like these, however, there were no dedicated seminaries in pre-Reformation Europe. Even Ingolstadt’s Georgianum, which was affiliated to the local university, was not solely intended to train priests nor was it under episcopal jurisdiction. College residents training for the priesthood there were merely provided with stipends and could complete courses in subjects other than theology. In this real sense, the Georgianum was less an ecclesiastical than a secular institution, serving a broad range of students.13

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Historiography of the Germanicum The Collegium Germanicum, on the other hand, was the first seminary, properly speaking, established in Rome for the formation of foreigners. It was founded on 31 August 1552 for candidates for the priesthood from the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, and in the succeeding decades other seminaries for foreign priestly candidates were also established on a broadly similar model. At first, the Germanicum was nothing more than an empty shell, with a ­haphazardly ­assembled student body without a distinctive clerical community.14 It was only under Pope Gregory XIII, its most important patron, that the institution secured itself financially and amalgamated, in 1580, with the Collegium ­ ungaricum. H Unlike that of his predecessors, Gregory’s patronage of the Collegium Germanicum was underwritten financially and had a qualitatively different effect. Part of a broader pontifical initiative to provide higher-level education opportunities in Rome for foreign students from Protestant, Orthodox and Islamic territories, it included the establishment of the Collegio dei Neofiti and the Greek college in 1577. These were followed by the inauguration of the English college in 1579 and the Maronite college in 1584.15 Simultaneously, Gregory supported the foundation of a string of ‘papal seminaries’ within Jesuit colleges in northern Europe. Those in Braniewo, Olomouc and Vilna, for instance, were intended for the formation of Catholic clergy from Scandinavia.16 The development of the Collegium Germanicum lay at the heart, therefore, of Gregory’s ambitious provision of abroad colleges and it operated as a seminary model, particularly for analogous Roman foundations.17 The historical importance of the Collegium Germanicum has ensured that it has been the subject of detailed historical research. In the early twentieth century,Andreas Steinhuber, a Jesuit and long-standing rector of the ­Germanicum, published an important history of the Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum. Steinhuber was still resident in the Germanicum when he was made cardinal. In his extensive two-volume Geschichte des Kollegium Germanikum Hungarikum in Rom [History of the Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum in Rome] he explained the development of the college, drawing on a meticulous analysis of material of the college archive, to which he had privileged access, as well as details on the later activities of the students. However, the obvious hagiographical inspiration of his account, characteristic of ecclesiastical history writing in the period, influenced his interpretation. Unsurprisingly, Cardinal Steinhuber ascribed to the Germanicum a central role in the Counter-­Reformation.18 Moreover, he wrote in the context of the particular circumstances of German Catholicism during his own lifetime. In the nineteenth century, the Germanicum was generally regarded with a degree of hostility in Germany, suspected as a hotbed of

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ultramontanism. In fact, bans were imposed on sending students there. In a sense, therefore, his work was a defence of the Germanicum against would-be critics, both of the traditional Protestant and contemporary liberal Catholic varieties. Peter Schmidt’s more recent work on the history of the college offers a less polemical and defensive approach to the college’s history and significance. Using the college’s matriculation register to 1914, he examines the composition of the college community, uncovering with particular success the dichotomy between the Germanicum of the early modern period as, on the one hand, an institution dominated by noblemen with their specific career and dynastic interests and, on the other, as the seminary community intended by the Jesuits to prepare men for pastoral responsibilities in the German lands. This fundamental tension had its roots in papal policy for the college, which, for all the pastoral motivation of Gregory XIII, was primarily concerned that the Germanicum produce reliable personnel for leading positions in the imperial church. The Jesuits, on the other hand, inspired by their founder’s community model, wanted to train pious, skilled, mobile and independent priests for effective pastoral care and catechesis.19 The detailed research of Steinhuber, Schmidt and others20 permits a reassessment of the Collegium Germanicum and its significance, with a sharp focus on its development in the crucial period from 1552 to 1584. In this chapter the establishment of the college in the 1550s is examined to reveal the complex role of the Society of Jesus in the college’s first decades. It emerges that although the Jesuits agreed to oversee the daily management of the college, they quickly ran into problems caused by the chronic underfunding of the institution, which struggled to survive. In this, the Collegium Germanicum illustrated a central problem which would plague most abroad colleges: the challenge of securing a reliable funding mechanism either from host patrons or domestic donors (or, in many cases, a mix of the two). The chapter goes on to examine the crucial role of Diego Lainez, the second Superior General of the Society of Jesus, as advocate for the Collegium Germanicum in the 1550s and 1560s. Lainez argued for the development of the college within the context of the Council of Trent’s attempt to reform clerical formation through the foundation of seminaries. Though Lainez did not live to witness it, the pontificate of Gregory XIII secured the future of the college in the later 1570s. Finally, the chapter addresses the social history of the student population at the early modern college and the later history of the institutions which faced similar problems to other abroad colleges, particularly in the later eighteenth century.

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The establishment of the Collegium Germanicum The initial impetus to establish the Collegium Germanicum came from Cardinal Giovanni Morone, who visited the German-speaking lands in the 1540s and recognised the general crisis among the local clergy, particularly with regard to clerical recruitment. As a nuncio in Germany between 1536 and 1542, he distanced himself from the idea of combatting the Reformation by means of violence; instead he emphasised the need for spiritual confrontation.21 This meant directly influencing bishops and priests, as well as restructuring clerical training and pastoral care in order to ensure that the church could meet the challenge of the Reformation.22 Morone realised that the problem would not be resolved through initiatives in Germany alone, particularly when the Jesuit Claude Jay’s suggestion, in 1542, to establish episcopal colleges at German universities to train future priests was not implemented.23 The Society of Jesus had already built up valuable experience in training priests before the early 1550s, notably in Goa, India and later in Gandía, Spain. Furthermore, within the early Society of Jesus discussion was underway about the potential for improving the training of priests in their respective home countries and the Society was also considering that it might assume responsibility for this initiative.24 In short, the Jesuits were ideally placed to assume a role in the formation of clergy for the German lands and Cardinal Morone was aware of this when he made contact with Ignatius in 1551, seeking his assistance to help set up a college, something he had had in mind since 1542. In contrast to the Jesuits’ own religious houses, which were financed through alms, the Society of Jesus demanded that any college or seminary owned or administered by them have a sufficient endowment for a specific number of students to ensure financial stability. Education was a ministry and thus should be gratis. Cardinal Morone successfully made the case to Pope Julius III that the Holy See should finance the establishment of the proposed college. This resulted in the establishment of the Germanicum, on 31 August 1552, as a pontifical institution, run by the Jesuits.25 Ignatius was a driving force behind its establishment but was only prepared to accept the spiritual leadership of the college, while responsibility for the financial well-being of the institution was left to six cardinal protectors, among them Giovanni Morone. However, the pope’s and cardinals’ contributions proved insufficient. This resulted in the pope, via the nuncio, petitioning the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and his brother King Ferdinand to support the Germanicum. The pope’s case centred on the dearth of good priests in the German Lands and he argued for the necessity of an institution like the Germanicum to provide pastors and leaders.26

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Ignatius, Jesuit Formation and the Collegium Germanicum Why did Ignatius commit his energy and the resources of the Society of Jesus to the daunting task of establishing the Germanicum? Steinhuber, Schmidt and others have detailed the events leading to the opening of the college in 1552, but even more important were the religious and pedagogical motives that underlay Ignatius’ decision to temper his original vision of the Society by committing to education. These ideas and convictions had deep roots in Renaissance Humanism.27 Educationally, humanism sought to mould young people through education and formal training, and to help them develop good, sound characters.28 In turn, this would be advantageous not just for the individual, but for society as a whole. The first Jesuits adopted and adapted the insights of Renaissance Humanist educational ideals. They structured these in the specific framework of their evolving training activities and the particular objectives of Christian mission.29 ‘From among those who are now merely students,’ Ignatius explained on 1 December 1551, ‘various persons will in time emerge – some for preaching and the care of souls, others for the government of the land and the administration of justice, and others for other responsibilities. In short since young people turn into adults, their good formation in life and learning will benefit many others, with the fruit expanding more widely every day.’30 From 1548, the Jesuits implemented their educational goals in their first school in Messina. The basic Renaissance Humanist thrust of Jesuit education remained influential in subsequent decades.31 Germany became a major preoccupation and concern for the early Jesuits. Jerónimo Nadal, S.J. (1507–1580), on the basis of his own work in the Germanspeaking lands, drafted an image of the new Society as a bird with the Indies and Germany as its two wings. These were the geographical areas with the greatest spiritual need and thus perfect theatres for the Society’s ministries. He wrote to Ignatius: ‘A certain person was taken completely with the desire to go to the help of Germany. He offered his Mass for that intention … With intense feeling he desired to achieve God’s glory – an unsullied glory – in Germany. This glory he felt compelled to seek, driven as he was by a desire that was bathed in a certain bright and luminous sweetness. It was a glory that he thought would expel every tinge of heresy. This would be achieved in Christ Jesus, to whom be infinite and eternal glory. Amen.’32 The Society made Germany a top priority. Writing to Petrus Canisius on 13 August 1554, Ignatius stressed that ‘the best means to help the Church in this [that is the time of the Protestant Reformation] distress would be to multiply the colleges and schools of the Society in many regions’.33 In a letter dated 30 July 1552, Ignatius asked Claude Jay to send young Germans to the soon-to-be-established Germanicum; the Superior General stated that the Germanicum presented the best form of assistance for the weakened

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Catholic Church in Germany. He expressed his hope that many trustworthy and energetic young men would come to the Germanicum, who would then spread God’s word and serve as role models on account of the good example they set during their studies and the positive influence of their education.34 Ignatius himself used this argument to demonstrate the benefit and usefulness of the institution, inter alia in his search for endowments, for example when he visited Charles V. In this sense, the Germanicum can be regarded as an instrument of the Counter-Reformation from the outset. Ignatius intended that Jesuit schools trained and educated students as social leaders. Whether as lay people or priests, the Jesuits envisaged that they were to have a positive influence on the political, social and cultural environment. Their inner, spiritual journey on their way to finding God was, therefore, also related to this educational goal.35 Both this spiritual orientation and the educational goals fed into the constitution of the Germanicum, as laid down in the first four paragraphs. The aim of attending the Germanicum was to study and to acquire the skills that would later pave the way for working on the mission. The college constitutions underlined the importance of spiritual training, because piety was viewed as the basis for academic study. This encompassed daily Mass attendance, and monthly confession and communion. In a way, what was new for the seminarians was the clearly defined structure, for example the duty of obedience towards the college’s rector, the religious attire worn, and living without personal funds, all of which trained the seminarians for their later duties as pastors.36 Further college rules outlined the particulars in more detail. In the Jesuit model, intellectual and moral education went hand in hand with general formation.37 To this end, regular practice of the rule was essential, always in the context of the college community and student fellowship. Community observance of the rule was something to which Ignatius attached the upmost importance, and central in nurturing the Society to the new college mission undertaken in the Germanicum and later elsewhere. This form of training quickly paid off as those who resided at the Germanicum assumed important governing roles in the fraught German Church within a relatively short space of time.38 Implementing a version of the Jesuit rule in the Germanicum, however, was not without difficulty. Nevertheless, the college’s educational and religious basis, which was fundamentally an amalgam of Italian Renaissance Humanism and Counter-Reformation ideals, endured, providing a clear structure and solid content, both factors facilitating the rapid expansion of Jesuit educational establishments in the second half of the sixteenth century.39 As Friedrich Schroeder’s account of the Germanicum shows, Ignatius laid a solid foundation for this. Ignatius wanted to achieve the pastoral principle of ‘helping the souls’, particularly of the poor, and initially, in 1541, he was of the view that there should be ‘no studies and no lessons in the Society [of Jesus]’.40 However, his distinc-

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tive formation programme was soon coming into focus, expressed through the foundation of a large number of colleges, at first only for the Society of Jesus, then mixed colleges and finally, with the establishment at Messina, colleges exclusively for outsiders.41 In The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, he dedicated the extensive fourth section to colleges and universities.42 ‘Helping the souls’ and ‘serving the poor’ were fundamental to Ignatius’s concept of priestly duty. This was something he wanted to impart to candidates training for the priesthood at the Germanicum. This ‘Ignatian’ focus diverted student attention away from the traditional task of acquiring an ­ecclesiastical position, one that had motivated perhaps the majority of university-trained clerics in the period prior to the Reformation.43 We shall return to this. Financial challenges Recruiting candidates for the Germanicum from the German lands proved more difficult than expected. According to the ‘Liber iuramentorum’, which recorded those definitively admitted to the Germanicum, sixteen candidates were accepted in 1552 when the college opened. In 1553, however, there were only six candidates. The following year, 1554, saw a sizeable cohort with thirtytwo entrants but in 1555 there was only one new student, and in the following two years none at all.44 The reason for this poor performance lay in the almost impossible financial position of the college, which proved much more difficult to secure than its spiritual organisation, academic programme or leadership structure. While the mandate of the founding bull ensured the legal existence of the Germanicum, it did not provide for its financial wellbeing. The question of endowments, to which only an unsatisfactory solution had been found, worsened on the death of Pope Julius III (23 March 1555) and during the short reign of Marcellus II (9  April–1 May 1555). His successor, Pope Paul IV, was largely indifferent towards the Germanicum, perhaps because of his contentious relationship with Ignatius. Consequently, papal subsidies practically dried up and the cardinal protectors proved unable to secure alternatives. Furthermore, Paul IV was theologically suspicious of both Ignatius and Morone. Thus, the college’s financial situation remained unresolved when Ignatius died in mid-1556, leaving the Germanicum in a precarious state.45 Morone, the man who had originally inspired the foundation of the college, was actually imprisoned by Paul IV, while Cardinal Otto von Truchsess of Augsburg, who was particularly well-disposed towards the Germanicum, explained that the German bishops and laity wanted and needed skilfully trained clergy for parishes and dioceses. Thus they were reluctant to support financially or to send seminarians to the Germanicum because of Ignatian insistence that they eschew ecclesiastical titles

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and positions.46 Prior to his death, Ignatius had even taken out loans for the Germanicum, something that caused controversy within the Society itself. To reduce college expenditure, he had also moved some of those attending the Germanicum into a number of the Italian Jesuit colleges. With his death and that, shortly thereafter, of André des Freux, the college’s first rector and one of Ignatius’s closest collaborators, the Germanicum was in a poor financial state.47 Oddly Ignatius found more generous support for the Collegio Romano and the Germanicum in Spain and Portugal than in Italy. Transferring these monies to Rome proved so problematic that Ignatius recommended to Francis Borja that they be hidden in bags of sugar.48 Immediately following the passing of Ignatius, Diego Lainez assumed responsibility for the overall supervision of the Germanicum, from August 1556 as vicar general of the order and, from 1558, until his death in 1565, as Superior General of the Society of Jesus. As such, he was inevitably confronted with the institution’s financial woes, and it was for this reason that he wrote to Cardinal Francisco Mendoza Bobadilla (1508–1566) and Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520–1589) in September 1556, pleading for their support. Lainez informed Cardinal Bobadilla in general terms about the financial distress of the Germanicum and requested support, stating that this college was instrumental for counteracting apostasy and heresy in Germany.49 Lainez was even more explicit in his letter to Cardinal Farnese. In it he outlined how the Society of Jesus had assumed responsibility only for the spiritual leadership of the Germanicum, and had not envisaged taking on financial responsibility as well. Because the college’s cardinal protectors had failed to secure the institution financially, the Society, he explained, had run up debts to keep it open.50 Lainez requested that the influential Farnese put pressure on his brother cardinals to pay the sums they had pledged.51 It was in response to this missive that Farnese wrote a letter recommending the college’s cause to his younger brother, Ranuccio Farnese (1530–1565).52 Early in 1557, Lainez described the financial plight of the Germanicum in moving terms in a letter to Petrus Canisius, a member of Cardinal Otto Truchsess von Waldburg’s circle. The cardinal was bishop of Augsburg. Lainez urged Petrus Canisius to ensure that the cardinal, as the main sponsor of the college, would take responsibility for his pledges to the college and pay up the monies promised. Although Truchsess had been one of the Germanicum’s greatest supporters,53 neither Lainez nor Canisius was hopeful, given Otto von Truchsess’s worldly reputation.54 Nevertheless because the cardinal had been a generous benefactor, Lainez approached him less than a year later, this time directly. For a second time, Lainez recommended the Germanicum to the cardinal as a worthy cause.55 In mid-January 1558 Lainez again asked Canisius to visit the Augsburg cardinal in relation to the Germanicum. At that stage, the Germanicum had ninety students and, due to the failure of Spanish funders, was more indebted than ever.56

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Lainez also approached secular leaders for help. The king of Bohemia, and later Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand I (1503–1564) was one of Lainez’s chief targets.57 Ferdinand had already been supporting the Germanicum and Bohemian students were in attendance there for a number of years. He responded positively to Lainez’s petitions, promising to transfer 400 scudi annually to support the Bohemian students at the Germanicum. This encouraged more Bohemian students to enrol in the Germanicum, confirming its imperial mission. In early 1559 Lainez expressed satisfaction with the Bohemian students in the Germanicum, noting that two wished to enter the Society of Jesus. Although the Jesuits welcomed these recruits, the problem of perceived Jesuit subornment of brighter students intended for the diocesan mission would become a bone of contention in many Jesuit-run seminaries like the Germanicum, pitting diocesan authorities against the Society.58 Lainez actually extended the ­invitation to more Bohemians, helpfully warning that candidates should await admission from Rome before setting off on their journey.59 Diego Lainez, the Council of Trent and the seminary question Diego Lainez was one of the few Jesuits who was present at all three sessions of the Council of Trent, where he participated in discussions relating to clerical formation and seminaries, with direct relevance for the nascent (and struggling) Collegium Germanicum.60 At the first two sessions Lainez acted as peritus. He performed this service rather reluctantly, doubting whether the Council of Trent could actually serve to reform the church. However, his presence at these first two sessions at least had the advantage of allowing him to establish connections and set up networks beneficial to the Jesuits.61 As a theologian, Lainez was not consulted on the question of the residency obligation of the bishops, something which had been under discussion since 1546. At that point, Lainez reported to Ignatius, he had not deemed it expedient to voice his opinion, as such matters were questions of reform rather than doctrine.62 However, the Jesuits who participated in the Council’s third and last session took a different view. Their participation now had implications for their official recognition by the papacy and for the definitive acknowledgement of its General, Lainez, at the Society’s helm.63 In this third session, so crucial for the articles on priestly formation, Lainez was more vocal on all issues, including those concerning church discipline. On 15 July 1563, Diego Lainez signed a series of reform decrees concerning priestly formation.64 Of particular significance was the decree that every diocese was to establish a seminary for the education of young men to the priesthood (canon 18).65 The Germanicum played a specific role in this decree’s origin66

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and Lainez had a particular interest in all discussion relating to priestly education and training. He argued for more teachers, more regular classes and more diverse subject matter. Interestingly, he attributed existing clerical shortcomings, such as non-compliance with clerical celibacy, not to premature ordination of seminarians but rather to their insufficient and unsatisfactory training. Lainez argued that young men should be taught to live chaste lives and in that way learn to be virtuous priests. With regard to the content of the priestly formation programmes, the Tridentine decree on seminaries reflected the regulations Ignatius had stipulated for the Germanicum,67 and those observed by Lainez in the Germanicum and in other Jesuit colleges. These naturally included a strong emphasis on ‘vita communis’, frequent reception of the sacraments, especially confession and daily Mass, with an overarching demand for disciplinary obedience. Lainez’s contribution to the Council and his favourable vote were the fruit of his and his Society’s varied experience in training of priests and managing seminaries like the Germanicum. Although Lainez supported the decree on seminaries, contributing signi­ ficant suggestions and revisions, the same decree had an unpleasant financial downside for the Jesuits. This was because it stipulated that the bishop, in consultation with diocesan clergy, could effectively collect a seminary tax even from exempt orders, which included the Society of Jesus. The Jesuits avoided this financial charge on their own colleges by having them classified as institutions equivalent to the now mandatory episcopal seminaries, arguing that both fulfilled a similar task.68 The council fathers also suggested that the pope should set a good example by supporting a Tridentine-style seminary in Rome, as a model for the universal church. At the same time, the decree on seminaries implied church approval and support for the existing Germanicum and for the Collegio Romano. This had been a Jesuit objective since the establishment of these institutions. The Jesuits correctly maintained that the Germanicum and the Collegio Romano already represented institutions in line with those stipulated by the decree on seminaries, though they criticised the fact that the institutions were inadequately funded to carry out their respective missions.This gave the Jesuits the opportunity to make a claim for appropriate financial support.69 In the August 1563 consistory, Pope Pius IV reacted positively to the idea of establishing the Seminarium Romanum, and to this end he engaged a commission of cardinals, including Carlo Borromeo, to develop a proposal. Borromeo, acting on Cardinal Morone’s suggestion, had previously argued that the pope should establish a Seminarium Romanum.70 Things moved quickly. By October 1563, negotiations with the pope and other key clerical leaders were sufficiently advanced to envisage the establishment of a Seminarium Romanum in the proximate future.71 In July of the following year, Pius IV definitively entrusted its establishment and much of its management

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to the Society of Jesus. By the end of 1564, the Jesuits had bought the college building, and Diego Lainez appointed Giovanni Battista Peruschi, S.J. as rector and installed a faculty. As the new rector in Rome, Peruschi was respected on account of his previous work and achievements. As such, his appointment proved fortunate given the clear hostility towards the Jesuits on the part of some leading Roman figures and the resistance to the establishment of a seminary in Rome on account of the seminary tax associated with it. Lainez, however, did not survive to witness the opening of the seminary, expiring in early 1565 just weeks before the college opened. Nevertheless, the fundamental structure of the Seminarium Romanum reflected that of the Collegium Germanicum. It was organised along the lines laid down in the Germanicum’s constitution. In the following years, both served as models for a significant number of new Roman seminaries.72 Pope Gregory XIII and the Collegium Germanicum While Lainez contributed to the development of the Collegium Germanicum and the seminary model more generally, he could not secure the longer term future of the abroad college. Ultimately, it was only under the pontificate of Gregory XIII that the Germanicum secured adequate endowment, guaranteeing its long-term existence after 1573.73 Thus, apart from the year of its establishment in 1552, 1573 was the most important milestone in the Germanicum’s history.The seminary suffered from insufficient income and inadequate numbers of students following Diego Lainez’s death,74 and its financial safeguarding, even when it did come, occurred not in one fell swoop but rather in fits and starts, accordingly to pontifical whim and general circumstances. As in 1552, so in 1573 it was Cardinal Giovanni Morone who encouraged renovation works to be undertaken on the dilapidated buildings of the Germanicum. He was seconded by another consistent advocate for the college, Cardinal Otto Truchsess von Waldburg. Although the latter did not give money, as had previously been hoped, shortly before his death in spring 1573 Truchsess, like Morone, made the case to Pope Gregory XIII for the urgent safeguarding of the college. Petrus Canisius supported Otto Truchsess von Waldburg and Morone. In spring 1573, Canisius visited the south German princes on behalf of the pope with the intention of securing a firm financial basis for the Germanicum; it is therefore not without good reason that the college church bears his name today. These efforts bore fruit and after 1573, thanks to pontifical grants, the Germanicum emerged as a fully-fledged seminary, providing clergy to the Catholic states of the Empire. What might be described as the re-foundation of the college took place in several stages between 1573 and 1584, supported by a series of papal bulls and briefs. The bull ‘Postquam Deo placuit’ (6 August 1573)

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was the most important as it stipulated a minimum number of students (100) and an annual budget of 10,000 ducats. What could not be derived from the college’s farmland was to be provided by the Apostolic datary. Peter Walter underscores Pope Gregory XIII’s extensive support not only for the G ­ ermanicum but also for the establishment of later papal colleges. We have already mentioned the Greek college and the English college. Gregory also endowed the Collegium Hungaricum in 1578, and later in 1584 the Maronite college. Gregory also ensured the development of the Jesuit Collegio Romano. Walter correctly states that this level of support clearly demonstrates the Counter-Reformation pope’s political will to create the basis for the solid training and education of a new generation of priests.75 Up to 1573, the financially strapped college had been obliged to admit practically any student capable of paying fees. This meant that for the first two decades of its existence fewer than one tenth of those students attending the Germanicum were actually German seminarians. This caused the calling into question of the very purpose of the Germanicum, as a clerical provider to the Empire. Thus, the decision of 1573 to accommodate these mostly Italian and non-seminarian boarders elsewhere was a logical consequence of the new situation in which the college found itself under Gregory’s patronage. The presence of international students at the college did not, however, cease completely. For example, seven Irish students (Johannes Stacpull (John Stackpoole); Nicolaus Sedgradius (Nicholas Sedgrave); Johannes White (John White); Eugenius Cornelius (Eugene Cornel); Thomas Longolius; Nicolaus Scered; Thomas Rothus (Rothe)) resided at the Collegium Germanicum between 1562 and 1612.76 Other nationalities were represented too, testimony to the increasingly strong international draw of Roman institutions as papal authority and the Catholic reform strengthened.77 One of the key Jesuit figures in the post-1573 evolution of the Germanicum was Michele Lauretano, appointed rector in October 1573, a post he held until his death on 12 October 1587. He operated as a hands-on educator of priests, helping those attending the Germanicum to develop beyond the mere academic study of philosophy and theology into a community subject to the same rules and structure. The goal was to orient men for a manner of living characterised by Christian humility in preparation for later pastoral work. To achieve this, the rector himself served as a role model, and while emphasis was placed on the liturgy, the fostering of a culture of prayer, as well as academic excellence, students were also reprimanded and called to order when necessary. Living as a community played a crucial role in forming the distinctive character of life within the college. Profound interaction between the students and the college was envisaged and facilitated: ‘the students should become proper Germaniker [students of the Germanicum], not just during their studies but also, indeed in particular, when they are finished’.78 This was connected to Lauretano’s view that

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students of the Germanicum should strive not to attain canonries and sinecures but, rather, to obtain sound knowledge and virtues in order to provide good pastoral care on the domestic mission. Curiously, the rector’s educational concept and practice actually contradicted a regulation set out by Pope Gregory XIII in the bull ‘Postquam Deo placuit’. In this bull, Gregory envisaged that students of the Germanicum would take lessons not only in the subjects stipulated in the bull that established the college in 1552, but also in canon law. This was in recognition of the fact that study of the law, more so than theology, was the traditional passport to higher office in the church, and the Catholic reform did not change that. In fact,Tridentine legislation, and the need to interpret it, enhanced the status of canon law. Accordingly, in order to attract students from the upper ranks of German society, the pope intended that the Germanicum facilitate canon law studies. This did not sit well with the Jesuit vision for the institution and, for a time, the college managed to preserve its Jesuit communitarian ethos. After Lauretano’s rectorship, however, and especially from the middle of the seventeenth century, canon law regained its supremacy at the Germanicum. This meant that the college became the preserve of priestly candidates drawn from the upper ranks of German society. In fact, sons of noblemen made up more than three-quarters of the students of the Germanicum, with commoners poorly represented in the student body.79 Thus, in the seventeenth century and until its closure in 1798, the Germanicum became an institution attended mainly by the sons of the Catholic German aristocracy. This went against Ignatius’s and the Jesuit order’s founding intentions, which were to educate and train clergy in community for pastoral work.80 Pope Gregory, however, was not entirely consistent. In ‘Postquam Deo placuit’ he had also stipulated that students of the Germanicum should not learn about the practices of the Roman curia during or after their studies, thereby effectively closing off a potential career in the Roman curia. From the beginning, the Germanicum had housed non-German students from the Empire, including Bohemians and a substantial number of Hungarians. In 1579, Pope Gregory XIII founded the Collegium Hungaricum following the promptings of Hungarian students in the Germanicum, in particular Stephan Szántós who entered the Germanicum in 1560 and became a Jesuit just a year later in 1561. Indeed, the proposal for the establishment of a Hungarian institution had been mooted by Ignatius as early as 1554.81 Since endowment from Hungarian Jesuits and the recruitment of Hungarian seminarians proved quite difficult, in 1580 the pope amalgamated the Hungaricum with the by then thriving Collegium Germanicum, once again acting on Cardinal Giovanni Morone’s advice.82 From a staffing point of view, this was easier to manage for the Jesuits, but it was also advantageous for the pope, who could thus somewhat reduce the crippling costs for the papacy of supporting the expanding papal

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abroad college network. However, the amalgamation did not entirely suspend the Collegium Hungaricum: Pope Gregory XIII ensured that the Germanicum reserved twelve places for Hungarian and Croatian students. The amalgamation was followed by the papal bull ‘Ex Collegio Germanico’ (1 April 1584), which regulated the recruitment, education and training, as well as the care and support of the students. These rules endured into the eighteenth century, and some remained in place as late as the twentieth century. Later history In the seventeenth century, only about one quarter of students completed the seven-year study programme. This was largely because the imperial aristocracy, whose sons now dominated the seminary, were more interested in shorter periods of study. Overall, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, between 40 and 60 per cent of students admitted were ordained, a figure that compares with similar pontifical institutions in Rome. With few exceptions, these students originated from Catholic regions of the Empire. Pope Gregory XIII’s successors, however, proved less generous to the Germanicum, with the result that, as early as 1592, the number of students had to be reduced. By the middle of the seventeenth century the college was again close to financial ruin. However, it managed to recover, permitting an increase in the number of seminarians. The suppression of the Jesuits in 1773 resulted in another slump in numbers, which fell further when Joseph II confiscated the college’s north Italian estates. He also forbade candidates from his territories to enter the seminary. The admission of Swiss candidates from 1791 did little to compensate, although they would make up a significant proportion of Germanicum students in the nineteenth century.83 Following the invasion of Rome by Napoleonic troops the college was obliged to close in 1798. Notwithstanding these setbacks, and in line with the experience of many other former Jesuit institutions, attempts were made to re-establish the Germanicum after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. In 1818, two Swiss students were instrumental in re-opening the college, which had by then become a Jesuit institution. The aristocratic and patrician origins of students, so overwhelming in the early modern period, was less marked in the re-founded institution. Indeed the social composition of students now shifted towards the middle classes and rural populations of the German-speaking lands. This was accompanied by a strong tendency towards ultramontanism among students, at least until the middle of the twentieth century.84 After 1818, a seven-year course of study and ordination became the norm in the Germanicum, as in most seminaries.85

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Conclusion The Society of Jesus, as the body responsible for the Germanicum, was at first voluntarily responsible for the leadership and spiritual development of the institution and up until at least 1573 was involuntarily involved in its financial woes. This commitment illustrates that from the very early years, training priests counted as one of the core activities of the Society, alongside the training of candidates for the Society’s own missionary work. Therefore, it was the Society’s contribution to institutions like the Germanicum, as much as the regulations deriving from the Council of Trent, which laid the foundations for the seminary system that by the end of the early modern period was producing an increasingly standardised clergy for Catholic communities across Europe. In the early period, the Germanicum managed to remain true to its original communitarian vision, with its distinctive rules and discipline introduced by Ignatius. Lainez was crucial to this success though arguably his greatest achievement was to stand by the Germanicum and the Jesuit colleges in a period of financial crisis. To do this he had to allow the admittance of non-German fee paying students, many of whom were not intended for the priesthood. The domination of the Germanicum by students of noble birth late on in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries obviated the need for this compromise, in marked contrast to many other abroad colleges, especially the Irish, which could not have survived without lay boarders and which, despite their generally Jesuit managements, were actually intended to cater to the laity as well as the clergy. In a way, of course, such compromises were very much in line with the Jesuit educational ideal to provide education and training for Catholics of all social stripes and states, including those studying for the secular professions. In the case of the Germanicum, compromises like these helped bridge the gap until a satisfactory financial basis could be secured for the Germanicum through Pope Gregory XIII’s provision, after the death of Lainez. In the cases of overseas colleges serving other Catholic communities, like those of the Irish, for instance, financial pressures and social custom ensured that, prior to the nineteenth century, few of these institutions could ever operate solely as seminaries, dedicated to the production of priests. Notes

The chapter was translated from the original German by Lessa Wheatley. The editors are grateful to Thomas McCoog, S.J. for useful comments on earlier versions of the chapter. 1 J. W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 9. The present chapter draws on: U. Fink, ‘Diego Lainez, das Collegium Germanicum und die Priesterausbildung zur Zeit des Trienter Konzils’, in P. Oberholzer (ed.), Diego Lainez (1512– 1565) and his Generalate (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Jesu, 2015), pp. 819–36. 2 O’Malley, The First Jesuits, p. 2. 3 See G. E. Ganss, ‘The origin of Jesuit colleges for externs and the controversies about their poverty’, Woodstock Letters, 91 (1962), 123–66; O’Malley, The First Jesuits, passim;T. M. McCoog, ‘ “Replant the uprooted trunk of the tree of faith”: the Society of Jesus and the continental

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colleges for religious exiles’, in R. Armstrong and T. Ó hAnnracháin (eds), Insular Christianity: Alternative Models of the Church in Britain and Ireland, c.1570–c.1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 28–48; C. Pavur (trans.), The Ratio Studiorum: The Official Plan of Jesuit Education (St Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2005). 4 T. Kaufmann, Geschichte der Reformation (Frankfurt and Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 2009), p. 660. 5 N. P.Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (2 vols, London and Washington, DC: Sheed and Ward/Georgetown University Press, 1990): Third Lateran Council (1179), canon 18, vol. 1, p. 220; Fourth Lateran Council (1215), canon 11, vol. 1, p. 240. 6 E. Gatz (ed.), Priesterausbildungsstätten der deutschsprachigen Länder zwischen Aufklärung und Zweitem Vatikanischen Konzil (Rome, Freiburg, Vienna: Herder, 1994), p. 19. 7 E. Gatz, Geschichte des kirchlichen Lebens in den deutschsprachigen Ländern seit dem Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts. Vol. IV: Der Diözesanklerus (Freiburg, Basel, Vienna: Herder, 1995), pp. 25–31. 8 P. Staerkle, ‘Priesterbildung und Priesterseminar in der Diözese St. Gallen’, Zeitschrift für Schweizerische Kirchengeschichte, 56 (1962), 113–53. 9 G. Schwaiger, ‘Georgianum’, in Gatz (ed.), Priesterausbildungsstätten, pp. 148–51, at p. 148. 10 Along with the university, the Georgianum was moved from Ingolstadt to Landshut in 1800, and from Landshut to Munich in 1826, where it continues to fulfil its function in close proximity to the university. On the Society of Jesus and this university, see S. Spruell Mobley, ‘The Jesuits at the University of Ingolstadt’, in T. M. McCoog (ed.), The Mercurian Project: Forming Jesuit Culture 1573–1580 (Rome and St Louis: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu/ The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2004), pp. 213–48. 11 Cf. A. Esposito and C. Frova, Collegi studenteschi a Roma nel quattrocento (Rome: Viella, 2008), in particular the first copy of the founding statutes of the Almo Collegio Capranica (ibid., pp. 155–201). The only history of the Gregorian University in English is P. Caraman, University of the Nations: The Story of the Gregorian University with its Associated Institutes, the Biblical and Oriental, 1551–1962 (New York: Paulist Press, 1981). 12 L. Willaert, Les Origins du jansénisme dans les Pays-Bas catholiques (Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1948), p. 188. 13 K. Unterburger, ‘Zwischen Universität und bischöflicher Kontrolle. Das Verhältnis des Herzoglichen Georgianums in München zum Episkopat und zur Rechtsform eines bischöflichen Priesterseminars im Laufe der Geschichte’, Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift, 61 (2010), 291–316, at 291–5. 14 P. Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum in Rom und die Germaniker: Zur Funktion eines römischen Ausländerseminars (1552–1914) (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1984), pp. 68–70. 15 Ibid., p. 2f. 16 O. Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia: Jesuit Educational Strategy, 1553–1622 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 175–265. 17 F. C. Cesareo, ‘The Jesuit colleges in Rome under Everard Mercurian’, in McCoog (ed.), The Mercurian Project, p. 607. 18 A. Steinhuber, Geschichte des Kollegium Germanikum Hungarikum in Rom (2 vols, Freiburg: Herder, 1906). 19 Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum, pp. 38–61 and passim. 20 Research on specific aspects of the college’s history have been published in the internal college journal Korrespondenzblatt Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum, which first appeared in 1892, intended for current and past alumni. Among the many other works on the history of the college, is that of Peter Walter, himself a past student: ‘Die Gründung des Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum’, Korrespondenzblatt Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum. Jubiläumsausgabe zum 450jährigen Bestehen des Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum (2003), 86–113. 21 On Morone, see A. P. Robinson, The Career of Cardinal Giovanni Morone (1509–1580): Between Council and Inquisition (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). 22 Walter, ‘Die Gründung des Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum’, pp. 90–3. For an overview of the extremely comprehensive college archive, see: U. Fink and P. van Geest, ‘Das Archiv des Pont. Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum de Urbe’, Korrespondenzblatt Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum [Rome], 98 (1989), 95–111.

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23 See H. Jedin, ‘Domschule und Kolleg. Zum Ursprung der Idee des Trienter Priesterseminars’, in H. Jedin (ed.), Kirche des Glaubens, Kirche der Geschichte, Vol. II: Konzil und Kirchenreform (Freiburg, Basel, Vienna: Herder, 1966), pp. 348–59, at p. 350. 24 Walter, ‘Die Gründung des Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum’, p. 93. 25 Cesareo, ‘Jesuit colleges in Rome’, p. 622. 26 Steinhuber, Geschichte, p. 12f. 27 J. W. O’Malley, ‘Renaissance Humanism and the religious culture of the first Jesuits’, Heythrop Journal, 31 (1990), 471–87. 28 See P. F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). 29 A. P. Farrell, The Jesuit Code of Liberal Education: Development and Scope of the Ratio Studiorum (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1938); P. R. Blum, ‘Apostolato dei college: on the integration of humanism in the educational programme of the Jesuits’, History of Universities, 5 (1981), 101–15. 30 C. Casalini and C. Pavur (eds), Jesuit Pedagogy, 1540–1616: A Reader (Chestnut Hill, Mass.: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2016), p. 59. 31 For this section, in general, see: F. C. Cesareo, ‘The Collegium Germanicum and the Ignatian vision of education’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 24:4 (1993), 829–41. See also, Cesareo, ‘Jesuit colleges in Rome’, pp. 607–44; A. Scaglione, The Liberal Arts and the Jesuit College System (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 1986); K. M. Comerford, ‘The influence of the Jesuits in the curriculum of the diocesan seminary in Fiesole, 1636–1646’, Catholic Historical Review, 84 (1998), 662–80; L. W. B. Brockliss, ‘The Irish colleges on the continent and the creation of an educated clergy’, in T. O’Connor and M. A. Lyons (eds), The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe: Refashioning Irish Identities, 1600–1800 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010), pp. 142–65. 32 As cited in W. V. Bangert, Jerome Nadal, S.J., 1507–1580: Tracking the First Generation of Jesuits, ed. T. M. McCoog, S.J. (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1992), p. 201. 33 As cited in Cesareo, ‘Jesuit colleges in Rome’, p. 609. 34 F. Schroeder (ed.), Monumenta quae spectant primordia Collegii Germanici et Hungarici (Rome: Cuggiani, 1896), pp. 20–3. 35 J. J. Scarisbrick, The Jesuits and the Catholic Reformation (London: Historical Association, 1989). 36 D. F. Zapico (ed.), Regulae Societatis Iesu (1540–1556) (Rome: apud Monumenta Historica Soc. Iesu, 1948), pp. 297–305 (Italian and Latin); Schroeder, Monumenta, pp. 60–72 (Latin). 37 See for example Zapico, Regulae, pp. 306–10; Schroeder, Monumenta, pp. 72–4. Many pertinent documents can be found translated in Casalini and Pavur, Jesuit Pedagogy, 1540–1616, pp. 93–155. See in particular Giuseppe Cortesono’s ‘draft’ or ‘proposed’ ‘Constitutions of the German college’ on pp. 107–55, which includes a rationale for the college (pp. 112–15). The ‘draft’ contains the following apologia: ‘Our Father Ignatius, of holy memory, inspired by God, sought nothing other in creating the Society than to fill the world with Christian doctrine and spirit since these two things were in a very bad condition in his time. The Society has no better means to engage in these activities than the German College’ (p. 114). 38 Cesareo, ‘The Collegium Germanicum’, pp. 838–41. 39 Steinhuber, Geschichte, pp. 24–45, offers a good overview of the early period of the college’s history. 40 Ignacio Tellechea Idigoras, ‘Il Collegio romano: “Omnium nationum seminarium”. Prospettive e speranze ignaziane’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 29 (1991), 9–16, at p. 11. 41 Tellechea Idigoras, ‘Il Collegio romano’, 9–13. On the gradual involvement of the Society in education see: Ganss, ‘The origin of Jesuit colleges for externs’. 42 G. E. Ganss (ed.), The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus (St Louis:The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1970), pp. 171–229. 43 For Ignatius’s conception of the priesthood, see: A. de Jaer, ‘Ignace de Loyola et le ministère des prêtres’, Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 109 (1987), 540–53; M. A. Lewis, ‘The first Jesuits as “reformed priests”’, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 65 (1996), 111–27. 44 Steinhuber, Geschichte, pp. 43–5, lists those who took the college oath, i.e. who definitively

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THE SOCIETY OF JESUS AND THE COLLEGIUM GERMANICUM  53 entered the college. The list of names on the college register for the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, which do not necessarily correspond to the ‘Liber iuramentorum’, are printed in: Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum, pp. 217–321. 45 Steinhuber, Geschichte, pp. 7–37. 46 See Bangert, Jerome Nadal, pp. 142–3. 47 Ibid., pp. 33–7; for more details on the overall problem see: H. Rahner, ‘Ignatius und sein Germanikum’, Korrespondenzblatt Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum (May 1956), 3–25. Ignatius of Loyola faced the same problems in relation to the Collegio Romano, founded in 1551, as he did with the Germanicum; see: Tellechea Idigoras, ‘Il Collegio romano’. 48 T. H. Clancy, ‘Ignatius the fundraiser’, Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, 25/1 (1993), 1–37 at 29. On Borja’s assistance to the Roman colleges, see F. de Borja Medina Rojas, ‘El padre Francisco de Borja y la financiación del Colegio Romano-Borgiano durante la crisis europea mediosecular’, in E. García Hernán and M. del Pilar Ryan (eds), Francisco de Borja y su Tiempo (Valencia and Rome: Albatros Ediciones/Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2011), pp. 543–75. 49 Lainii Monumenta. Epistolae ea acta Patris Jacobi Lainii secundi praepositi generalis Societatis Jesu, ex autographis vel originalibus exemplis potissimum deprompta a patribus ejusdem Societatis edita (8 vols, Madrid: Typis Gabrielis López del Horno, 1912–1917), vol. 1, pp. 401–3, No. 173. 50 The corresponding list of names, which also includes a signed commitment to make donations from Cardinal Farnese, is published in: Schroeder, Monumenta, pp. 135–40. 51 Lainii Monumenta, vol. 1, pp. 443–5, No. 194; L. von Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, ed. R. F. Kerr (St Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1891–1953), vol. 19, p. 238. 52 Lainii Monumenta, vol. 1, pp. 498–500, No. 232. 53 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 64f., No. 429. On Canisius, the cardinal and the Germanicum, see J. Brodrick, Saint Peter Canisius (London: Sheed and Ward, 1935), passim. 54 P. Rummel, ‘Petrus Canisius and Otto Kardinal von Truchsess von Waldburg’, in J. Oswald and P. Rummel (eds), Petrus Canisius – Reformer der Kirche (Augsburg: St Ulrich, 1996), pp. 41–66, at p. 42. On the cardinal’s financial support, see Bangert, Jerome Nadal, passim. 55 Lainii Monumenta, vol. 2, p. 269f., No. 476 (17 June 1557). 56 Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 34–6, No. 707. 57 Ibid. , vol. 2, pp. 309–12, Nos. 504, 505. 58 See e.g. L. Hicks, ‘The English college, Rome and vocations to the Society of Jesus, March, 1579–July, 1595, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 3 (1934), 1–36. Nadal, perhaps in jest, dismissed these fears: ‘Germans by nature do not adapt easily to a life of austerity such as we live … especially at the present time when all Germans either feel outright hostility toward religious life or at least experience little attraction for it’ (as cited in Bangert, Jerome Nadal, p. 143). 59 Lainii Monumenta, vol. 4, pp. 167–71, No. 1110. 60 See the list of ‘Jesuits presents at the Council of Trent’, in Oberholzer, Diego Lainez, pp. 925–7. 61 P. Oberholzer, ‘Das Konzil von Trient im Spiegel der ordensinternen Korrespondenz’, in Oberholzer, Diego Lainez, pp. 527–63, at pp. 547–9. 62 Lainii Monumenta, vol. 1, p. 50f., No. 20. 63 Ibid., vol. 5, pp. 527–32, No. 1718. 64 Concilium Tridentinum: Diarium, actorum, epistularium, tractatum nova collectio, vol. ix (Freiburg and Breisgau: Herder, 1924), pp. 623–39, especially p. 638. For a discussion of the seminary decree, see: H. Jedin, Geschichte des Konzils von Trient, vol. iv/2 (Freiburg, Basel, Vienna: Herder, 1975), pp. 72–9 (Diego Lainez is not mentioned in this context). 65 The decree on seminaries is published in Latin with an English translation in: Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2, pp. 750–3. 66 For more information on this see: E. Garhammer, Seminaridee und Klerusausbildung bei Karl August Graf von Reisach (Stuttgart, Berlin, Cologne: Kohlhammer, 1990), pp. 20–5; M. Scaduto, L’epoca di die Giacomo Lainez. Il Governo 1556—1565, Storia della Compagnia di Gesù in Italia III (Rome: La Civiltà Cattolica, 1964), pp. 224–31. 67 M. Scaduto, Storia della Compagnia di Gesu in Italia IV: l’epoca di Giacomo Lainez – l’azione

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(1556–1565) (Rome: La Civiltà Cattolica, 1974), p. 230. H. Grisar S. J. (ed.), Jacobi Lainez secundi Praepositi generalis Societatis Jesu disputationes tridentinae (2 vols, Innsbruck: Rauch, 1886), contains no comments by Diego Lainez regarding the decree on seminaries. 68 P. Oberholzer, ‘Resoconto sul concilio nella corrispondenza interna alla Compagnia di Gesù’, in M. Catto and A. Prosperi (eds), Trent and Beyond. The Council, Other Powers, Other Cultures (Brepolis: Turnout, forthcoming), p. 14. 69 Joan Polanco reported to Rome on this matter in: Lainii Monumenta, vol. 7, pp. 180–4, No. 1866. See also: Oberholzer, ‘Resoconto sul concilio’. 70 For information on the history of the Seminarium Romanum to its establishment on 1 February 1565, see: L. Testa, Fondazione e primo sviluppo del Seminario romano (1565–1608) (Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana 2002), pp. 29–57. 71 Lainii Monumenta, vol. 7, pp. 447–9, No. 1958. 72 Testa, Fondazione e primo sviluppo del Seminario romano, p. 466f. Steinhuber’s assertion that Lainez had drafted the statutes himself is false: Steinhuber, Geschichte, p. 23. 73 Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum, p. 16; Cesareo, ‘Jesuit colleges in Rome’, p. 625. 74 My comments on the epochal year of 1573 and its context are based on: P. H. Jacobs, ‘Zur “Wiedergeburt” des Collegium Germanicum 1573’, Korrespondenzblatt Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum, 80 (1973), 10–27. 75 Walter, ‘Die Gründung des Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum’, p. 104; Cesareo, ‘Jesuit colleges in Rome,’ p. 607. 76 Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum, pp. 232, 271, 292, 294, 300, 303, 316. See also A. Bellesheim, Geschichte der Katholischen Kirche in Irland von der Einführung des Christenthums bis auf die Gegenwart (3 vols, Mainz, 1890–1891), ii, 714–15. 77 The number of Irish, Scottish and English at the Germanicum declined in the seventeenth century. Arguably the most famous non-cleric was Alexander Seton, King James I’s chancellor. See Maurice Lee, Jr, ‘King James’s Popish Chancellor’, in I. B. Cowan and D. Shaw (eds), The Renaissance and Reformation in Scotland: Essays in Honour of Gordon Donaldson (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1983), pp. 170–82. 78 Jacobs, ‘Zur “Wiedergeburt” des Collegium Germanicum 1573’, p. 22. 79 See Walter, ‘Die Gründung des Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum’, p. 104, 106. 80 Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum, pp. 21–31. 81 T. Löhr, ‘P. Stephan Szántó S.J. und die Theologie’, Korrespondenzblatt Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum, 86 (1979), 27–58, at 32–8. 82 I. Bitskey, ‘The Collegium Germanicum Hungaricum in Rome and the beginning of the Counter-Reformation in Hungary’, in R. J. Evans and T. V. Thomas (eds), Crown, Church and Estates: Central European Politics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 114. 83 U. Fink, ‘Giuseppe Garampi und das Pont. Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum de Urbe’, Korrespondenzblatt Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum, 99 (1990), 47–77, at 69–71. 84 The diary of Johann Baptist Olav Fallize, a student at the Germanicum, offers a good insight into the period of the First Vatican Council: Römisches Tagebuch 1866–1871, ed. J. Köhn, in cooperation with J. Malget (Freiburg, Basel, Vienna: Herder, 2015). For the end of the nineteenth century see: C. Gröber, Römisches Tagebuch, ed. J. Werner (Freiburg and Breisgau: Herder, 2012). 85 For more detail on this see: Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum, pp. 62–180.

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3 Colleges and their alternatives in the ­educational strategy of early modern Dutch  Catholics Willem Frijhoff The common image of the Dutch Republic is that of a Protestant bulwark from which Catholics were by and large excluded so that they had to look for refuge, including education, abroad. In fact, there is ample reason for nuance.1 After the foundation of the Dutch Republic in the 1570s and 1580s and its ­subsequent public self-definition as a Protestant nation, Dutch Roman Catholicism was not really proscribed in the private sphere. But until the Batavian Revolution (1795) the Catholic Church could not express itself in public any more as a full-fledged religious institution. Yet Catholicism survived, in some regions even prospered, and locally quite often as a strongly structured and motivated minority.2 Survival was, however, at the price of a heavy cultural investment within the Catholic community itself, transmitting Catholic life, doctrine and culture in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation. Rather quickly this received a decidedly Dutch touch, centred around the problem of the continuity of the Dutch Church, often marked by and entangled in a native form of Jansenism. The use of Catholic colleges for the education of the clergy, members of learned professions and other intellectuals outside the frontiers of the Dutch Republic was an important instrument for the maintenance of a committed and well-structured Catholic community at home, but due to the particular evolution of religion in the Northern Netherlands, the Catholic educational landscape was rather diversified.3 In all, four educational strategies may be distinguished: an education entirely imparted at Catholic institutions, in conformity with the origin of the clergy at home, either secular or regular; the deliberate, apologetic immersion of young Catholics in the Protestant environment of the Dutch educational landscape; a mixed form, consisting in the conscious choice of a good Catholic college abroad as the first, protective step in a curriculum involving later on one or more Protestant institutions at home; and the matter-of-fact attitude of parents sending their offspring to the nearest college or university, without any confessional consideration. In order to understand how the Dutch developments fit with those of other countries, in particular the Catholic communities

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of Britain and Ireland with their straightforward strategy of church reconstruction abroad and their considerable investment in foreign educational equipment, we have first to position Dutch Catholicism in its own context. Secondly, we must examine how far the liberty of Dutch parents and pupils extended in the choice of educational facilities. A third parameter is the existence and accessibility of the network of Catholic institutions abroad. Finally, the rise of a range of institutions beyond the Dutch frontiers, but created specifically for the Holland mission, must be taken into consideration. The Dutch Republic: secularisation and confessionalisation The Republic of the Seven United Provinces, i.e., roughly the present-day Netherlands, was the only European country, with the possible exception of Ireland, where the rise of the university system after 1575 coincided not only with the creation of a modern state, but also with the diffusion of the Protestant Reformation. The Dutch Reformation had gone through a number of vicissitudes before being fixed, in the 1580s in the coastal provinces and a decade later in the interior provinces, as a public church in the Calvinist mode, more specifically in its orthodox variety proclaimed at the Synod of Dort (or Dordrecht) in 1618–1619. This was the privileged religion, the sole authorised public church admitted by the Great Assembly of 1651, following the state’s formal independence at the Peace of Westphalia (1648).4 However, due to the fact that the Dutch state rose out of a rebellion legitimised by a mixture of religious and political motives, the particular political structure of the Dutch Republic had prevented the Reformed Church from engaging in a German-style process of confessionalisation. It was the public church, but not the state church. Although the Calvinist Church was an integral part of the Dutch Republic’s political and social identity, Dutch culture was at the same time broader and differentiated. It received its particular outlook through the empirical solutions for inter-confessional co-existence wrought or admitted by the secular authorities of the Dutch Republic and assimilated by all confessional minorities, including, at least in the long run, by the partisans of the Reformed Church itself.5 Though considered confessing Calvinists, the Dutch rulers maintained at the same time a liberal, meta-religious attitude as regards public order and the social discipline characteristic of the confessionalisation process. By de-confessionalising and indeed basically secularising public life the political authorities laid at the same time the foundations for an internal re-confessionalisation of the different religious groups. While they were unable to express their religion in public, the minority religious groups, soon followed by the Reformed Church itself, started internalising their basic values and their worldview, and making

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them the essential features of their group organisation and sense of identity. This two-step internalisation took place over three centuries before, at the end of the nineteenth century, culminating in a new socio-religious form of cultural organisation, known as the verzuiling (pillarisation). It is often thought that in the Protestant Netherlands Catholicism was a negligible minority in the face of a dominant Calvinism. Because of the clandestine position of the Catholic Church, assessing the number of Catholics during the early modern period is difficult.6 Around 1600 the overall population of the Seven United Provinces, without the so-called Generality Lands on the southern border which were occupied later on (parts of Flanders, Brabant and present-day Limburg), may be estimated at roughly one and a half million people. About 45 per cent of these lived in the province of Holland. Baptism and church membership were not yet universally registered, and until the second half of the seventeenth century only a few Catholic baptismal records were conserved. Initially, lay Catholics even may have considered baptism and marriage in the Reformed churches as licit since they regarded these churches still as their own, as public churches available to everyone, including their former owners, the Catholics for whom they continued to serve as a burial place. Around 1600, the Reformed Church may have counted for not more than 10 per cent of the population, 40 to 50 per cent still consisting of Catholic communicants, with strong local and regional variations; 10 to 20 per cent belonged to other confessional groups, and 20 to 30 per cent were still undecided. Among them many were simple liefhebbers of the Reformed Church, i.e., supporters or sympathisers for the benefit of their office, job or career, without personal commitment or full membership, and quite a lot remained unaffiliated with a specific church.7 Between 1600 and 1800 the Northern Netherlands were strongly affected by migratory movements. Foreign immigrants arrived in important numbers from the Southern Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia, France and Britain. The immigrant numbers from the Southern Netherlands alone can be estimated at about 100,000 or up to 150,000, in other words between 7 per cent and 10 per cent of the total population of the Dutch Republic around 1600.8 The tremendous impact of these migrations is essentially due to their religious character, which made them instrumental in a certain form of confessionalisation. A sizable part of the refugees kept to a dissenting faith (Lutheranism, Anabaptism), but in the end many rallied at least to that civic conception of Calvinism which had become the emblem of immigrant origin and culture in their new homeland. As a country of transit, commerce and warfare, the Northern Netherlands remained permanently open to important inflows and outflows of relevant population groups, without consideration of confession. The refugees from the Southern Netherlands, for instance, not only included Calvinists, Lutherans and Anabaptists, but also Catholics who had strong economic motives for fleeing their

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provinces ruined by the war, such as the wealthy international merchant Hans van der Veken from Mechelen. Though he always remained an active Catholic, he migrated to the north and settled in the most prominent house of Rotterdam, in front of the town hall. For a large community of Catholics he kept up a chapel in the castle he bought for himself at Capelle, next to the city. Ultimately the minority confessions were decimated, and the undecided made their choice. At the census of 1809 in the Napoleonic Kingdom of Holland, the first to register everybody’s confessional membership, the religious landscape was totally transformed. Among the 2,200,000 inhabitants of the country in its present-day borders, two churches plainly dominated: the Reformed confession, i.e., the former public church including its linguistic variants (the Walloons, the Presbyterians, the Scots and the Germans) with 55.5 per cent of the total population, and the Roman Catholics with 38.1 per cent. The other churches had been reduced to small portions: less than 3 per cent for the Lutherans, 1.4 per cent for the Mennonites, 1.8 per cent for the Jews, and even smaller proportions for the others. People without a confessional choice had virtually disappeared: only 295 in absolute numbers. However, the distribution of the confessional denominations varied widely across the provinces. Less than 1 per cent of the population remained Catholic in the small inland province of Drenthe, ironically the very last to have been submitted to Calvinisation. Not more than 9 per cent of the population was Catholic in the northern provinces of Groningen and Friesland, 20 per cent in Zeeland (mostly in the former Generality district of Flanders), about 25 per cent in Holland, 35 to 40 per cent in the inner provinces of Overijssel, Gelderland and Utrecht, but 88 per cent to 98 per cent in the former Generality Lands. The most important city, Amsterdam, had an atypical distribution of the confessions among its 202,000 inhabitants. Beside 50 per cent Reformed Protestants and 21 per cent Roman Catholics, there were no less than 16.5 per cent Lutherans and 11 per cent Jews. In spite of these largely diverging ratios, and the completely asymmetric distribution of Catholicism and Protestantism over the country, the initial religious diversity had turned everywhere into some form of religious dualism: Calvinist versus Catholic. The Catholics formed the majority in the south, in some eastern borderlands and rural areas of Holland and Utrecht, the Reformed Protestants elsewhere. Roman Catholics and Old Catholics After the extinction of the whole Dutch episcopate in the last quarter of the sixteenth century and the split between Spain and the rebellious States-General, the Holy See had declared the Netherlands to be henceforth a mission country. As from 1592 it was administered by an apostolic vicar appointed by Rome, under the supervision of the nuncio, first the one residing at Cologne, then

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the internuncio at Brussels. The country’s status as Missio Hollandica under the authority of the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide was formalised in 1622. However, from the start this was severely criticised by many secular priests of local origin. The more so as the missionary style of the congregations authorised by Rome, especially the Jesuits, Franciscans and Recollects, often conflicted sharply with the prudent confessional policy, the rigorist theological orientations and the severe moral standards maintained in the complicated Dutch context by the secular clergy, especially in the core provinces of Holland and Utrecht. Jansenistic rigorism was considered in the long run as a more or less national expression of Dutch Catholicism.9 Serious trouble had flared among the clergy of the Holland Mission as early as the apostolic vicariate of Johannes van Neercassel (1626–1686), a stern Oratorian priest of saintly life and Jansenistic tendencies, born to a Catholic brewer’s family of Gorcum in Holland, close to the local elite. He had successively been a pupil of the Catholic boarding school of the Regular canons of the Holy Cross at St Agatha-Cuijk, just across the border of the Dutch Republic, a student of the humanities college of the Pig at Louvain (while living in the Pulcheria college founded for the Holland Mission), then of the (Reformed) university of Utrecht, of St Magloire theological seminary at Paris, and finally of the theological college of the Oratorians at Saumur.10 The Saumur seminary, established in the new buildings of the important pilgrimage shrine of Notre-Dame-des-Ardilliers next to the town, where the Oratorians also ran the humanities college, functioned as the declared adversary of the renowned Protestant Academy in that town, the intellectual centre of French Calvinism.11 As the erudite Antwerp dean Aubertus Miraeus had noted less than three years after its foundation: ‘[The Oratorians] domi sue Theologiam, atque in primis Fidei controversias, adversus Calvinianos Salmurij potissimum obstrepentes, diligenter explicant’.12 More than most other colleges, Saumur prepared future Dutch priests for an active, even aggressive engagement with the Calvinists at home. Neercassel, who taught for four years as a professor, acquainted himself at Saumur with the theological views he later championed in his home country. A professorship in philosophy in the Oratorian seminary of the rue Saint-Honoré in Paris followed, where he fell under the influence of the erudite theological polemicist Jean Morin (1591–1659), a former Huguenot. Finally the theology chair of the Oratorians at Mechelen completed his formation in an anti-Calvinist as well as a pro-rigorist sense. Neercassel’s attitude, work and opinions may be considered as exemplary for the Dutch secular clergy of his century in general. The intra-Catholic religious troubles between rigorists, mostly the secular clergy, and laxists, many pertaining to the religious orders, quickly worsened under Neercassel’s successors, first of all his immediate successor, the Amsterdamborn Petrus Codde (1648–1710). Codde started as a humanities student of the

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Oratorian college at Mechelen, then went to the arts college of the Castle at the University of Louvain, and studied theology in the Oratorian schools at Louvain, St Magloire (Paris) and Orleans. He wanted to finish his studies in Rome but Neercassel called him back and completed Codde’s formation in 1678 under his personal supervision in the select community of his refugee seminary at Huissen in the duchy of Cleves, just across the Dutch border.13 Codde quickly identified with the cause of Jansenism, only to be dismissed as apostolic vicar in 1704 by the Holy See. In the meantime the militant and Jansenistic element of the secular clergy reformulated the history of the Dutch Catholic community and restored its sense of identity in terms of institutional continuity, redrafting its theology and ecclesiastical law in the spirit of Jansenism, Gallicanism and episcopalism, in spite of Rome’s repeated warnings and interventions. In fact, the conflict between the religious strategies of the two portions of the clergy was reinforced by opposing visions on the canonical status of the Catholic hierarchy. An important part of the secular clergy stated that the original Dutch hierarchy of the new dioceses established by Pope Paul IV in 1559 was still in existence. They claimed an institutional autonomy that the Roman powers denied, the latter arguing for the extinction of the episcopate after the Dutch independence, some thirty years later. The supporters of the continuity thesis considered the apostolic vicars, appointed by Rome as bishops of extinct distant dioceses in partibus infidelium, as the legal successors of the pre-Reformation bishops of the northern Dutch dioceses, in particular those of Haarlem and Utrecht, where some ecclesiastical institutions had indeed been maintained. A smaller part of the secular clergy and the bulk of the missionaries belonging to the regular orders held the Roman viewpoint. The two factions bitterly opposed each other in words and, whenever possible, also in deeds, with the help of the local or the Roman authorities. Jansenism, current among the anti-Romans, brought a further complication. In 1723, in the heat of the Jansenist struggle, the schism was consummated when the upholders of the continuity of the apostolic succession made a public and decisive step towards an independent church organisation. The Leiden archpriest Cornelis Steenoven (1661–1725), who had been a pupil of the college of Louvain for eight years, followed by a further four years of that at Rome, was elected archbishop of Utrecht by the cathedral chapter that had survived on its own terms though being illegitimate from the Roman point of view and extinct in the opinion of the secular power. Steenoven was consecrated by the French Jansenist Dominique-Marie Varlet (1678–1742), bishop of Babylon, who during his long life in the Netherlands was to consecrate several of his successors too. This inaugurated a turning point in state–church relations. Though the Holy See immediately excommunicated Steenoven, he obtained recognition from the Dutch political authorities. The church of the new archbishop, scattered over many parishes in the country,

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declared itself to be the Old Catholic Church, in true apostolic succession, and continued on an autonomous track. Soon two other bishops were elected for the restored dioceses of Haarlem and Deventer, in order to safeguard the traditional rules of episcopal consecration and ensure continuity.14 The creation of a semi-national church conflicted, of course, with the prevailing option of Catholic education abroad, because the foreign educational institutions attended by Dutch Catholics were always under the final supervision of the Holy See. Indeed, immediately after the election of Steenoven, the cathedral chapter of the Haarlem diocese intervened, fearing that his adherents would appropriate the provisions abroad for use by the schismatic church. This chapter, that had managed to survive as a private body, was responsible for one of the two Dutch residential colleges at Louvain, the Collegium Pulcheriae Mariae Virginis, or the College of Our Beautiful Virgin Mary, established for students from the dioceses of Haarlem, Leeuwarden and Groningen. The Haarlem chapter appointed two new Rome-friendly governors of the college and started an expropriation procedure before the University Court of Brabant, which it won. The Old Catholics soon ignored the Rome-bound colleges at Louvain, Rome, Douay and Cologne altogether and created their own humanities college at Amersfoort, a town in the neighborhood of Utrecht in which two-fifths of the population had remained Catholic. In 1725 this was raised to the status of a theological seminary for the Old Catholic Church.15 Tolerance and accommodation Although toleration is a key dimension of the historical image of the Dutch Republic, in the true and full sense of the word it had to wait for the Batavian Revolution of 1795 to be formally granted and implemented. However, from the early seventeenth century onwards religious minorities of many kinds survived under the regime of a more or less tacit and often moneyed connivance (conniventie) or permissiveness.16 In the spirit of what I have named the ecumenicity of everyday life, Catholic foundations and other permanent forms of cultural, charitable or educational organisation could be maintained and even created, as long as they were based purely on lay initiative, administered by laymen or lay women, had no proclaimed or visible Catholic outlook, and e­ xhibited no official link with the Catholic Church as a foreign or even native organisation.17 ­Catholics could therefore fund scholarships or grants for study abroad, and occasionally even for schools or boarding houses inside the Netherlands, provided they did not infringe upon the educational monopoly of the cities and provinces with regard to grammar schools, colleges and universities. Many scholarships were destined for students for the priesthood at Cologne or Louvain, the two late-medieval

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nearby universities that had been the usual home for Dutch students before the foundation of universities in the Northern Netherlands from 1575 onwards.18 As private foundations, such scholarships were not suppressed by the public authorities as long as no laws were transgressed. Some of these were pre-Reformation in origin. Their evolution shows how ecclesiastical aims were finally applied to secular objectives. To quote just one example: the foundation Vicarie Sancti Nicolai, established in 1501 at Winterswijk in the county of Zutphen, near the German border, is still in existence and active.19 Started as an ecclesiastical fund for members of the Van Basten Batenburg family, it continued after the Reformation providing grants for study abroad to members of this extensive and rather wealthy Catholic kinship network, in order to maintain the Catholic faith in the county. When one of its branches embraced the Reformation, regulations for an equitable and alternate distribution were added. Another foundation from the same county tells a different story. Egbert Spitholt (c. 1549–1627), a member of a prosperous and well-educated merchant family from the county’s capital Zutphen, had taken a master’s degree in theology at Cologne. After the final transition of his birth town to the Reformation in 1591 he became a canon of Antwerp cathedral and was even raised to the office of plebanus, the parish priest of that important church; in 1610 he drafted his will creating a grant at the Parvum Collegium Theologicum of Louvain, in the first place for students from his family, then from his hometown Zutphen, and finally for poor youngsters from Antwerp. In fact, only his nephew Willem, who lived with him at Antwerp when in 1625 he made his will, and one other family member started their studies with this scholarship; other relatives studied arts and law in the Northern Netherlands, at Deventer or Franeker, and preferred employment as lawyers or barristers, professions which, not being formal public offices, remained accessible to Catholics. Rather quickly the Spitholt scholarship disappeared from the view of the northern Catholics and became an endowment for poor students from Antwerp.20 The files of such scholarships conserved in the university archives of Louvain but never systematically analysed in this sense, would permit historians to follow closely how northern Catholics used these financial facilities at home or abroad for the protection of their educational and confessional interests. After the Reformation, private schools under Catholic masters and mistresses were quickly established, but forms of continued education (grammar or Latin schools) remained subject to authorisation by the local administration. Yet Catholic boarding houses for students existed in some places in the Dutch Republic throughout the early modern period, certainly in Leiden, apparently also in Amsterdam and, as we learn from a judicial procedure against a priest in Rotterdam, for a short time even at his home. Two of these initiatives are

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of more than local interest. In 1622 Jan de Meere (1588–1652), bachelor in theology of Cologne and the eldest of the six sons of a prosperous cattle farmer in Zuidermeer, near the town of Hoorn in West-Friesland, established a Dutch, French and Latin school for the Catholic children of his region, which remained overwhelmingly Catholic, in the farmhouse of his father. Since 1598 the farm had already served as a shelter for persecuted priests and as a local gathering place for the Catholic community; it was commonly called the Papennest (‘the priests nest’). In 1624 a complaint was made at the Court of Holland, and Jan had to take refuge temporarily at Louvain, where he entered the congregation of the Oratory. Having returned to his birth village in 1627, he resumed his pastoral work in the thirteen villages of his mission territory and at his flourishing school, with the connivance of the local authorities. In both tasks he was assisted by his three brothers who were also ordained priests, after their studies in Louvain, Mons (Hainaut) and under the French Oratorians in the college of Le Mans, at Angers University, and at St Magloire seminary in Paris. In 1638 the De Meere brothers, all members of the Oratory, used their personal funds to erect a new school building that served also as a presbytery. The school disappeared at the death of the youngest brother Jacobus de Meere in 1679.21 Jan’s reputation extended to Amsterdam where poet Joost van den Vondel (1587– 1679), a Mennonite converted to Catholicism, sang his merits in a poem under his portrait. Connivance was also the reason why the Latin school erected in 1643 at Noordwijk near Leiden could subsist. This was a Catholic boarding school housing about 30 pupils under the direction of Rector Jacob Verhagen. Though there were many Catholics in that place, the school would certainly have been closed if the rector had not married a Reformed woman. This justified the admission of six Reformed youngsters and the persistence of the school during his lifetime.22 Such forms of Catholic education normally escaped registration until a zealous bailiff fined the priest or the teacher after a denunciation, or intervened for the sake of public order after a complaint by a scandalised Reformed consistory. Mostly, however, only the priests, as ordained representatives of the Catholic Church, and those who in a private home attended Mass as a congregation, were put under scrutiny and fined. Catholic churches were tacitly admitted in most of the cities, rather early in the major towns of Holland and Utrecht, where initially town councils still conserved some Catholic members, later on also in the towns of the other provinces. The invasion of the Dutch Republic in 1672 by Louis XIV of France and the prince-bishop of Münster resulted in a temporary check on Dutch permissiveness towards the Catholics. In most of the occupied towns, including the episcopal sees of Utrecht and Deventer, they had benefited from the Catholic occupation by recovering the major churches after re-consecration. Considered as collaborators with the enemy or even traitors,

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they suffered for some decades an increased oppression, revived once again in 1685 when the religious policy of Louis XIV forced tens of thousands of Huguenots to flee to the Dutch Republic.23 However, by the turn of the seventeenth century the inter-confessional relations were again at the customary level of permissiveness towards the Catholics, the more so as the growing dissensions inside the Catholic community between the adherents to pontifical policy, and the more ‘national’ Jansenists, allowed the public authorities to make a barely disguised choice in favour of the Jansenist party, considered as a proto-national church able to preserve the interests of the Dutch state against the papacy and other Catholic powers. In fact, persuaded that it was their duty to ensure the continuity of the Catholic faith in the Northern Netherlands, those who remained faithful to the Catholic Church soon started creating social institutions that would warrant the preservation of their confessional community, in particular in the province of Holland, where the civil authorities were more resistant to the claims of the Reformed Church consistories. Catholic orphanages, alms-houses and institutions for lodging elderly men or women were founded by concerned citizens in the major towns. They were strictly private institutions, but duly provided with lawful regulations which could limit admission to Catholic beneficiaries alone. The best known of these foundations is probably the Maagdenhuis, the huge Catholic girls’ orphanage of Amsterdam, created in 1585, shortly after the transition of the city to the Reformation (1578), by some rich citizens. In 1629 it was relocated on the Spui, in front of the Begijnhof which as an enclosed Catholic lay institution has equally survived into modern times, despite the transformation of its original chapel into an Anglican church. At the time of writing it still serves as the main building for the University of Amsterdam.24 French Catholic refugees in the Dutch Republic The indulgence of the political authorities towards Gallicans and Jansenists went so far as to permit French Jansenists persecuted under royal policy to take refuge openly in the Dutch Republic in the early eighteenth century.25 The west European network of priests and intellectuals critical of the anti-Jansenist papal bull Unigenitus (1713) proved to be extremely important here, beginning with the omnipresent bishop of Babylon, Marie-Dominique Varlet. They were soon sustained by the newly ordained Old Catholic bishops and some zealous French priests like Abbé Gabriel Dupac de Bellegarde (1717–1789), a wealthy nobleman from Lyons who settled in the Netherlands and acted as the treasurer and the historian of the Appelants movement. After a first wave of arrivals of thirty French Carthusians in 1725, fifteen monks of the Cistercian abbey of Orval established a seminary in 1736 for some thirty students in philosophy and theology at Rhynwyck (or Rijnwijk), a noble residence on the

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Rhine near Utrecht. The next step was the foundation in 1753, under provincial authorisation, of a Catholic French and Dutch boarding school in Vianen, a small town that had been an autonomous possession of the Brederode family, pertaining to the high nobility. Having been acquired by the States of Holland, it had conserved some of its particular regime of toleration. This residential college run by the French Oratorians under the direction of father Honoré Mercadier (1695 to after 1764), a close friend of the Jansenist bishop of Senez, Jean Soanen, housed a small number of French and Dutch pupils, probably never more than ten, some of whom were destined for the priesthood.26 The collegeseminary was suppressed in 1762 when the provincial administration of Holland withdrew its authorisation, in the context of a renewed persecution of Protestants in France.27 Another significant fund was the famous Boîte à Perrette, a French Jansenistic foundation from the end of the seventeenth century that was later attached to the Old Catholic seminary at Amersfoort. In 1803 it was used to found the Société des Amis de Port-Royal.28 These cases show the potentially transnational nature of such initiatives. More generally we may conclude that the necessary privatisation of Catholic financial and institutional support has greatly promoted in the Netherlands the emancipation of the upper social layers of the Catholic laity from supervision by the ecclesiastical hierarchy, privileging at the same time the national interests above those of the world church. Dutch Catholics studying abroad After some hesitations, universities were formally set up in each of the provinces of the Dutch Republic as Protestant institutions for the advancement of learning.29 The choice of Leiden as the town where in 1575 the first university was to be established in the north, was probably due to the city’s status as a town which had experienced a long Spanish siege, next to William of Orange’s personal preference, not or much less for religious reasons, although the creation of a seminary of Reformed theology was an important issue for some of the rebels. Once the Reformation was introduced, the new universities of the Dutch Republic (Leiden, 1575; Franeker, 1585; Groningen, 1614; Utrecht, 1636; Harderwijk, 1648; Deventer, 1630),30 were confronted with a formidable dilemma. On the one hand they had to adopt the traditional university configuration and its centuries-old curricular structure, which would make them fashionable in the European world of learning, permitting the introduction of Calvinist orthodoxy in the faculties of theology without much trouble. On the other hand, the universities sought to serve the emerging Dutch nation with its new needs, embedded in an expanding economy and a demanding culture, and still uncovered by the traditional encyclopaedia of knowledge that in former centuries had been

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transmitted through the teaching of nearby universities as Cologne, Louvain or Paris. Many young students from the Dutch Republic, not only members of the nobility as in Germany and Central Europe, but mostly burgher sons from the rising middle classes, added therefore to their formal university training at home a broad range of skills to be learned during their peregrinatio academica in towns of learning and culture in Germany, England, France, Switzerland and Italy.31 They were often accompanied by brothers, cousins or friends, sent out to learn the skills of international trade or local crafts. In the Nationes Germanicae (German fraternities) of popular university towns like Orleans, Bourges, Angers or Caen in France, Padua in the Republic of Venice, or Siena in Tuscany, a formal regime of confessional tolerance for Catholics as well as Protestants prevailed. Most often the functions alternated between the confessions within the fraternity and special regulations were drafted with regard to degrees and their validity. This allowed many Dutch students in law, arts or medicine to practise a universal tolerance of learning that would soon be the academic ideal of the Republic of Letters and their new Dutch Republic itself. Besides, this regime of tolerance was probably one of the reasons why the Grand Tour was popular among the Catholic students of the new Protestant Republic too, because in those Catholic cities they could freely practise their confession in the liberal, ‘Dutch’ way, without falling victim to the religious excesses of the papacy, Propaganda Fide or the Holy Inquisition.32 Douay Even when deprived of a regime of tolerance, foreign universities could be exciting because of the change of the cultural climate they permitted. Take for instance Douay, the university created by King Philip II and inaugurated in 1562 for the French-speaking parts of his Netherlandic possessions, in connection with the erection of new bishoprics in the Netherlands in 1559–1561. Even more marked by a spirit of institutional autonomy than the University of Louvain, that of Douay, where the Jesuit order played a leading role, became the foremost instrument of the Catholic Reformation in the Netherlands until the annexation of the town of Douay by the king of France in 1668. The Jesuits were active in many towns of the Netherlands when the Revolt started. The first Dutch Jesuit and one of the best known worldwide was Petrus Canisius (1521–1597), a member of the order from 1543 and author of the bestselling catechism of Catholic doctrine according to the Council of Trent (the Summa doctrinae christianae, 1555), who was the son of a burgomaster of Nijmegen in the province of Gelderland. Dutch attendance at Douay University is not well known because of the lack of matriculation registers.33 Nevertheless, the popularity of Douay as an educational location and a stage on the Grand Tour in the last decades of the sixteenth

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century is well documented by the many inscriptions of Dutch students at Douay in Alba amicorum of former students and by other sources, such as correspondence, testimonials or degree certificates. The interest in Douay for Dutch Catholics was obvious: the town was still part of the Netherlands, no special authorisations were required, and degrees had a universal validity, but the town was at the same time located in a French-speaking territory that was profoundly imbued with French culture. For many, a stay at Douay meant therefore their first long-term contact with the French lifestyle that by and large imposed itself as the most fashionable among the European elites. One of these sources consists in the travel diaries of the Utrecht student Arnoldus Buchelius (1565–1641), a militant Catholic in his student years though he would later become a stern Calvinist. Having first matriculated at Leiden in 1584, he went in the same year to Douay for further study from April 1584 until June 1585, before continuing his peregrinatio to Paris and Rome. He had to return home in 1588 after his money was stolen. He settled himself in his birth-town Utrecht as a lawyer and became a noted antiquarian.34 In his diaries we discover his comrades and many interesting observations concerning his studies, including the association of Utrecht students at Douay, renewed in October 1584 and signed by twenty young people from Utrecht and Amersfoort, which suggest that there must have been a regular stream of students. In most cases it is difficult, if not impossible, to discover whether a stay at Douay was just a brief stage on the Grand Tour or served the purpose of an extended period of study. But the clear Catholic identity of Douay University and its important Jesuit character suggests that a prolonged stay was more likely, and it is quite plausible that the adherents of a profound Catholic Reformation made a conscious choice for Douay instead of Louvain or even Cologne. The curriculum of Blasius Boucquet, a son of the director of the Holland Mint at Dordrecht, illustrates such a choice.35 He attended the grammar school at Delft, then the college of Arras in Artois, and finally, as a law student, the University of Douay. He wanted to continue his studies and take his degree in law at Bologna, in the pontifical state, but needed the authorisation of his legitimate sovereign in case he decided to return and exercise his profession in the courts and councils of the king of Spain.To his request of 13 March 1591 for this authorisation and a small scholarship, he added a testimony in which the authenticity of his Catholic faith is stated, together with a declaration that his parents had greatly suffered for their Catholic faith because his father had lost his job as director of the Mint; this had been given to his brother-in-law who had changed religion. However, his father’s poverty must not be exaggerated because he was able to finance the Grand Tour of his other son Willem, who was a member of the German Nation at Orleans. There were some northern scholarships at Douay. Those provided for in the wills of two professors, Georgius Colvenerius (1564–1649) and Theodorus

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van Coeverden were used in 1662 to establish a small residential college, called the College or Seminary of Our Lady, for students of the archbishopric of Utrecht and the duchy of Cleves, under the auspices of the Propaganda Fide.36 But with the exception of incidental course material and some names of Gelderland students having obtained a scholarship in their college, little has until now been retrieved on the Dutch students at Douay University. Leiden Viewed from the present state of Europe, Douay is not situated even in a neighboring country of the Netherlands, but two frontiers away.Yet in the mind of the late sixteenth-century Holland student, and more generally for all the students from the northern provinces who remained faithful to their legitimate king, Douay was not a foreign university, it pertained to their own country, the original confederation of seventeen provinces.We must bear in mind this ambiguity when studying the Catholic colleges abroad. Douay, and also Louvain, were foreign for the supporters of the rebellion in the north after the destitution of King Philip II and the virtual declaration of independence by the rebellious States-General in 1581. Inside the United Provinces, however, many – especially the militant Catholics – continued to consider the southern provinces as an integral part of their state and hoped for their own liberation from the heretics in due time. Foreign powers thought similarly, although the necessary realpolitik forced them to assume the de facto independence of the new Republic. Nevertheless, from its creation Leiden University suffered a problem of legitimacy.37 The university was founded in the first days of 1575, two months after the relief of the town from the Spanish siege by the lieutenant-admiral of the fleet of the Beggars, on 3 October 1574. This foundation had been realised under the impetus of the leader of the Revolt, Prince William of Orange, who in 1572 had been appointed stadtholder (governor in the king’s name) of the county of Holland by the rebellious States. The coincidence of the Leiden victory, involving both political revolt and the struggle for recognition of the Reformed confession, and the foundation of the first university in the Northern Netherlands, with a faculty of Reformed theology, encouraged commentators to view the foundation of Leiden university as an act of militant Protestantism from the start. Until the formal independence of the Dutch Republic at the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the Emperor, followed by other Catholic princes of the Empire and elsewhere, refused to recognise Leiden University and the civil value of its degrees. In their eyes, Leiden was a nonconformist and non-Catholic foundation, created surreptitiously against the will of its legitimate sovereign, the king of Spain. The supporters of the Reformed faith in the founding bodies of the university had initially promoted its image as a theological school created to provide the new country with well-trained Calvinist ministers. Yet this motive

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encountered opposition within the rebellious state itself, especially among those who had not fought against Spain religionis ergo but above all libertatis ergo, and who refused to exchange the Catholic Inquisition for an equally repressive Calvinist Synod. This would have made the university unfashionable for the still predominantly Catholic masses, not to speak of the humanist elites of the new state with their liberal, Erasmian as well as Erastian attitude in religious matters. In fact, among the first professors outside the faculty of theology, some were still secretly if not openly Catholic. It took therefore some time to attract, next to the small bunch of students in Reformed theology, pupils from a convenient socio-cultural level open to the innovatory mentality and the humanist spirit required by the changing society and expanding economy of the new Dutch commonwealth. In 1592 the States of Holland and West-Friesland established a college and boarding house for students in theology, the so-called States College, the only residential college of Leiden University apart from the small college for French-speaking, ‘Walloon’ students in theology funded some years later. The humanist procurators of the university were certainly aware of the confessional problem. They soon attracted a number of prominent academics to ensure the university’s scholarly reputation, without examining their religious persuasions too closely. Among them were the Flemish philologist Justus Lipsius in 1578, the French law-student Hugo Donellus in 1579, in 1582 the Flemish botanist of Frisian origin Rembertus Dodonaeus, and in 1593 the French philologist Josephus Justus Scaliger, the most famous scholar of his time. Scaliger was the first to be offered a real research professorship without formal teaching duties, in order to exemplify the university’s status through his scholarly work and thereby attract students, but he was a convinced Calvinist, contrary to Lipsius who after some years returned to Catholicism and to Louvain. Even Petrus Bertius (1565–1629), a Flemish minister’s son and the third president of States College, was in Reformed eyes a Catholicising ­Protestant; he was dismissed in 1615, went to Paris and converted there to Catholicism. All this made Leiden a suitable university for Catholics who were not afraid of contact with heretics, hoping secretly that their active presence would contribute to their conversion. The first procurators of Leiden University, deputies for the province of Holland and of the town of Leiden, understood this. They were cultivated men and Christian humanists, mostly academically trained law students. Most notable among them was the nobleman Janus Dousa, university curator from 1575 to 1604. A man of remarkable intelligence, erudition and political insight, he is considered the real founder of the university. In Dousa’s eyes, the university had to be conceived not as a breeding-ground for Calvinist ministers but as the heart of the new nation’s cultural identity. Yet rather quickly after the Union of Utrecht (1579), concluded four years after

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the university’s foundation, a Reformed conviction became a prerequisite for obtaining a teaching job at Leiden University, and still more at the other universities of the Republic, stricter in confessional matters. Henceforth, until the end of the ancien régime, not only Roman Catholics, but Lutherans and Mennonites too remained excluded from the professoriate, unless they previously converted to the Reformed creed or bypassed this confessional obstacle by other means, such as political intervention. That was, for instance, the case of the Mennonite philosopher Burchard de Volder (1643–1709), who converted in 1670, and the equally Mennonite anatomist Govert Bidloo (1649–1713), who in 1694 enjoyed the protection of the king-stadtholder William III. Catholic scholars had to find jobs abroad, however, such as Gerard van Swieten (1700–1772), the famous physician who reformed medical teaching in Vienna. A proposal requiring an oath to the Reformed confession from all the students prior to their matriculation was, however, not implemented. In fact, although the theological faculties of the Dutch universities and colleges remained reserved to Reformed theology, none of the Dutch institutions of higher learning restricted general admission by means of a confessional oath, as was the case in many ­universities of the neighbouring countries. Biographical research shows that from the very beginning Catholic students matriculated even at the most Calvinistic institutions. This was, for instance, the case of the future apostolic vicar Joan van Neercassel, who matriculated at Utrecht University in 1644, when the Reformed theologian Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676) established Calvinist orthodoxy there. Because Neercassel proved his whole life to be addicted to religious controversy, this may have been a conscious move. Although the full universities did not encourage confessional division, they defended their civil autonomy in matters of religion with conviction by referring to their forum privilegiatum, the privilege of the academic court. In 1587 the Court of Holland started a procedure against the canon of the (by then formally forbidden) cathedral chapter of Haarlem,Willem van Assendelft (d. 1591), a licentiate in law and duly matriculated at Leiden University, who maintained in that university town a boarding house for Catholic students in which he organised exercises on the catechism of the Catholic doctrine by his fellow-countryman, the Jesuit Petrus Canisius. Leiden University reacted swiftly and strongly against this encroachment on its privileges by the provincial court, though it bypassed the issue of religion itself. The university won the case. The priest was authorised to continue his educational work, on the loosely formulated condition of ‘refraining from teaching anything that would be contrary to the Reformed doctrine’.38 In 1625, there were so many Catholic students at Leiden that the local Jesuits were able to erect a confraternity which subsisted until the 1660s.39 The academic privileges served to safeguard the presence of acting Catholic priests in the city of Leiden throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by means of their

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matriculation in the university registers. A scrupulous search of these registers combined with those of the academic tax exemption (the so-called recensielijsten), which proved the actual presence of a suppositus of the university in the town, has demonstrated that between 1698 and 1804 at least one hundred Roman Catholic priests were matriculated at Leiden University, most of them benefiting from the university’s forum privilegiatum and other material advantages, but some certainly also with the aim of continuing their studies. Remarkably, several among them matriculated as students in (Reformed) theology!40 Dole As well as Douay, another university in a remote region was closely attached to the Burgundian state of which the Netherlands initially were part: the University of Dole in Franche-Comté, founded in 1423 by the duke of Burgundy. This territory, the Empire-bound half of ancient Burgundy, remained Spanish until its final annexation by Louis XIV in 1678, after some terrible wars of conquest which made the territory difficult to access for many years. The inhabitants of the Netherlands were conscious of their political union with Franche-Comté, as appears in the existence of a Nation Belgique at the University of Dole, at least between the years 1651 and 1674. The older matriculation registers which covered the period to 1616 mentioned Netherlandic students and in the intermediate years several others took their degree at Dole.41 This nation was endowed with formal statutes, just like the Natio Germanica at Orleans, but its functions were apparently limited to that of a confraternity gathering in the Bibliotheca Belgica and providing the law students, who formed the essential part of its recruitment, with material support and book lending. Members had to be Catholic and of Netherlandic birth. In fact, 40 per cent of the 473 members listed in that period had already studied at Louvain and some of them can be found in the registers of the French universities of the Grand Tour or at Pont-à-Mousson, the Jesuit University of Lorraine.42 Just as in Douay, the Dutch students at Dole, limited in number, must have been convinced Catholics who aspired to a position in one of the royal courts, councils and institutions outside the Dutch Republic. Creating Catholic strongholds Prohibitive regulations Such movements towards Catholic universities inside the realm of Philip II were stimulated by the prohibitive regulations of the king himself.43 Following his removal by the rebellious States-General on 22 July 1581, he issued an edict

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on 26 March 1582 declaring that the students of the pretended University of Leiden, established without his permission and against the Catholic faith, would henceforth be considered as heretics or at least suspected of heresy, and were incapable of fulfilling any office within the Spanish monarchy.44 Conversely, on 12 March 1591, the States of Holland and Zealand forbade their subjects to attend the universities of Louvain, Douay or Dole, and any other university under the authority of the Spanish king, or to take a degree requiring an oath of fidelity to the ‘Roman errors and superstitions’. Such an oath would make law students unable to serve as barristers at the courts of Holland and Zealand.45 Infractions would be fined at a rate of 300 guilders for the benefit of the newly formed States College. Apparently, however, very few lawyers actually suffered from this interdiction, because all the German nations in France and Italy, where foreign students normally matriculated and took their degree under a special regime, were in fact excluded from this rule. This decision of the States of Holland was reiterated several times. On 4 April 1596 the States-General extended its control to the whole Republic, and raised the fine to 1,000 guilders annually.46 Because the country was in the midst of the war and its future was not certain, the enemy had to be identified with precision. Those who had studied under the Jesuits – i.e. at the universities of Douay, Dole and Cologne, and the great colleges of Antwerp, Münster, Emmerich (a town just across the border in the duchy of Cleves, but pertaining to the archdiocese of Utrecht) – or obtained their degree in a university under the Spanish regime, would be unable to occupy a public office. The Jesuitdominated University of Douay was esteemed particularly dangerous.47 After the Truce (1609–1621), a new interdiction was issued on 26 February 1622, this time directed at the parents, fined 100 guilders a month for each child attending ‘the schools in the territory of the king of Spain, in the countries of the enemies, or in other Jesuit colleges’.48 Obviously the universities were not the primary enemy any more, but all the colleges and grammar schools beyond the authority of the States-General. In fact, in the meantime not only the Jesuits but also other religious orders, such as the Franciscans, Recollects or regular canons of the Holy Cross had established a range of boarding schools in the many small autonomous territories that surrounded the still uncertain frontiers of the Dutch Republic.49 The early history of most of these schools remains rather vague, and matriculation registers are virtually non-existent, but indications in the surviving documents and local studies show that there is no doubt about the importance of these border colleges in the history of the Dutch Catholic community. The answers to these prohibitive regulations by the apostolic vicars at the head of the Holland Mission were unequivocal. They were supported by the Spanish king and by Pope Clement VIII himself who in 1603 expressed his

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opinion that a student of Leiden was ipso facto excommunicated.50 But instead of poisoning the inter-confessional relations further by inconsiderate exclamations and interdictions, the secular clergy started a twofold offensive in a positive sense, firstly by sending the Catholic students to the Catholic universities in the realm and to neighbouring Cologne, the best alternative in wartime, and secondly by founding residential colleges in the two principal university towns, Cologne and Louvain. Although Dutch Catholic lay people continued to send their sons to their local colleges and, for the arts, law and medicine, to the Protestant home universities, the public educational effort of the leaders of the Holland Mission was now essentially directed towards the universities and colleges they attended before the Reformation, in particular Louvain and Cologne. However, the educational picture, instead of being simplified, became more and more complicated, and slowly drifted away from its northern roots. Indeed, several imperatives had to be served at the same time: preserve the adherence to the Roman Catholic Church; ensure a Catholic education in an open atmosphere because of the necessary relations with the heretics; reconquer the Dutch Republic for Catholicism; restore Catholic orthodoxy itself in the sense of Trent; and fight any tendency towards intra-Catholic heresy (in the Dutch case Jansenism) for the sake of the necessary unity in front of the heretics. A complete renewal of the clergy was deemed compulsory. To safeguard their culture, confessional as well as national, additional ‘Holland colleges’, in fact seminaries, were set up with an outspoken missionary, conquering and strictly anti-Protestant purpose, three of them at Louvain, for the dioceses of Utrecht, Haarlem and ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Bois-le-Duc) respectively, and one at Cologne.51 Besides, two national seminaries existed at Rome. Next to the new Collegio Urbano of the Propaganda Fide, the ancient refuge and boarding house of the Dutch themselves still existed. That was the hospitium of Santa Maria dell’Anima, close to Piazza Navona. In 1552 it was converted into a seminary for all Germanics under the administration of the Jesuits, and called ­the ­Collegium Germanicum. Although often called ‘German’ in the nationally restricted sense of the word, this guest house had been founded in 1350 as a broadly ‘Germanic’ pilgrims’ hospice by a couple of benefactors from Holland’s oldest town Dordrecht and it was at first mainly used by the Dutch who in its chapel buried their only pope, the Utrecht-born Adrian VI (1459–1523). As the list of members of its confraternity shows, Dutch people from the Netherlands continued to use it as a guest house in considerable numbers after 1552.52 Besides, the lack of a strong central Catholic authority in the Holland Mission favoured the rise and maintenance of a supplementary educational network of lay origin, consisting of Dutch scholarships at foreign universities, small colleges founded by rich Dutch Catholics, and an important p­ articipation

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of Dutch pupils in the humanities colleges of the religious orders abroad, such as the Jesuits (Antwerp, Cologne, Emmerich, Münster), the Benedictines, or the Oratorians (Mechelen), not forgetting the Catholic participation in the Grand Tour.53 The Jansenist schism (1723) added to the complexity of the educational landscape, reinstalling in 1725 a schismatic Catholic college in the Dutch Republic itself. As a consequence, the Haarlem Pulcheria College at Louvain, administered by the schismatic Jansenist Petrus Melis, had lost most of its students around 1730, whereas the Utrecht Alticollense college was taken over by the anti-Jansenists.54 Cologne As early as 1603, the apostolic vicar and his assistants founded a residential college for students in theology from the archdiocese of Utrecht and the surrounding Dutch bishoprics in the university city of Cologne, for many centuries the cultural capital of the eastern Netherlands and the seat of the nuncio responsible for the north.55 By the second half of the sixteenth century, Cologne had proved its importance. The Jesuits had established their seminary in the city and it was the base from which they directed activities in the Low Countries, with the help of the first Dutch Jesuits themselves.56 Immediately after the takeover of power in the Northern Netherlands by Calvinist authorities, committed priests tried to secure the continuity of the Catholic Church by private educational initiatives in Cologne. As early as the 1580s Claes Wiggers Cousebant (or Vigerius), member of a wealthy Haarlem brewers family, a student in theology of Louvain and licentiate in theology of Cologne, organised a private seminary at his refuge in Cologne.57 After some decades, a new college was built in the Grosse Bodengasse. It was called the Collegium Alticollense (Hoher Hügel) because of its situation on a small hill.58 Though functioning from as early as 1602, and instituted by a notarial deed on 9 May 1603, it was officially inaugurated on 1 July 1613 for the education of Dutch students to the priesthood, in a missionary spirit faithful to the new orthodoxy of the Catholic Reformation. It was dedicated to the major Anglo-Saxon missionaries of the ancient Netherlands, the Saints Willibrord and Boniface who obtained at this point the status of national saints, able to represent and inspire the recapture of the fatherland for the Catholic faith. Simultaneously, the Cologne Jesuits transformed their Gymnasium Tricoronatum, one of the three great arts colleges of the university, into a leading institute for the formation of the Dutch lay elites. However, the laxist and probabilistic tendency of Jesuit theology motivated the Dutch clerical authorities to finally quit Cologne and transfer the formation of the Dutch clergy to the more orthodox and stern University of Louvain.59 Apostolic vicar Neercassel, a strong partisan of theological Augustinism, preferred for doctrinal reasons the students educated at Louvain.60 The most active protagonist of this transfer was

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the Jansenist François van Vianen (1615–1693), an anti-laxist theologian and president of the Pope college at Louvain, where normally a dozen of Dutch theology students were accommodated, at whose intention sixteen scholarships had been funded. Henceforth, only the students at Rome and Douay would escape the dangers of Jansenism. Huissen This transfer, from Cologne to Louvain, started in 1670 and the buildings of the Cologne college were sold in May 1673, its library and other possessions being moved to Dordrecht in the province of Holland. After the invasion of the Dutch Republic by the French army in early 1672, the public exercise of Catholicism had temporarily been restored in the occupied territories, under the spiritual authority of apostolic vicar Neercassel as intended archbishop. On Sunday 10 June 1672 he re-consecrated with great pomp the cathedral of Utrecht, an act that after the retreat of the French occupants in November 1673 made him for a while persona non grata in the Republic.61 In 1675, he established his residence in the small town of Huissen, in the bi-confessional duchy of Cleves, just across the border of the Republic. A women’s convent founded in 1448 under the protection of St Elisabeth, with a residence for the chaplain attached to the community, could now serve as a small boarding house.62 Between 1675 and 1680, some of the advanced Cologne students in theology followed the apostolic vicar to this refuge where they received their final formation under his close direction, in a spirit of pastoral service and doctrinal rigorism. Building on the presence of those literati, the municipality also created a short-lived Catholic grammar school in 1676. After the signature of the Peace of Nijmegen (just a two-hour walk from Huissen) between France and the Dutch Republic in 1678, and the Peace of St Germain on 29 June 1679 between France and Brandenburg, Cleves’ overlord, the apostolic vicar, could return to the Dutch Republic and in 1680 the seminary was moved to its final destination, Louvain. Paris For the best students, another option was available: St Magloire seminary at Paris, in the rue St Jacques (at present the Institut National des Sourds-Muets), under the direction of the rigorist wing of the Oratorians whose theological teaching had started there in 1640 and was strongly marked by Augustinism.63 Several leading members of the Dutch clergy were among their pupils, such as the future archbishop Petrus Codde in 1672, and in 1718 Cornelis-Johannes Barchman Wuytiers (1693–1733). In 1719 the latter would be ordained a priest at Senez in the French Alps by the local Jansenist bishop Jean Soanen, together with fifteen other Dutch candidates; he served afterwards as vice-president of

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the Pulcheria college at Louvain and became Old Catholic archbishop of Utrecht in 1725. In April 1726 Barchman wrote about the St Magloire seminary: ‘j’ai appris avec joie que c’était un des plus éclairés, des mieux réglés et des plus zélés pour la pureté de la foi et de la religion qui fût dans le royaume’.64 Louvain Around 1696 a list of the 308 secular priests active in the Holland Mission was prepared for the Holy See, indicating their pro- or anti-Jansenist spirit. Of 224 priests whose study place was mentioned, 163 (73 per cent) had studied at Louvain, twenty-eight (13 per cent) at Cologne, twenty-four (11 per cent) at Rome, four in France, three at Fulda, one at Mechelen and one at Münster. Among the 163 Lovanists, only twelve were markedly anti-Jansenist, whereas that was case of twenty-two out of the twenty-eight from Cologne and eighteen of the twenty-four from Rome. At the turn of the seventeenth century, Louvain clearly had become the dominant, almost exclusive, educational facility for Dutch secular priests, and their formation bore a decidedly rigorist mark.65 The choice of Cologne had not only been dictated by the historical links between this city and the provinces of the Northern Netherlands but also by the limits set to the relations between north and south during the ongoing war. Yet, many students from the north still went to Louvain. Sometimes, however, they used a pseudonym for safety reasons, as clearly appears from the aliases in the account book of the college of the Haarlem diocese.66 Young Neercassel, for instance, matriculated in 1643 under the name of ‘Nieuport’.67 Until the Peace of Westphalia separating definitively the northern from the southern provinces, Louvain was not considered a foreign town. It was one of the four major cities of the duchy of Brabant, where Dutch students from the coastal provinces and the duchy itself had always been numerous. Besides, it was a Flemish-speaking town. It was therefore quite normal that some leaders of the Holland Mission tried to recover the link with Louvain. As early as January 1602 a notarial deed confirmed the institution of a Dutch college for the northern dioceses at Louvain, though its realisation had to wait for the Truce (1609–1621), when the relations between north and south became easier. In 1604–1605 the college of St Willibrord or Bosch College had been instituted at Louvain in the Nieuwstraat by Nicolaus Zoesius (1564–1625), an Amersfoort-born canon of Tournay, then a councilor of the Grand Council at Mechelen, who was thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Trent. It had to serve as a grand seminary for future priests of the dioceses of Brabant, in particular ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Bois-le-Duc), a frontier town that was still under the authority of the Catholic Archdukes but would be definitely conquered by the north in 1629, the diocese becoming by then a mission territory.68 When in 1615 Zoesius was elevated to the episcopal dignity of Bois-le-Duc, he not only

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created a grand seminary in his episcopal town in 1617, but also renewed the Louvain college, in which he died ten years later during a visitation. Before the Revolt, and still more in later years, private persons, families and institutions from the northern provinces funded a large number of scholarships for arts students at the residential colleges and boarding houses of Louvain, in particular the colleges of the Castle, the Falcon, the Pig, the Lily, Viglius and the Holy Trinity (the latter founded in 1657 by the arts faculty to replace the Collegium Vaulxianum).69 The Pope college, founded in 1523 by the Utrechtborn Pope Adrian VI, served as a residential college for gifted Utrecht students in theology. On 6 November 1616, the cathedral chapter of the Haarlem bishopric, covering a sizable part of the province of Holland including the rapidly expanding metropolis of Amsterdam, established a seminary for the coastal dioceses of Haarlem, Leeuwarden and Groningen, called the Collegium Pulcheriae Mariae Virginis or in short Pulcheria, at Louvain on the Veemarkt, and inaugurated it in May 1617. In that first year, thirty-four Dutch students were matriculated at the university, among whom nineteen came from the province of Holland where Catholicism had maintained itself rather well.70 Cornelius ­Jansenius (1585–1638), the future professor of theology and bishop of Ypres, the godfather of Jansenism, was appointed its first president on 23 February1617, and continued in this role until his departure in 1624. In June 1617, he received his doctorate in theology.71 According to Jansenius, the college had ‘to educate priests able to resist by their acquaintance with theology and languages [i.e., Greek and Hebrew] the efforts of the Huguenots in Holland’.72 In 1649, thirty years later, thirty-eight (7 per cent) of the 542 students matriculated at Louvain came from the province of Holland, but we may add thirty-four students from the Generality Lands (essentially the northern part of the duchy of Brabant) recently annexed to the Dutch Republic, i.e., in total seventy-two, or 13.3 per cent. For the period 1645–1670 the account book of the Pulcheria college lists approximately twenty students per annum, most of them in the logica class. In later years the number of students from the north diminished. This may have been caused by the diversification of the supply of theological schooling. When in the early 1680s the students of the Cologne Collegium Alticollense migrated to Louvain, they were at first housed in the Pope college. But because of the persisting problems between president Van Vianen and the Holy See, a new, autonomous Dutch Collegium was built in 1683 in the Proefstraat (at present Naamsestraat) at the cost of 100,000 florins. It conserved the old Cologne name of Alticollense, and served for the students in theology from the dioceses of Utrecht, Deventer and Middelburg.73 At the same time, Neercassel restored discipline in the Pulcheria college and aligned it to the Pope college. Henceforth, all the Dutch students from Pulcheria and Alticollense, covering the whole Holland Mission, had to matriculate at Louvain

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University.Yet in 1679–1680, within a total of 449 matriculations in the whole university, the Dutch students numbered not more than nineteen (4.2 per cent), or thirty-seven (8.2 per cent) including the Generality Lands. The proportion of Holland students among the Dutch at Louvain rose during that period from 55 per cent to 75 per cent. Most probably the theology students from the other provinces went to other seminaries, colleges or universities, either in the Netherlands or abroad. Alongside this educational strategy, the apostolic vicar of the Missio Hollandica Philippus Rovenius (1572–1651) commenced a search in the 1620s for an institute of priests that, contrary to the existing religious congregations, in particular the Jesuits, would be unconditionally loyal to the local bishop and able to radically reform the secular clergy in the north in the sense of a new spirituality, focused on the Incarnation and on the local saints as role models for the regeneration of the Dutch Catholic community.74 In his Respublica Christiana (1648) he provided a blueprint for a restored and purified Catholic Church in which the secular priests were rated much higher than the regular clergy.75 Considering first the introduction of the Oblates of Carlo Borromeo, a congregation of secular priests founded in 1581, he consulted Jansenius on that matter.76 Jansenius had more confidence in the spiritual work of Pierre de Bérulle and recommended to him the French Oratorians. The Oratory was a large community of secular priests founded by Bérulle in 1611 in Paris, in a spirit of community service, Christocentric spirituality, individual autonomy and immediate obedience to the local bishop instead of the formula of a strictly organised religious congregation subordinate to the pope’s authority alone, such as the Jesuits. Founded explicitly for the care of the souls, the Oratory committed itself rather quickly to the teaching of humanities, and these two objectives taken together motivated the creation in 1626 of a sister organisation in the (Southern) Netherlands, intended also for missionary work in the north.77 Jansenius had already persuaded some individual priests from the north to join a residence of the Oratory in France. In Jansenius’s view, the Oratorians would rival more vigorously the Jesuits who from their Antwerp stronghold pervaded the territories in the north. He tried, in fact, to obtain for the Oratory the monopoly of the Latin schools in the Catholic Netherlands and anticipated also the incorporation of his own Holland college into the future Oratory of Flanders.78 The main issue at stake was the location of the theological f­ormation of the clergy: at closed seminaries or in the more open atmosphere of a u­ niversity? Should they be in everyday contact with their future opponents or educated strictly according to a pre-established programme? In Jansenius’s eyes, the Louvain residence of the Oratory of Flanders had to adopt the model of the Paris Collège de Sorbonne, as the main, secular theological college of the university. Whereas François Bourgoing, the first director of the Flemish Oratory dispatched

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from Paris, preferred using the archiepiscopal seminary at Mechelen, close to the ordinarius loci, for the formation of his students, Jansenius recommended placing the formation of the Oratorians at the heart of Louvain University, in the faculty of theology.The Louvain college of the Oratory was incorporated into the university on 24 October 1658. But Jansenius himself was soon frustrated in his ambitions for the Oratory, which he would have liked to use as CounterReformation shock troops for the spiritual recapture of the whole Netherlands, north and south. Mechelen The Louvain foundation of the Oratory in 1626 was soon followed by similar initiatives for theological renewal outside that institute such as that of vicar general Aubertus Miraeus (1573–1640) in Antwerp. Having established a residence at Mechelen (Malines) in 1629, the Oratorians took over the local humanities college (the Grootschool) in March 1630, obtaining the next year also one of the two theology chairs in the archiepiscopal seminary.79 Under the protection of Archbishop Jacques Boonen (1573–1655), the Mechelen seminary rapidly became a privileged institute for the theological formation, in the spirit of the Catholic Reformation, of the candidates for the priesthood, including many Dutch. However, the eviction of the Oratorians from their chair by the new Archbishop Andreas Creusen (1591–1666), on account of their Jansenist inclinations, was a severe setback. Yet, over the years many Dutch candidates continued to study at the Mechelen grand seminary, often after a stay at the Oratorian humanities college that remained one of the most secure refuges for the northern youth. A typical academic path of the later seventeenth century was that of Martinus de Swaen (1651–1713), son of a wealthy Amsterdam merchant and cousin of the future apostolic vicar Petrus Codde who had also studied at Mechelen. After his humanities at Mechelen which started at age eleven, Martinus went to Louvain seven years later to finish his philosophy at the Castle college, as magister artium in 1671; having matriculated at Paris University, he obtained there the degree of utriusque juris baccalaureus; after his ordination he became parish priest in a Holland village and obtained at the same time the licentiate in theology at Louvain; having been appointed president of Pulcheria in 1681, he finished his studies with a doctorate in theology in 1685.80 Another telling example is Petrus Johannes Meindaerts (1684–1767), the son of a lawyer from Groningen, who was consecrated Old Catholic archbishop of Utrecht in 1739 and secured the apostolic succession in his church by the consecration of two other bishops, for Haarlem and Deventer. He studied for four years in the college at Mechelen, and then returned in 1703 to his (Reformed!) home university in Groningen for three years of philosophy under the mathematician

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Johannes Bernoulli (1667–1748), to be continued for six years at the Viglius college in Louvain. Due to the absence of a bishop in the Holland Mission, he was ordained a priest in Ireland in 1716, together with some other Dutch candidates, by Bishop Luke Fagan of Meath.81 Rome The disagreements in the Missio Hollandica and the rising danger of Jansenism in the secular colleges at Louvain and Mechelen motivated part of the clergy to look for a college in Rome itself. Whereas the Hungarian, English and Scots Catholics already maintained colleges at Rome, the Netherlands did not, perhaps because of uncertainty about the outcome of the war. There is no evidence that the Collegium Germanicum, founded for the whole German Empire in 1552, served in the seventeenth century as a seminary for the Dutch.82 Apparently, the political separation of Germany and the Netherlands had also severed the educational links between the two national communities. Moreover, in 1622 the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide was established, addressing its missionary efforts expressly to the heretic Netherlands. In 1627 the Collegium Urbanum for the formation of missionaries was founded under the control of Propaganda Fide. But it was a small college, more or less earmarked for the communities of the near east, not of the Northern Netherlands. However, candidates were scarce, and in 1668 the Dutch apostolic vicar was invited by the Propaganda Fide to provide five of the scholarships in the Collegium Urbanum with Dutch students, to be educated in theology and eventually obtain a doctor’s degree at the college. This offer was much appreciated and the scholars were immediately sent, including two nephews of Bishop Neercassel himself. But almost from the start theological discussions emerged in the Netherlands between the former students from Louvain and those from Rome. Until the Batavian Revolution of 1795, about seventy-five Dutch pupils studied theology at the Collegium Urbanum, half of them finishing their studies with a doctorate in theology. Not more than five, including the future Old Catholic Bishop Cornelis Steenoven, passed over to the Jansenist party.83 In fact, having taken over the educational function of the old Collegium Germanicum for the Dutch, the Collegium Urbanum played a considerable part in the genesis of the split between the Roman Catholics and the Old Catholics in the Netherlands, not only because of the direct influence of Roman policy on the Mission, but also because the much more numerous Louvain graduates were inclined to discriminate against the Romans in the distribution of clerical offices in the fatherland.84

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Four educational strategies As a result of the dispersion of the students, the secretive character of their movements and the more or less private nature of the sources regarding the first decades of clandestine Catholicism, it remains difficult to sketch a global picture of the formation of the Dutch clergy abroad. In spite of lists of students at some individual colleges, a systematic survey of candidates for the priesthood in the first half of the seventeenth century does not yet exist, the less so as the archives of apostolic vicar Philippus Rovenius have apparently been lost in one of those bailiff’s operations against the highest Catholic leaders that continued to occur until the mid-seventeenth century. Still, Rovenius’s professional journal, the Manuale, has been conserved. For the period 1615–1651 it mentions a great number of students for the priesthood not only at Cologne and Louvain where the Missio Hollandica maintained colleges, and at Douay University, but also at the grand seminary of Antwerp, at that of the Oratory in Paris, at the Jesuit college of Emmerich and even at Passau in Germany.85 How do these observations fit into the basic question of this chapter, that of the educational strategies of the Dutch Catholics?86 Globally, four strategies may be distinguished. The first strategy was heavily influenced by the structure of the educational system itself. The first choice to be made was always that of a grammar school, a humanities college or ‘Latin school’, as it was called in the United Provinces. In so far as Catholic parents did not simply send their sons to the local grammar school without any further reflection, which must have been the most obvious option for those who did not possess sufficient means to make a different choice and in towns where public life was not really marked by confessional aggression, this choice was very much determined by the casual implantation of the religious orders, sometimes aided by locally available grants or Catholic scholarships. Where Jesuits exercised authority, the children went to a Jesuit college abroad. In parishes maintained by secular priests, the secular colleges in frontier towns or at Louvain University were the obvious option. The choice of a university college at the higher level followed the same logic. Because the grammar schools and arts colleges were normally incorporated in the university, there was no reason to look elsewhere. That was the case at Cologne and, for the Jesuits for instance, at Pont-à-Mousson or in some minor German universities under their administration, but, mutatis mutandis, also in secular Louvain, where the grand arts colleges (called paedagogia) functioned as a vestibule for the entrance at the higher faculties. The second strategy was opposed to the first, because it implied the conscious immersion, with an emphatically apologetic finality, of Catholic students in a Protestant environment, some of them obviously acting as ultras. This implied education at home, not in foreign countries. From the start of

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the confessional divisions, this aggressive counter-offensive had its supporters, because many Catholics were not ready to submit to the public violence of the new religion or to let them spoil their sacred places and the treasures they had collected and donated to their church over the centuries. Their desire was to re-occupy as soon as possible all the places they considered the property of their community, sometimes even of their family. In educational terms this meant that their offspring went to equally aggressive institutions, ready to combat the new rulers. For this attitude a strong religious ally was always ready and available: the Church of Rome, the papacy, the international community of religious orders as opposed to the national or provincial Reformed Church. The secular clergy, including the Jansenists, started this counter-offensive from the university strongholds of Cologne and Louvain, or through Propaganda Fide at Rome. The religious orders, in particular the Jesuits, could rely upon their own international organisation and its huge infrastructure. The important humanities colleges at Bois-le-Duc, Roermond, Maastricht, and later on those at Antwerp and Louvain, but also the schools of Münster in Westphalia, at Emmerich and further in the Holy Roman Empire, the universities of Douay and Pont-à-Mousson with their facilities for Dutch students, cooperated together for the formation and training of a militant elite, laymen or priests, convinced that the recapture of the country for the Catholic faith would be soon within reach. Apologetic literature, spectacular conversions, miracles, prophecies, controversy, forms of everyday resistance; everything could be a useful instrument to achieve that aim. The third strategy was a mixture of the first two. It supposed a first choice of a reliable Catholic institution, in order to lay the foundations for a self-conscious Catholic attitude, but assumed that this could be followed by attendance at one or more Protestant institutions, either in the course of a peregrinatio academica in foreign countries, or as a roundtrip in one’s own country – an option that is clearly discernible in the curriculum studiorum of many young Dutch Catholics of that time. Obviously, such a strategy served the integration of a student in the multi-confessional context of his country more than involvement in the controversies between the conflicting confessions. It privileged socialisation in the local or national elites or efficient forms of professionalisation above religious conflict. The fourth strategy would be that adopted by parents with little interest in confessional matters. In this case the choice of the student (or his parents) was entirely determined by non-religious parameters: the proximity of the school or the college, the wealth of the parents, available civic scholarships or grants, the cost of graduation, the reputation of the teachers or professors, the teaching matters, the social status of the institute’s rules and customs and (where they existed) of its fraternities, not to speak of an important factor that

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is very difficult to measure: the student’s own curiosity for anything new, at home or abroad. We should therefore not reduce the problem to a check-list of simple choices. In the Netherlands, many students had several educational alternatives at their disposal, and their final decision depended not only on the choices consciously or unconsciously made beforehand for them by their families, their social context or the availability of suitable institutions, but also on students’ own aspirations with regard to the defense of the truth, social cohesion, political peace, cultural identity and intellectual achievement.

Notes

1 For a general overview of the history of the Dutch Republic: J. I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall (1477–1806) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). For an in-depth analysis focused on its cultural and religious dimensions: W. Frijhoff and M. Spies, 1650: Hard-Won Unity, trans. Myra Heerspink Scholz (Assen and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 2 C. H. Parker, Faith on the Margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); C. Kooi, Calvinists and Catholics during Holland’s Golden Age: Heretics and Idolaters (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 3 This chapter focuses on the secular clergy. It must be remembered that an important number of mission stations in the Northern Netherlands were in the charge of the regular orders, in particular those of the Jesuits, and students often went in that case to their universities. Future members of these orders received their education and training at their own seminaries, mostly in the Southern Netherlands, Germany and Italy. For the Dutch Jesuits, see F. van Hoeck, Schets van de geschiedenis der jezuïten in Nederland (Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1940); P. Begheyn, A Guide to the History of the Jesuits in the Netherlands 1540–1850 (Nijmegen:Valkhof Pers, 2006). 4 W. Frijhoff, ‘Kalvinistische Kultur, Staat und Konfessionen in den Vereinten Provinzen der Niederlande’, in P. C. Hartmann (ed.), Religion und Kultur im Europa des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 109–42; W. Frijhoff, ‘Was the Dutch Republic a Calvinist community? The state, the confessions, and culture in the early modern Netherlands’, in A. Holenstein, T. Maissen and M. Prak (eds), The Republican Alternative: The Netherlands and Switzerland Compared (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), pp. 99–122. On the early developments: A. Duke, Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (London and Ronceverte: Hambledon Press, 1990). 5 On the regents’ political ideology and praxis, see H. Schilling, ‘Der libertär-radikale ­Republikanismus der holländischen Regenten: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des politischen Radikalismus in der frühen Neuzeit’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 10 (1984), 498–533. 6 In spite of its imperfections, the most important study of the confessional ratios in the Netherlands still is J. A. de Kok, Nederland op de breuklijn Rome-Reformatie. Numerieke aspecten van Protestantisering en Katholieke herleving in de Noordelijke Nederlanden 1580–1880 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1964). It includes full documentation of the available figures and has been the basis for the excellent synthesis by H. Knippenberg, De religieuze kaart van Nederland: Omvang en geografische spreiding van de godsdienstige gezindten vanaf de Reformatie tot heden (Assen and Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1992). 7 A. Th. van Deursen, Bavianen en slijkgeuzen: Kerk en kerkvolk ten tijde van Maurits en Oldenbarnevelt (3rd edn, Franeker:Van Wijnen, 1988) pp. 128–60, has proposed a fundamental revision of the problem of the undecided and explored the importance of the numbers of liefhebbers. 8 J. Briels, Zuid-Nederlanders in de Republiek 1572–1630. Een demografische en cultuurhistorische studie (Sint Niklaas: Danthe, 1985); P. Dibon, ‘Le Refuge wallon précurseur du Refuge huguenot’, XVIIe Siècle, 76–77 (1967), 53–74 [reprint in P. Dibon, Regards sur la Hollande du Siècle d’Or (Naples: Vivarium, 1990), pp. 315–41]; W. Frijhoff, ‘Migrations religieuses dans les Provinces-Unies avant le Second Refuge’, Revue du Nord, 80 (1998), 573–98 ; Israel, The Dutch Republic, pp. 307–18.

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9 Parker, Faith on the Margins, pp. 24–68; J. Pollmann, Catholic Identity and the Revolt of the Netherlands 1520–1635 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 10 M. G. Spiertz,‘Jeugd- en vormingsjaren van Johannes van Neercassel, apostolisch vicaris (1663– 1686)’, Archief voor de geschiedenis van de katholieke kerk in Nederland [hereafter A.G.K.K.N.], 18 (1976), 169–97. 11 A list of the students, including twenty Dutch, in A. W. Goisnard, L’École de théologie de NotreDame des Ardilliers de Saumur (MS in the Archives of the Oratory, Paris); A. W. Goisnard, ­‘L’Installation des Oratoriens aux Ardilliers de Saumur’, Oratoriana (May 1969), 51–91; J. Maillard, ‘L’Oratoire de Saumur et les protestants au XVIIe siècle’, in F. Lebrun (ed.), Saumur, capitale européenne du protestantisme au XVIIe siècle (Fontevraud: Abbaye royale, 1991), pp. 125–35. 12 A. Miraeus, Regulae et constitutiones clericorum in congregatione viventium (Antwerp: Trognaesius, 1638), p. 126. 13 H. G. J. Buijks, ‘Pieter Codde (1648–1710), een Amsterdams koopmanszoon wordt vicarius apostolicus (1648–1688)’, A.G.K.K.N., 20 (1978), 141–97. 14 P. Polman, Katholiek Nederland in de achttiende eeuw (3 vols, Hilversum: Paul Brand, 1968). An extensive, partisan, yet rather well-informed history of Jansenism and the Old Catholic Church in the Netherlands was written in English as early as 1858 by the Anglican scholar J. M. Neale, History of the So-called Jansenist Church in The Netherlands (new edn, New York: AMS Press, 1958); equally from an Old Catholic perspective: B.W.Verhey, L’Église d’Utrecht (Amersfoort: Stichting Centraal Oud-Katholiek Boekhuis, 1984). On the social history of Jansenism more generally: W. Doyle, Jansenism: Catholic Resistance to Authority from the Reformation to the French Revolution (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999). 15 F. Smit, ‘Die Gründung des altkatholischen Priesterseminars in Amersfoort’, Internationale kirchliche Zeitschrift (hereafter I.K.Z.), 66 (1976), 129–48 ; B. A. van Kleef, ‘Die Priester­ seminare der Utrechter Kirche seit dem Konzil von Trient’, I.K.Z., 47 (1957), 75–105; F. Smit, J. Visser and A. J. Glazemaker, 250 jaar Oud-katholiek Seminarie (Utrecht: Stichting Oud-katholiek Seminarie, 1975); F. Smit, ‘Präsidenten, Professoren und Präfekten am altkatholischen Priesterseminar in Amersfoort während der Jahre 1723 bis 1823’, I.K.Z., 73 (1983), 246–60; A. Berlis, ‘Dar Collegium Alticollense in Leuven und das Seminar der Kirche von Utrecht in Amersfoort im 17.-20. Jahrhundert’ (http://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/3121). Complete lists of students as of 1722 in Utrechts Archief, Oud-Bisschoppelijke Clerezie (inv. Bruggeman), no 875: from 1730 annually between three and ten new pupils, after 1800 virtually always less than five (N=687 between 1722 and 1877). 16 On the different varieties of permissiveness, connivance and toleration, see W. Frijhoff, ‘Dimensions de la coexistence confessionnelle’, in C. Berkvens-Stevelinck, J. Israel and G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes (eds), The Emergence of Tolerance in the Dutch Republic (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 213–37; W. Frijhoff, ‘Religious toleration in the United Provinces: from “case” to “model”’, in R. Po-Chia-Hsia and Henk van Nierop (eds), Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 27–52; W. Frijhoff, ‘Religion and toleration in Old and New Netherland’, in J. Jacobs and L. H. Roper (eds), TheWorlds of the Seventeenth-Century HudsonValley (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2014), pp. 197–224. 17 W. Frijhoff, Embodied Belief: Ten Essays on Religious Culture in Dutch History (Hilversum: Verloren, 2002). 18 On the universities of the Holy Roman Empire in the late Middle Ages and the sixteenth century, including Louvain and Cologne, see the numerous publications of R. C. Schwinges, synthesised in his Students and Scholars: A Social and Cultural History of Medieval German Universities (Leiden: Brill, 2008). On Louvain: E. Lamberts and J. Roegiers, Leuven University, 1425–1985 (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1988). 19 C. Gietman and A. Verschoor, Een goed voor de eeuwigheid: De Gelderse vicarie Sancti Nicolai, 1501–2011 (Westervoort: Van Gruting, 2011). 20 W. Frijhoff, ‘Zutphense studenten in het buitenland van de middeleeuwen tot in de vroegmo­ derne tijd’, Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie, 66 (2012), 9–36. 21 J. C. van der Loos, ‘De opleiding der geestelijkheid in de Noord-Nederlandsche Missie sinds het

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Concilie van Trente’, Bijdragen Bisdom Haarlem (hereafter B.B.H.), 60 (1948), 1–112, at 38–9; H. Kollis, Uit de historie van Berkhout (Berkhout: Dorpsfonds, 1968), pp. 191–7. 22 Van der Loos, ‘De opleiding’, pp. 35–6. 23 B. Forclaz, Catholiques au défi de la Reforme: La coexistence confessionnelle à Utrecht au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Champion, 2014). 24 H. C. de Wolf, De kerk en het Maagdenhuis:Vier episoden uit de geschiedenis van katholiek Amsterdam (Utrecht & Antwerp: Het Spectrum, 1970); R. Meischke, Amsterdam: Het R.C. Maagdenhuis, het huizenbezit van deze instelling en het St. Elisabeth-gesticht (The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij, 1980). 25 Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 2504, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du clergé janséniste d’Hollande où sont compris les différents établissements faits dans ce pays-là par les Jansénistes refugiez françois, 1753. 26 Reims, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 1371, no. 8, pp. 243–52, Lettre à un ami sur l’établissement des Pères de l’Oratoire en Hollande. 27 F. Smit, ‘De kostschool van de Franse oratorianen te Vianen (1753–1762)’, Het Land van Brederode, 11 (1986), 20–9; F. Smit, Franse oratorianen en de Cleresie in de jaren 1752–1763 (Zeist: Stichting Oud-katholiek Seminarie, 1981). 28 N. Lyon-Caen, La Boîte à Perrette: Le jansénisme parisien au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 2010). 29 For the general picture, see: W. Frijhoff, ‘Patterns’, in H. de Ridder-Symoens (ed.), A History of the University in Europe,Volume II, Universities in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 43–110, and for the Dutch university landscape, W. Frijhoff, ‘A watchful symbiosis: Protestantism, scholarship and higher education as (inter)national assets of the Dutch Republic’, in Wolfgang Flügel (ed.), Spurenlese:Wirkungen der Reformation auf Wissenschaft und Bildung, Universität und Schule (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2014), pp. 107–29. 30 The institution of higher education at Deventer had been set up as a full university but failed to obtain a charter from the Provincial States and remained therefore a so-called ‘illustrious school’ without graduation rights. See W. Frijhoff, ‘Het Athenaeum van Deventer: een stedelijke hogeschool en haar studenten’, in H. W. Blom, H. A. Krop and M. R. Wielema (eds), Deventer denkers: De geschiedenis van het wijsgerig onderwijs te Deventer (Hilversum: Verloren, 1992), pp. 9–27. 31 For a synthesis with bibliographical references: W. Frijhoff, ‘Éducation, savoir, competence: les transformations du Grand Tour dans les Provinces-Unies à l’époque moderne’, in R. Babel and W. Paravicini (eds), Grand Tour. Adeliges Reisen und europäische Kultur vom 14. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert. Akten der internationalen Kolloquien in derVillaVigoni 1999 und im Deutschen Historischen Institut Paris 2000 (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2005), pp. 609–35. 32 For a case study on one of the major intellectuals of the Dutch Golden Age, illustrating this point, see: W. Frijhoff, ‘Pieter de la Courts reisjournaal (1641–1643) als ego-document’, and ‘De reisnotities (1641–1643) van Pieter de la Court: Uit het manuscript bezorgd en van commentaar voorzien’, in H. W. Blom and I. W. Wildenberg (eds), Pieter de la Court in zijn tijd: Aspecten van een veelzijdig publicist (Amsterdam & Maarssen: APA-Holland University Press, 1986), pp. 11–34 and 35–64. 33 C. Lefebvre, ‘Douai’, in Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, vol. 14 (Paris, 1960), col. 703–32; G. Dehon, L’Université de Douai dans la tourmente (1635–1765): Heurs et malheurs de la faculté des Arts (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1998); H. de Ridder-Symoens, ‘Étude du rayonnement national et international d’une université sans livre matricule: le cas de l’université de Douai (1559–1795)’, in M. Bideaux and M.-M. Fragonard (eds), Les Échanges entre les universités européennes à la Renaissance (Genève: Champion, 2003), pp. 45–60. 34 J. Pollmann, Religious Choice in the Dutch Republic.The Reformation of Arnoldus Buchelius (1565– 1641) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999); S. Langereis, Geschiedenis als ambacht: oudheidkunde in de Gouden Eeuw: Arnoldus Buchelius en Petrus Scriverius (Hilversum: Verloren, 2001). Digital access to the manuscripts of his Monumenta and Inscriptiones: http://buchelius. library.uu.nl/. 35 Utrechts Archief, OKN, Verzamelde stukken (toegangsnummer 88), no. 664, fos. 103–204.

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36 Utrechts Archief, Apostolische vicarissen van de Hollandse Zending, no. 15; A. Jansen, ‘Het college van de Propaganda te Douai’, in Archief voor de geschiedenis van het Aartsbisdom Utrecht (hereafter A.A.U.), 12 (1884), 446–54; J. H. Hofman, ‘Het seminarie van O.L. Vrouw te Douai’, A.A.U., 26 (1900), 60–9. 37 W. Otterspeer, Groepsportret met Dame, I: Het bolwerk van de vrijheid. De Leidse universiteit, 1575–1672 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2000); H. L. Clotz, Hochschule für Holland: die Universität Leiden im Spannungsfeld zwischen Provinz, Stadt und Kirche, 1575–1619 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1998). 38 P.  A. M. Geurts, Het eerste grote conflict over de eigen rechtspraak der Leidse universiteit (Utrecht and Antwerp: Het Spectrum, 1964); Otterspeer, Groepsportret met Dame, I, pp. 124–6. 39 L. J. Rogier and P. Brachin, Histoire du catholicisme hollandais depuis le XVIe siècle (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1974), p. 58. The States-General prohibited repeatedly the activities or (still in 1641) even the presence of Jesuits on the Dutch territory. However, very soon a network of Jesuit mission stations came into being that could be secretly maintained in spite of the many tensions with the secular missionaries. 40 H. E. van Berckel, ‘Priesters, ingeschreven aan de Leidsche Hoogeschool gedurende de XVIIIde eeuw’, B.B.H., 23 (1898), 415–38. 41 W. Frijhoff, ‘L’ “Album Inclytae Nationis Belgicae” de l’Université de Dole en Franche-Comté, 1651–1674’, Lias: Sources and Documents Relating to the Early Modern History of Ideas, 5 (1978), 87–151. 42 W. Frijhoff, ‘Katholieke Noordnederlandse studenten aan de universiteit van Pont-à-Mousson in Lotharingen (1582–1717)’, Gens Nostra, 34:2 (1979), 61–5. 43 Elements of the following paragraphs have been presented previously in W. Frijhoff, ‘Politiques discriminatoires en pays protestant: les étudiants catholiques néerlandais (fin XVIe-XVIIe siècle)’, in P. Ferté and C. Barrera (eds), Étudiants de l’exil: Migrations internationales et universités refuges (XVIe-XXe siècles) (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2009), pp. 37–54. 44 P. C. Molhuysen (ed.), Bronnen tot de geschiedenis der Leidsche Universiteit, I (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1913), pp. 100*–102*. 45 C. Cau (ed.), Groot Placaet-Boeck, I (The Hague: Wed. Hillebrandt, 1658), pp. 223–4. 46 J. D. M. Cornelissen (ed.), Romeinsche bronnen voor den kerkelijken toestand der Nederlanden onder de apostolische vicarissen 1592–1727, I (1592–1651) (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1932), p. 38, no. 45. 47 N. Japikse (ed.), Resolutiën der Staten-Generaal van 1576 tot 1609, vol. 8 (1593–1595) (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1925), pp. 364 (May 24, 1594), 377 (January 10, 1595). See Nuncio Bentivoglio to Secretary of State Scipione Borghese, 29 September 1612 in Cornelissen, Romeinsche bronnen, I, p. 187, no. 245. 48 Utrechts Archief, OKN, Verzamelde stukken (toegangsnummer 88), no. 410: ‘les écoles sises dans les territoires du roi d’Espagne, dans les pays ennemis, ou d’autres collèges des jésuites’. 49 Cf. T. Clemens, ‘Een onbedoeld kind van de revolutie: veranderingen in de opleiding van priesters voor de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk van de Noordelijke Nederlanden na 1795’, Trajecta, 3 (1994), 307–28 (map on p. 309). For example: H.W. Fortgens and P. J.W. Beltjens, ‘De Latijnse School te Culemborg’, Bijdragen en mededelingen ‘Gelre’, 53 (1953), 91–148. 50 P. A. M. Geurts, ‘Het gewetensconflict van de katholieke studenten aan de Leidse universiteit, ± 1600’, in Voor Rogier. Een bundel opstellen van oud-leerlingen de hoogleraar bij zijn afscheid aangeboden (Hilversum and Antwerp: Paul Brandt, 1964), pp. 65–79. 51 J. F. Vregt, ‘De vroegere Collegiën of Seminariën tot opleiding van geestelijken voor de Hollandsche Missie’, B.B.H., 8 (1880), 1–55, 256–319, 337–420; E. Reusens, ‘Documents relatifs à l’histoire de l’université de Louvain (1425–1797)’, Analectes pour servir à l’histoire ecclésiastique de la Belgique, 19 (1883–84), 129–39 (‘s-Hertogenbosch), 150–8 (Haarlem), 346–57 (Utrecht); Van der Loos, ‘De opleiding’. 52 Liber confraternitatis B. Marie de Anima Teutonicoum de Urbe (Rome: Propaganda Fide, 1875; reprint Nabu Press, 2010); the restricted ‘German’ interpretation in A. J. Schmidlin, Geschichte der deutschen Nationalkirche in Rom S. Maria dell’ Anima (Freiburg: Herder, 1906); P. Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum in Rom und die Germaniker: Zur Funktion eines römischen Ausländerseminars (1552–1914) (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1984). In current German literature, the

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Dutch origin of the hospice and the special link with the Netherlands are often overlooked. 53 For current work on these colleges see E. Put, ‘L’Invasion des collèges? Les écoles latines dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux et leur visibilité archivale (1585–ca 1700)’, XVIIe Siècle, 60 (2008), 483–94. 54 ‘Rapport adressé, en 1730, au Souverain Pontife Clément XII par le Cardinal Thomas-Philippe d’Alsace de Boussu’, Analectes pour servir à l’histoire ecclésiastique de la Belgique, 12 (1875), 146–51. 55 Original documents on the Dutch colleges at Cologne and Louvain in Utrechts Archief, Oud-bisschoppelijke Clerezie, no. 854–70 (ancient inv. Bruggeman, no. 319–38); Apostolische vicarissen van de Hollandse Zending, no. 131; Collectie Rijsenburg, no. 546–58. See also: P. Gerlach, ‘Stukken betreffende opleiding der geestelijkheid in de Hollandse Missie’, A.A.U., 67 (1948), 15–133 (with lists of students). See further the conclusions of G. Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen: Bisschoppen en priesters in de Republiek (1663–1705) (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2003), pp. 70–9, including a biographical catalogue. 56 J. Hansen (ed.), Rheinische Akten zur Geschichte de Jesuitenordens, 1542–1582 (Bonn: Behrendt, 1896). 57 B. A. Vermaseren, ‘Het z.g. seminarie van Nicolaus Wiggers Cousebant te Keulen’, A.A.U., 65 (1945), 253–77; D. van Heel, Nicolaas Wiggers Cousebant als seculier priester 1555–1603 en als minderbroeder 1603–1629 (Haarlem: s.n., 1929). 58 S. Schotten, ‘Het college Alticollense te Keulen en zijn eerste bewoners’, in B.B.H., 61 (1946), 137–48 (with a catalogue of pupils from 1602); H. Heussen, ‘Das Collegium Hollandicum in Köln’, I.K.Z., 22 (1932), 123–6. 59 M. G. Spiertz, ‘Les Relations de Neercassel et des théologiens de Louvain Van Vianen et Huygens concernant la formation des prêtres’, in Actes du Colloque sur le Jansénisme organisé par l’Academia Belgica, Rome, 2 et 3 novembre 1973 (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1977), pp. 47–63. 60 G. Ackermans, ‘Bisschoppelijk benoemingsbeleid en priesterlijke respons: Clericale carrièrepatronen in de Hollandse Zending’, Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse kerkgeschiedenis, 14 (2011), 132–45. See also the report drafted by the Jansenist intellectual Pasquier Quesnel on the study programme of Alticollense, March 1683: J. A. G. Tans, Pasquier Quesnel et les Pays-Bas: Correspondance (Paris: Vrin, 1960), pp. 51–6; L. Kenis and M. Lamberigts (eds), L’Augustinisme de l’ancienne faculté de théologie de Louvain (Louvain: Peeters, 1994). 61 During the occupation by the king of France and the prince-bishop of Münster of three of the seven Dutch provinces (Gelderland, Overijssel and Utrecht) in 1672–1673, attempts were made by the Jesuits, Oratorians and other religious orders to establish colleges in the conquered towns, but ultimately to no avail. 62 E. J. Th. A. M. A. Smit, ‘Neercassel en Huissen’, A.G.K.K.N., 17 (1975), 203–25; Neercassel, Huissen en de Hollandse Zending (Huissen: Historische Kring Huessen, 1979). 63 There is no suitable monograph on this important institution and no lists of students survive. However, in the correspondence of the Dutch apostolic vicars and other high clergy many references to Dutch students at St Magloire can be found, especially among those prone to rigorism. See Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 1208, a series of conferences held at St Magloire in 1643 on the excellence of priesthood. 64 Utrechts Archief, Archives de Port Royal, no 3926 (Barchman to Séraucourt); P. J. Maan, Das Episkopat des Cornelis Johannes BarchmanWuytiers, Erzbischof van Utrecht 1725–1733 (PhD thesis, Universität Bern, 1941). 65 Roma, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Fondo Gesuitico, vol. 1103, no. 2, fos. 63vo.–107ro.: [A. van Wijck], Informatio generalis, specialis et magis specialis de sacerdotis missionariis per Belgium Foederatum. The list is clearly incomplete for the eastern and northern parts of the Dutch Republic, where the influence of Cologne and other German institutions must have been greater. 66 Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Universiteitsarchief, Oude Universiteit, Fonds Gent, MS 305-b: Catalogus studiosorum Collegii Hollandici (starting in 1629). 67 Spiertz, ‘Jeugd- en vormingsjaren’, pp. 179–80.

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68 However, the bishopric of Roermond, at present in the (Northern) Netherlands, remained after the Revolt part of the Southern Netherlands. The reform bishop Wilhelmus Lindanus established in 1581–1588 its first theological seminary in his bishop’s town; a re-foundation was realised in 1619 and again in 1695. See P. W. F. M. Hamans, Geschiedenis van het seminarie van het eerste bisdom Roermond 1570–1813 (Bruges: Tabor, 1986). 69 A full list of the colleges in Lamberts and Roegiers, Leuven University, pp. 57–63. On the Dutch funds, stipends and scholarships: F. Smit and J. Jacobs, Van den Hogenheuvel gekomen: Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de priesteropleiding in de kerk van Utrecht 1683–1723 (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers, 1994), pp. 163–76, and the many funds listed in H. de Vocht, Inventaire des Archives de l’Université de Louvain (Louvain: Uystpruyst, 1927); Noord-Hollands Archief (Haarlem), Archief Oud-katholiek Bisdom Haarlem, no. 572 (Liber Fundationum); Utrecht Archief, Oud-bisschoppelijke Clerezie, no. 737 (Students and scholarships at Cologne and Louvain, 1642–1662); ibid., no. 854–60 (ancient inv. Bruggeman, no. 319–29). 70 A. Schillings (ed.), Matricule de l’Université de Louvain (10 vols, Brussels: Académie royale des sciences, 1903–1980), vol. 5, pp. 9–24 (1616–1617), 493–508 (1649); vol. 6 (1651–1683) (Brussels, 1963), pp. 448–61 (1679–1680). 71 J. Orcibal, Jansénius d’Ypres (1585–1638) (Paris: Etudes augustiniennes, 1989), pp. 77–93, 123–30; L. Ceyssens, ‘Les débuts du jansénisme et de l’antijansénisme à Louvain’, in E. J. M. van Eijl (ed.), Facultas S. Theologiae Lovaniensis 1432–1797. Bijdragen tot haar geschiedenis (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1977), pp. 381–432; J. van Bavel and M. Schrama (eds), Jansénius et le jansénisme dans les Pays-Bas. Mélanges Lucien Ceyssens (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1982). 72 Orcibal, Jansénius, p. 79, footnote 8. 73 For a comprehensive study on this college and related matters, in particular after its transfer to Louvain, see Smit and Jacobs, Van den Hogenheuvel gekomen, with lists of students, pp. 223–33. Documents on the fraternity of Utrecht students at Louvain can be found in Utrechts Archief, Collegium pastorum, no. 27. 74 J. Visser, Rovenius und seine Werke: Beitrag zur Geschichte der nordniederländischen katholischen Frömmigkeit in der ersten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1966); J. Visser, ‘La Relation entre Jansénius et Rovenius’, in E. J. M. van Eijl (ed.), L’Image de C. Jansénius jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Louvain: Peeters, 1987), pp. 43–51. 75 Visser, Rovenius und seine Werke, pp. 60–76. 76 P. de Bérulle, Correspondance, ed. Jean Dagens (3 vols, Paris and Louvain: Desclée de Brouwer, 1937–1939), vol. 2, pp. 288–90, no. 372 (1 July 1622). 77 W. Frijhoff, ‘The Oratory in the seventeenth-century Low Countries’, Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 107 (2012), 169–222. 78 He intended ‘à leur faire tomber entre les mains toute la jeunesse avec le temps’: J. Orcibal (ed.), Correspondance de Jansénius (Louvain: Bibliothèque de la RHE, and Paris: Vrin, 1947), p. 345 (12 October 1626) ; C. P. Hoynck van Papendrecht, Historia Ecclesiae Ultrajectinae, I (Mechelen: Van der Elst, 1725), pp. 17–18. 79 E. Put and M. D’hoker (eds), Latijnse scholen in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden (16de–18de eeuw). Repertorium en archiefgids:Vlaanderen en Brussel (Brussels: Rijksarchief, 2007), pp. 487–500; J. Laenen, Geschiedenis van het Mechelsch Seminarie (Mechelen: Laurent, 1930), pp. 85–7; Constant van de Wiel, Jansenistica te Mechelen: het archief van het aartsbisdom (Louvain: Peeters, 1988), p. 82, no. 643. 80 Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen, pp. 448–9, no. 0586; Buijks, ‘Pieter Codde’, pp. 160–4. 81 [R. Cerveau], Suite du nécrologe des plus célèbres défenseurs et amis de la vérité du 18e siècle, VII (s.l.: s.n., 1778), pp. 14–16 ; Patrick Fagan, The Diocese of Meath in the Eighteenth Century (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 77–85. 82 Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen, pp. 72–6. 83 Listed in A. van Lommel, S.J., ‘De Noord-Nederlandsche leerlingen van het Urbaansch College te Rome geschiedkundig herdacht’, A.A.U., 19 (1892), 291–335. 84 G. Ackermans, ‘Propagandisten in de Missio Hollandica’, Trajecta, 6 (1997), 233–62. For the background: M. G. Spiertz, L’Église catholique des Provinces-Unies et le Saint-Siège pendant la deuxième moitié du XVIIe siècle (Louvain: Bureaux de la R.H.E., 1975).

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85 Utrechts Archief, KKK, no. 169 (ancient inv. Bruggeman, Oud-bisschoppelijke Cleresie, no. 521); Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen, pp. 70–9. 86 For Catholic survival strategies, see W. Frijhoff, ‘Strategies for religious survival outside the public church in the United Provinces: towards a research agenda’, in S. Ehrenpreis, U. Lotz-Heumann, O. Mörke and L. Schorn-Schütte (eds), Wege der Neuzeit: Festschrift für Heinz Schilling zum 65. Geburtstag (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 2007), pp. 177–94; W. Frijhoff, ­‘Overlevingsstrategieën van rooms-katholieken in Zutphen na de Hervorming’, in E. H. Bary, C. M. Hogenstijn, H. J. Selderhuis and J. D. Snel (eds), Lebuïnus en Walburgis bijeen: Deventer en Zutphen als historische centra van kerkelijk leven (Delft: Eburon, 2006), pp. 203–19.

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4 The domestic and international roles of  Irish overseas colleges, 1590–1800 Thomas O’Connor

Contested historiographies It is unfortunate that the emergence of the Irish college network in Europe followed the council of Trent and its 1563 decree on clerical education, Cum adolescentium aetas. This accident of timing made the former seem the consequence of the latter, creating the impression that the foundation of the colleges was the rolling out of a coherent counter-reformation pastoral strategy.1 At the other end of the colleges’ lifespan there was a second distorting temporal coincidence. The colleges’ demise, or at least that of a substantial number of them in France and the Austrian Netherlands, overlapped with the French Revolution and the imposition of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Prima facie, this suggested that the Revolution and its secularist principles brought the curtain down on the Irish colleges. On these two temporal accidents, Catholic nationalist historiography constructed a mighty interpretative edifice according to which the colleges, as conciliar institutions, saved Irish Catholicism from English state building, the errors of the Protestant reform and the allurements of traditional religion.2 An interpretative twin, erected on the same foundations by Protestant unionist historians, ascribed similar historical weight to the colleges but preferred to cast them as Catholic cradles of political subversion, idolatry and obscurantism.3 Both interpretations assumed the colleges’ conciliar origins and their late eighteenth-century demise, laying the blame for the latter at the feet of the godless French. Curiously, neither interpretation accounted for the mundane fact that for more than half a century after the Henrician suppressions and confiscations, the Irish survived well enough with no seminaries at all. This was partly, of course, because no one was entirely clear at the time what a seminary was. But even if they had been, it is not certain that the Irish laity, who effectively ran what might be called the Irish Catholic Church after the Henrician confiscations, would

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have seen the need for them. Like most societies of the time, Irish Catholics made provision for priestly training through an apprenticeship system, reserving academically structured spiritual, moral and theological formation, usually in English universities, to a small clerical elite. For the home-grown majority academic preparation for ministry was minimal. Medieval priestly primers, like Ignorantia sacerdotum, were in circulation4 and candidates for holy orders could sometimes spent preparatory spells in religious communities, a practice that in parts of the country probably survived the Henrician suppressions.5 Mostly, however, they learned on the job, observing the local priest and repeating his gestures. At least in the towns, sixteenth-century Irish laity seem to have been happy enough with just a leaven of clerical learning. Liturgically conservative, they could be doctrinally forbearing, tolerating clerical and lay traffic across fuzzy confessional lines, at least until the middle years of Elizabeth’s reign.6 It would take nearly seventy years before they were persuaded to dedicate any of ecclesiastical revenues they controlled to the funding of seminaries. Of course, with lay funding came the possibility of lay influence, less in the management of the colleges, which was largely in Jesuit hands, than in the selection of their students, who depended, at least in part, on the laity’s financial support. Furthermore, the effective absence of Catholic bishops for most of the early modern period, except between 1620 and 1650 and after the 1750s gifted default influence to certain sections of the Catholic laity, especially the nobility, the Pale gentry and port elites. This influence varied over time and according to social status and political conditions, but was significant both in the selection of parochial clergy and also in the control of their pastoral and political activities. Regarding the latter, in the crucial early years of the colleges the majority of these native lay funders were loyal supporters of the Tudor and Stuart monarchy. Moreover, they cherished their traditional governance role in the kingdom. From their point of view, the colleges were intended as anything but schools of sedition and, when it came to politics, they expected their priests to behave as loyally as themselves.7 Furthermore, lay interests could hardly be strictly aligned with all the objectives of the Catholic reform, particularly if these included the restitution of the confiscated church property held by them since the mid sixteenth-century secularisation.8 The relatively late foundation of the seminaries, the overlooked role of Irish laity in the process and the importance of Irish loyalism complicate the traditional picture of the overseas colleges’ early years. College statistics, in so far as they can be reconstructed, further muddle received accounts by relativising the pastoral importance of the colleges. The numbers speak for themselves. By the 1620s, the Irish colleges in Iberia and the Netherlands were capable together of furnishing perhaps thirty priests a year. This is a modest number, when put in the larger pastoral context of the 800 diocesan clergy active in Ireland in the

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1620s, supplemented by up to 200 Franciscans and perhaps 200 other religious. It is clear that in the early seventeenth century only a small portion of the clergy active in Ireland could have benefited from a sojourn abroad, at best a third of diocesan clergy, with huge regional variations.9 This was not the only relativising factor. Of the modest portion of Irish priests who did study abroad in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, most seem to have been younger students supported by their families, generally the better off inhabitants of the port towns and their hinterlands. Overall, they appear to have slotted into the new seminary model evolving in Europe. It was a different case, however, for students from poorer families, who could not afford to pay for their education abroad. It was customary to ordain them prior to departure for Europe, permitting them to cover college fees by honouring Mass stipends accepted both at home and abroad. This is less surprising that it might seem. The practice of ordaining men prior to their formal ecclesiastical studies was fundamentally a continuation of medieval practice. It was only later that it was justified as an emergency response to adverse religious conditions in Ireland.10 Trent, in fact, imposed no obligatory course of studies prior to ordination and, only later in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as clerical formation gradually came to precede ordination in general European practice, did antecedent ordination, as practised in Ireland, begin to appear irregular to some. The widespread and persistent practice of antecedent ordination meant that from the early seventeenth century, a good number of Irish college alumni, at certain times the majority, were already mature adults prior to their abroad experience. As well as posing a disciplinary challenge to college authorities, who often struggled to regulate their behaviour, these mature males were probably less susceptible to new influences than younger men or boys might have been. In many cases, the best students failed to return to the home mission, having been siphoned off to foreign ministry, especially through Jesuit and Franciscan networks. In 1609, for instance, there were sixty-two Irish men in the Society of Jesus, with just eighteen serving in Ireland.11 Alleged student subornment was often a bone of contention between the papal bishops and college management. However, in the broader social context, clerical alienation was neither so negative nor so negatively viewed. On the contrary, the colleges were actually intended not only to produce priests for the domestic mission but also to distribute students permanently abroad. A striking early seventeenth-century example concerns the Wadding clan, whose most talented clerical progeny were systematically recruited by religious orders for foreign service. The Waterford-born Michael Wadding (d. 1644), an alumnus of the Salamanca college, became a Jesuit missionary in the New World and assessor to the Mexican I­ nquisition.12 His brother, Peter (1583–1644), was Jesuit chancellor

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of the University of Prague.13 Another brother, Ambrose (d. 1619), also joined the Jesuits and taught theology and Hebrew in the Bavarian town of Dillingen. A third (half-) brother, Luke, joined the Jesuits at Villagarcía in 1610 and taught in the Colegio Imperial in Madrid. A first cousin, Paul Sherlock, was assessor for the Inquisition in Valladolid.14 The Franciscan Luke Wadding in Rome, another first cousin, became official historian of the Franciscans and assessor for the Roman Inquisition. Richard Wadding, an Augustinian, yet another cousin, lectured in the University of Coimbra and worked for the local Inquisition.15 This was a significant brain drain but not one that the lay members of the Wadding family necessarily lamented.These young men were too talented for the limited opportunities offered by the Catholic Church in Stuart Ireland. College governance reflected this. The majority of the colleges were under Jesuit rather than secular/episcopal government, operating independently of the hierarchy. In fact, seventeenth-century Irish bishops, like their sixteenth-century predecessors and most of their eighteenth-century successors, had remarkably little to do with either the selection or formation of their diocesan clergy. The absence of episcopal oversight in Ireland was taken for granted by the Holy See. A 1626 papal bull allowed the ordination of Irish clerics sub titulo missionis (i.e. with no clerical living) on the word of a superior of an Irish college, without the usual letters dimissorial from the candidate’s bishop.16 Not surprisingly, Irish bishops objected as the concession effectively dismantled the link between the bishop and his clerical underlings and inevitably compromised episcopal authority in the diocese, already weakened by absenteeism. This would be a feature of the Irish Church during most of the early modern period. In contrast to England and Scotland, Ireland did retain a Catholic hierarchy but, due to government disapproval, Irish prelates were not free to act as a Tridentine episcopate. If Trent was the council that consecrated the pastoral and governmental role of the bishop in the Catholic renewal, that role was only indirectly reflected in either the governance or the clerical output of the seventeenth-century college network. The migration context These second thoughts about the importance traditionally ascribed to the colleges occur in a larger research context, marked by a general renewal in the study of early modern migrants and migrant activities.This is particularly true of Spain and its territories, home to the bulk of the early Irish colleges. New work there has been recovering the diverse roles of migrant groups in specific areas of Spanish life, notably in trade, banking, engineering and military service.17 This has helped nuance the traditional picture of Spain as a refuge for exiled Catholics, enriching it with an appreciation of its geopolitical complexity. However

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publicly committed they were to the Catholic cause, the Spanish Habsburgs’ varied geopolitical responsibilities relativised their religious mission.18 From the point of view of Irish migrants, these bigger strategic interests meant that any apparent special treatment they received on account of their Catholicism was largely self-interested on the Spanish side. The reality was that Irish migrants, on arrival abroad, competed not only among themselves but also with other migrants, including English and Scottish Catholics, in the scramble for survival, patronage and economic clout in the Spanish world. Unsurprisingly, competing migrant interests were important in the gene­­­­sis of the Catholic colleges.19 Affording these factors their due weight in the colleges’ foundation, ties these institutions back into the warp and weft of the international migrant experience, producing a more adequate account of their origins, roles and functions in Irish migrant activities across Europe.20 Accordingly, the various Irish college communities were not merely exile havens and instruments of Spanish strategy but also migrant institutions, components of the broadly spread Irish Catholic world that, long before the mass migration of the nineteenth century, stretched far beyond the physical boundaries of the kingdom. This sharper migrant focus invites a second look at how the colleges actually came into being. Fresh research on migrant groups, especially those involved in trade and commerce, has thrown a spotlight on the role of Irish mercantile networks in hosting the various migrant groups who were associated with the colleges.21 It is clear that from late medieval times, small mercantile groups, originating mostly in the Munster ports, had begun to settle in Iberian ports.22 From the middle of the sixteenth century these tiny overseas groups played host to two new migrant strands, both associated with the colleges’ emergence. The first were the Irish students who used mercantile networks to access foreign universities. They begin to feature in Louvain and other university records from the 1540s. The second group was composed of the papal bishops displaced by the Elizabethan settlement. From the 1560s they started appearing in Spanish and Portuguese ports, initially on their way to or from Rome. Both groups played pivotal roles in the complex processes that eventually led to the setting up of the first Irish colleges. Students on the move The migrating Irish students did not arrive in mid-century Europe totally out of the blue. Since the Middle Ages, it had been common for ambitious Irish clerics to travel abroad, mostly to England, for further studies.23 However, from the 1540s, Irish student names start to show up in the registers of Louvain

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University.24 A little later they begin to figure in those of Salamanca,25 Alcalá26 and thereafter in Rome,27 Paris28 and elsewhere.29 These early students were a mixed bunch and one can only guess why they preferred these European universities to traditional English alternatives. A rare exception is the Oxford graduate Nicholas Comerford, a native of Waterford, who appears in the Louvain records in 1565.30 It is reasonable to assume that he quit England with William Allen and other Oxford faculty, who moved to the Netherlands to await the restoration of a Catholic regime in England. For Dermot O’Hurley,31 another early Louvain alumnus and future martyr bishop of Cashel, the original motivation is less clear. The same holds for Richard Creagh,32 future archbishop of Armagh, who entered in 1549 and Daniel Farrell, a student there in the late 1550s.33 Revealingly, both Creagh and Farrell returned to Ireland to set up schools, the first in Limerick and the second in Dublin, suggesting that this may have been the original purpose of their Louvain sojourn.34 If so then why the sudden interest in education? On one level, it was probably connected with the growing importance of humanities-based ­education, common across Europe. In 1537 the Dublin parliament passed an act for ‘English order, habit and language’, with provision for primary schools.35 It was a popular measure, welcomed by the port and Pale elites of Norman ancestry as a means of civilising their Gaelic neighbours. There may also have been a more mundane side to this. Like their contemporaries abroad, Irish merchants needed trained personnel capable of providing the secretarial and professional services demanded by more internationalised and complex commercial connections. The proposed educational provision by the Tudors, for parish schools in the 1530s and grammar schools in the 1570s,36 had a civilising purpose. They were also part of a political and religious reformation, the first consequences of which were the dispersal of the local religious houses and the disruption of their charitable and educational activities.37 These changes concerned local Irish elites, some of whom were wary of the new schools and, when possible, preferred to send their offspring abroad, using existing mercantile networks.38 Some of the returning graduates were associated with setting up a network of informal grammar schools, a number of which predated the Anglican state schools of the 1570s act, and later competed with them.39 It was probably on a visit to one of these in 1570 that Edmund Campion noticed the ‘lusty fellows of twenty-five years, groveling on couches of straw, books at their noses, themselves lying prostate, and so to chant out their lessons by piecemeal’.40 However rustic their pedagogy may have appeared to cultivated visitors, these schools provided a basic humanities style formation, equipping their students not only with writing skills useful for book-keeping and foreign correspondence but also with academic passports to foreign universities. It is clear that without

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these schools it would have been impossible even to conceive later of foreign colleges as, without them, intending Irish students would have been intellectually unprepared for further education abroad. Abroad, the trickle of Irish students was absorbed into existing educational networks. Jesuits like David Wolfe entrusted students to his colleagues in Rome, Portugal and Spain. Other students who had completed their basic schooling in Ireland followed alternative mercantile networks across England, ending up in the English41 and Scots42 colleges in Douai and, a little later, in dedicated Irish hostels. One of the first of these was set up in Douai in 1593, by an Irish priest, Christopher Cusack.43 This turned out to be the first of a series of small foundations that later included Antwerp (1600), Tournai (1616) and Lille (1610).44 There was a Paris offshoot from the Dutch network, accommodated initially in the Collège de Montaigu, but it had a fitful existence until later in the seventeenth century.45 Displaced papal prelates A decade or so after the first Irish student names begin to appear in European university registers, a small number of Irish bishops start to feature in contemporary European records. These were papal bishops displaced by Anglican appointees who began to pass through Portuguese and Spanish ports, initially in transit to or from Rome.46 Their exile was financially motivated.47 After 1560, the appointment of Anglican bishops in Ireland gradually deprived papal bishops of their sees and associated incomes. As a seventeenth-century government informer later commented: ‘But as for the [papal] Bishoppes ... they receave not a penny from out of this land, but are releeved by the bountie of the princes throughout Christendome where they dwell and by the prelates of the Cloysters wherein they receave their orders in order to survive’.48 Redmund Gallagher, papal bishop of Killala, who arrived in Lisbon in 1566, was not untypical.49 Others followed, including William Walsh of Meath, who settled in Alcalá. Almost from the beginning, these prelates, some of whom acted as political agents for disaffected Irish nobility, were joined by students, often family members, who were accepted into local, usually Jesuit-run schools.50 Although they were well received by fellow ecclesiastics, they were viewed with suspicion by the king of Spain. Initially Philip II was hesitant about supporting them, principally due to their associations with rebellious Irish nobility. Up to the late 1560s, Philip was still striving to maintain relations with England and, consequently, gave the rebellious Irish and their episcopal agents a wide berth.51 Later, however, AngloSpanish relations deteriorated, turning militant Irish migrants into potentially useful agents of Spanish influence. It was only then that the Spanish monarchy

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began to support peripatetic Irish bishops and their dependents, usually by setting up small funds managed by the itinerant prelates to support clergy.52 Even with this new strategic interest in the Irish clergy, Philip II was characteristically hesitant about committing more resources to their support and education. Consequently, for the foundation of the first Irish colleges in Spain and Portugal, it was local and Irish initiative that proved decisive. The example from Lisbon is informative. In the 1580s, the arrival there of increasing numbers of itinerant Irish youth prompted the local Irish Jesuit, John Howling, to organise temporary accommodation. In 1590, with the help of some Irish and Portuguese merchants, he set up the Confraternity of Saint Patrick, as a step towards something more permanent.53 Within two years a premises had been acquired and a small seminary established, initially run by a board composed of confraternity members.54 Not all the expatriate Irish were content. Howling’s success ruffled epis­­ copal feathers and Bishop Cornelius Mulryan of Killaloe’s refusal to attend spoiled the opening ceremony. Political and ethnic difference separated the two men and Mulryan may have resented the Jesuit’s achievement in establishing a seminary he might have preferred to preside over himself.55 Killaloe’s reaction was symptomatic not only of intra-Irish divisions but also of the exiled episcopacy’s failure to secure either management or governance footholds in the emerging continental colleges.56 In the genesis of the college at Salamanca, the crucial figure was another Jesuit, Thomas White. In the 1580s, before entering the Society, he brought a number of students to Santiago.57 They were initially supported by the local Jesuits but later moved down to Valladolid, perhaps in the hope of finding accommodation in the newly founded English college there.58 Soon afterwards, White secured royal funding for an Irish college, which it was decided to locate in nearby Salamanca.59 This was the first direct Spanish royal intervention to erect an institution for the education of Irish clerics but it might be extravagant to interpret this as an expression of a coherent geopolitical strategy. Organising the importunate exiles into collegial communities was primarily a means of removing their nagging presence from the court. Interestingly, the Spanish used a similar strategy to disperse Irish soldiers who arrived in Spain in the 1600s, substituting Irish regiments for seminaries. In other ways too, the religiously highminded rhetoric of royal foundation decrees hid more worldly concerns. In the 1590s, for instance, short-term military concerns had led the Spanish to support Irish militants like Hugh O’Neill, then in rebellion against Elizabeth I. This gave increased influence to his Irish supporters in Spain, notably Flaithrí Ó Maol Chonaire (Florence Conry), then a student in the fledgling Salamanca college. When he complained about Jesuit management there, alleging a bias

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against Gaelic Irish entrants, a Spanish government investigation ensued.60 In the meantime, however, the Ulster earls and their Spanish allies suffered defeat and, in 1604, the treaty of London established peace between Spain and England.This marked the end of direct Spanish military intervention in Ireland and caused an immediate cooling in Spanish relations with O’Neill. In this context there was no question of undermining contested Jesuit hegemony in Salamanca, on foot of complaints from agents of the defeated Ulster nobility. On the contrary, the Society’s authority in the Spanish network was actually strengthened. The small collegial institution set up in Santiago in 1605 by Killian McCarthy, to cater for the sons of exiled Irish military, was soon under their control, despite opposition from other Irish interests.61 Another college, this time in Seville, founded in 1612 by Thomas Stapleton and originally under secular control, also passed to the Jesuits.62 In Spain, only the Irish hostel and chapel in Madrid63 and the college in Alcalá64 remained outside the Society’s control. Across the Pyrenees, in Bordeaux, a small college was set up in 1603 by Diarmuid MacCarthy,65 essentially a northern extension of the Spanish network. It remained under secular control, along with its twin college in Toulouse.66 Spanish disengagement from Gaelic Irish interests after Kinsale was somewhat mollified in 1607 when Philip III approved the foundation of an Irish Franciscan college at Louvain, at Conry’s behest.67Two further Franciscan foundations were made from Louvain, one in Paris (1617) and the second in Prague (1630). The Paris house ran into local opposition and failed to thrive.68 The Prague foundation was part of the Habsburg drive to re-catholicise Bohemia.69 A third Irish Franciscan house was set up in Rome in 1625. It was the result of the emergency handover of a failed Spanish Franciscan institution, Saint Isidore’s, to the Irish Franciscan, Luke Wadding.70 His success there allowed him to influence the setting up of a Roman college for Irish secular clerics in the late 1620s. However, this institution, like so many of its Spanish counterparts, was later placed under Jesuit management, to Wadding’s chagrin.71 The Franciscans had similarly bad luck in the case of the Propaganda Fide supported college, founded for Irish seculars in Louvain in 1623. Initially under local Irish Franciscan auspices and with an Ulster student intake, it suffered crippling financial difficulties and was removed from Franciscan jurisdiction in 1638. Financing the college network Every college’s foundation was the result of a specific set of circumstances and a distinct group of historical agents, according to diverse social, ethnic and ­political interests. This was reflected in their funding models. Traditional accounts have stressed royal and papal support for the colleges. There is no doubt that official

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support was important. Salamanca, for example, enjoyed a royal annuity of about 10,000 reales. However, this grant was insufficient to maintain the college and, like colleges administrators elsewhere, those in Salamanca faced constant financial worries. Necessity obliged them to approach other possible sources, including the Catholic laity back home in Ireland. Accordingly, in 1613 a hostile Irish government report explained but what in the particuller is sent unto them [Irish students abroad] is the porcon theire fathers doe leave them, and some collections that yearely is taken upp for them, and with this they live togeather with certaine yearely pensions that is allowed unto the Colledges by the kinge and princes in whose dominions they are.72

The same informer went on:‘The Colledges beyondes are nowe and then releeved by almes collected uppon the Sonndayes in the Citties and uppon any great meetings by the directions of the vicar generals.’73 It appears that funding from Ireland, along with royal grants, were crucial to the survival of the colleges but together these were not enough. Even the royal college at Salamanca was obliged to secure supplementary funding, receiving donations and questing.74 In a model widely followed in other colleges, pre-ordained Salamanca students paid fees with their Mass stipends. It is difficult to assess the relative importance of this source but the evidence suggests a brisk business in collecting domestic stipends and conveying them abroad.75 Targeted fundraising missions to Ireland were also undertaken, like that led by James Archer in 1596. He collected revenues from the Catholic holders of confiscated church properties, operating a system of composition which seems to have been in widespread use at this time.76 This expiatory method of generating college finances would continue at least into the seventeenth century. In the 1640s, for instance, it formed the basis for certain propoals to fund the re-established church, including its educational infrastructure, under the Catholic Confederates.77 In the case of Salamanca, monies raised by Archer and others in Ireland helped pay for college rent, until the authorities acquired first the ground rent and later the title to certain properties in the city. Only when properly established could the college request funding from bodies like the local Cortes of Castile.78 Salamanca’s was an especially complex funding model but similarly ­elaborate means of funding supported the other colleges. In Paris, the third rector, Thomas Messingham, writing in 1634, referred to the devastating financial consequences of France’s involvement in the ThirtyYears’War. Local sources of income had dried up, he reported, restricting college entry to those who could pay for themselves.Very shortly afterwards, a combination of government exactions, galloping inflation and food shortages effectively closed the college.79 In Spain, there were supplementary sources of ecclesiastical funding, including the Misión del norte, a fund intended to assist Irish priests’ ­travelling

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costs back to Ireland on completion of their studies.80 Officially set up in 1611 and drawn on the revenues of the archbishopric of Cádiz, it could cover ­travelling expenses for up to half a dozen returning clergy per annum. Because applications were normally vetted by the Spanish authorities, the latter, in theory, controlled the fund. However, the monies were disbursed on the recommendation of college authorities or religious superiors, leading to in-fighting among the Irish and also souring relations between them and their English and Scots co-religionists. The Scots in particular resented the ‘special’ treatment accorded to the Irish. William Semple, co-founder of the Madrid Scots college in 1627, petitioned for the diversion of Misión funds to the Scots.81 Impact of the seminary clergy, 1600–1650 Overall, the church-property-owning Catholics of the port towns and their hinterlands, along with the Pale gentry, dominated the colleges’ network in their first century of existence, largely in cooperation with the Jesuits. Later, however, the fact that a significant proportion of the student population came to be drawn from other social and ethnic groups, including the Gaelic learned classes and others, fuelled tensions within some colleges. The Gaelic Irish were better represented in the Franciscan college network and returning friars were more involved in the Gaelic speaking areas. Whatever the differences between returning secular and regular missionaries, their education set them apart from the rest of the clergy. In 1606 Eugene Bernard, arriving in Galway following a spell abroad, found townsfolk attending Protestant service, an error that had arisen, he claimed, ‘from the stupid ignorance of some priests who were never out of Ireland’.82 Outsiders noticed the educational gap between seminary and home-reared clergy. In 1613 the Brussels internuncio, Bentivoglio, reported to Rome on the educational levels of Irish friars, ‘one would hope for more ­refinement and better doctrine but many of them were ordained in Ireland and consequently lack qualities necessary to the priestly ministry’.83 In general, however, the Irish laity got the clergy they paid for as the ministering clergy were supported almost entirely through stole fees.84 Given lay influence, the absence of bishops and the occasional interference of the state, the returned seminary clergy learned the advantages of keeping a low profile. This seems to have been the way the laity preferred it. Although the government naturally took lay support of their own clergy as evidence of civil disobedience, the laity themselves made much of their loyalty and refused to accept that sending sons abroad to Catholic colleges was seditious. In a way they wanted to have their cake and eat it. For a long time, the relative weakness of both the state and clerical authority permitted them to do so.

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This evidence raises interesting questions about the extent to which the colleges assisted in the enculturation of the Catholic reform into native communities across the ethno-social spectrum, but especially among the Gaelic speaking majority. Despite its Gaelic press and its contribution to Gaelic scholarship, Louvain was pastorally and ecclesiastically less unlike its secular and Jesuit-run, largely English language counterparts in Spain than might first appear. In most cases, returning clergy, whatever their ethnic origin, brought a standardised rather than a culturally inflected version of the Catholic reform. In any case, not all of those who returned from a sojourn abroad were competent even to preach in Gaelic, having lost the language while overseas. Even for those who did not, there is little evidence that their time abroad provided them with anything more homiletically challenging than simple translations of standard European texts.85 Overall, it would appear that the colleges struggled to e­ stablish and nurture a viable Gaelic Catholic book-based culture.86 This was not entirely the fault of the colleges. The authorities did invest in the Irish language, organising conversation classes to preserve speaking and preaching competence. But complaints about returning priests’ linguist sufficiency were common, with the bishops frequently chiding the Jesuits, alleging that the Society culturally alienated the students in order to suborn them to the order.87 Interestingly, the students did not always agree. In a 1642 anti-Jesuit memorial, Salamanca students complained that they were prevented from communicating with Castilian students and learning Castilian!88 The 1650s watershed Most accounts of the colleges concentrate on the founding and early years, with comparatively light coverage of the period after 1650, at least until the flurry caused by the staggered suppression of the Jesuits, and the French Revolution. However, notwithstanding the inattention of historians, the colleges were transformed during this period as they adapted to the changing needs of the domestic Irish Church and the evolving priorities of their continental hosts. By the early 1650s, the domestic church was in real trouble. Cromwell’s conquest was a hecatomb for Catholic landowners and clergy, ripping the heart out of the Catholic towns. There were political implications too. Confederate defeat finally put paid to Irish Catholic pretentions to a governance role in the kingdom of Ireland. Although this claim was briefly revived in the 1680s, it was devastatingly rebuffed first on the field of battle and later through the Penal Laws. On the continent, the ending of the ThirtyYears’War and the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) rang significant changes in European geopolitics. The treaty erected the state as the basic sovereign political unit, outlawing mutual interference for reasons of religion.89 Thanks to Richelieu’s diplomatic skills, the treaty’s

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territorial clauses advantaged France. Although the country was subsequently racked by internal turmoil, under Louis XIV France eclipsed Spain to emerge as the undisputed continental power and Catholic champion. The Irish quickly took note. For their colleges, these domestic and inter­ national changes had important consequences. The Cromwellian conquest triggered significant clerical expulsions, with exiled clergy piling up in ­continental bolt-holes, especially in France. At the same time, strengthening currents of permanent migration, initially among Catholic merchants but later including other sections of the domestic Catholic community, led to the f­ormation of new and more complex migrant networks on the continent. These later developed into institutions like the Irish regiments, which helped distribute careerfrustrated Irish Catholics to overseas alternatives. The colleges also helped convey ever larger numbers to permanent exile abroad.90 There were other challenges too. Because of the level of pastoral devastation of the 1650s returning Irish ecclesiastics faced an uphill struggle to provide educated clergy to Irish parishes. The existing college network, centred in Spain and the Spanish Netherlands, was inadequate to the task, due to limited capacity and entrenched family and regional interests. To supplement Spain and the Netherlands, senior Irish clergy turned to France, which from the 1640s was attracting more and more Irish students. In time, the Paris college was reorganised and new colleges founded in locations like Nantes (1680), Poitiers (1674, under Jesuit supervision), Bar sur Aube (1685), Wassy (1685) and Boulay (1700). Paris was by far the most successful of the French collegial ventures. Thanks to two Irish priests, Patrick Maginn and Malachy Kelly, the Irish student body in the city managed to colonise a defunct Italian foundation, the Collège des Lombards.91 From the late 1670s, this permitted the establishment of a community of Irish priests in a refurbished premises.92 Unsurprisingly, the Cromwellian confiscations disrupted domestic sources of income for the overseas colleges, especially those like Paris, which were now expanding. To an extent the colleges compensated through bursaries, often funded by exiled clergy and laity and drawn on French rather than Irish revenues.93 The influx of Irish military exiles to France after 1690 created more possibilities for this sort of funding, as did the prosperity of the small Irish communities in French and Spanish ports and, of course, the growing number of Irish clergy and professionals who made careers abroad. Reflecting the variety of Irish migrants’ needs, bursaries were not intended for the exclusive use of clergy, they also supported students pursuing legal and medical degrees.94 The University of Reims awarded medical degrees to no fewer than 598 Irish students in the early modern period, the vast majority from the 1680s onwards. Most of these students studied elsewhere before purchasing degrees at Reims, a facility with attracted Irish Protestants as well as Catholics.95

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Rising standards and expectations In the post-Cromwellian period, antecedently ordained students continued to dominate college populations. The practice was formally justified by the student priests’ need to generate income from Mass stipends, an agreed portion of which was customarily handed over to college bursars. In time the Collège des Lombards was home to about one hundred of these priests. Paris also attracted younger, un-ordained Irish students, intended for the priesthood, or, failing that, for alternative careers abroad. From 1707 a number of these were admitted to the Collège des Lombards, forming a separate clerical community that at mid-century numbered over sixty. The dual composition of the Paris college expressed some of the contradictions within Irish Catholicism. The antecedently ordained represented the clerical ‘establishment’, securely financed by stole fees, earmarked for one of the thousand or so domestic parochial positions, little interested in theology and attached to their privileges and autonomy. The younger, un-ordained students, second-class citizens within the college and often without pastoral prospects at home were, it seems, more amenable to college discipline, more academically engaged and understandably better viewed by reform-minded college ­authorities. From the 1730s, reforming administrators, anxious to improve the quality of the clergy, found it increasingly difficult to cater to the younger clerics in the face of the entrenched interests of the more privileged student priests. At the same time, developments at home began to favour these ‘modernisers’. With the relative relaxation of the penal regime in Ireland came a marked rise in the number of ordained clergy across the kingdom, in part due to episcopal laxity and even venality regarding ordinations. Government sources noted the more plentiful clerical presence. In 1731, the reports to the Lords’ Committees inquiring into the state of popery painted the alarmist picture of a priest- and friar-infested Irish countryside.96 The bountiful supply of clergy only deepened existing concerns about clerical quality among modernising strands of Catholic opinion.97 Certain clergy in Dublin and Armagh feared that a glut of under-employed priests would scandalise the Protestant authorities and unbalance the delicate mechanism of practical tolerance operating under the Penal Laws. These concerns found an echo in Paris, where college administrators, already frustrated by the autonomy and conduct of the antecedently ordained student body, expressed doubts about the quantity and quality of incoming students.98 They proposed a stay on admissions of pre-ordained priests and favoured preferential treatment for younger clerical students.99 The Irish bishops balked at the proposal, arguing that seminary facilities were inadequate to allow all priestly candidates a spell in college prior to ordination.100 Moreover, it was unclear if the Catholic

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laity, who provided the college clergy and contributed to their support, would willingly wear such a proposal.101 Episcopal intransigence and possible lay reservations won the day but in the longer term their reluctance to modernise proved irrelevant. Propaganda Fide intervened in 1742 to limit the number of secular ordinations. Later, in 1751, it forbade the religious orders to accept any novices in Ireland. For reformers this looked like a minor victory and had things remained as they were, the new restrictions would probably have had a small improving effect. They could not have foreseen that their attempts to ensure a better-educated clergy would exacerbate a crisis in the supply of priests. This was because as clerical numbers stabilised or grew only slightly, the population of Ireland, in the twenty years after 1750, grew by about 45 per cent. This demographic explosion caused a crisis in pastoral provision that consistently outpaced all efforts to remedy it. Despite a modest recovery in clerical numbers later in the century, the gap between pastoral need and clerical numbers continued to grow for nearly a hundred years.102 It gradually became clear that the existing collegial infrastructure was too small, too restrictive and too poorly financed to respond to the crisis. Lay and episcopal concerns about pastoral provision grew apace. Neither the Paris administrators nor their friends in Propaganda Fide had an answer to the demographic explosion that was altering the face of Catholic Ireland. In some dioceses, bishops decided to take matters into their own hands, buoyed up by the 1782 Catholic Relief Act. It permitted Catholics to open schools and although it expressly forbade institutions of a university character, i.e. seminaries, two bishops decided to test the legislation. In 1782, Bishop Thomas Troy of Ossory established a secondary school in Kilkenny, intended to educate young boys in humanities and Christian morals, preparing them for the professions, trade and further education.103 Initially, college graduates earmarked for priesthood were to be sent abroad.104 On the outbreak of unrest in France, in the late 1780s, it was decided to expand the programme to include philosophy, a sure indication that a domestic seminary was now contemplated. In nearby Carlow, Bishop Delaney of Kildare and Leighlin took things further still. Under his supervision, the construction of a college in Carlow was underway in 1785 and, the law notwithstanding, the institution was envisaged as a seminary from the beginning.105 Three years later Delaney explained to Troy, by then archbishop of Dublin, that he could not spare funds for Paris due to his building commitments in Carlow. Perhaps for the first time, domestic educational establishments were now in direct competition with the overseas collegial network. This was not the only straw in the wind. In Spain and Portugal, the college network had not adapted to keep pace with domestic needs. This was due in part to inflexible funding arrangements, the colleges’ small size and also to their colonisation by non-Irish students. At the time of the earthquake of 1755, for

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instance, the Lisbon college was home to fewer that eight students.106 Later, in 1767, the Seville college housed four Irish students but over twenty Spaniards.107 The Iberian network’s vulnerability was further exposed by the removal of its Jesuit administrators, following the suppression of the Society, first in Portugal in 1759. Weaker colleges like Santiago and Seville now became vulnerable to rationalisation and in due course were amalgamated with Salamanca. Alcalá initially survived a bid to unite it with the Scots college in Madrid, but this was largely due to Scots resistance. In 1785 it too was collapsed into Salamanca.108 Rationalisation, however, did not improve capacity, which for the domestic church in Ireland, lay and clerical, was now the overriding concern. Nor was Spain the only weak link in the network. Rationalisations in the Empire led to the closure of the Franciscan college in Prague in 1786. In the Netherlands, the pastoral college in Louvain was experiencing difficulty in holding on to its divinity students.109 About the same time doubts were expressed about the standard of theological formation available to Antwerp students. These were accompanied by dire warnings about the nefarious effects of increasing government interference in church institutions.110 Meanwhile in Bordeaux in 1774, the college rector complained about the difficulties in maintaining discipline due to the unreasonable nature of students’ inherited obligations to the local church.111 The old college skins could not take the new wine. The same held for college finances. Not only were traditional financial sources underperforming, but also the cost of the overseas colleges was becoming obvious to domestic clergy and laity, as they were more frequently asked to cough up. This was especially obvious in Dublin, home to the largest concentration of newly prosperous Catholic merchants and business men, most likely to be solicited by college fundraisers. In 1765 a Douai funding drive raised £430. Four years later £540 was raised for Nantes. In the same year £100 was collected for Lille and in 1775, £350 for Lille. Two Lisbon campaigns in 1782 and 1789 yielded £415.112 These piecemeal campaigns were not only a drain on good will but also underlined the colleges’ financial vulnerability and the generally un-coordinated organisation of the entire network. Paris, of course, was something of an exception to the general rule of dysfunction, underperformance and financial embarrassment. By the late eighteenth century, the Seine-side complex was the jewel in the overseas crown and by far the largest of all the overseas institutions, with nearly two hundred students in all. The domestic church was among the many parties who invested heavily there in the 1770s, funding an entirely new, purpose-built seminary, fit for the sons of the emerging Catholic urban middle classes.113 Bursaries, the life-blood of college finances, continued to be established, though revealingly some now made provision for the possible delivery of education at home.114 However, even in Paris financial pressures grew, especially in the 1780s. Structural ­financial

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weaknesses were exacerbated by growing state tax demands. Moreover, it is probable that changes in public piety in France, influenced in part by economic hardship and intellectual challenges to traditional practices, reduced income from Mass stipends, customary mainstays of fee-paying students. In spite of these difficulties, the Paris college was central to the mission of providing priests for the burgeoning Irish Catholic population. It remained so even after the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. In fact, during the relatively benign early months of the revolution, college authorities were surprisingly upbeat about the future, sharing the general eagerness for change. However, the 1790 Civil Constitution of the Clergy, effectively subordinating the French Church to the state, cooled earlier clerical enthusiasm.115 During 1791 students melted away, apprehensive about the future, although newcomers continued to arrive as late as 1792, no doubt intent on benefitting from their bursaries. Tensions, however, were rising, and not just in Paris. Back home in Dublin, the nefarious consequences of the recent revolution were rehearsed in the excommunication of Robert McEvoy, fulminated by Archbishop Thomas Troy. McEvoy, a priest of the archdiocese, had availed of the new arrangement in Paris to contract marriage, presenting another face of the revolution to shocked Irish conservatives.116 Worse was to come. September 1792 saw the first mass killings of French clergy. The indefatigable Charles Kearney, superior of the Irish college, wrote to Paris old boy and bishop of Meath, Patrick Plunkett, that it was time to think about diverting college income to domestic alternatives.117 Growing concerns in Paris and Dublin regarding French radicalism chimed with domestic concerns about political extremism nearer home. The restoration of Catholic parliamentary voting rights thanks to the 1793 relief Act, caused already worried conservatives like Troy to fret about the potential for the radicalisation of the newly enfranchised. Given the volatile political atmosphere in Ireland, characterised by increasing religious sectarianism, splits in the Catholic Committee and the meeting of the ominously named Catholic Convention in late 1792, his worries did not seem unfounded. The outbreak of war between Britain and France in 1793 only served to darken the mood further. Accordingly, even before the confiscation of French religious institutions in 1793118 Troy and others were already considering the possibility of establishing a seminary in Ireland. This might have been nothing more than a pipe dream had not the Dublin government revealed a readiness to cooperate. Dublin officials were anxious to retain Catholic confidence in the face of domestic radicalism and saw a domestic seminary, with appropriate government supervision, as the least of a number of evils, including a continued Irish clerical presence in revolutionary France. A complex deal was cut between government and Catholic hierarchy. The immediate result was the foundation of the royal Catholic college of St Patrick at Maynooth.119 In the longer term the deal helped secure episcopal

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condemnation of the 1798 rebellion and their support, in return for expected Catholic emancipation, for the 1801 Act of Union. Maynooth inaugurated a seminary order that durably eclipsed the tottering continental network. However, it was far from a clean break with the past. Following the established continental model Maynooth included a ‘lay college’, which operated into the nineteenth century. Nor was there any weakening of the French link. A continuing Gallic influence was assured by the repatriation of French-based Irish professors and the employment of a number of French clerical émigrés. Unlike the Paris colleges, however, there was now a formal place for episcopal governance, albeit temporarily compromised by the irksome presence of Protestant visitors.120 These developments, so crucial to the institutional history of the colleges and so absorbing for historians, took place against a deeper set of changes. From the 1750s, improving economic conditions in Ireland had already begun to impact decisively on the traditional social role played by Irish Catholicism’s European extensions. With increased domestic prosperity, thanks to free trade, the success of the textile industry and improved Irish access to larger markets, especially in England and the Americas,121 the range of migrant services provided by colleges’ network declined in relative importance. Henceforth there were domestic and international alternatives to traditional military and clerical careers in Catholic Europe. At home, thanks to the growing militarisation occasioned by Britain’s larger international involvements, British army recruiters began looking to Ireland, especially Catholic Ireland, for cannon fodder. Recruitment of Catholics necessitated the removal of a number of Catholic disabilities, which the government readily facilitated.122 In the face of Protestant opposition and the rise of domestic radicalism, the Dublin administration quickly lost its appetite for reform but thanks to the French revolutionary wars, the imperial army’s appetite for Irish Catholic recruits proved insatiable. The figures speak for themselves. As the revolutionary wars advanced the army grew. By 1801, Irish recruits, mostly Catholic, made up a third, perhaps, of the 300,000 under arms. This opened a whole new set of career possibilities for Irish Catholics of all backgrounds, including the new poor created by rapid population growth. For all of them the old European networks were increasingly irrelevant, as Irish Catholics were drawn more tightly into the economic and military structures of the British imperial system. Domestic prosperity also permitted the emergence of new domestic sources of Catholic income, which lay and clerical pioneers applied to a range of pious and educational projects, including the establishment of domestic colleges.123 In a sense, eighteenth-century economic prosperity and m ­ ilitarisation had begun to transform Catholic Ireland and its continental extensions long before the ­revolutionary tumults of 1789 and 1798. Ironically, just as early

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modern state formation and economic dislocation had provided the context for the emergence of the seminaries in the sixteenth century, so later early modern economic prosperity and empire building rendered the continental colleges largely­ ­redundant.124 Conclusion Generalised accounts of college origins, positing big events as institutional triggers, risk robbing the colleges of their historical agency, making them at worse victims, at best instruments of larger, impersonal forces. In line with recent developments in the history of migration, this chapter highlighted the agency of specific migrant groups. It underlined the domestic as well as international factors that shaped their actions, plumbing the motivation and tracing the activities of groups most involved in the colleges’ origins. This worm’s eye view set out to identity the individuals and groups behind the organisational and financial efforts to bring these small institutions into being and maintain them in function. From this reworking, the colleges emerge as multi-functional institutions, tied into complex migrant systems that linked back into domestic social structures and networked outwards to host economies. Operating under the sanctions imposed by the confessional Irish state, the overseas colleges educated a portion of the domestic clergy and a much larger number of lay progeny, the latter for abroad careers. Economic prosperity, domestic militarisation and politically motivated Catholic relief changed the configuration of this post-reformation Irish Catholic infrastructure, robbing the colleges of their core traditional functions. By the third quarter of the eighteenth century, the colleges had had their day. Some overseas institutions survived but their nineteenth-century afterlives were played out in the shadow of the emerging domestic college network and its newly empowered episcopal managers.



Notes

1 See T. J. Walsh, The Irish Continental College Movement:The Colleges at Bordeaux,Toulouse and Lille (Dublin: Golden Eagle Books, 1973), pp. 28–9, 34. 2 For a summary, see Ó. Recio Morales, ‘Irish émigré group strategies of survival, adapation and integration in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Spain’, in T. O’Connor and M. A. Lyons (eds), Irish Communities in Early Modern Europe (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006), pp. 240–2. 3 For an overview of contending Irish religious historiographies in the context of the Penal Laws see J. Kelly, ‘The historiography of the Penal Laws’, in J. Bergin, E. Magennis, L. Ní Mhunghaile and P. Walsh (eds), New Perspectives on the Penal Laws (Dublin: Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society, 2011), pp. 27–52. 4 H. A. Jeffries, Priests and Prelates of Armagh in the Age of Reformations, 1518–1558 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997), p. 52. 5 Ibid., pp. 38–42, 73–6. 6 In the beginning this was possible even at episcopal level. For the notorious example of Miler McGrath see L. Marron, ‘Documents from the State papers concerning Miler McGrath’, Archivium Hibernicum, 21 (1958), 75–189.

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7 The loyalists had their critics, particularly among sections of the Gaelic Irish clergy and laity. This reflected divisions present in contemporary English Catholicism. See the chapter by Michael Questier in this volume. 8 The re-establishment of Catholicism in Ireland posed a threat to the Catholic owners of confiscated church property and remained a bone of contention in the seventeenth century. It erupted into a major intra-Catholic row during the Confederate period. See J. Kavanagh (ed.), Commentarius Rinuccinianus (6 vols, Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1932–49), vol. 1, pp. 433–4. 9 This percentage is suggested for the early seventeenth century by Patrick Corish, The Irish Catholic Experience: A Historical Survey (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1985), p. 102. A little earlier in 1590 Miler McGrath, Anglican bishop of Cashel, reported that of thirty priests active in the Tipperary area, about five were ‘seminary’ educated. See J. Brady, ‘Irish colleges in Europe and the Counter-reformation’, in Proceedings of the Irish Catholic Historical Committee (1957), p. 5 and Brian Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, 1603–41 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), Chapters 1 and 4. 10 For a short discussion see H. Fenning, Undoing of the Friars: A Study of the Novitiate Question in the Eighteenth Century (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1972), pp. 55–6. 11 E. Hogan, Ibernia Ignatiana (Dublin: Societas Typographica Dubliensis, 1880), p. 228. 12 See T. Worcester (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); J. A. Gagliano and C. E. Ronan (eds), Jesuit Encounters in the New World: Jesuit Chroniclers, Geographers, Educators and Missionaries in the Americas 1549–1767 (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1997). 13 P. O’Dea, ‘Father Peter Wadding SJ: chancellor of the university of Prague, 1629–1641’, Studies, 30:119 (1941), pp. 337–48. 14 Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional (hereafter A.H.N.), Inquisition (hereafter Inq.), 1319 (2), deposition of William Casey, 1 Feb. 1644. 15 Ibid., 1319 (2), deposition of John Convey Beare, 6 Mar. 1644. 16 Walsh, The Irish Continental College Movement, p. 48. 17 M. B. Begona Villar García and P. Pezzi Cristóbal (eds), Los extranjeros en la España moderna (2 vols, Málaga: Ministerio de Ciencia e innovación, 2003). 18 T. O’Connor, IrishVoices from the Spanish Inquisition: Migrants, Converts and Brokers in Early Modern Iberia (London: Palgrave, 2016), pp. 17–32. 19 For a set of comparative essays see B. J. García and Ó. Recio Morales (eds), Las corporaciones de nación en la monarquía Hispánica (1580–1750) (Madrid: Fundación Carlos Amberes, 2014). 20 On the larger British and imperial contexts for English, Irish and Scottish migration see A. Murdoch, British Emigration 1603–1914 (London: Palgrave, 2004). 21 Ó. Recio Morales, ‘Conectores de imperios: la figura del comerciante irlandés en España y en el mundo atlántico del XVIII’, in Ana Crespo Solana (ed.), Comunidades transnacionales: colonias de mercaderes extranjeros en el Mundo Atlántico 1500–1830 (Madrid: Ediciones Doces Calles, 2010), pp. 313–36. 22 D. Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492–1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 17–39. 23 V. Davis, ‘Material relating to Irish clergy in England in the late Middle Ages’, Archivium Hibernicum, 56 (2002), 7–50; V. Davis, ‘Irish clergy in late medieval England’, Irish Historical Studies, 32 (2000), 145–60. For the situation in the Gaelic parts of Ireland see Jeffries, Priests and Prelates; H. Jeffries, ‘Erenaghs in pre-plantation Ulster: an early seventeenth-century account’, Archivium Hibernicum, 53 (1999), 16–9; A. Empey, ‘Irish clergy in the high and late Middle Ages’, in T. C. Barnard and W. G. Neely (eds), The Clergy of the Church of Ireland, 1000–2000: Messengers,Watchmen and Stewards (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006), 6–43. 24 J. Nilis,‘Irish students at Leuven University, 1548–1797’, Archivium Hibernicum, 60 (2006/2007), 1–304. 25 D. J. O’Doherty, ‘Students of the Irish college Salamanca (1595–1619)’, Archivium Hibernicum, 2 (1913), 1–36.

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26 Ó. Recio Morales, Irlanda en Alcalá: la comunidad irlandesa en la Universidad de Alcalá y su proyección europea, 1579–1785 (Alcalá: Ayuntamiento de Alcalá, 2004), pp. 120–30. 27 H. Fenning, ‘Irishmen ordained at Rome, 1572–1697’, Archivium Hibernicum, 59 (2005), 1–36. 28 L. W. B. Brockliss and Patrick Ferté, ‘Prosopography of Irish clerics in the universities of Paris and Toulouse, 1573–1792’, Archivium Hibernicum, 58 (2004), 1–166. See also L. W. B. Brockliss and Patrick Ferté, ‘Irish clerics in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: a statistical survey’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 87C (1987), 527–72. 29 J. Burrieza Sánchez, ‘Escuelas de sacerdotes y mártires: los colegios del exilio católico’, in E. García Hernan, M. Ángel de Bunes, Ó. Recio Morales and B. J. García (eds), Irlanda y la monarquía hispanica: Kinsale 1601–2001: Guerra, política exilio y religión (Madrid: CSIC-Universidad de Alcalá, 2002), 38–73. 30 Nilis, ‘Irish students’, 37. 31 Ibid., 33–4. 32 C. Lennon, An Irish Prisoner of Conscience of the Tudor Era: Archbishop Richard Creagh of Armagh, 1523–86 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), p. 37. 33 Ibid., p. 34. 34 Later, in 1564, Creagh, as archbishop of Armagh, obtained Pius IV’s bull, proposing universities and colleges in Ireland, financed from the resources of confiscated monastic houses. 35 28 Henry VIII, c. 15. 36 12 Elizabeth I, c. 1. 37 For the diocese of Meath, for instance, see B. Scott, ‘Administrative documents relating to the pre-reformation Church in the Diocese of Meath, c.1518’, Archivium Hibernicum, 61 (2008), 325–46. 38 C. Lennon, ‘Education and religious identity in early modern Ireland’, Paedagogica Historica, supplementary series 5 (1999), 57–75: H. Robinson-Hammerstein, ‘Aspects of the continental education of Irish students in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I’, Historical Studies, 8 (1971), 137–53. 39 On some of the practical difficulties involved see T. M. McCoog, ‘Life in Tudor Limerick: William Good’s “Annual Letter” of 1566’, Archivium Hibernicum, 69 (2016), 7–36. 40 Edmund Campion, Historie of Ireland (Dublin: Hibernia Press, 1809), p. 26. 41 T. F. Knox, The First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay (London: David Nutt, 1878), passim; Michael Sharratt, ‘Theology and philosophy at the English College Douai: a handlist of sources’, History of Universities, 18:2 (2003), 197–225 42 T. McInally, The Sixth Scottish University: The Scots Colleges Abroad, 1575–1799 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), Chapters 1 and 2. 43 J. Brady, ‘Father Christopher Cusack and the Irish college of Douai 1594–1624’, in Sylvester O’Sullivan (ed.), Measgra Michíl Uí Chléirigh (Dublin: Assisi Press, 1943), pp. 98–107; B. Jennings, ‘Documents of the Irish colleges at Douai’, Archivium Hibernicum, 10 (1943) 162–210. 44 T. O’Connor, Irish Jansenists 1600–70: Religion and Politics in Flanders, France, Ireland and Rome (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008), pp. 78–84. 45 P. Boyle, The Irish College in Paris from 1578 to 1901 (London: Art & Book Company, 1901), pp. 9–10; L. Swords, The Irish French Connection (Paris: The Irish College, 1978); L. Swords, ‘History of the Irish college Paris, 1578–1800: calendar of the papers of the Irish college, Paris’, Archivium Hibernicum, 33 (1980), 3–233. 46 E. Garcia Hernán, ‘Obispos irlandeses y la monarquía hispánica en el siglo xvi’, in Villar García and Pezzi (eds), Los extranjeros en la España moderna, vol. 2, pp. 275–80. 47 C. Lennon and C. Diamond, ‘The ministry of the Church of Ireland, 1536–1636’, in Barnard and Keely (eds), Clergy of the Church of Ireland, pp. 44–58. 48 B. Mac Cuarta, ‘Irish government lists of Catholic personnel, c.1613’, Archivium Hibernicum, 68 (2015), 84, citing Trinity College Dublin (hereafter T.C.D.), MS 567, fos. 32r–43v. 49 Rome, Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (hereafter A.R.S.I.), Lusitania, 62, fo. 229v., Cipriano Soares to São Francisco de Borja, Lisbon, 6 June 1568, cited in M. Gonçalves Da Costa, Fontes inéditas Portuguesas para a história de Irlanda (Braga: Barbosa & Xavier, 1981),

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p.  132. He was still in Lisbon in 1578. See Rome, Archivio Segreto Vaticano (hereafter A.S.V.), Nunziatura di Portogallo, 1, fo. 216, Portuguese nuncio to Rome. 50 In 1577, for instance, one of the Irish merchants in Lisbon lodged the eleven-year-old Maurice, son of James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, who was attending the local Jesuit school. See A.S.V., Nunziatura di Portogallo, 2, fos. 280v.–281r. Coleitor apostólico to the papal secretary of state, Lisbon, 1 Aug. 1577, cited in Da Costa, Fontes, p. 177. 51 E. Garcia Hernán, Ireland and Spain in the Reign of Philip II (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009), p. 25. 52 Cornelius O’Boyle of Limerick had charge of one of these funds. See Hernán, Ireland and Spain, pp. 309–16, 322–3. 53 K. Schüller, Die Beziehungen zwischen Spanien und Irland im 16. Und 17. Jahrhundert: Diplomatie, Handel und die soziale Integration katholischer Exulanten (Münster: Aschendorff, 1999), p. 159. 54 P. O Connell, The Irish College at Lisbon 1590–1834 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 25–30. 55 See Howling to Strong, Lisbon, 26 May 1592 (British Library, Lansdowne 71, no. 49, fo. 100rv., cited in Da Costa, Fontes, pp. 207–10). 56 The pastoral college in Louvain was an exception. It was established by Archbishop McMahon of Dublin in 1623 but was under Franciscan management until the 1630s. 57 T. Morrissey, ‘The Irish student diaspora in the sixteenth century and the early year of the Irish college at Salamanca’, Recusant History, 14 (1977–8), 242–60. 58 It took him some time to realise that Catholic England needed well-educated clerics as much as Christian crusaders. See Burrieza Sánchez, ‘Escuelas de sacerdotes’, p. 41. 59 M. Henchy, ‘The Irish college at Salamanca’, Studies, 70 (1981), 220–7. 60 Maynooth, Russell Library, Salamanca Archive leg. 52/9; Andrés de Prada, Orden del Consejo al conde de Miranda, 7 July 1604; Archivo General Simancas (hereafter A.G.S.) Estado Corona de Castilla, leg. 199. 61 P. O Connell, The Irish College at Santiago de Compostela 1605–1769 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007). 62 J. J. Silke, ‘The Irish college, Seville’, Archivium Hibernicum, 24 (1961), 13–47. 63 E. Garcia Hernán, ‘Irish clerics in Madrid 1598–1665’, in O’Connor and Lyons (eds), Irish Communities in Early Modern Europe, pp. 267–93. 64 It was originally founded in 1627; re-founded 1630 and 1645. 65 T. J. Walsh and J. B. Pelette, ‘Some records of the Irish College at Bordeaux’, Archivium Hibernicum, 15 (1950), 92–141; Walsh, Irish Continental College Movement, pp. 88–119. 66 P. Ferté, ‘Étudiants et professeurs irlandais dans les universités de Toulouse et de Cahors (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles): les limites de la mission irlandaise’, in O’Connor and Lyons (eds), Irish Communities in Early Modern Europe, pp. 69–84; Walsh, Irish Continental College Movement, pp.  120–39. 67 R. Gillespie and R. Ó hUiginn (eds), Irish Europe 1600–1650:Writing and Learning (Dublin: Four Courts, 2013). It was also pastorally significant. Over the following two centuries, over three hundred college students were ordained priests in Malines, with two hundred more admitted to orders before being sent off to other Franciscan houses. Their subsequent careers are not known. 68 B. Millett, The Irish Franciscans, 1651–1665 (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1964), pp. 184–95. 69 J. Pařez, ‘The Irish Franciscans in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Prague’, in T. O’Connor and M. A. Lyons (eds), Irish Migrants in Europe after Kinsale 1602–1820 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003), pp. 102–17; B. Jennings, ‘Documents of the Irish Franciscan college at Prague’, Archivium Hibernicum, 9 (1942), 173–294. 70 G. Cleary, Father Luke Wadding and St Isidore’s College Rome (Rome: Bardi, 1925). 71 P. J. Corish, ‘The beginnings of the Irish College, Rome’, in The Franciscan Fathers (eds), Father Luke Wadding: Commemorative Volume (Dublin: Clonmore and Reynolds, 1957), pp. 284–94. 72 Mac Cuarta, ‘Irish government lists’, 84, citing T.C.D. MS 567, fo. 37r.

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73 Ibid. 74 A. Castro Santamaría and N. Rupérez Almajano, ‘The real colegio de San Patricio de nobles irlandeses of Salamanca: its buildings and properties, 1592–1768’, in T. O’Connor and M. A. Lyons (eds), The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe: Refashioning Irish Identities, 1600–1800 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010), pp. 223–41. 75 In a letter written in 1640 Domhnall Mac Suibhne OSA speaks of 600 Mass stipends to be shared between himself and an Irish clerical colleague. See É. Ó Ciosáin, P. Ó Macháin and C. O’Scea, ‘Two letters in Irish from Domhnall Mac Suibne OSA in Nantes (1640)’, Archivium Hibernicum, 68 (2015), 110, 114. Secular clergy probably had similar access to this form of finance. 76 Walter McDonald, ‘Irish colleges since the reformation’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 10 (1873), 360–6. 77 Kavanagh, Commentarius Rinuccinianus, vol. 1, pp. 433–4. 78 It was they, not the king, who dictated the device carved over the main entrance of the Salamanca college which ran: ‘This college was built by the crown of Castile for the sustenance of the Christian religion of Ireland the year the Catholic King Philip III expelled the Moors, enemies of the faith, from the realm, 1610.’ 79 Sheffield Archives, WWM Str P 14 (279), Messingham to Stephen Duffe, Paris 1634. 80 C. Bravo Lozano, ‘La Misión de Irlanda en la estrategia política de Felipe III’, in M. J. Pérez Alvarez and A. Martín García (eds), Campo y Campesinos en la España moderna: culturas políticas en el mundo hispano (Madrid: Fundación Española de Historia Moderna, 2012), pp. 1157–566. 81 McInally, The Sixth Scottish University, p. 29. 82 Hogan, Ibernia Ignatiana, p. 205. 83 A. S.V., Borghese, Series I, vol. 269, fo. 85, Bentivoglio to Rome, Brussels, 6 Apr. 1613, cited in Archivium Hibernicum, 3 (1914), 301. 84 ‘The ordinarie priests doe live commonly by ministringe sacraments receaving from every howse in theire parishes 12d or at the moste iis, besides ii s for every marriadge, and 12d when the women are churched, and are farr richer then the prelats and preachers whose privie tyethes can scarce releeve them, without privat Almes.’ See Mac Cuarta, ‘Irish government lists’, citing T.C.D., MS 567, fo. 36v. 85 C. Mac Murchaidh, ‘Text and translation for James Gallagher’s “A sermon on the assumption of our Blessed Lady” (1736)’, Archivium Hibernicum, 62 (2000), 154–82. 86 For some of the recent scholarship see A. Ó Corráin, The Pearl of the Kingdom: A Study of A fhir léghtha an leahráin bhig by Giolla Brighde Ó hEódhasa (Oslo: Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture, 2013) and A. Ó Corráin, The Light of the Universe, Poems of Friendship and Consolation by Giolla Brighde Ó hEódhasa (Oslo: Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture, 2014). 87 Burrieza Sánchez, ‘Escuelas de sacerdotes’, pp. 56ff. For Santiago see A.G.S., Estado leg. 2750, ‘El consejo de estado a 3 de septiembre de 1620 Por el seminario de Irlandeses de la ciudad de Santiago’. The Scots had similar problems. See A.G.S., Guerra y Hacienda, leg. 965, ‘Memorial de Juan de Geddes, rector de los Escoceses a Manuel de Roda’, Madrid 19 July 1778. 88 A. G. S., Estado, Negocios de ‘partes’, leg. 2752. 89 H. Kissinger, World Order (London: Penguin, 2014), pp. 11–48. 90 For Spain see O’Connor, Irish Voices, Chapter 8. For France see E. Ó Ciosáin, ‘A hundred years of Irish migration to France, 1590–1688’, in T. O’Connor (ed.), The Irish in Europe 1580–1815 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 93–106. For the merchants see L. Cullen, ‘Galway merchants in the outside world’, in Diarmaid Ó Cearbhaill (ed.) Galway Town and Gown (Galway: University College Galway, 1984), p. 63. 91 L. Swords, ‘Collège des Lombards’, in Swords (ed.), The Irish French Connection, pp. 44–62. 92 Boyle, The Irish College in Paris, p. 28. 93 L. Chambers, ‘Irish fondations and boursiers in early modern Paris, 1682–1793’, Irish Economic and Social History, 35 (2008), 1–22; Walsh, Irish Continental College Movement, pp. 46, 169–90. 94 Nilis, ‘Irish students at Leuven University’, p. 11; Chambers, ‘Irish fondations and boursiers’, p. 15. 95 Medicine was one of the few professions that remained open to Catholics in Ireland under

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the Penal Laws. See L. W. B. Brockliss, ‘Étudiants de médicine des îles britanniques inscrits en France sous l’ancien régime’, in P. Ferté and C. Barrera (eds), Étudiants de l’exil: Migrations internationals et universités refuges (XVIe–XXe s.) (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2009), pp. 81–104; L. W. B. Brockliss, ‘Medicine, religion and social mobility in eighteenthand early nineteenth-century Ireland’, in J. Kelly and F. Clark (eds), Ireland and Medicine in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century (Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 73–108. 96 ‘Report on the state of popery, Ireland, 1731’, Archivium Hibernicum, 1 (1912), 10–27; ‘Report on the state of popery in Ireland, 1731: diocese of Dublin’, Archivium Hibernicum, 4 (1915), 131–77. 97 H. Fenning, ‘Some problems on the Irish mission, 1733–1774’, Collectanea Hibernica, 8 (1965), 58–109; H. Fenning, ‘Clerical recruitment, 1735–83’, Archivium Hibernicum, 30 (1972), 1–20; Fenning, The Undoing of the Friars of Ireland. 98 L. Chambers, ‘Rivalry and reform in the Irish College, Paris, 1676–1775’, in O’Connor and Lyons (eds), Irish Communities in Early Modern Europe, pp. 103–129, at p. 114. 99 Originally, only the community of ordained priests benefitted from the Lombards bursaries and accommodation. Following a petition on their behalf in 1707, clerical students were admitted too. See Boyle, Irish College in Paris, p. 38. 100 Walsh, Irish Continental College Movement, p. 78. 101 For a biting and hilarious satire on clerical ignorance at this time, see S. Ó Dufaigh and B. E. Rainey (eds), Comhairle Mhic Clamha ó Achad na Muilleann (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1981). 102 E. Larkin, The Pastoral Role of the Roman Catholic Clergy in Pre-Famine Ireland, 1750–1850 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006), pp. 9–41. 103 F. Ó Fearghail, St Kieran’s College Kilkenny, 1782–1982 (Kilkenny: St Kieran’s College, 1982), pp. 21ff. 104 P. Birch, Saint Kieran’s College, Kilkenny (Dublin: Gill, 1951), p. 36. 105 E. Derr, ‘The Irish Catholic episcopal corps, 1657–1829: a prosopographical analysis’ (2 vols, PhD thesis, Maynooth University, 2013), vol. 1, p. 130. 106 A.S.V., Nunziatura di Portogallo, 117, fos. 289r–91r. 107 J. J. Silke, ‘The Irish college, Seville’, Archivium Hibernicum, 24 (1961), p. 118. Silke notes, ibid., p. 122, that the college had a fund, drawn on interest from bonds, to finance return journeys to Ireland by ordained students. 108 Burrieza Sánchez, ‘Esculelas de sacerdotes’, pp. 72–3. 109 Dublin Diocesan Archive (hereafter D.D.A.), Continental colleges, 116/17, Charles Joseph Finn to Troy, 14 May 1788. 110 Letter to Peter Macve, president of pastoral college, Louvain, undated, in J. Nilis, ‘The Irish college, Antwerp’, Clogher Record, 15 (1996), 29. 111 Walsh, Irish Continental Colleges Network, p. 111. 112 See C. Begadon, ‘Laity and clergy in the Catholic renewal of Dublin, c.1750–1830’ (PhD thesis, Maynooth University, 2009), pp. 195–6. 113 There was a 1772 appeal for funds for this new college in Paris. See D.D.A., Irish College Paris, papers, AB3/34/16(37). In 1786 the bishop of Cloyne noted a list of clerical subscribers to the Collège des Lombards. See E. Derr, ‘Episcopal visitations of the diocese of Cloyne and Ross 1785–1828’, Archivium Hibernicum, 66 (2013), 317. 114 Swords, ‘History of the Irish college Paris, 1578–1800’, 165, 167. 115 L. Chambers, ‘Revolutionary and refractory? The Irish colleges in Paris and the French Revolution’, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, 2:1 (2008), 29–50. 116 D.D.A., Troy Papers, AB1/116/5(83), sentence of excommunication of Revd Robert McEvoy, 29 Sept. 1792. 117 ‘Charles Kearney to Patrick Plunkett, 2 Sept. 1792’, in A. Cogan, The Diocese of Meath, Ancient and Modern (3 vols, Dublin: Joseph Dollard, 1867), vol. 3, pp. 196–7. 118 The Irish colleges were restored to Irish ownership in 1795 but at that stage were not functioning as seminaries. 119 P. Corish, Maynooth College, 1795–1995 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1995), pp. 6–19.

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120 35 George III, c. 21. 121 I. McBride, Eighteenth Century Ireland: The Isle of Slaves (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2009), p.  110. 122 Ibid., p. 286. 123 Begadon, ‘Laity and clergy’, pp. 196–7. 124 McBride, Eighteenth Century Ireland, p. 359.

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5 The Scots colleges and international politics, 1600–1750 Adam Marks

The Scottish Catholic colleges have primarily been viewed as training centres for a clerical population, which, after the council of Trent and the ensuing Scottish reformation, could not be educated at home.1 This was undeniably one of the colleges’ original functions and an objective that was pursued with vigour throughout their existence. However, these colleges, at the same time, became elements of a complex transnational political network. The evolution of this network between the colleges at Paris, Rome, Madrid, Douai and their alumni is not a unique phenomenon. Such links were also a feature of contemporary Protestant universities. However, to date, the significance of these extra-curricular networks between the Catholic colleges has often been played down by their historians.2 The research of Thomas McCoog is a notable exception to this. His work has focused on the Jesuits but has also recognised the part played by the Catholic colleges in early modern European politics.3 The aim of this chapter is to reposition the Catholic colleges, and specifically the Scots colleges, in their political context. The research on which this chapter is based actually started out as an exploration of British overseas networks and was never intended to cover the colleges. However, it was necessary to deal with them because they emerged as fundamentally important institutions in English, Scottish and Irish Catholic engagement with the Stuart dynasty. The Scots college networks in particular were an influential part of this complex relationship and, as will be seen, did not confine themselves to purely religious matters. On the contrary, they were also part of a larger political effort to re-establish Catholicism across all the Stuart kingdoms. In a sense the colleges’ political activities had greater long-term impact perhaps than their better known educational contribution to the Scottish Catholic Church. This chapter will follow the development of the colleges from the ascent of James VI to the British thrones in 1603 to the end of the 1745 Jacobite uprising, with particular reference to the Thirty Years’ War and the Jacobite era. As will be seen, the interaction between the colleges and the Stuart dynasty itself

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was key to their operation, and ultimately their withdrawal from politics, as they tied themselves ever closer to a dynasty increasingly unlikely to re-establish itself in the British Isles. Therefore, the activities of the colleges need to be understood not just through individual episodes in their history, nor indeed in terms of the traditional religious college narratives, but also within a political arc that spanned both chronologically and geographically the rise and fall of the Stuarts as Scottish, English and Irish monarchs. Although many of the activities examined in this chapter were based around the Stuart court, they enjoyed a broader social and geographical reach thanks to the colleges’ networks. The Stuarts relied not only on high profile college alumni but also on their student, family and regional contacts. One striking example of this is Thomas Dempster, who maintained his links to various colleges while living in Bologna and forwarding information to the papal court.4 Dempster also linked events taking place within the wider framework of the Italian peninsula into the college network of Hugh Semple in Spain.5 In addition, this chapter also argues that, although these colleges were undeniably Scottish in terms of personnel and patronage, their outlook was much broader, encompassing British, European and universal Catholic spheres. Throughout their early years they were committed to the restoration of Catholicism to Britain and Ireland. It is clear that their bond with the Stuarts was fundamental to this broader outlook. The demise of the Stuarts after 1745, therefore, goes some way to explain why, from this point onwards, the colleges trimmed their political sails and began to behave more like regular seminaries than centres of political intrigue. Origins The origins of the colleges tell us something of their subsequent activities. The Scottish colleges in southern Europe were not an entirely new creation, but rather additions to the existing network of medieval Schottenklöster that already existed in southern Germany.6 The early modern Scots college in Paris, for instance, emerged from a set of pre-existing institutions, one of which originated in a foundation made by David Innes in 1326. Archbishop James Beaton played an important role in attempts to establish a Paris college on the instruction of Mary Queen of Scots, giving the eventual new foundation a decidedly Stuart focus from the beginning. Crucially the founders of the new Paris college aimed to create an institution that was not exclusively for clerics but also intended for the education of lay Scottish Catholics.7 This complex originating objective allowed the Scots college at Paris to engage in a range of political as well as seminary activities. Even as other colleges became less important ­politically, the aristocratic lay Catholics educated at Paris maintained

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a communication network with each other and the college. The Jacobite connections that ran through Paris in the eighteenth century were therefore in part a consequence of the decisions made almost two centuries earlier. The Scots college in Rome had a different genesis and purpose. Since medieval times, a Scots Hospitum served as a hostel and sometimes as a refuge for Scottish exiles.8 The foundation of the Scots college in Rome in 1600 provided for the first time an institutional framework within which exiled Scots could operate. Crucially, the appointment of a succession of Jesuits as college rectors transformed the college into an active instrument of the Jesuit mission.9 The Jesuit rectors made the restoration of the Catholic faith in Scotland a central tenet of the college mission and the college strictly enforced the rule that all students had to return to Scotland within six months of graduation.10 This enforced repatriation of Rome college students not only impacted on the religious culture of Scotland but also ensured that the college’s network had a geographically wide and vocationally varied membership. In the longer term, the Jesuit leadership of the college marked it off from its Paris counterpart, which was run by secular clergy. However, at least during the early seventeenth century, the Jesuit tenor of the Roman college did not preclude cooperation between it and wider political networks across Europe, following the Paris model. The two Scots colleges in the Habsburg lands were founded, at least in part, due to the activities of soldier and diplomat, Colonel William Semple (1546–1633). The Douai foundation was actually part of a long-standing scheme to establish a Scots presence in the university city of Louvain. The project received a crucial financial boost from the Spanish king and the Archduke Albert, which eventually led to the college’s establishment in the city in 1593.11 A foundation in Madrid followed in 1627, despite hostility from the already existing Scots colleges.12 Indeed, Pope Urban VIII had stated that there was no need for any further Scottish colleges, but Semple disagreed.13 Despite the opposition, Semple’s persistence paid off and the first students, transferred from Douai, arrived in Madrid in 1633. Like Paris, the college in Madrid chose to educate laity as well as clerics. However, both Madrid and Douai, unlike the other Scots colleges, were less Scottish institutions than Spanish institutions run for Scots.14 These two Habsburg colleges completed the Scottish Catholic college network that produced the students whose political activities form the focus of this chapter. They were not large in number, but they were strategically spread across some of the most important Catholic territories of Europe. They were not reluctant to put their contacts at the service of the Stuart dynasty.

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The collegiate network Scotland’s colleges did not exist in a vacuum but rather within a larger network that included the colleges of English and Irish Catholics. In particular the English colleges, which are not the focus of this chapter, require some comparative comment, considering the broader British and European aims of the Scottish colleges.15 Despite their real ‘British’ dimension, the Scots colleges’ student populations were, in fact, less diverse than those of their English counterparts. For example, of the approximately 500 Scottish students who entered the Scottish colleges in the Iberian peninsula, only around eighty students were not Scottish, including thirty-five from England and two from Wales.16 This is in marked contrast with the English colleges where, from the latter half of the seventeenth century in particular, a significant number of Irish were educated.17 Despite this difference in student diversity the educational networks for managing students were remarkably similar. Both English and Scots colleges used the same means to maintain tight relations between the individual colleges. This was achieved primarily through student and faculty transfers between different institutions. Also, priests who returned to the home mission reported back to their alma maters, providing invaluable domestic intelligence. Further, thanks to their entry into religious orders, Scots college alumni enjoyed access to wider Catholic networks abroad. It was these connections that gave them the capacity to contribute significantly to the international politics of the day, particularly as they concerned the Stuarts and their interests, before and after 1688. The English collegial infrastructure was larger than Scotland’s. English colleges in Valladolid, Seville, St Omer and Douai had already trained about 1,700 students before 1650, excluding those educated at Madrid, for whom no records survive.18 This was a significantly higher number than were trained at the Scots colleges, reflecting, in part, the size of the English Catholic community. It is interesting to note that although there were differences in scale, the Scots and English college networks were remarkably similar in other ways. For instance, both had a significantly higher proportion of students at one college in the north of Catholic Europe. For England St Omer and for Scotland Douai, received incoming students and distributed them around the network. St Omer received 812 of the c.1,700 English students educated between 1600 and 1650.19 Joachim Baal from Suffolk was typical. He studied at St Omer between 1604 and 1608 before moving to Seville, where he studied logic and philosophy, from 1608 to 1611. Thereafter, he attended the English college in Rome prior to moving to Padua where he died.20 Douai was the Scottish equivalent of St Omer. Although for some of the Scottish college students Douai was their final stop, for many others it was simply a first port-of-call before moving on to Madrid or Rome. In the Scottish case, a remarkable 43 per cent of first student registrations were at Douai and its relative importance is clear from Table 5.1.

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Table 5.1 Number of students at each Scots college, 1600–1750 College Douai Erfurt Madrid Paris Pont-a-Mousson Regensburg Rome Scalan Tournai Valladolid Würzburg

Number of Students 433 12 39 76 41 103 231 5 1 44 20

Note: ‘College’ includes a full spectrum of institutions including the four formal colleges (Douai, Madrid, Paris and Rome), the Schottenklöster (such as Regensburg, Würzburg and Erfurt) and the illegal underground seminary in Scalan (Scotland). Tournai (founded in 1576) was merged into Douai after the latter’s creation in 1612. Sources: W. F. Leith (ed.), Records of the Scots Colleges at Douai, Rome, Madrid,Valladolid and Ratisbon 1 (Aberdeen: New Spadling Club, 1906); McInally, A Database the Alumni; McInally, ‘The Alumni of the Scots colleges abroad 1575–1799’ (PhD thesis, University of Aberdeen 2008); McInally, The Sixth Scottish University.



The statistics given in the table are not precise, as the extant records for the colleges are incomplete. For example, according to the table above Rome received 23 per cent of the students and Paris only 8 per cent. However, the latter is clearly under-represented due to the loss of many of its records.21 Figure 5.1, based on already published data, provides an overview of the total number of identifiable entries across all the Scots colleges to the end of the eighteenth century. 120

100

80 60 40 20

0



Figure 5.1 Number of students Source: Leith (ed.), Records of the Scots Colleges; McInally, A Database of the Alumni.

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Although it is dangerous to draw too many conclusions from such a small and erratic data set, it is possible to say that as the colleges became established student numbers increased, before peaking in the 1620s and 1630s. The period between the outbreak of Civil Wars and the Glorious Revolution led to broadly consistent student numbers before some sharp fluctuations occur in the early eighteenth century. It has been remarked that the 1620s rise in matriculations was at least partly due to a new and punitive legal framework in Scotland yet numbers peaked in 1621, before it had been introduced, suggesting other factors may have been at work.22 Equally, since the Paris college grew in importance as time progressed and significant numbers of its students are not represented here due poor survival of records, it is fair to say that the figures above increasingly underestimate not only the importance of Paris as the seventeenth century advances but also the overall number of students matriculating. Data problems aside it is clear that the colleges were not producing Catholic priests and gentlemen en-masse. The numbers were modest and this must be remembered when assessing their impact in Scotland and in Europe generally. Much of the research on the Scots colleges to date has been prosopographical and focused on the type of education the students received.23 A great deal of this work is extremely useful but authors have generally chosen to focus on only one college at a time and have tended to overlook how the inter-relations between alumni functioned as political networks. As William Forbes Leith and Tom McInally have shown, the number of students actually educated was quite small. Given the relative paucity of students, the political significance of the college network is all the more impressive.24 The contributions of the colleges to Jacobitism in particular illustrate the long standing and consistent political role that the colleges played in supporting the Catholic Scottish community. Looking at the colleges politically fits into a set of wider historiographical developments, through which historians have reassessed the role of the diaspora in Scottish history. In particular, work done on the Protestant north has illustrated the significance of networking as an interpretative context.25 These much broader studies have also covered Scottish military networks in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Germany.26 In his work, Steve Murdoch, a leader in this field, has illustrated how various network types – mercantile, military, educational and political – need to be studied together in order to produce a more complete picture of the significance of the migrant phenomenon.27 In particular, the interconnectedness of these complex early modern social networks allowed not just for the exchange of information and goods but also the creation of spaces in which to foment revolt and support regime change. This was all the more important for exiled English, Irish and Scottish Catholics because, to an even greater extent than for their hard-line Calvinist contemporaries, Catholics entirely lacked a domestic political forum. Conse-

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quently, their European footholds, including the colleges, became the heart not only of their religious but also of their political life. Thanks to the work of David Worthington on the role of Scots both in Spain and in eastern and central Europe, this dimension of expatriate life has come into sharper focus.28 Elsewhere, I have also analysed the interaction between the Scots college in Rome and the wider Scottish networks that existed in Italy.29 There are two pivotal moments between 1600 and 1750 that in particular illustrate the importance of the colleges as political or diplomatic networks. The first occurs during the Thirty Years’ War, after the forced removal of Elizabeth Stuart from her husband’s lands in the Palatinate. The second takes place following the Stuart exile after 1688. These two dynastic upheavals for the Stuarts presented in two very different contexts a series of political challenges and opportunities for the Scots Catholics abroad.These events also illustrate how a small numbers of alumni, using their connections and the colleges themselves, could wield significant influence. In the following sections, this dimension of the collegial network’s activities will be examined in more detail. It will become clear how the colleges were never mere seminaries but also functioning parts of the Stuart dynastic politics. The Scots colleges and the Thirty Years’ War The outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War marked a key turning point in the history of both the colleges and the Stuart dynasty. The defeat of Protestant forces at White Mountain in 1620, and the subsequent removal of Frederick V and his wife Elizabeth Stuart from the Palatinate, overshadowed Stuart foreign policy until the outbreak of Civil War in Britain itself in the early 1640s.30 Over 100,000 soldiers were levied from across the Stuart kingdoms in attempts to see the royal pair restored to the Palatinate.31 These men played a key role in supporting militant Protestantism both at home and abroad.32 One important illustration of this is the fact that over half the casualties suffered by the Dutchled forces at Maastricht originated from the three kingdoms.33 The significance of this enormous deployment of native forces abroad for the Stuart cause has only recently been coming back into historical focus, providing a sharper and more accurate picture of the capabilities and scope of the Stuart state overseas.34 This has also begun to mark scholarship on the Scots colleges and to complicate our understanding of how they reacted to the Protestant Stuart cause in Europe. The legal status of sixteenth and seventeenth century Scots soldiers serving in other nations’ armies has sparked considerable recent debate, notably between D. J. B. Trim, David Parrott, Steve Murdoch and the present author.35 Though much of this discussion is not directly pertinent to the day-to-day activ-

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ities of the Scots colleges examined here, it is essential to remember that the background to their political activities (and to those of the English colleges for that matter) was this large scale Scots and English Protestant military presence abroad. In this context, the Stuarts managed to use the colleges, in a number of indirect ways, actually to further the Protestant cause, throughout the Thirty Years’ War.36 In some cases, dynastic loyalties could trump those due to the church. While they were divided by religion and often opposed each other in desired outcomes, expatriate Protestant and Catholic subjects of the Stuarts both effectively utilised intelligence resources and, in the process, integrated themselves into wider European political networks. A revealing example on the Protestant side is the partnership of Anstruther, Conway and Carleton, which became part of the Calvinist finance networks that ensured supplies for Charles I’s armies in Danish and Dutch service.37 This was clearly a potent counterbalance to the Catholic networks operating in part through the colleges. They tended to support the Hapsburgs and other Catholic powers in the hopes of restoring Stuart Britain and Ireland to the Holy See. However, they were also marked by their loyalty to the native dynasty and these sentiments coloured their wartime activities. Many Catholic Stuart subjects served abroad, most notably in the Spanish Netherlands on the Habsburg/Catholic side. While influential, these soldiers remained small in number and never matched those British soldiers going into Protestant service.38 4500 4000

Number of soldiers

3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0

1609

1611

1619

1620

1623

1624

1627

1633

1640

1643

1647

1661

Year

Figure 5.2 Number of soldiers levied from the Stuart kingdoms within the various pro-Habsburg armies in the Low Countries Source: G. Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659:The Logistics of SpanishVictory and Defeat in the Low Countries’Wars (London: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 271–2. Unfortunately Parker does not distinguish between English and Scottish soldiers.

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Given that social networks generally tend to overlap with one other, it is striking that there was remarkably little crossover between the military and collegial personnel in the Scots and English colleges during the ThirtyYears’ War. With few exceptions the two cohorts appear to have operated as largely separate networks. The exceptions include Englishmen such as Charles Cheney’s father, who fought on behalf of Spain before he entered the English college in Rome in 1633.39 There are also a few examples of Scots such as Adam Lawrence Gordon who left Douai in 1631 to become a soldier in France before he enrolled in the college of Rome, where he completed his degree and eventually became the rector of Madrid.40 Francis Chrichton also departed from Douai to become a soldier, presumably in the Low Countries, and Alexander Leith served in France after studying in Douai.41 However, it is clear that there were fewer than ten identifiable clerics who had military experience either before, during or after their college sojourn.42This is in stark contrast to the majority of lay students who followed political, military or educational vocations after graduation. Despite their political activities examined below, it is clear that the Catholic colleges were not directly engaging in the military struggles of Europe in this period.This contrasts, as will be seen, with the later Jacobite period when, in part due to the broader student base attending the college at Paris, and, no doubt, the dynastic change of religious loyalties, there was a larger number of high profile graduates in active service in the Stuart armies involved in the 1715 and 1745 rebellions. How did the Protestant Stuarts benefit from the Catholic colleges? Perhaps most importantly the colleges, with their staff and student cohorts provided the Stuarts with means of communicating with the major Catholic and Protestant powers. The presence of the colleges in various Catholic capitals and cities, in particular Madrid, Rome and Paris, meant that their networks and graduates were ideally placed to serve this purpose. From 1618 onwards, the colleges were no longer blindly seeking a way back into the heart of the Stuart establishment. Some of them believed that they now possessed the means to do so in fact. The existing web of connections in both the Iberian and Italian peninsulas meant that they were in a position to assist the Stuarts in obtaining their central foreign policy objective: the restitution of Elizabeth of Bohemia to the Palatinate. This was understood, on the Catholic side, to involve, in return, toleration for domestic Scottish Catholics. A striking example from November 1625 illustrates the general situation. At that point, a joint letter from the duke of Buckingham, the earl of Holland and Dudley Carleton emphasised that the key objectives of Stuart policy were the restitution of the king and queen of Bohemia to their ancestral rights and dignities, the return of peace to Germany and fair treatment of the reformed religion.43 The last objective in particular created the context for a quid pro quo between the Stuarts and their continental interlocutors regarding the treatment of Scots Catholics at home.

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The colleges’ officials quickly learned how to capitalise on these objectives, in particular Father Robert Philip, confessor the Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I. He used a network of college alumni in Rome and London to further these aims. It is somewhat ironic that the great Protestant icon, ­Elizabeth, the Winter Queen, became such a key figure in Catholic exile activities. This is apparent from the 1620s, when the ‘Spanish Match’ negotiations were undertaken. Ultimately, none of the proposals and plans analysed here were successful. However, their mere existence at the highest levels of d­ iplomatic activity indicates that their supporters at the time thought they had some ­possibility of success and that, through them, they could exercise political influence, to the benefit, for instance, of the domestic Catholic community. Additionally, these schemes contributed to the development of Stuart foreign policy and their examination deepens our understanding of how the early modern British state operated. It was through establishing themselves in the courts of their host nations that college alumni provided unofficial yet direct access for the Stuarts to Catholic monarchs, removing the need for the Stuarts to rely on formal diplomatic means to establish initial contact. During the 1620s the English college network in Spain provided assistance to Prince Charles and the duke of Buckingham during the ‘Spanish Match’, when they travelled to Madrid in an attempt to secure a Spanish bride for the Stuart prince.44 This experience provided a base on which a wider British network could be constructed. Henry Mayler is an example from within the English network of how the system came to operate. Mayler had been born in Bristol but was educated in Seville between 1594 and 1606 before becoming a professor in Douai and eventually moving to Paris.45 From 1621 Mayler became actively involved in the ‘Spanish Match’. In a letter to Mayler, William Bishop who had just been appointed head of the secular clergy stated that he had been brought up to date with events from his correspondence. The letter of Bishop is revealing, since in it he expressed the hope that Mayler might be used to bypass the Spanish ambassador who ‘perhaps will not so willinglie send unto use your letters as the others agent will’.46 This distrust and division between the Spanish and English supporters of the match undoubtedly hampered their efforts to secure a favourable outcome. Mayler went on to play an active role in the negotiations between Prince Charles and Buckingham at the Spanish court. Indeed he regularly met with both to give insights into Spanish procedure and remained in Madrid until 1624 to ‘assist in anything that might have required his service’.47 The idea of using a dynastic marriage to restore the Stuarts to the Palatinate and Catholicism to England, Ireland and Scotland was a potent motivating force in the minds of exiled Catholics with connections to the Catholic-Habsburg side of the Thirty Years’ War. The participation of Scottish Catholic networks in the ‘Spanish Match’ negotiations along with the English colleges, was initially hampered by the lack

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of a Scots college in Spain. The Scots college in Madrid was not founded until 1627 and prior to this the network relied entirely on the contacts of Colonel William Semple. Semple spent a significant amount of time and effort attempting to coordinate actions that would bring Scotland back to the Catholic faith or at least improve conditions for Scottish Catholics.48 These were largely ineffective, and even when the college was founded, it did not immediately provide the structure necessary to support a student and staff network, on the model of the other colleges. The early lack of the institutional structure from which to work was clearly a disadvantage. It goes some way to explaining why Semple’s efforts yielded so little. Indeed, Semple proposed several alternative schemes for cooperation between the Stuarts and Habsburgs but due to the lack of a powerbase he struggled to make his voice heard. When Semple became one of a group of reforming Spanish intellectuals called the arbitristas, he and others omitted to integrate the restitution of Elizabeth Stuart into their political thinking.49 Despite this flaw the arguments of the arbitristas did support some factions of the Spanish Courts who desired closer relations with Scotland, though this never resulted in tangible achievements. The link between Elizabeth Stuart and the restitution of Catholicism would be left for others to explore. Instead, Semple negotiated with Philip III in favour of direct Spanish military intervention in the Stuart kingdoms. In particular he wrote a series of memoranda for the Spanish king proposing ‘a war of defence against land and attack by sea’.50 The idea of a Spanish invasion of the British Isles was nothing new, but rather a revival of the proposals that had circulated in the late sixteenth century.51 This strategy of influencing Spanish foreign policy towards open aggression stood in contrast to many English Catholic networks, which were working within pre-existing political schemes to incorporate their own religious agendas. Semple was the driving force behind the activity of the Scots in the Iberian Peninsula and died in 1633, after the arrival of the first batch of college students. This left his nephew, Hugh Semple, to take up his mantle, but he achieved little.52 Indeed, despite his continued efforts, not only did he fail to engage realistically with international political factions, but he also failed to attract high-level government attention in either the Habsburg or the Stuart states. This illustrates how the political and educational roles of the college were often complementary. To form a successful and well-placed political network a talented and well-educated alumni body was indispensable. In the 1620s Scots Catholics in Madrid lacked both. This was in marked contrast to the situation in Rome. The fact that the religious exiles there were heavily involved in international affairs should come as no surprise, considering the close links between the Scots college and the papacy. Much of the success of the college’s political development can be traced to 1605 when Camillo Borghese, the cardinal protector for Scotland, became

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Pope Paul V.53 He immediately increased the Scots Roman college’s budget by fifty crowns per month and this proved to be the first of a number of grants.54 After Camillo Borghese had been elected pope, the newly appointed cardinal protector for Scotland was Maffeo Barberini, who subsequently became Pope Urban VIII in 1623.55 The link between the Scots and the Barberini family was already strong but throughout Urban VIII’s reign it strengthened further. This meant that, with the exception of Gregory XV, who was pope for a limited period, between 1605 until 1644 the pope was an ex-cardinal protector for Scotland. Urban’s appointment of Francesco Barberini as cardinal protector for Scotland ensured a direct familial line of communication between the exiled Scots college and the papacy itself.56 The political priority of the Italian Scots college network was gaining recognition for Catholicism in the British Isles in exchange for solving the Stuart’s greatest foreign policy problem, the successful restitution of the Palatinate to Frederick V and Elizabeth Stuart. In its focus, therefore, the scheme was similar to those attempts by the English colleges in Spain in the 1620s, though there is little evidence that the two were coordinated. As in Madrid so in Rome, the eventual outcome was a failure but the plan was, at least on one level, plausible and conducted at the very highest diplomatic levels.57 Indeed, many of the ideas supported by those involved in the schemes of the 1630s can be traced to the correspondence of Maffeo Barberini, before his election as pope, and to George Strachan, one of the first students to enter the Scots college in Rome.58 In January 1610 Strachan outlined a proposal to re-unify the Churches of England and Scotland, with that of Rome.59 Strachan cautioned against employing the Jesuits, argued in favour of secrecy and recommended that trusted Scottish networks should always be the core of any scheme to restore Catholicism. Many of the details of this proposal made it directly into later schemes. The central figure of the Roman college network in the 1630s was Father Robert Philip. Philip was one of the first batch of students to enter the Scots college in Rome.60 It seems likely that it was at this point he made his first contacts with the Barberini family, a connection that would remain important to him throughout his life. After his training Philip returned to Scotland before being arrested and promptly exiled.61 Upon his return to the continent he circulated within the college networks, taking up a position in the Scots college in Paris.62 Philip now made the second important contact for his future plans when he was appointed chaplain to Henrietta Maria.63 Her marriage to Charles I provided Philip with his passport to return to the Stuart kingdoms, but this time without fear of arrest. A variety of sources cover the events of the 1630s but the activities of Philip are best recorded and entertainingly described in the memoires of Gregorio Panzani, one of the key Italians involved in these events.64 Philip’s position within

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the network of college graduates, and his correspondence with the Barberini family placed him in an ideal situation. He began to outline his desire to oversee ‘re-uniting them [the British churches], once more to the see of Rome’.65 Philip played an active role in negotiating the various understandings required for covert negotiations to take place. He also clearly understood the sensibilities of both Rome and the Stuart court. Gregorio Panzani arrived at the Stuart court in 1634 to formally visit the Queen. In an attempt to avoid any public attention his formal letters of introduction had been signed by Cardinal Barberini. Charles I required that the letter come from the pope. It is a testament to the effectiveness of the network coordinated by Philip that this was speedily arranged and a new letter dispatched.66 Charles set those around him the task of progressing the negotiations. Philip’s scheme focused on securing the restitution of the Palatinate through papal diplomatic assistance and the terms envisaged included a marriage between one of the daughters of the Elector-Palatine and the Polish king, thereby providing a symbolic bridge across the confessional divide and avoiding the embarrassment of any of the protagonists having to compromise directly with their enemies.67 The plan generated discussion in diplomatic correspondence and news networks. Sir William Boswell referred to it in letters to Viscount Scudamore from The Hague, emphasising Poland’s desire for an end to European conflict.68 Ultimately King Vladislav IV sent a Polish delegation under Jan Zawadski to discuss terms.69 These negotiations came to nought and conversations soon broke down as is became clear than none of those concerned had the authority to deliver on their promises. After all, in 1636 the German Lands were being fought over by a host of armies, none of which were under the control of either the king of Poland or the papacy.They were the preserve instead of the Habsburg, French and Swedish monarchies. Despite the breakdown of negotiations, Philip, Panzani and their backers managed to continue to pursue their own agenda by keeping the issue on the table. By 1638, Charles was increasingly desperate as an ever-widening gulf opened between him and his Protestant soldiers in the Low Countries. Indeed, a significant number of those men, mostly engaged at the siege of Breda, would soon return to fight against him in armed rebellion.70 For the Catholics the next move came from Philip who was involved in openly sending a Catholic bishop to the Stuart court. This bold action caused great controversy, as the various schemes which had hitherto been relatively secret now became very public and attracted hostility from English Protestants.71 Still nominally tied to a Palatinate restitution, Philip helped to secure the exchange representatives for a period five years while also getting Panzani, as a public foreign Catholic at court, returned to Rome.72 Charles eventually selected a Scot, William Hamilton, to travel to Rome and negotiate with the pope. During Hamilton’s audience Urban

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emphasised his commitment to the process and clarified that he would continue to push for a Palatinate restitution.73 The negotiation flickered and faltered but carried on. Hamilton remained the Stuart representative in Rome until he was replaced in 1640.74 When Panzani returned to Rome another member of the Scots college network replaced him in London. This was George Conn who had entered the Rome college in 1619 before being incorporated into the circle of Francesco Barberini and eventually becoming a member of the bedchamber of Urban VIII.75 It is not clear who selected Conn for the mission. However, because he was another member of the Scots college network it seems unlikely that it was not discussed by Philip and the Barberini family. He was also a man known to be disliked by many Jesuits, which meant that his presence in the court of Charles I would likely attract less negative attention.76 In reality the widespread knowledge that he was to be appointed a cardinal on his return to Rome meant he actually managed to create even more controversy.77 By this point the scheme had long since moved on from any initial ideas relating to a Polish marriage and was part of the increasingly desperate foreign policy forays of the beleaguered Charles I. However, the ambitious scope of the new schemes in which the colleges were involved reveals the scale of the influence of the collegiate networks. Despite a lack of success in bringing their schemes to fruition, they had helped to facilitate diplomacy between the papacy and the British monarchy by providing a conduit for contact and negotiations. That the scheme failed is clear. It was overtaken not only by events such as the outbreak of Civil Wars but also by the increasing public awareness of the scheme. Indeed, the papal–Stuart meetings of the 1630s were successfully managed primarily because secrecy was observed. However, increased public attention and the outbreak of the Civil War did not end the activities of the network. Patrick Conn, a nephew of George Conn, who had attended Douai, Paris and Rome, continued to send intelligence to Francesco Barberini and Robert Philip remained a member of Henrietta Maria’s household.78 Indeed, Robert Philip travelled with Henrietta Maria to The Hague in 1642 when she went to seek aid for her husband.79 After the outbreak of the Civil War some other members of the college network returned home to support their king in a more direct manner. For example, Alexander Leith and Walter Hervey both returned to Scotland and fought under the marquis of Montrose during his campaigns.80 The Civil War, however, fundamentally altered the emphasis of the college’s political priorities. Rather than seeking to secure the Palatinate in return for Catholic recognition the colleges henceforth worked to maintain Charles on his thrones, in the hope that he would eventually reward their dynastic loyalty with religious concessions. On Charles’s death the restitution of Catholicism in the British Isles seemed an even more distant dream than before the Civil War.

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The Scots college network, comprising a relatively small number of individuals linked across Paris, London and Rome, had attempted to negotiate an ambitious Catholic British religious settlement.Those that participated in the various schemes saw the three kingdoms through the prism of the Stuart dynasty and as such, put as much of their energy into the reconversion of England as of Scotland, believing that the other kingdoms would follow England’s lead. The Stuart government shared this opinion and it is therefore not surprising that much of the religious negotiations between the college network and the Secretary of State discussed the return of the Church of England, rather than the Scottish Kirk or the Church of Ireland, to the Catholic fold.81 While the college’s efforts only specifically discussed one church it is clear that religious restitution across the Three Kingdoms was at the core of the Scots colleges’ political aspirations. It was also a key cause of their problems. Gregorio Panzani wrote that that ‘they [the English] apprehended something might be carried on to the prejudice of the English nation, while two Scotchmen were employed’ and that it ‘did not go down with the English Stomach’.82 Regardless of the reticence felt by English Catholics, the Scots college network maintained their broad approach to religious reconversion. This pan-British outlook was due to their close allegiance to the Stuart crown rather than any specific ‘national’ inclination. The loyalty of the group to the Stuart dynasty only increased as the monarch joined the Catholic college network in exile during the 1650s. Ultimately, most of Scots college network’s political objectives were never realised. Nevertheless, the political techniques they used in pursuing their goals were significant and they operated at the highest levels of the Stuart court. While the Civil War disrupted this network it did not destroy it, and the restoration of the monarchy changed the balance of power once more. Particularly after the accession of James II to the English, Irish and Scottish thrones, the colleges began to adapt to the new circumstances. In contrast to the centrality of Rome and Madrid in many of the events of the 1620s and 1630s, it was the Paris college that proved most important to the network’s political activities in the latter seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. During its first fifty years the Scots college in Paris had fewer students than Rome but this changed as time went on.83 Part of the reason for the rise in student numbers in Paris was its proximity to the newly exiled Stuart court.The Scots college took full advantage of this association. Paris found itself not only a part of a wider Catholic network but at the heart of the Jacobite cause. Indeed, even more directly than during the 1630s, the events of 1688 placed the Catholic networks of the colleges into a position where their interests and those of the Stuart dynasty converged. Dan Szechi has recognised this, pointing out that the ‘core groups within Jacobitism were simply emulating the endogamous, but widespread, family connections the Anglo-Scottish Catholic community had used to preserve itself for the previous 200 years’.84

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The colleges and the Jacobites Louis Innes (1651–1738), the rector of Paris during this period was only thirty-one years old when, in 1682, he became college principal, succeeding Robert Barclay.85 Innes was to define the character of the Paris college during the tumultuous period of the Glorious Revolution, and would play a key role in establishing it as a centre of the Jacobite cause. Unlike Robert Philip and his college network in the 1630s, Innes was faced with a much more clear-cut set of political choices. The Stuarts had shown themselves to be, at the very least, tolerant of Catholicism. In James II’s case they took that tolerance a step further. He was the first reigning Catholic monarch since Mary. For Innes there was no longer a confessional bridle to his Stuart loyalties. Innes visited Britain three times during the early years of his principalship, in 1684, 1686 and 1687, although it would be his actions abroad that formed the most significant part of his political achievement.86 Some of Innes’s trips were undertaken with the view to securing his nomination as a bishop, something that was ultimately overtaken by the events of 1688. But Innes’s pre-1688 British visits served to make a connection between the Paris college and James, a link that only increased the college’s importance to the Stuart dynasty, once the king had moved to France. After the Glorious Revolution when James VII took residence in St Germain, the fate of Scottish Catholicism, as espoused by the colleges at least, was now tied directly to the fate of the Stuart dynasty.87 From the very beginning Innes was central to this process of identification and he used his networks to push forward the goals of the Stuart monarchy wherever possible. The role of Paris in these events was key, and it must be remembered that unlike Rome, the Paris college accommodated Scottish lay Catholics, not just candidates for the priesthood. This gave the college a much broader social, geographical and political reach, and a denser human network to deploy on behalf of the Jacobite cause. In part this explains how the college became so tied to wider Jacobite networks. However, it also opened the door to the divisions and dissentions that plagued Jacobites, something that greatly compromised the college’s mission in the longer term. The role of the Scots colleges during the Jacobite period has received considerable historical attention. This does not mean that the Irish and English collegial networks were irrelevant. On the contrary. In the Irish case in particular the collegial networks played a key role in maintaining Jacobitism, for instance, by facilitating the nomination of Jacobite bishops to Irish sees,88 though there is more work to be done to investigate how exactly this was achieved.89 Nevertheless, it was the Scots colleges who led the collegiate contribution to the Jacobite movement. Although there were significant numbers of non-Jacobite Scottish Catholics, and indeed Protestant Jacobite Scots, it is undeniable that the fate

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of Catholicism in Scotland became, from the perspective of many Catholics, bound to the fate of James and his successors. This was, at least in part, because of Scotland’s strategic role in any future Stuart restoration attempt. As Walter Leslie wrote: ‘but if once his Majesty be sure of Scotland, at least beneath the Tay, his Majesty will be in fair way to soon overcome all the rest, and lastly ensure England with a great and victorious army, and carry all along before him’.90 The political significance of the colleges to Jacobitism needs to be recognised and placed into the wider context of diplomatic history. It was not, as some have argued, a diversion from the colleges’ true, educational mission. Tom McInally has described Innes’s appointment as king’s almoner as a ‘distraction’, which damaged the educational provision of the Paris college. However, it is possible to argue that it was precisely appointments like this that constituted some of the college’s greatest successes. They were also a natural continuation of the traditional political role of the colleges.91 The ability of the college network to penetrate political networks, and manipulate them to push forward their vision of a Catholic Scotland was a tangible success, and appointments like Innes’s were part of this. As in the case of Rome, the ultimate failure of the schemes is no reason to dismiss them as insignificant. It is worth emphasising that during this period more students of the college in Paris followed military careers than became priests.92 James Drummond, the Duke of Perth, was an alumnus of the Scots college in Douai and Paris, and participated in the Irish campaigns of 1689, fought at the battle of the Boyne and the siege of Limerick.93 Indeed, as with a number of other members of the college networks, he also fought in the 1715 uprising, before dying a year after the 1745, when he was buried in the college. His brother John Drummond, earl of Melfort, who had previously served as secretary of state for Scotland worked alongside his brother and within the Catholic networks created by the colleges.94 Both men were members of the order of the Thistle, created for recent converts to Roman Catholicism.95 This order, although clearly in part existing to forward an interest separate from that of the traditional old Scottish families, constituted a link to the old college network through James Drummond, and it seems that the college network remained important to the activities of the two men.96 However, the deepening divisions within European political Catholicism, especially between Louis XIV and Pope Innocent XI, affected continental support for the Jacobites and found expression in the toils of the Paris college and its network. So too did the increasingly strained relations between Rome and the Francophile Jesuits.97 Within this rivalry, however, the colleges provided a venue for mediation and communication between Paris and Rome as the correspondence between William Leslie, of the college in Rome, Walter Leslie, his brother, and Louis Innes reveals. Indeed, correspondence of this nature continued right through to the end of the 1745.98 In 1690 Lord Melfort secured an audience

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with the pope, with the primary aim of discussing the restitution of James to his kingdoms and Walter Leslie’s comment on the affair illustrates the depth of the divisions that college personnel were trying to overcome:99 my lord Melfort is most diligent, most vigilent and has answert all their reasons [from the Pope] not to help the King of England which reasons I assure are not to conforme to the maximes of the ghospel but most conform to the maximes of this court which is ever to honour the strongest party Catholick or Protestant providing France be humbled, so I assure you of small hope heir of help except yee be victorious … I am persuaded that God almighty upholds the Catholick faith in spyte of them.100

As divisions within the colleges deepened, particularly as the Jansenist controversy grew in France, it became increasingly difficult for the various factions to work together. Indeed on one occasion Walter Leslie referred to his opponents as ‘blockheads’.101 A year after Melfort’s unsuccessful meeting he wrote: ‘now I say the Jesuits are lyke to the Jews of Samaria who in Samaria adored the idols’.102 From 1692 onwards the rhetoric of distrust increased in intensity. Leslie eventually claimed that the city was full of Orangeists and was a dangerous place for impressionable youths.103 This mistrust was reciprocated and it was reported to the pope that if he gave money to the Jesuits they would keep it and give none to Scotland.104 These tensions were obvious in the Scots colleges too, as they continued to push for a Stuart restoration, providing support for ­diplomatic missions where necessary, such as supporting Melfort during his papal ­negotiations. However, as Dan Szechi argues, ‘The Catholic coterie with which he [James II] surrounded himself at St Germain soon recreated the introverted councils that had led to his expulsion from Britain’.105 This obviously became more complicated within the broader Jacobite circles at the court of St Germain since, as Charles Whyteford, the acting principal of the Scots college in Paris, pointed out, ‘We have at court a protestant and a catholique faction.’106 Despite these divisions the colleges made a significant contribution to the Jacobite movement, in particular to the rebellions of 1715 and 1745. As already shown they at the very least maintained channels of communication through which grievances inside the Catholic faction could be aired. Nevertheless it is clear that whatever mediation the colleges managed, there was still distrust between the Jacobite factions prior to the outbreak of the 1715 uprising.107 Louis Innes secured his appointment as almoner of King James from 30 November 1713, just before this uprising commenced, and was acutely aware of the political sensitivities of the moment. Despite the tensions he did not retreat and continued to pursue a pro-Catholic agenda. Writing in January 1713 to the earl of Middleton, fearing that the king might be forced to listen to the Protestant faction in his entourage, he wrote:

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He said their encouragement proceeded from their reflecting that King Charles had been Catholic long before the restoration; yet that he temporised and never declared himself Catholic, till upon his death-bed; and that this encouraged them to hope, that the King, seeing the impossibility of his being restored without temporising, in the same manner, might be persuaded to it.108

Such concerns also illustrate the broader religious divide within Jacobitism, which although slightly beyond the remit of this chapter, was informed by the Scots Catholic networks. Innes played a role in both the preparation for and diplomacy surrounding the 1715 uprising, and the college itself was used not only to hold the King’s money but also to help in organising the shipping of weapons to Scotland.109 This role brought the college to the very centre of Stuart government in exile and gave it significant influence over the development of policy.There is some debate about whether Innes was himself in Scotland during the revolt but it seems more likely that he was not, though a number of college alumni did take part, including the duke of Perth and General Alexander Gordon of Auchintoul and his brother.110 However, for those still at the college all that could be done was to monitor events, something they did eagerly as the steady stream of letters to the college attest.111 Immediately after the 1715 uprising, Innes lost his post and an entire circle of Catholics was removed from Jacobite politics for a time. What followed was a period of gradually declining influence. During the 1720s and 1730s the splits within the movement increased as the Jansenist controversy took hold within the Paris college itself. The theological tensions within the network rendered it impossible for staff to provide reliable intelligence in the run up to 1745.112 The marked contrast with the possibly delusional and certainly overoptimistic but well-coordinated activities of the colleges during the 1630s is obvious. There was still a significant number of alumni from all of the colleges fighting in the ranks of the 1745, with the royal standard being blessed by Bishop Hugh Macdonald.113 But unlike the 1690s, by 1745 the college network was only loosely involved in the overall coordination, beyond providing students to fight. George Innes, the Paris principal, appears to have been mainly occupied with intelligence and news gathering.114 This seems to point to a fundamental change in the role and significance of the Scots colleges. The attempts to directly manipulate politics, at least on the scale of the earlier period, had ended. From the ThirtyYears’War to the failure of the 1745 the colleges had attempted to promote themselves by aiding the Stuart dynasty but after 1745, lacking a new raison d’être, they had no cohesion and this permitted divisions to fester and deepen.The role of the Jansenist controversy in the decline of the colleges has been debated but it is clear that there were wider issues affecting the networks than the purely theological.115 The eclipse of the Stuart cause was accompanied by the decline of the political role of the colleges.

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Douai was closed in the late eighteenth century and subsequently the radicalisation of the revolution in France in the early 1790s heralded the eventual closure of the Paris college, which occurred in 1792.116 The turmoil of revolution posed a number of fundamental questions to the Paris college, in particular that of its sometimes conflicting Catholic, French and Scottish identities.117 Questions of identity preceded the revolutionary turmoil. From the 1780s onwards Alexander Gordon had argued with Alexander Innes, George Hay and John Geddes about the future of the college. Gordon advocated selling the college’s assets in Paris and moving it elsewhere but the divisions between these men illustrate not only the justifiable fear of the changing political context in France but also the lack of a clear vision for the institution.118 Having successfully sought, as a foreign institution, exemption from revolutionary reorganisation, the outbreak of war between France and Britain sealed the college’s fate. Its assets were seized and Alexander Innes, the procurator, was arrested.119 Innes, who was imprisoned in the college, witnessed the Terror, when the college premises served as a prison. The failure to re-establish the college after the revolution was in part because the French government did not encourage it and in part because the needs of Scottish Catholics and their political concerns had shifted considerably since the seventeenth century.120 A new united college structure was eventually created in the early nineteenth century bringing together the English, Scottish and Irish colleges, which meant that Scots could and did continue to study in France. But the college that had existed in the seventeenth century was no more. The monument to James VII in the Scots college in Paris is in many ways an apt symbol of the failed possibilities that Jacobitism represented for the college. A movement which could have propelled the Scots colleges to the highest levels of influence across the three kingdoms instead resulted in the ending of their political role with the failure of the movement they had wholeheartedly supported. Indeed, this break with their tradition of political activity meant that the colleges became, late in the eighteenth century, what perhaps they had originally been intended to be, seminaries, detached from political activity. Conclusion The colleges’ political networks were, it seems fair to say, far from a glorious success yet they clearly played an important role in diplomacy, an aspect of their activity that has been overlooked in the historiography. In 1690 Walter Leslie reported from Rome to Paris how, in reality, the papacy did not understand Britain, nor did it intend to: ‘Firstly you must presuppose that heer this court has little understanding [of] our affairs in Brittain, nor, which is worst, will understand them ... Rome never applyed its mynd to know our affairs well since

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the losse of the Spanish Armada in the year 1588.’121 This statement contrasts markedly with an earlier remark that described the role of the English and Scottish colleges in Spain earlier in the seventeenth century. The quote captures well the aggression and confidence of the colleges stating that they: ‘have been artillery which has given a broadside of great effect in those kingdoms for your Majesty’s and God’s service’.122 Such a shift in attitudes illustrates not only the problems within the colleges, but also the changing political situation in Europe. By 1690 the papacy was becoming more concerned with the rise of France than with reconverting Scotland and, although the Jacobite movement provided a temporary advantage for the French, it did not last. During the entire seventeenth century, while Protestant English and Scots (mainly Calvinists) fought and tried to manipulate policy through the military, the Catholic colleges provided an effective diplomatic counter balance. Managing diplomacy at the highest levels created some minor successes, notably in the 1630s. During this decade the network facilitated direct communication between Charles I and the pope. These negotiations did not result in immediate success but did open avenues of communication that would continue to be used for the rest of the century. The failure to restore Catholicism in the British Isles does not necessarily cancel the colleges’ contribution, especially given that they had managed to create an atmosphere within the Stuart court that allowed such politically sensitive objectives to be discussed. The bond between the colleges and the Stuart dynasty strengthened with the Stuart exile, when the interests of colleges and monarch became ever more closely intertwined. Although Charles II had been exiled in the 1650s, it was the arrival of James II to Paris that proved the defining moment for the collegial network. However, despite enjoying access to the exiled Stuart king and the French court, internal divisions caused a host of problems for the Scottish college networks, exacerbated by the Stuart court’s enforced move from France, eventually to Rome under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). Though the colleges did prove influential within Jacobite circles, this meant that the restitution of Catholicism became entwined with the Jacobite movement, limiting the range of political options available to the college network. The failure of the 1715 rising marked the beginning of the decline of their influence. The defeat of the 1745 uprising condemned this cause and also the role of the Scots colleges as political vehicles. The Scots colleges were undeniably Scottish in terms of personnel and operated on behalf of Scotland’s interests, but they also coordinated and worked with and on behalf of other parts of the three kingdoms. In the 1630s they expressly used a Scottish network to attempt to negotiate for the restoration not only of Scotland but also of England to the Catholic Church. This focus was part of their adoption of a Stuart world-view and of their acceptance that the Stuart dynasty represented their best chance of securing Catholicism’s future in

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England, Scotland and Ireland. Moreover, as time passed it became clear that the Scots colleges were not solely Scottish in terms of their personnel. For example, in 1688 the Scots college in Paris put out a request for scholars who spoke Irish, a strong indicator that Irishmen were becoming increasingly involved in the college and that there was some crossover with Irish networks, something that had not been a feature of the colleges earlier in the century.123 This broad and accepting view allowed the Scots colleges to weather several political storms and to enhance their networks. With the rise of the Jacobite movement the colleges used the Scottish Catholic networks they had spent years developing with the aim of complete Stuart restoration. This Stuart-British outlook does not mean that there were no tensions between the nations involved, far from it. Just as Protestants and Catholics clashed and individuals within the same religion fell out over differences, there was disagreement between the English, Scots and Irish. Walter Leslie expressed his frustrations writing that ‘it seems the Inglish nation are altogether blynd’.124 Tom McInally described the colleges as the ‘sixth university’ of Scotland and this was in many ways correct as they undoubtedly educated a great number of Scots.125 However, as this chapter has shown, the colleges were more than just educational institutions. The networks between the colleges and their political activities were an equally important collegial legacy. The network created by the colleges provided a complicating political counterbalance to the vast Protestant military diaspora and proved effective in influencing Stuart policy, especially after 1690. The close bond between the Stuart dynasty and the Scots college network from 1600 to 1750 deserves attention. Indeed, understanding the wider political roles of Scottish, English and Irish colleges in early modern society deepens our understanding of the activities of the Stuart monarchy on the European stage and allows historians to analyse an entire dimension of diplomatic activity that was not conducted through ambassadors.

Notes

1 T. McInally, ‘The Scots college Paris, 1652–8: a centre for Scottish networks’, Journal of Irish Scottish Studies, 2:1 (2008), 15. 2 For example see E. Mijers, ‘News from the Republick of Letters’: Scottish Students, Charles Mackie and the United Provinces, 1650–1750 (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 3 T. M. McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1589–1597: Building the Faith of Saint Peter upon the King of Spain’s Monarchy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). 4 A. Marks, ‘The Scots in the Italian peninsula during the Thirty Years’ War’, in T. O’Connor and M. A. Lyons (eds), The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe: Refashioning Irish Identities, 1600–1800 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010), pp. 327–48. 5 D. Worthington, ‘Alternative diplomacy? Scottish exiles at the courts of the Habsburgs and their allies, 1618–1648’, in S. Murdoch (ed.), Scotland and the Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), p. 57. 6 T. McInally, The Sixth Scottish University: The Scots Colleges Abroad, 1575–1799 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 1–2. 7 Ibid., p. 25.

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8 A. Wright, ‘Rome, the Papacy and the foundation of national colleges in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, in R. McCluskey (ed.), The Scots College Rome, 1600–2000 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2000), pp. 1–19. 9 W. James, ‘Anderson’s edition of Abbe Paul MacPherson’s History of the Scots College Rome’, Innes Review, 12 (1961), 19; ‘Patrick Anderson’, in Enciclopedia cattolica (12 vols, Vatican City, 1948–1954), vol. 1, p. 1179. 10 M. Dilworth, ‘Beginnings, 1600–1707’, McCluskey, The Scots College Rome, pp. 19–42. 11 McInally, ‘The Scots college Paris’, p. 16. 12 M. Taylor, The Scots College in Spain (Valladolid: no publisher, 1971). Kindle location 75. 13 McInally, The Sixth Scottish University, p. 27. 14 Ibid., pp. 30–1. 15 James VI took the title of ‘King of Great Britain’ on his accession to the English throne in 1603 and the Stuart monarchs and others at the time used the term ‘British’ to denote all three of their kingdoms (England, Scotland and Ireland). 16 T. McInally, A Database of the Alumni of the Scots Colleges Abroad 1575–1799 (Aberdeen, 2008). 17 See for example in the English college of Seville (one such student is James Comerford): M. Murphy (ed.), St Gregory’s College, Seville, 1592–1767, Catholic Record Society (hereafter C.R.S.), vol. 73 (London, 1992), p. 60. 18 245 students from Douai (ordination only), 276 from Seville (1600–1650), 71 from Lisbon (1628–1650), 338 Valladolid, 812 from St Omer. E. H. Burton and T. L. Williams (eds), Douay College Diaries:Third, Fourth and Fifth, 1598–1654, C.R.S., vols 10–11 (2 vols, London, 1911); Murphy, St Gregory’s College, Seville; M. Sharratt (ed.), Lisbon College Register, 1628–1813, C.R.S., vol. 72 (London, 1991); E. Henson (ed.), Registers of the English College atValladolid, 1589–1862, C.R.S., vol. 30 (London, 1930); G. Holt (ed.), St Omers and Bruges Colleges, 1593–1773: A Biographical Dictionary, C.R.S., vol. 69 (London, 1979). These figures are incomplete for the entire period since Lisbon was not founded until 1628 and Douai only has accessible records for those who undertook ordination, not those who arrived. 19 Holt, St Omers and Bruges Colleges. 20 Murphy, St Gregory’s College, Seville, p. 51. 21 B. M. Halloran, The Scots College Paris, 1603–1792 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1997). 22 McInally, The Sixth Scottish University, p. 134. 23 Halloran, The Scots College Paris; McCluskey, The Scots College Rome; Taylor, The Scots College in Spain. 24 McInally, The Sixth Scottish University. 25 Esther Mijers research on the role of Scots within the Low Countries ‘republic of letters’ is an excellent example of this. Mijers, ‘News from the Republick of Letters’. 26 A. Grosjean, An Unofficial Alliance: Scotland and Sweden 1569–1654 (Leiden: Brill, 2003); S. Murdoch, Network North: Scottish Kin, Commercial and Covert Association in Northern Europe, 1603–1746 (Leiden: Brill, 2006); S. Murdoch and A. Grosjean, Alexander Leslie and the Scottish Generals of the Thirty Years’War, 1618–1648 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014); K. Zickermann, Across the German Sea: Early Modern Scottish Connections with the Wider Elbe-Weser Region (Leiden: Brill, 2014). My own research on English military networks also fits into this: A. Marks, ‘England, the English and the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648)’ (PhD Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2012); A. Marks, ‘Recognising friends from foes: Stuart Politics, English military networks and their alliances with Denmark and the Palatinate’, in S. J. Wolfson and V. Caldari (eds), Marriage Diplomacy: Early Stuart Dynastic Politics in their European Context, c.1604–1630 (Woodbridge: Brewer & Boydell, forthcoming). 27 Murdoch, Network North. 28 D. Worthington, British and Irish Experiences and Impressions of Central Europe, c.1560–1688 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). 29 Marks, ‘The Scots in the Italian peninsula during the Thirty Years’ War’, pp. 327–48. 30 For a recent study of the Palatine family see Marks, ‘Recognising friends from foes’; B. C. Pursell, ‘The Palatinate and its networks in the Empire and Europe’, in O. Asbach and

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P. Schröder (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to the Thirty Years’ War (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 25–38. 31 Marks, ‘England and the Thirty Years’ War’, p. 192; S. Murdoch, ‘Introduction’, in S. Murdoch (ed.), Scotland and the ThirtyYears’War, 1618–1648 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 19–20. 32 S. Murdoch, K. Zickermann and A. Marks, ‘The Battle of Wittstock 1636: conflicting reports on a Swedish victory in Germany’, Northern Studies, 43 (2012), 79–109. 33 Marks, ‘England and the Thirty Years’ War’, pp. 72–5. 34 Ibid.; Murdoch, Scotland and the Thirty Years’War; Murdoch and Grosjean, Alexander Leslie; D. Worthington, Scots in Habsburg Service, 1618–1648 (Leiden: Brill, 2004). 35 D. J. B. Trim, ‘Fighting “Jacob’s wars”. The employment of English and Welsh mercenaries in the European Wars of Religion: France and the Netherlands, 1562–1610’ (PhD thesis, King’s College London, 2002), pp. 75–8. Trim has also argued that it was not until the Peace of Westphalia that the use of force by a nation was bound to a declaration of war and that to effectively explain the early modern period we must refrain from viewing events from the same perspective of nineteenth-century ‘great power’ politics. Within a Scottish context see: Murdoch, ‘Introduction’, pp. 15–18. David Parrott’s work has argued that far great nuance is necessary to understand the various status and motivations of soldiers. See D. Parrott, The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 36 Marks, ‘England and the Thirty Years’ War’; Marks, ‘Recognising friends from foes’. 37 See primarily The National Archives (hereafter T.N.A.), SP 75/8, State Papers Foreign, Denmark (1627). There are also useful records within: Statens Arkiver Rigsarkivet, Copenhagen, TKUA, 63–7, Letter from Dudley Carelton (3 April 1628); Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, 1.01.02 5890 Stukken betreffende Engeland (1627–1628). For a broader account of these networks see O. P. Grell, Brethren in Christ: A Calvinist Network in Reformation Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2011). 38 They were also contained within the Spanish Netherlands. Worthington, Scots in Habsburg Service, p. 51. 39 A. Kenny, The ‘Responsa Scholarum’ of the English College, Rome, C.R.S., vols 54–55 (2 vols, London, 1962–63), vol. 2, p. 438. 40 W. F. Leith (ed.), Records of the Scots Colleges at Douai, Rome, Madrid,Valladolid and Ratisbon: Volume I, Registers of Students (Aberdeen: New Spalding Club, 1906), pp. 22, 110. 41 Ibid., pp. 24–5, 43. 42 McInally, A Database of the Alumni. 43 Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, 1.01.02 5889.335, Letter from the Duke of Buckingham, earl of Holland and Dudley Carleton, 21 November 1625. 44 For details of the Protestant military aspect of this see Marks, ‘Recognising friends from foes’. 45 Murphy, St Gregory’s College, Seville, p. 82. 46 M. Questier (ed.), Stuart Dynastic Policy and Religious Politics, 1621–1625, Camden Society, 5th series, 34 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 132. 47 T.N.A., SP 94/30, fo. 264v., Sir Walter Aston to Secretary Conway,17 May 1624. Cited in Questier, Stuart Dynastic Policy, p. 294. 48 Scottish Catholic Archives, Aberdeen University (hereafter S.C.A.), CA /4/3/13, Scots College, Spain [Madrid and Valladolid], 15 December 1620. 49 Worthington, Scots in Habsburg Service, p. 53, 64. 50 R. A. Stradling, The Armada of Flanders: Spanish Maritime Policy and European War, 1568–1668 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 26. 51 Ibid., pp. 25–32. See also C. Fry, ‘Diplomacy and deception: King James VI of Scotland’s foreign reations with Europe (c.1584–1603)’ (PhD thesis, University of St Andrews, 2014), pp. 51–2; McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, pp. 123–9. There were numerous similar schemes with Ireland as an invasion base. 52 Worthington, Scots in Habsburg Service, p. 111. 53 James, ‘MacPherson’s History of the Scots College Rome’, p. 15.

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54 M. Dilworth, ‘Beginnings, 1600–1707’, in McCluskey (ed.), The Scots College Rome, p. 20. James, ‘MacPherson’s History of the Scots College Rome’, p. 16. 55 W. E. Brown, ‘Essay on the history of the Scots college’, in The Scots College, Rome. A Tribute of the Scots College Society (London: Sands, 1930), p. 7. 56 Marks, ‘The Scots in the Italian Peninsula during the Thirty Years’ War’, p. 332. 57 The only research on this can be found in my own essay: ibid., pp. 327–48 and in:W. McMillam, ‘Robert Philip, Father Confessor to Henrietta Maria’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, 9 (1974), 83–96. 58 See G. L. Dellavida (ed.), George Strachan, Memorials of a Wandering Scottish Scholar of the Seventeenth Century (Aberdeen: Third Spalding Club, 1956); Leith, Records of the Scots Colleges, p. 101. 59 Dellavida, George Strachan, pp. 30–1. This contains the original Latin and a translation. 60 Leith, Records of the Scots Colleges, p. 101; McMillam, ‘Robert Philip’, p. 84 for more details of Philips early life. 61 J. H. Burton, D. Masson, P. H. Brown, H. Paton and E. W. M. Balfour-Melville (eds), Register of the Privy Council of Scotland (36 vols, Edinburgh: General Register House, 1877–1970), series 1, vol. 10, pp. 815–16; R. Pitcairn (ed.), Criminal Trials in Scotland from MDCCCCLXXXVIII to MDCXXIV embracing the entire reigns of James IV, JamesV, Mary Queen of Scots and JamesVI, compiled from the original records and MSS with historical notes and explanations (3 vols, Edinburgh: William Tait, 1833), vol. 3, pp. 252–4. 62 Halloran, The Scots College Paris, pp. 28–9. 63 A. J. Loomie, ‘Philip, Robert’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (hereafter O.D.N.B.) (online edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–14). 64 J. Berington (ed.), The Memoirs of Gregorio Panzani, giving an Account of his Agency in England in the years 1634, 1635, 1636. (Birmingham: Swinney and Walker, 1793). Whether Panzani himself or a close associate wrote the memoirs is not clear, however, they are corroborated by other sources such as D. T., The Popes Nuntioes, or, The Negotiation of Seignior Panzani, Seignior Con, &c. resident here in England with the Queen and treating about the alteration of religion with the Archbishop of Canterbury and his adherents in the yeares of our Lord, 1634, 1635, 1636, &c.: together with a letter to a nobleman of this kingdom concerning the same (London: R[obert] B[ostock], 1643). 65 Berington, The Memoirs of Gregorio Panzani, p. 131. 66 D. T., The Popes Nuntioes, pp. 6–7; Berington, The Memoirs of Gregorio Panzani, p. 133. 67 Berington, The Memoirs of Gregorio Panzani, pp. 154–5. This analysis of the state of Europe is a little simplistic but illustrates the general concept of the scheme. 68 T.N.A., C 115/109/8735, Sir William Boswell, The Hague, to Viscount Scudamore, 9/19 May 1636. 69 T. McInally, ‘Scottish Catholics abroad, 1603–1688: evidence derived from the archives of the Scots Colleges’in D. Worthington (ed.), British and Irish Emigrants and Exiles in Europe, 1603–1688 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), p. 227. 70 Marks, ‘England and the Thirty Years’ War’, pp. 75–7. 71 D. T., The Popes Nuntioes, pp. 11, 13. 72 Berington, The Memoirs of Gregorio Panzani, p. 189. 73 Ibid., p. 252; J. J. Scally, ‘Hamilton, William, second Duke of Hamilton’, O.D.N.B. 74 M. V. Hay (ed.), The Blairs Papers (1603–1660) (London: Sands, 1929), p. 113. 75 Leith, Records of the Scots Colleges, p. 106. 76 Ibid.; Berington, The Memoirs of Gregorio Panzani, pp. 236–7. 77 T. Urquhart, The Jewel, ed. R. D. S. Jack and R. J. Lyall (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1983), p. 158; D. T., The Popes Nuntioes, p. 15. It seems plausible, though there is no proof, that Conn’s promotion was deliberately delayed to aid suitability for his mission. 78 McInally, The Sixth Scottish University, p. 41. 79 N. Akkerman (ed.), The Correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia,Vol. 2, 1632–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 1031. 80 Leith, Records of the Scots Colleges, pp. 24–5, 30; McInally, The Sixth Scottish University, p. 40.

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81 D. T., The Popes Nuntioes, p. 8; Berington, The Memoirs of Gregorio Panzani, pp. 140–2. 82 Berington, The Memoirs of Gregorio Panzani, pp. 233–4. 83 Halloran, The Scots College Paris, p. 34. 84 D. Szechi, The Jacobites: Britain, and Europe, 1688–1788 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), p. 24. 85 Halloran, The Scots College Paris, p. 57. 86 Ibid., pp. 57–63. 87 Ibid., p. 80. See in general: McInally, The Sixth Scottish University; E. Cruickshanks, ‘Attempts to restore the Stuarts, 1689–96’, in E. Cruickshanks and E. Corp (eds), The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites (London: Hambledon Press, 1995); McInally, ‘The Scots College Paris’; J. F. McMillan, ‘The Innes brothers and the Scots College in Paris’, in Cruickshanks and Corp (eds), The Stuart Court in Exile, pp. 91–100; Worthington, ‘Alternative diplomacy?’. 88 E. Derr, ‘The Irish catholic episcopal corps 1657–1829: a prosopographical analysis’ (2 vols, PhD thesis, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 2013). 89 A. I. Macinnes, ‘Jacobitism in Scotland: episodic cause or national movement?’, Scottish Historical Review, 86:2 (2007), 231. 90 S.C.A., BL/1/131/14, Letter from Walter Leslie, 7 February 1690. 91 McInally, The Sixth Scottish University, pp. 47–8. 92 Halloran, The Scots College Paris, p. 80. 93 Ibid., p. 81. 94 E. Corp, ‘Drummond, John, styled first earl of Melfort and Jacobite first duke of Melfort (1649–1714)’, O.D.N.B. 95 M. R. Glozier, ‘The earl of Melfort, the court Catholic party and the foundation of the Order of the Thistle, 1687’, Scottish Historical Studies, 79:208 (2000), 234. 96 Ibid. 97 S.C.A. Pincus, ‘The European Catholic context of the Revolution of 1688–9: Gallacanism, Innocent XI and the Catholic opposition’, in A. I. Macinnes and A. H. Williamson (eds), Shaping the Stuart World, 1603–1714:The Atlantic Connection (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 82–3. 98 Ibid., p. 112. 99 S.C.A. BL/1/131/2, Walter Leslie to Mr Whyteford, Paris, 10 January 1690. 100 Ibid., BL/1/131/4, Letter from Walter Leslie, 31 January 1690. 101 Ibid., BL/1/105/2, Letter from Walter Leslie, 4 February 1687; BL/1/105/5, Walter Leslie to Mr Whyteford, Paris, 15 April 1687. 102 Ibid., BL/1/138/19, Letter from Walter Leslie, 20 December 1691. See also BL/1/151/8, Leslie to?, 2 December 1692. 103 Ibid., BL/1/150/11, Letter from Walter Leslie, 17 June 1692; BL/1/150/17, Walter Leslie to Whyteford, 19 August 1692; BL/1/162/9, Letter from Walter Leslie, 20 March 1693. 104 Ibid., BL/1/151/11, Letter from Walter Leslie, 26 December 1692. 105 Szechi, The Jacobites, p. 30. 106 D. Szechi, ‘A blueprint for tyranny? Sir Edward Hales and the Catholic Jacobite response to the Revolution of 1688’, English Historical Review, 116:466 (2001), 349; S.C.A., BL/2/1/186, Whyteford to Leslie, Paris, 19 July 1694. 107 Original Papers; containing the Secret History of Great Britain, from the Restoration, to the Accession of the House of Hanover.To which are prefixed, Extracts from the Life of James II., as written by himself, ed. J. Macpherson (2 vols, London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1775), vol. 2, pp. 422–23. 108 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 365–6. 109 Halloran, The Scots College Paris, p. 84. 110 Ibid., p. 86. 111 S.C.A., BL/2/207/2–10, L. Innes to T. Innes, January–February 1716. See also Halloran, The Scots College Paris, p. 99, fn 48–52. 112 Macinnes, ‘Jacobitism in Scotland: episodic cause or national movement?’, p. 234. 113 Halloran, The Scots College Paris, p. 91. 114 S.C.A., BL/3/88, Correspondence of G. Innes, 1747. See also Halloran, The Scots College Paris, p. 101, fn 107–8.

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115 M. Rapport, ‘Review: The Scots College Paris 1603–1792 by Brian M. Halloran’, Scottish Historical Review, 77:204 (1998), 268. 116 J. Russell, ‘The last students at the Scots College, Douai’, Innes Review, 58:2 (2007), 222–5. 117 M. Rapport, ‘A community apart? The closure of the Scots College in Paris during the French Revolution, 1789–1794’, Innes Review, 53:1 (2002), 85. 118 Ibid., p. 89. 119 Ibid., pp. 100–1. 120 Rapport, ‘Review: The Scots College Paris’, p. 269. 121 S.C.A., BL/1/131/15, Letter from Walter Leslie, 18 October 1690. 122 A. J. Loomie, Spain and the Jacobean Catholics,Volume II: 1613–1624, C.R.S., vol. 68 (London, 1978), p. 165. 123 S.C.A., BL/1/115/1, Letter from Walter Leslie, 20 January 1688. Followed by a general request for more scholars: S.C.A., BL/1/115/5, Letter from Walter Leslie, 6 April 1688. 124 Ibid., BL/1/175/5, Letter from Walter Leslie, 26 February 1694. 125 McInally, The Sixth Scottish University.

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6 Seminary colleges, converts and religious change in post-Reformation England, 1568–1688 Michael Questier The English college network on the continent, like its Irish, Scots and Dutch counterparts, had its origins in the sixteenth century. Under the leadership of William Allen, Oxford Catholic exiles set up a seminary for English clergy in Douai in 1568.1 It quickly attracted Scots and Irish students as well. In 1579, after much bickering between English and Welsh clergy, an English seminary under Jesuit government was set up in Rome.2 It replaced an English hospice, which had sheltered English and Welsh pilgrims since 1362 and superseded a strife-ridden Welsh-led English seminary founded by William Allen in 1576.3 Students there frequented the Jesuit Roman college and provided no fewer than forty priests, four of whom subsequently underwent martyrdom, a tally that went unchallenged by either Irish or Scots recusants. In 1589, largely thanks to the activities of Robert Persons, the English college of St Alban was established in Valladolid,4 followed by the foundation of a college in Seville in 1592.5 To supply the seminaries a network of continental grammar schools, supplementary to domestic institutions, was set up, beginning with a school in Eu in 1581.6 The crucially important school at Saint Omer was set up in 1593.7 Connected to this network of seminaries and grammar schools were foundations catering for male and female religious, some of which, like the English Benedictines at Dieulouard in Lorraine,8 offered schooling. The establishment of the English college network, like that of its Irish counterpart, involved some bitter conflicts. The most important of these concerned differences between secular and regular clergy, particularly regarding the nature and priorities of the English mission. These came to a head with the demise of the moderating influence of Allen in 1594. As neither a hierarchy nor an English Jesuit province existed, a slugging match ensued between English seculars and regulars, the latter mainly Jesuits. The appointment of a secular priest, George Blackwell, as archpriest with authority over the seculars was Rome’s attempt at a settlement. But Blackwell was regarded by his critics as an instrument of the Society of Jesus. They appealed against his appointment

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and his authority. This episode is referred to in the literature as the Archpriest, or Appellant, controversy (in which a well-organised cadre of seminary clergy condemned the Jesuits, offered their support to James VI against Presbyterians and, at the same time, urged a toleration of the majority of English Catholics), and it spawned a not unsophisticated and quite extensive printed literature.9 These late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century controversies, with their frequent arguments about clerical training, and what sort of priests should be deployed on the English mission and in the English Church, raised in a particularly acute way the question of what the English colleges were actually for. Their most obvious purpose was, of course, no more and no less than the founders and leading lights of those institutions themselves explained – to train clergy and dispatch them back to their home land in order to preserve and increase the faith. The claim of contemporary Catholics was that these clergymen were simply continuing in the tradition established by previous missionaries sent from Rome.True religion, it was frequently averred, had always come to England from the Holy City.10 But in the conflict-ridden circumstances of the later 1570s and early 1580s, for instance, bringing true religion to England from the continent had a number of different meanings and implications. When in May 1582 the papal nuncio in Paris, Giovanni Battista Castelli, commented on and recommended to the cardinal of Como the multi-pronged invasion proposal recently drawn up by the duke of Lennox in order to release Mary Stuart back into the political arena and, in all likelihood, to dethrone Elizabeth, he argued that Pope Gregory XIII’s sponsorship of this venture would be analogous to the evangelical enthusiasm of his predecessor, Gregory I, who had sent missionaries to convert Anglo-Saxon England.11 Perhaps it was an analogy of sorts. Many contemporaries, however, would have been able to spot some crucial differences and, for most English P­ rotestants, this was all nonsense anyway. As William Lloyd wrote in 1667, summarising years of argument on this topic, Protestants rejected the claim that ‘we in this land have been twice converted’ from paganism ‘by persons sent to us from Rome’. Lloyd added (in reply to his adversary, the earl of Castlemaine) that, even if it were in some sense true, this did not mean that ‘because we received good from the primitive Christians of that place, therefore we should lay our selves open to receive any evil that may happen to us from their degenerous ­successors’.12 So – what about those ‘degenerous successors’, and particularly those who were trained in the continental colleges and seminaries and who rapidly became some of the most controversial actors and agents in post-Reformation politics? If these clergymen were actually intending to carry out what some of them referred to as the ‘conversion of England’, what exactly did that mean? Was this a purely spiritual and private function, as they almost always declared? If so, why did this have potentially radical and disturbing public and political

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c­ onsequences? Or, if as is fairly obviously the case, these two things (spiritual function and political consequence) were not mutually exclusive, how does one discuss that historically? One of the ironies of the quite extensive literature on this topic is that those who started in the nineteenth century to reassemble the records generated by the seminaries and their clergy could not easily discuss this at all. Thomas Knox, who helped to produce splendid editions of the correspondence of William Allen and of the diaries of the English college at Douai, concluded bluntly that Allen’s ‘political action stands in no relation to his work for the seminary’. Knox could not believe that ‘our non-Catholic adversaries’ (as he called them) continued to deny ‘that the English colleges abroad were instituted merely for the maintenance and increase of the Catholic religion in England’. These unnamed ‘adversaries’ had the temerity to describe those foundations as ‘hot-beds of political emissaries and training-schools of traitors’. This, as far as Knox was concerned, was utter rubbish, as false a charge ‘as it had been when it was brought against the colleges in the first years of their existence’ and was ‘refuted by Allen himself in his Apology for the English seminaries and his Answer to the Libel of English Justice’. For Knox, ‘the groundlessness of the charge’ could ‘hardly fail to be apparent to anyone who attentively’ considered ‘the detailed account … of the foundation of the seminary’ (as compiled by Knox) as well as the ‘views and aims’ of Allen and ‘the manner of life and studies pursued there’. As Knox saw it, the ‘documents … largely quoted as they stand’ proved that the ‘seminarists were a body of simple-minded and zealous-hearted men, possessed with the one thought of rescuing souls from Hell, not through the medium of political intrigue but in priestly ways by preaching, administration of the sacraments and the celebration of the holy Sacrifice’. ‘Political intrigue’ had nothing to do with this, nor they with it – ‘we find no trace of enthusiasm among them except for winning souls and for martyrdom’. Along with contemporary Catholic martyrologists, Knox concluded that the form of the treason indictments under the 1585 statute against seminary clergy (which made the fact of their ordination treasonable) was ‘proof that the end for which the seminaries existed was not to form political emissaries and traitors’.13 Of course, for many historians outside the Catholic tradition, a brief perusal of William Allen’s life and aims and indeed of many of the personnel of the seminaries still seems to prove something like the opposite. A glance at Allen’s searing 1588 ad faeminam attack on Elizabeth Tudor suggests as much.14 Knox was fully aware that the Jesuit and seminary rector Robert Persons, and indeed other Jesuits, were regarded even by some contemporary Catholics as political agitators; but, for Knox, this was to confuse the agenda of a few clergy (and, behind them, of the Spanish monarchy) with the purpose and function of the seminaries.15

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However, modern commentators who assume that the regime must have had some kind of valid reason for its hostility to seminary clergy are not particularly keen to say explicitly what that might have been and, in fact, tend to regard Catholicism in the post-Reformation as something of an irrelevance, or at the very most as a rather confusing fag-end of the more intellectually respectable and in some quarters almost fashionable narrative of the cultural vitality of late medieval Catholicism as described so lavishly by Eamon Duffy.16 It is almost as if a kind of self-denying ordinance prevents those both inside and outside the Catholic tradition, if not from saying what it was that these colleges formally existed for, then certainly why their foundation and function might have been politically contentious. Maybe we should not blame them. The attempts by Elizabethan regime members and parliamentary draftsmen to define exactly what it was that made the exercise of certain of the seminary clergy’s functions treasonable – for example (as it was called) ‘reconciling’, in other words the absolving of a penitent from the sin of schism and/or heresy – were themselves highly contestable and potentially confusing. New statutes in 1571 and 1581 had tried to tighten up the existing law here. The claim was, as far as reconciling to Rome was concerned, that in practice this constituted disobedience to the queen. As the 1581 statute (23 Elizabeth, c. 1) put it, those who had or claimed to have ‘power, or shall by any wayes or meanes put in practise to absolve, perswade or withdrawe’ the queen’s subjects ‘from their natural obedience to her majestie, or to withdrawe them for that entent from the relygeon nowe by her highenes aucthoritie ­established within her highenes domynions to the Romyshe religeon, or to move them or any of them to promise any obedience to any pretended aucthoritie of the sea of Rome, or of any other prince, state or potentate, to be had or used within her dominions’ should be adjudged traitors, as would those who ‘by any meanes’ were ‘willinglye absolved or withdrawne as aforesaid, or willinglye’ were ‘reconciled’.17 But, of course, that was a case which still had to be made – that is, that converting (if that was what it was) to Rome (in this sacramental sense) was as politically disobedient as the long and heavily rhetorical passages in the relevant statutes declared that it might be. At times the regime pushed close to saying that anyone who went into separation must have converted in the sense defined by the law as treason. The judge Sir Edmund Anderson apparently said something like that at the trial of the Winchester recusant James Bird who was hanged on 25 March 1593: ‘a recusant is one who refuses to go to church’ but ‘this no one does except those who have been reconciled to the Church of Rome’ and ‘he that is reconciled to the Church of Rome is a rebel and a traitor’.18 This was legally highly contentious although it may reflect local knowledge in Bird’s case – that is, that he had been reconciled in a sense liable to attract

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the penalties of the law. But Catholics could take the same facts and invest them with an entirely different set of assumptions. Thus in 1600 John Rigby defended himself by admitting that he had been reconciled (by an unnamed priest) but he said that he had not converted to Rome in any treasonable sense. He was reconciled only to ‘God Almighty’ as ‘lawfully’ he ‘might be’. It was, he told the bench, ‘allowed in your book of common prayer, in the visitation of the sick, that if any man find himself burthened in conscience he should make his confession to the minister, which confession manifesteth a breach between God and his soul, and by this humble confession he craveth pardon of his sins, and reconciliation to God again, by the hands of his minister’. He was, however, never ‘reconciled from’ his ‘obedience’ to the queen or in fact to the ‘Romish religion’ since ‘although’ he ‘sometimes went to church against’ his ‘will, yet’ he ‘was … never of any other religion than the Catholic, and therefore needed no reconciliation in religion’. His attendance at his parish church was effectively the result of coercion and he was ‘never minded to fall from the old religion, and therefore needed no reconciliation’. He dared the judges to say that the statute made it treason (for, as Rigby saw it, ‘a man fallen into the displeasure of God, through his sins’ being ‘reconciled to God again, by him to whom God hath committed the authority of reconciliation’ was definitely not a traitor). Unfortunately for Rigby they took him up on his offer, and he was hanged.19 Still, these court-based confrontations demonstrate sharply how the function of seminary clergy was open to a range of interpretations. Seminary clergy and conversion On almost any measure, of course, at certain points the politically controversial nature of what these clergy did is clear enough. The obvious case is the agitation conducted by the Jesuits Edmund Campion and Robert Persons in 1580–1581. They used a combination of preaching and pamphleteering in order to attack the conformist culture of the Elizabethan settlement of 1559 and to urge those who considered themselves to be good Catholics to go into separation, which they took to be a form of religious conversion. Some years ago Peter Lake pointed out that the Jesuit use of a clandestine press in 1580–1581 was very similar to the kind of agitation more usually associated with John Field and Martin Marprelate.20 Indeed it is not unreasonable to see what Campion, Persons and their friends did as an equivalent in reverse, even if in miniature, of the puritan exercises and prophesyings which were supposed to provoke a national conversion from popery but which had caused so much difficulty for leading Protestant churchmen in the mid-1570s when the queen left Archbishop Grindal and his friends in no doubt as to what she thought of all this.21

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But for many historians of recusancy, whatever their fairly evident confessional biases, the issue of separatism was essentially a static one. Real recusancy was about a state of permanent and unyielding separation. For them, how people got to that point of separatist no-return was relatively insignificant. The position for most historians of the topic has, traditionally, been this: if you agreed that the move into separation from the national church by Catholics in England during the later sixteenth century produced a very small nonconformist community, then the doyen of English Reformation studies (local historian of Yorkshire and extraordinary anti-popish diehard) A. G. Dickens was right – recusancy was of little real importance in the sense that the total number of people who were out-and-out separatists was so trivial.22 Even in supposedly conservative Yorkshire, he claimed, there were very few recusants. His statistics, he argued, were conclusive proof of the sweeping triumph of the Reformation, understood as a via media, something quintessentially English and, as Dickens called it, ‘Anglican’, but certainly incompatible ultimately with the kind of Catholicism represented by recusancy. On the other hand, if separation was the tip of the proverbial iceberg then the statistics of recusancy meant something totally different – that is, they were evidence of a much larger but partly or even mostly concealed set of attitudes and inclinations (and not just in religion narrowly defined) which were sharply hostile to the reforming and allegedly progressive regimes of mid- and late Tudor England. If that was indeed the case then, from the known knowns of detected instances of Catholic separatism, one could tell a story about the known unknowns of the post-Reformation period which is potentially very different from what still passes for up-to-date in the average ‘mainstream’ textbook, in which the assumptions about the Catholic minority have tended to remain the same as Dickens’s back in the 1940s. Of course, since that time there has been a good deal of research and publication on how one might describe the proportion of the population which remained in some sense non-Protestant. This has resulted in complex games of ‘religious identity’ formation in which one person’s occasional conformist is another person’s church papist, and what not.23 What there has been less certainty about has been the mechanisms via which contemporaries may have moved backwards and forwards over various kinds of lines of demarcation and division. Conversions of the kind that were celebrated (or condemned) in contemporary polemical literature in almost exclusively theological language were more intricate than that and were not just the product of a decision about whether Catholic or Protestant theologians were right about this or that controverted doctrine. In other words, the constantly shifting size of what John Bossy termed the Catholic community was the result of a series of responses to everything

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from the outpourings of contemporary theological writers to the this-way-andthat lurches in policy of successive regimes and the shifting balance of political forces in continental Europe. If one takes conversion in this sense seriously, then this suggests that the Elizabethan polity and church may have been nothing like as stable as some historians have tended to assume. Recently Professor Lake has (in a volume entitled Bad Queen Bess?) laid out a political map of an alternative version of the period, one which is certainly not compatible with the putative and allegedly stable via media which has framed so many narratives of the years after 1558.24 By following what one might call the ‘other side’ of Elizabethan politics, the to-andfro rumour-mongering, libel-spreading and speculation in the public arena over the course of the royal succession and its connection with the reformation of religion, he has constructed an account in which the Elizabethan polity is not a collective middle-of-the-road ‘situation normal’ but consists, in the 1570s and 1580s particularly, of an embattled hard-line Protestant inner core inside the regime struggling against the forces of something which one might, from time to time, describe as Catholicism. This was certainly the case when that regime was working to contain the surges of antagonism emanating from the supporters of Mary Stuart, queen of Scots and to face down the shifting coalitions of hostile European states, which often appealed to religious orthodoxy in their critiques of Tudor rule. This inner core’s sense of encirclement was fuelled by Elizabeth’s frequent refusal to see the world their way and to provide for the future in the event that she did not survive. The vulnerability and potential impermanence of that kind of Protestantism in the English polity could be picked up in the publications of leading Catholic writers of the period (polemical texts which figure very heavily in Lake’s account). In this polemical and rhetorical struggle, each side appealed to a variety of overlapping publics and they did so by claiming to define the correct relationship between political authority and true religion. One effect of this struggle was to allow those publics to make up their own minds and, if necessary, change their position on a range of controverted questions. One obvious and visible example of this would be the many claims made by Catholics, after the executions/ martyrdoms of their co-religionists, that initially hostile spectators had become sympathetic to the plight of the condemned and had rejected the regime’s imputation of treason to those who (it was claimed by their co-religionists) had adhered to and died for the true religion.25 Of course, change of religion is still not really something that can be measured statistically. This is partly because of the absence of anything like sufficient suitable records and partly because it is hard to see how in the case of most people such records could ever have been compiled. Change of religion was not necessarily the same as exchanging one confessional label for another, although

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going into separation might well attract legal penalties and that was something which often does show up in the archives. There is, however, an obvious connection between, on the one hand, the question of and evidence for change of religion in the post-Reformation and, on the other, the central topic of this chapter – the seminaries and colleges in exile – since, in the first instance, the function of those who trained there was to procure both individual conversions (of various kinds) and, as we have seen, collectively a national conversion too, though exactly how that was supposed to come about, and even what national conversion meant in this context, were often left usefully vague. What, then, did seminarist clergy think that conversion to Catholicism actually meant in a country (England) where many of the formal means of expressing a Roman Catholic understanding of the faith had supposedly been dismantled and removed, or at least made unavailable to those who wanted to practise it overtly? Conversion, in other words, to what and from what? Among historians there has long been something of a schism between those who think that Catholicism (as a form of religious identity) in later sixteenthcentury England was primarily a residual attachment to the past, a popular cultural memory which could not be extirpated by the reforming agencies of the state and, on the other hand, those who regard it (the real thing, that is) as the product of evangelical conversion/change of religion, procured in the first instance by the ministry of new/seminary priests in the face of heresy, tyranny and bitter persecution which afflicted the church under the cross. This uncertainty maps onto a rather older debate about whether Catholicism should be regarded, in this context, either as a form of political activism (in the bad sense), and ultimately as a form of conspiracy – more or less as anti-popery writers said it was – or as the reverse – a kind of quiescent interior concern with religion as a matter of private conscience. Something like the first of those either/or dichotomies (residual attachment/evangelical conversion) was at the centre of the largely outcome-less debate between John Bossy and Christopher Haigh. In Haigh’s account, the seminary colleges and their clergy were part of an elite but snooty CounterReformation culture, which largely avoided contact with the ‘people’.26 At the same time, the progress of Protestant reform was so slow (because so unpopular) that a large Catholic-as-much-as-anything-else residuum of the population, who remained members of the national church, were as little touched by it as they were by seminarist Catholicism. These people never converted to anything – probably, if anyone had asked them, they would have said they never converted away from anything either. In other words, the self-image of the seminary priests as some great collective evangelical mission was a fantasy. Haigh claimed that there was a continuity of popular Catholicism which Bossy, like others, had

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missed, though that type of continuity was in the long run unsustainable since the kind of spiritual sustenance that popular religion required in order to keep it sacramentally Catholic gradually became unavailable, that is, as the number of Catholic parish clergy who separated in and after 1559 dwindled away.27 Bossy, by contrast, took seriously the impact of the European CounterReformation on what he called the English Catholic community. In his magnum opus – The English Catholic Community, 1570–1850 – Bossy argued very strongly that there was a clean break when occasional conformity/church popery was no longer a viable option for its members. Bossy accepted, in effect, the account of the English Church put forward by, among others, the founders of the new English seminaries, William Allen and Robert Persons, and their understanding of Counter-Reformation Catholicism defined in part by reference to a thoroughgoing style of conversion/change of religion. English Catholicism, said Bossy, was a sect after c.1570, not the remnants of a church, and was fated to remain numerically limited. Only those groups (notably the members of the Society of Jesus and the seminary clergy who followed aspects of the Jesuit path) that recognised this and could adapt quickly to the new, missionary ‘situation’ could do much to nurture the sectarian community. Finally, Bossy appears to believe that the vitality of Catholicism in the period before 1850 consisted precisely in its non-established sectarian character which freed it from the dead hand of clerical ‘hierarchalism’ (in particular, of episcopal governance).28 In more recent times, the buzz-word term ‘church popery’ has become available again as a way of talking about the ‘religion of the people’, and potentially of endorsing the Haigh-ite version of the slow progress of the Reformation in England. The implication of this is that Bossy’s account of, in effect, rapid religious change is overwritten, and that he ignored the widespread church popery in the national church long after the Reformation – thus exaggerating the sharpness of the experience of religious change on the part of those who, post-1570, reckoned that they were Catholics.29 Here it is worth returning to the text of Bossy’s unpublished PhD thesis – a real tour de force, but very different from the (equally brilliant) sociological text which appeared in print in 1975 as The English Catholic Community, 1570–1850. The PhD was rooted in the cultural politics of exile. It looked at the influence on English Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation reaction in France to the Huguenot challenge over the disputed royal succession. It is still the best guide to what one might call the radicalisation of the seminary movement (though particularly of the English college at Reims, since Bossy was concentrating on Anglo-French material). Briefly, Bossy’s doctoral dissertation identified and posited a ‘revolt of the clerks’ over and against the inclinations of those of a Catholic disposition who were minded to accept the implications and structures of the sixteenth-century

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Reformation (and, in particular, of what in the 1960s and 1970s scholars liked to call the ‘triumph of the laity’). Bossy described here what he took to be the emergence of a new strain in Elizabethan Catholic culture. In a passage which is worth citing in detail – it is still probably the most eloquent evocation of the driving force of seminarist clericalism as an agent of change – he argued that, during the mid-sixteenth-century Reformation, ‘the property and institutions which the Church had built up over the centuries for the support of its clerks had been radically diminished. The monasteries, the mendicant orders, had been suppressed; many schools had gone with them, and the universities, in the flush of a period of expansion unequalled since their foundation, had been cut back, even threatened with suppression’.The case could be made that in time this sort of damage to the social fabric was if not completely reversed then, to some extent, made good. But, in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, the loss was all too visible and, moreover, it ‘involved a serious diminution of the clerk’s social standing and opportunities for advancement’. In other words, someone who reckoned that their vocation lay inside the ministry had ‘material as well as … intellectual’ reasons for being angry with ‘the new dispensation’. He was, or would be, impoverished and excluded ‘from the new fields of opportunity’. This ‘provided the frame of a radical criticism of Elizabethan society, a revolt of the clerks’.30 For some, it was enough to drive them into exile – whether or not they formally changed their religion as they went – and a number of them claimed that they had. As Bossy put it, for the university types who went abroad to train as Catholic clergy, ‘Catholicism was to appear not in the guise of a conformity to traditional forms of belief and behaviour, but in the guise of a personal vocation, a conversion; not as a hankering after a universe of old forms, but as the exigence of a new universe of purity – individual, interior, in a sense anarchic, anti-hierarchical. What found its outlet in the refusal of lay supremacy and intellectual compromise was a demand at once for truth in scholarship and purity in spirit.’ Here, Catholicism was ‘a type of nonconformity’ or ‘revolt’. Bossy saw this sentiment at its sharpest in the Jesuit Robert Persons’s criticism of the Marian regime and its comparatively feeble ‘restoration’ of Catholicism. Persons and his friends ‘were not’ in fact ‘trying to restore anything’.31 Of course, at fifty years’ distance from Bossy’s PhD one might want to say that there are other questions which one would now have to take into account. Yet Bossy demonstrated with an unrivalled clarity, which was all too often absent in other/later treatments of the same topic, how the processes of political change in France during the wars of religion, namely in the radicalisation of Catholic political thought and particularly of resistance theory, generated a step change in the ranks of Elizabethan Catholics, not least in their seminary foundations. As Bossy memorably put it, ‘to follow, to the end, the consequences’

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of refusal to compromise with the ‘Elizabethan order’ of things was, ‘unless one was to withdraw into quietism and magic, to accept the necessity of political action with its compromises and complaisances’ and also ‘to accept violence’.32 Bossy was not talking here (solely) about political conspiracy and foreign military intervention (though that was one of the obvious outcomes of what he was describing) and indeed his two published accounts of the Throckmorton plot of 1583 are masterpieces.33 But he was also thinking about a theological and rhetorical struggle to assert a Catholic identity, that is, by defining how a Christian in post-Reformation England might experience a number of things, including conversion to a true faith. One way of doing this, at least for contemporaries who thought that things had gone very wrong when the state intervened as it had done in the government of the national church, was to raise the spiritual bar and to claim that a good Christian must of necessity publicly reject the errors and heresies which were now being peddled in and through that church. Here, a decision to separate from the church established by law could be taken as contiguous or compatible with conversion/change of religion (in the sense of embracing the true faith intellectually and experientially). The question was: how was conversion to true religion to be practised, if it came down to it, in direct opposition to the will of the state which demanded conformity in religion from the queen’s subjects? Was it absolutely necessary for a good Catholic, aware of the seminarist-led call to convert, to separate himself from the national church completely? If so, what political implications did that separation have? For Robert Persons, writing his Brief Discours on that topic in 1580, the act of separation from parish communities, as a stark declaration of Catholic identity, was in fact an expression of political loyalism. Or, rather, it would serve to protect the queen against the insidious effects of puritanism, which, Persons claimed, was Elizabeth’s real enemy.34 In other words, if Catholics were to stand up and be counted, those puritan weevils who were burrowing into the fabric of the national church would not be able to get away so easily with the lies that they told. In this sense, the seminary colleges were not the receptacles of sedition that the regime falsely claimed. In 1581, when Cardinal William Allen was defending the new seminary foundations against a recent royal proclamation, he declared that they simply supplied an educational upgrade for those young men who were justifiably unimpressed with the depressingly low academic standards of Oxford and Cambridge; they were not engines of sedition.35 But what if there was no favourable response from, if not Elizabeth personally, then from the queen’s government? Would the spokesmen of separatist Catholicism remain quite so loyal and accommodating? In 1584, when Allen penned an explosive reply to Lord Burghley’s Execution of Justice in England, the seminaries’ function was now located in the context of a life-and-death struggle of English Catholics against heresy, informed by what one might call

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a high Catholic understanding of papal political authority and its uses in the defence of the church against heretics. The sufferings of English Catholics were already being taken up and deployed by the Holy League in France to show what happened to the church when the sovereign was a heretic.36 In 1587, said Allen, the function of the seminary priest could be regarded as analogous to the role of the soldier who renounced his allegiance (as Sir William Stanley had just done) to the heretic and excommunicate queen, Elizabeth. It was only a short step from this to Allen’s notorious but highly readable defence of the papal sentence of excommunication against Elizabeth and his justification of the Armada invasion fleet.37 But, all through the period, even during what contemporary Catholics referred to as a time of persecution, particularly during the 1580s and 1590s, there were Catholics (including some priests from the seminaries) who said that overt resistance to royal authority could not serve as the basis for the practice of Catholicism and would actually prevent the percolation through the national church of an identifiably Catholic culture of the kind that the seminaries were supposedly founded in order to encourage. Among those who made this case was, for example, Christopher Bagshaw, a one-time student of the English college in Rome and Robert Persons’s bitter enemy since the 1570s. Bagshaw emerged as a central figure in the so-called Archpriest, or Appellant, dispute in the later 1590s.38 Loyalist English seminary clergy of this kind followed the line taken by some French Catholics, often called (in derision) ‘politiques’, who said that, surveying the chaos and carnage of the later sixteenth-century wars of religion, nothing could really justify resistance to sovereign power. These were the people, of course, who opposed the Holy League and the intervention of the Spanish monarchy in France, especially after 1585. They tended to identify true religion with a strong and unified nation; and they said that the claims of leaguer (especially Jesuit) clergy to be fighting for religious truth were simply a mask to conceal the essentially secular ambitions of their patrons and paymasters in Spain and the Spanish Netherlands and their own selfish and proprietary determination to parasitise the national churches of which they were members.39 These soi-disant loyalist Catholics had a different (but also, they claimed, entirely spiritual) account of what conversion to true Christian life and faith was. They did not necessarily recommend accommodation and compliance with the state for their own sake, but they denied the claims of other Catholics that some aspects of the state’s power should necessarily be resisted at all points, even if the realm and nation had separated themselves from Rome. As Edward Gratley, one of these loyalist clergy (dripping wet, in fact, in contemporary ecclesiastical terms), put it in June 1586 to none other than Elizabeth’s puritan secretary of state, Sir Francis Walsingham, ‘the paynefull pathes which our wittes muste walke … are distincte and difficult; with Inghlish and straungers, frends and

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foes, wise and simple, to plante our owne policies, to subverte the opposite, to justifye, condemne, excuse, [and] to commende diverse actions, paste, presente and future’, so that ‘as our nations peace mighte bee established, Her Majesty’ and Walsingham ‘might bee esteemed the principall pillers of this magnificent building’. That ‘building’ would be constructed through enlightened and appropriately targeted tolerance. One of the people, he said, who deserved that kind of tolerance was the admirable Dr Bagshaw.40 During the 1580s and 1590s there were, in fact, visceral disputes among seminary clergy as some argued that the crimes of the queen’s government were so flagrant and its heresy so egregious that there could be no accommodation between Catholics and the persecutory state at all. The regime told bare-faced lies, said many Catholics, when it declared that it punished sedition alone when in fact its real concern was to extirpate true religion and the Catholic voices of those who told the queen to think on her sins in this respect.41 But those such as Gratley believed that almost no price was too high to pay for tolerance – absolute obedience in temporal matters was well worth it. Then the regime would have no reason to persecute good Catholics at all. In this way (only) should true Catholic religion be preserved. Perhaps the pivotal figure here was Thomas Bell, one time Church-ofEngland minister, later a student of Douai and the Venerabile (1576–1582) and from the early 1590s a hammer of his former seminary colleagues. His was not exactly the CV of a compliance enthusiast. Indeed, in the early 1580s he could be found, with other clergy, singing High Mass in York Castle in front of the prisoners of conscience incarcerated there. But at around this point Bell began to fall out with other seminarists who wanted in effect to radicalise existing (and perhaps largely conformist) Catholic culture and opinion and to make recusancy a no-holds-barred and clearly visible expression of dissent. For Bell, however, recusancy should not simply become a default-position rejection of the queen’s temporal authority. Hence Bell’s urging of Catholics in some sense to conform but, if it came down to it, to use a verbal declaration in their parish churches in order to show that, by their mere physical presence there, they were not converting to a Protestant understanding of the practice of Christianity.42 Of itself, none of this is particularly surprising. One gets debates of this (church/state) kind almost everywhere that there are problems caused by the collisions and supervening claims of different kinds of temporal and spiritual authority. But, in the case of the seminary colleges and what we might take to have been their central purposes, this is of some considerable significance. The reason is this – most scholars of this period tend to assume that the programme of the totalising Catholic seminary-trained opponents of any kind of conformity, indeed of almost any compliance at all with royal authority on such questions, was ultimately unsustainable and in some sense that may well be right. Bossy

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himself concluded that the period of Elizabethan Catholic radical politics came to an end when the Catholic gentry themselves imposed obedience and order on the cadre of clerics who had been trained in the seminaries and in many cases had, during the later stages of the French wars of religion, particularly under Guise patronage, adopted a leaguer political resistance ideology.43 There has also been an (often only partially articulated) consensus among those scholars who work on this period that any kind of return to Catholicism (sufficient to undo the Reformation settlement/s) could take place only via some form of physical force (a Spanish Armada, say) or via the succession of a Catholic to the crown . And since those agents of change invariably failed, contemporary Catholic narratives of seminary-led, or any other kind of, national ‘conversion’, were never realistic. In addition they must be irrelevant to believable descriptions of the English Reformation, that is, as a more or less self-sealing rational and progressive process (which is certainly how successive post-Reformation regimes described the exercise of monarchical power over the church). This is, however, where one can make a case for going back to the topic of the seminary foundations and, as it happens, to the already mentioned theme of ‘change of religion’. This is because the maximum ‘conversion-of-England’ interpretation of the Counter-Reformation’s purposes in England was itself a consciously polemical construct. Robert Persons frequently scribbled down potential versions of what the world should look like. But these were ones that usually did not take shape in the way that he imagined, or said that he imagined. (The classic case was his ‘Jesuit’s Memorial for the Reformation of England’, the measures suggested in which included the use of something like the Inquisition and presupposed a presumably violent change of regime.44) But as the instances of clergy such as Bell (and, undoubtedly, numerous others) demonstrated, Persons’s preferred version of national change of religion was never the only one available to Catholic contemporaries. Indeed, so complex was the religious landscape, continually changing and disrupted by stop-go attempts by successive regimes both to reform the church and to hold the line against those who wanted more or different kinds of sweeping transformation, that in this confessionally mixed and often deeply riven yet theoretically uniformly Christian society, what one had during the Reformation period was a virtually continuous and often bafflingly complex range of ‘changes’ of religion going on more or less simultaneously – even if only a few of them appear to have taken the form of, and were advertised as, full theological rejection of one church and the permanent endorsement or embrace of another. Often it is very difficult to decide exactly who might confidently be classed as a ‘Catholic’ or a ‘Protestant’ (or a ‘puritan’ or a ‘conformist’) or even whether those people would have described themselves as such (hence the now long-running scholarly debate about religious ‘identities’).45

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Here, then, the process of conversion and especially, where we have them, the here-and-there individual stories of personal changes of religion (public, private, rumoured, partial, career-driven, gradual, sudden and all the rest) are a guide, as it were, to the mixed, confused and shifting nature of the sixteenthcentury religious settlement and to the alternatives on offer, from time to time, to whatever the status quo might be thought to have been. This, as I say, is not national conversion in the Personsian sense. But, equally, the post-Reformation environment in England was not one in which Catholic understandings of true and effectual change of religion were limited to the preferred versions of those things endorsed and promoted by Persons and his friends. In some sense this can be picked up from the anti-popery of the period which, for all its apparent hysteria, made more or less exactly that point – in other words that true religion was in danger as much from the insidious creeping effects even of low-level tendencies towards unreformed styles of religion as it was from Spanish invasion fleets.46 Protestant reactions One can run these Catholic accounts of the future and of the possibility of some kind of national conversion against the almost continuous and often pessimistic speculation by Protestant contemporaries about the future with reference to the so-called ‘Protestant cause’, that is, the prospect of pan-European Protestant religious unity and collective safety, the logic of which was that a combination of ideological purity, true faith and, under that umbrella, political selfinterest would guarantee mutual Protestant security and, by uniting Europe’s Protestants in a league against their Catholic enemies, would in the end secure peace for them. Among its other benefits was the likelihood that, internally – within realms and regions that aspired to be confessionally Protestant – it would promote national conversion to the true/Protestant faith as well as obedience to legitimately constituted political authority, a virtuous circle in which national interest and security would be underpinned by true religion. The best modern reconstruction of that issue and, for the English, its problems and discontents is (still) Simon Adams’s magisterial DPhil thesis.47 As he shows, there were real difficulties for the English in trying to maintain a consistently hostile face towards Europe’s great Catholic nations just as there were almost impossible complexities involved when the English and (subsequently) the British state tried to make workable guarantees to its Huguenot, Dutch and German Protestant friends. The strains and stresses of trying to maintain Protestant coherence in the conduct of foreign policy could provide material for an exactly opposite account of the world, one in which Protestant-cause

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politics was socially and ideologically disruptive and could easily be labelled as puritanism, with which view a certain kind of Catholic in the British Isles was only too happy to be associated and to comment upon (though you certainly did not have to be a Catholic to hold an opinion of this kind). Notoriously, in the later 1570s, Elizabeth’s attempt to fashion an Anglo-French dynastic alliance (the so-called Anjou match) with the aim of facing down the Spaniards in the Netherlands provoked a slew of puritan-sounding complaint – for example John Stubbs’s pamphlet entitled The Discovery of a Gaping Gulf – and allowed Catholics to make the link between puritanism and political disobedience.48 Admittedly during the 1580s there was something of a puritan moment as, during the war years, Elizabeth’s godly councillors closed ranks around her, whether she wanted them to do so or not. As part of that process, further statute law allowed for the imposition of the kind of conformity which the seminary clergy were trying to disrupt. The regime’s case both in political rhetoric and carefully drafted legal phraseology was, as we have already seen, that the overt fact of the Catholic seminary clergy’s intention of inveigling the queen’s subjects into declaring themselves as, in some sense, Roman Catholic meant that it was only rational to identify the exercise of seminarists’ sacramental functions as treason.49 This was the period which saw the declaration of war against Spain and the quasi-republican attempts of the queen’s councillors to provide for the succession if she should fall to an assassin’s knife or bullet while Mary Stuart was still alive. But there were still all too many instances close at hand to remind worried Protestants of the danger of ideological drift. A crucial Protestant-cause relationship for the English during this period was, of course, with Scotland.50 The early and mid-Elizabethan state had done its damnedest to construct a recognisably Protestant amity between the two kingdoms after Mary Stuart was ejected by the Scots. But the young and technically Calvinist James VI, who in 1579–1580 promoted Esmé Stuart, sieur d’Aubigny into the Scots peerage as earl of Lennox and allowed the toppling of the Anglophile earl of Morton, apparently did not think of himself as a Protestant-cause leader. If anyone wanted an instance of how individual changes of religion could be part of an apparently unstoppable wave, up to and including confessional regime change, one needed only to look at the claims being made about mid-1580s Scotland where, as Walsingham’s informant Thomas Rogers reported in October 1585, the Jesuit clergy were saying that ‘by theire directions they have reconciled above 10 thousand of late, and that daylie they expect numbers, and also to gayne the kynge to there profession’.51 One might have thought that Presbyterian Scotland would have been more ideologically and confessionally proof against this kind of infiltration after the execution of Mary Stuart and the failure of the Armada. But all through the late 1580s and early 1590s there were reports of popish plotting in Scotland,

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which the king did curiously little to punish or suppress. In February 1593, after the exposure of the Blanks plot (an approach made to Philip II by Scots Catholic peers) Sir Robert Cecil warned in the Commons how, in addition to Spanish inroads into northern France and to Ireland, Philip II had realised that ‘a woodden bridge to passe into England’, i.e. the Armada, was of no use and so he had ‘found out a surer and more strong passage into England, namelie by land and by Scottland’. This truth might not be publicly ‘preached at Powle’s Crosse’ but in Scotland it was ‘as common as the highe waie that’ Philip had ‘procured unto himselfe [some] of the nobilitie’. This was itself a form of religious change and with ‘the number allsoe of papistes dailie increasing or least wise being more manifested’ (Cecil did not say whether in Scotland, or England, or both), this was a source of ‘imminent daungers’.52 In Ireland it was even worse. Of course, official memoranda about the state of the country had been predicting a popish apocalypse as long as anyone could remember but, for example, Sir John Dowdall argued to Lord Burghley on 9 March 1596 that the current rash of rebellion came out of the towns. In ‘the tenth [year] of her Majesty’s reign and since, they came very orderly to the church, but first their women grew weary of it, and that being unpunished their men left it, and they being unpunished the mayors, sovereigns and portreeves for the most part have left it’. ‘Superstitious seducing priests’ were in every ‘port town and upland town, and also gentlemen’s houses’. They passed between Spain, France and Ireland and they ‘swarm up and down the whole country, seducing the people and the best sorts to draw them from God and their allegiance to the prince’. Apparently they ran the schools and thus the ‘youth of the whole kingdom’ were ‘corrupted and poisoned with … gross superstition and disobedience’. Crucially, ‘the townsmen do transport into Spain, Italy, Reims and other places young men both of the Irish and English nation in the company of Jesuits to be brought up in their colleges; and so when they have been thoroughly corrupted they return again with letters of commendation, with instructions to seduce the people to disobedience and rebellion’.53 This may have been in some degree a caricature of what the CounterReformation in Ireland was like. But such reports, and there are many of them, are compatible with the modern line in so much Irish historiography that English colonialist misrule provoked a vigorous version of the Counter-Reformation in Ireland which meant that the Reformation failed there in a way that it did not in England and Scotland. Even if the Reformation in England clearly succeeded in a way that it never did in Ireland, there were plenty of Protestants who thought that it had not succeeded anything like enough. Across the British Isles, in other words, towards the end of the sixteenth century there was a kind of Counter-Reformation counterfactual – a ‘what if’ version of the world depending in part on the outcome of the battle over the succession.54 Perhaps

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the most succinct expression of the Protestant fear of a kind of conversion by stealth – an amoeba-like shift from one version or versions of orthodoxy in the English Church to something recognisably different – was set out in an extraordinary little pamphlet published in late 1601. Entitled Humble Motives for Association to Maintain Religion Established, it was put together almost certainly by the puritan MP Sir Francis Hastings shortly after the end of the 1601 parliament in which there had been some sharp exchanges about whether the harsh punishment of Catholic recusancy was really the best way to guarantee obedience to the queen. Crucially, the pamphlet has some waspish passages about the Archpriest, or Appellant, controversy. The pamphlet’s author saw the appellant agitation as a scam, which would surreptitiously introduce (yet more) popery into the English Church. But, for our purposes, what makes the pamphlet (which incorporates an earlier manuscript piece by the deceased Protestantcause enthusiast Thomas Digges) so significant is that it describes a nightmare scenario in which various forms of often semi-covert change of religion looked set to corrupt the national church. In its essentials it was very close to the warnings that Protestant contemporaries were regularly issuing about Scotland and Ireland. Even without anything like the same degree of civil strife, said the Humble Motives, the same thing was happening, by sleight of hand, in England. Digges’s memorandum (in fact a petition to the queen for an oath of association) discerned four categories of religion: ‘Protestants of religion’, ‘Protestants of state’, ‘papists of state’ and ‘papists of religion’.55 It narrated the way, as Digges saw it, that one category of religious identity could morph (for good or ill) into another – depending on political circumstances.56 Digges’s was, of course, a rather crude, not to say artificial, taxonomy – whoever was indicated by these categories no more had party cards or identifying badges than, say, church papists or moderate puritans did. But in Digges’s perception of these divisions we have a puritan account of how there might potentially be an irreversible shift in the religious environment if the appropriate controls were removed. Wrote Digges, ‘the more the first and second’ categories of Protestant were ‘increased’ the more that the queen’s security was guaranteed, but ‘the more’ the third and fourth types, that is, of Catholics were ‘augmented’ the further she was put in jeopardy. This was because ‘out of the second and third the increase of the first and fourth must grow’.57 The way to promote both truth and national security was to pump up the first two categories and to crush the second two.This was where the use of an oath was essential. For ‘as the dispa[y]re of the future and hope of the present produces Protestants of estat[e], so despayre of the present and hope of the future produces papists of state’. Digges’s oath of association was designed to stop that second scenario – a kind of reversal of the process by which seminary clergy – as Digges and Hastings would have seen it – used the dark arts of false evangelisation in order

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to make converts out of those who were already predisposed by a whole range of motives and attitudes to be receptive to the seminarists’ account of what true (though actually false) religion was.58 Of course, it was far from clear that Digges’s strategy for preventing all this would have worked. But at least he gives us a clear enough rendering of what must have been a common contemporary perception and language of how drift and change, from one version of the settlement of religion into another, might happen, that is, as a consequence of domestic political appeasement of the wrong sort of people, not least of the appellant seminarist lobby buoyed up by their friends on the privy council who should, as Hastings saw it, have known better. Bishop Richard Bancroft even allowed the appellants to gain access to a royal press to get their stuff out into the public domain. One Catholic pamphlet produced at this point (though not one turned out by the queen’s printers) was an acid point-by-point reply to the Humble Motives.59 (Bancroft’s calculation was evidently that the appellants’ anti-puritan and anti-Presbyterian rhetoric was too good a weapon to ignore in the creation of the post-succession settlement.) Worst of all, in Hastings’s view, these appellant pamphlets, even while rejecting the Personsian prescription for regime change by force, put out an account of national conversion every bit as persuasive and pervasive as the Jesuit one. They envisaged Catholicism becoming if not normative then an embedded fraction of the English national church with its own papally instituted hierarchy and bishops and pendant regulatory structures – in other words, with its own means of propagation as these structures spread out over the English realm and gradually drew more people inside them. Within that scenario, papists of state would soon become papists of religion. The way in which the founders of the seminary colleges and their trainees envisaged national conversion had always pointed potentially in more than one direction. Or, rather, their understanding of change of religion had a variety of meanings, meanings which depended on the context in which these changes took place or appeared to have the potential to do so.The Elizabethan period had seen a proliferation of Catholic accounts of conversion. The majority of these were polemically very sharp – constructed by reference to, as we saw, the need for absolute separation from an allegedly heretical national church (the only true sign of a full appropriation of the faith) and, at their furthest extent, discussed in terms of holy war waged spiritually by seminarist clergy – in league with the confessional-military complex and programme of the Spanish monarchy and its European allies. Here the relationship between the regime and the Catholic fraction of the national church was entirely adversarial. But there had always been more than one reading of that relationship. The original settlement, despite its fairly unambiguous Protestant inflections, had been flagged in terms of its separation

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between the temporal and the spiritual. Even at points of maximum confessional hostility in the 1580s and 1590s the regime had tended to defend itself through claims that the queen’s government distinguished between religion and politics, and that the queen demanded obedience only in civil/secular matters. (This, of course, was what, as we saw, clergy such as Gratley, Bagshaw and Bell appealed to when they tried to argue that there was the possibility in effect in the English Church for co-existence.) It was only via an appeal to a stark and potentially extreme version of papal authority that William Allen was able to repudiate Lord Burghley’s claims about the regime’s moderation here.60 For many Catholics, of course, Burghley’s claims had remained quite unbelievable. The accumulation of martyr narratives, most of which were centred on the sufferings of the seminarist clergy, were supposed to make it impossible for anyone, Protestant or Catholic, to credit the regime’s case in this respect. But the regime had itself created a corpus of political literature to which Catholic loyalists could continue to appeal – as indeed they did during the appellant dispute. Indeed, the nightmare scenario which the Humble Motives described was in part of the regime’s own making. Or, rather, the olive branches held out to loyalist Catholics built on the foundations laid by pamphlets such as Lord Burghley’s Execution of Justice were now available to those who said that they rejected quasi-republican Catholic critiques of royal authority and particularly of legitimist hereditary right. The irony was that so many of the regime’s harsher anti-Catholic measures had been linked to its own quasi-republican constitutional experiments in the mid-1580s, even though none of them had got very far in the face of Elizabeth’s own hostility to them. But once Mary Stuart had been violently removed from the scene, the Elizabethan regime in effect reinstated a kind of legitimist agenda as it became clear that it would not seek to exclude (the Calvinist) James VI of Scotland from the line of succession. Since James was, for a variety of reasons, the candidate who almost certainly had majority support within the Catholic community (in that this is measurable) this allowed loyalist Catholics to argue that Catholicism could not now simply be equated with sedition and that, just as the Huguenot minority in France had secured a measure of toleration for itself (also as a guarantee of civil peace), so should Catholics in England enjoy the same. Whatever these people’s previous attitude to the possibility that Spanish military power might remove Elizabeth, they now rejected the leaguer arguments used by Persons, notoriously in the Conference about the Next Succession to the Crown of England, that (true) religion should be used as a test to exclude certain candidates to succeed Elizabeth.61 For Persons and his friends, of course, this kind of Catholic loyalism was still tantamount to shutting up shop and going home. As he argued in June 1597, denouncing Charles Paget and Thomas Morgan, and the other flies (as Persons saw them) in the collective ointment who had poisoned the entire Catholic

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e­nterprise, mainly out of their hatred for Spain, these people, for factional reasons, had been prepared to throw over the whole Counter-Reformation project in the British Isles. They were ready to sell out to the heretics who, in turn, were only too ready to exploit them in order to divide and rule and break up the otherwise exceptional coherence of the English Catholic community. Among other pernicious exploits, these ill-intentioned individuals had provoked rebellion among the seminary students in Rome. As a result of this factioneering, ‘many of the young men … who leave England with good intentions fall into the hands of these seditious men and imbibe such impressions as they are never afterwards able to be rid of, until at length they are ruined, and not themselves only but others as well. Many of them in this way eventually become enemies, spies, apostates and heretics, as we have seen and are seeing every day.’ For Persons, ‘the conversion of England’ would ‘be rendered much more difficult owing to the disunion which these men are causing’ in the English Catholic body.62 Persons just as much as Thomas Digges and Sir Francis Hastings evidently thought in terms of flows of people between different categories of Catholic and Protestant, both of ‘state’ and of ‘religion’. Catholic toleration Significantly, though, Protestant commentators such as Hastings saw the appellant business as a kind of Trojan horse in which the disputes between Jesuits and seculars were actually a device to deceive the public and to use ‘loyalist’ clergy to obtain a toleration for the whole Catholic community.63 This was in fact not the case (the appellants and their critics as often as not really did hate each other) but, immediately after the accession, Hastings and his friends would have reckoned that all their warnings had been justified. In 1603–1604 there was an extensive seminarist-led Catholic toleration campaign, via manuscript and print, mirroring the better known puritan one at this point and saying more noisily what was implicit in so much of the appellant pamphleteering.64 Once again, the arguments and disputes generated in previous years by attempts to embed a form of Counter-Reformation Catholicism within the British Isles were rolled out in order to describe how a form of national religious change might occur.Temporarily the exposure of the Gunpowder plot made any form of tolerance for Catholics unlikely. But despite the waves of anti-popery sermons and pamphlets about the plot, the conspiracy actually provided a useful topic for those Catholics who had made the case for reintegration of Catholic ecclesiastical structures into the British Isles to argue (as the appellant clergy had briefly done) that the setting up of those structures, principally a Catholic episcopate of some kind, allowed if not covertly licensed by the crown, would provide for the

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proper government of the Catholic community and the prevention of sedition. The Catholic fraction of the English Church would be regulated and disciplined as it was on the continent. Properly appointed Catholic bishops would prevent subscription to inappropriate political doctrines and would nip actual conspiracies, should there be any such, in the bud, since a Catholic ­episcopate could police the Catholic ­community whereas Church of England bishops could not. But, of course, the erection of such an episcopate would not be a static enterprise – as we have just seen, on the appellants’ account, the implication was that increasing numbers of Catholics would be drawn into it and it would serve as an engine in effect of change of religion, even if many of those who were brought within the structures of Catholic episcopal regulation might reckon that they had always been in some sense Catholics. Though the arguments made by the appellants and their intellectual heirs about church government were phrased in the most turgid and often stultifyingly dull ecclesiological terminology, what they seem to have thought was that the English Catholic community would gradually become more like the majority religion in Ireland, both Gaelic and Anglo-Irish, which had never been subject to the same statute-based penalties and rigours as its counterpart had been in England, despite the actually much greater levels of violence there during the Nine Years’ War and previous rebellions.65 Indirectly these loyalist English Catholic seminary clergy tapped into some of the contemporary avant-garde conformist thought about the regulation of the Church of England in which episcopal government was of itself both a necessary and a benign entity. Obviously the question of how competing (Protestant and Catholic) episcopal authorities were to co-exist was a rather difficult one. But the Catholic claim was that a Catholic bishop or bishops would be part of the natural economy of religion and not, as anti-popery writers argued, itself a kind of conspiracy against the crown. Predictably enough there was an equal and opposite case made by the regular clergy, and particularly the Jesuits. On the basis of the print-based invective of Robert Persons’s published oeuvre, we tend to associate the Society’s mode of evangelisation with a kind of Sturm-und-Drang approach to conversion. But the Society could argue that, actually, its own regulatory structures were better suited to producing peace and order. Faced with an aggressive lobbying campaign by their Catholic critics who intended to secure, in all probability, bishops who, as night followed day, would start to lay down the law to the religious orders, some Jesuits claimed, not unreasonably, that for the papacy to institute Catholic episcopacy in England and Scotland would be insane. It would provoke the authorities to retaliate and would result in yet more persecution of Catholics. This would be the reverse of the ‘conversion of England’ since, inevitably, the faithful would fall away in droves. Far better to let the religious orders minister to the faithful in the absence of an interfering Catholic episcopate and, hopefully, of the state’s

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officials as well. This would be possible as long as the Jesuits had the protection and patronage of the socially powerful, the higher gentry and the aristocracy for they would provide a necessary shield against prying eyes. The mission of these clergy would then be all but invisible to the state. An extraordinary document, discovered by Thomas McCoog, which was presented in Rome in 1609 in order to rebut the secular clergy’s new suit for a grant of episcopacy, in effect makes this argument. It takes the form of a list of individual ‘churches’, based on groups of aristocracy and upper gentry and presided over by Jesuit priests. It describes, as a Jesuit would see it, the most appropriate shape of the Catholic Church in England – and with not a (Catholic) bishop in sight.66 The implication is that by serving a series of private gathered churches, sponsored, funded and protected by Catholic elites, the Jesuit clergy could prevent the recently witnessed and extremely unfortunate collisions between the state and the Catholic clergy. Such congregations were also unlikely to remain static, although they, of course, would not exercise the same kind of regulatory power as a Catholic episcopate. Even in the absence of evangelising zealots such as the former Jesuit superior William Weston, the logic of the steadily increasing number of Jesuit clergy dispatched into the country was that, via their ministry and protected by the Catholic elite, individual churches under the guidance of Jesuit pastors would inevitably generate the conversion of people to the faith, especially through the kind of evangelical ministry which Jesuit clergy exercised.67 None of this could, of course, ever be openly endorsed or permitted by the Protestant state. And yet all through James’s reign, for example, and even more in the later 1620s and much of the 1630s, there were stop-go moves towards something like a de facto tolerance of Catholics. There were now virtually no prosecutions of clergy under the Elizabethan treason statutes. A compounding scheme was instituted in the later 1620s by which convicted recusants could, to some extent, formally do deals to safeguard their estates. This conferred a bureaucratic structure on the earlier and informal arrangements which allowed some Catholic separatists to escape the full financial consequences of their recusancy.68 If one wants a classic case of where these issues coincided, one such instance would be the fractious and controversial attempts by the late Jacobean court to secure a dynastic marriage alliance, with either Spain or France, for the prince of Wales. As the negotiations for this branch of royal foreign policy commenced in the later 1610s amid a welter of popular political controversy, a range of Catholic clerical interest groups tried to make a pitch for toleration in return for actively and visibly supporting the crown’s dynastic strategy, not least in the Roman curia which would have to issue a dispensation for any mixed confessional marital union. The reason that this was crucial was that the

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papacy, before it licensed the marriage, would have to be fairly convinced that the British Isles were as tolerant as King James habitually proclaimed them to be. Concessions to Catholic clergy, as the court was aware, could serve as prima facie evidence that this was the case. Rome evidently believed that a new tolerant age had dawned since it appointed the ageing appellant priest, William Bishop, as a non-territorial, or titular, bishop in England in early 1623.69 As one knows from standard accounts of the early Stuart period, the hiatuses in royal government after the accession of Charles I meant that successive waves of parliamentary and popular anti-popery severely limited the prospect of anything approaching an official toleration of Catholics, even if the new queen, Henriette Marie, was a devout enough French Catholic. The fact that Charles relatively soon, if only briefly, found himself at war with both Spain and France made sure of that. In addition, the Catholic community was itself far from united over Rome’s institution of a hierarchy – William Bishop had made enough enemies in his time among his co-religionists and his successor in 1625, Richard Smith, was a kind of Olympic gold medallist when it came to alienating people. Smith was eventually forced out of the country by his Catholic critics.70 But throughout the 1630s a series of papal agents worked (via their accreditation with the queen) to see whether the Catholic community could be brought more fully into some form of accommodation with the Caroline court.71 The both sticking point and (if reworked) potential engine for agreement was the oath of allegiance of 1606 which the papacy had condemned on the grounds that it contained things that were contrary to faith. The suave papal agent Gregorio Panzani arrived in late 1634 with a brief to fashion some kind of consensus among the various clerical interest groups and their patrons in the English Catholic community, one which would then be sufficient to present a united front to the court in any subsequent negotiations leading to some form of toleration.72 This looked distinctly feasible when a particularly aggressive kind of avant-garde conformity, sometimes referred to by scholars simply as Laudianism, started to change the culture of the national church by working to raise the profile and status of the clerical estate, not least by arguing for jure divino episcopacy, which itself had always been anathema to many Protestants’ understanding of the royal supremacy. Linked with this was a concentration on the physical aspects of worship – sometimes referred to as the ‘beauty of holiness’ – an attitude to ceremonial which was utterly at odds with much of the godly Protestant approach to the reform of religion often described both by contemporaries and by modern scholars as puritanism. This was something which episcopalian Catholic clergy could buy into with gusto. While Archbishop Laud himself wanted anything but to be seen as a promoter of tolerance for separatist Catholics, there were some Catholics who felt able to describe the sweeping

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cultural changes in the national church of the 1630s as a vindication of their analysis of the political forces at work in that church and their predictions of the eventual toleration of their style of Counter-Reformation Catholicism, that is, on the grounds that its assumptions and approach to liturgy and worship were so close to the new and seemingly dominant orthodoxy in the Church of England, regarded by the king himself as appropriate and godly and in no way a challenge to royal authority.73 This seminary clergy-led attempt to find common ground with the Laudian Church was, therefore, simply one of a succession of Catholic interventions in English/British politics during the post-Reformation period, that is, as different groups of Catholics positioned themselves vis-à-vis the regime of the day, as often as not when the regime of the day was itself negotiating with a range of confessionally constructed interest groups (not just Catholic ones) in order to create new sources of ideological support in the face of blocs of opposition which, again, were as, often as not, confessionally constructed. An enduring option One might imagine that, in the context of the anti-popish tsunami which bore down on the court and the Laudian Church in and after 1640, for the Catholic community the prospect of toleration was well and truly over. The Civil War saw a good deal of harassment of Catholics and the resumption of treason trials of Catholic clergy.74 What is remarkable, though – and, actually, this is no great secret – is that notwithstanding the Catholic investment in the period of the personal rule, the Catholic community was far from uniformly royalist. Despite the claims made subsequently by, for example, the earl of Castlemaine that there had been an almost exact fit between the royalist impulse and the response of the king’s Catholic subjects,75 the fact was that a fair few of those who could have fought for the king remained neutral and, once the royalist cause started to collapse and implode, there were prominent Catholics who sought quite logically to do a deal with the emergent power in the land, which turned out to be the Army and the section of anti-royalist opinion which we tend to refer to as Independency. Here a number of Catholic voices reprised a good deal of the rhetoric used earlier in the century by their co-religionists who claimed that there was no inevitable conflict between the practice of the Catholic faith and the exercise of civil government. Those who made the approaches to the Army included those who were associated with or looked to the philosopher-priest Thomas White, better known by his alias of Blacklo. In 1626 he had served as the secular clergy’s agent in Rome and briefly in the early 1630s he was the president of the English college at Lisbon.76 (Some Jesuits made similar moves

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at this point, though Rome intervened to prevent them.77) Prominent among the Blackloist clergy was Henry Holden (who had been promoted by Richard Smith into the clergy’s episcopal chapter in 1638 along with White). Holden had in the late 1630s, in his capacity as the clergy agent at Rome, tried and failed to obtain papal confirmation of the chapter and was now rather jaundiced about the extent and purposes of papal authority. The Blackloists’ line was that the episcopal chapter which had been created in the 1620s, and which still had a corporate though uncertain existence, had the jurisdictional power to appoint a bishop whether Rome licensed it to do so or not.78 These people reprised the appellant rhetoric about the evils of Jesuitism (they compared Jesuits with Presbyterians) and made this the basis for their programme for state-sponsored tolerance, floated on a healthy disrespect for the papacy. They proposed the creation of an episcopate which would be completely free from Rome’s control and would answer exclusively to the new republican regime. Several scholars have pointed out the compatibility of the ideas of, on the one hand, the Erastian Thomas Hobbes and, on the other, the Blackloists.79 Without rehearsing in detail the complexities of the tolerationist ideology of these clergy, the point is that this was a strategy which anticipated the spread of the Catholic faith in a new and, in fact, after September 1650 technically tolerant environment, now that the Independents had royally stuffed their Presbyterian opponents and their dreams of a national church which would have been at least as coercive as anything imagined or achieved by the Laudians.80 Between 1651 and 1653 a series of Blackloist toleration pamphlets, written by John Austin, set out the way in which a Catholic fraction of the national church in England, constructed along Erastian lines, could be tolerated by the new form of government and should be protected against Presbyterian persecutors.81 Here, then, a version of the ‘conversion of England’ was still being articulated by leading Catholic voices drawn, in large part, from a tradition in the continental seminaries which stretched back to the debates in the Archpriest dispute about the most appropriate way to embed the Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation in England. How controversial it was, of course, became clear after the Restoration when Blackloist clergy found that they had a lot of explaining to do and there was a violent reaction against them within their own community. But the back-and-forth exchanges between people such as the earl of Castlemaine and his antagonist William Lloyd in the later 1660s demonstrate that these issues, in particular of the viability and reach of Catholicism, had not gone away. Lloyd declared: ‘we desire them to keep their religion to themselves, and not lay about them, as some do, to make proselytes, of which they have had a plentiful harvest in the late confusions; and if they should think to go on at that rate, we have reason to fear it would be a means to bring us into confusion again’. Lloyd’s account of Catholic clerical proselytising in the 1660s sounds identical to the zeal and

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practice of, for example, Jesuit clergy such as John Gerard back in the 1580s and 1590s. One would think that, in this respect, nothing had changed since that time: ‘we desire them at least not to abuse the weakness of dying persons, nor under pretence of carrying alms to condemned prisoners, to convert some of them with drink and to cheat others with hopes of salvation upon easier tearms than ever God yet declared unto men’. Referring to the appellants and, perhaps, obliquely to the Blackloists as well, Lloyd urged: ‘we desire them to content themselves, as their fathers have done, with such priests as are known and protected by the civil power, and that they would be pleased to demean themselves as priests ought to do, not disguising themselves like Hectors or mingling with gentlemen, to poyson the clubs and coffee-houses with phanatick discourses, or even with atheism itself, to destroy all religion that they may have their will upon ours’. Lloyd said that they should not ‘fill the world with their pamphlets, parallels, Philanaxes, Exhortations, Apologies etc. which tend only to the fermenting of mens passions, not at all to the conviction of their reason’.82 If this perhaps rather cynical rendition of what Restoration Catholic seminary clergy did is even half accurate, it may be that the seminaries – ­institutions which had been set up explicitly with the purpose of bringing about a change in English (and British) ecclesiastical and political culture after the Reformation – continued to do something like that even after the period when most scholars of the period seem to assume that, whatever the Counter-Reformation in the British Isles was, Catholicism had retreated there into a form of quietism and household piety.83 The frankly confused mêlee of the popish plot of the later 1670s certainly suggests that no such retreat had happened. (Catholics’ battles with each other can be glimpsed even in the plot trials, with the notorious pamphlet Blacklo’s Cabal being published in 1680 as, it appears, a sharp rebuke and riposte to the Blackloist tacit consent to the charges brought by Titus Oates and others against (other) Catholics.) Moreover, from this distinctly bizarre episode one can deduce perhaps that the duke of York’s Catholic agenda, one which was predicated on the possibility of a form of national conversion, or at least a radical change in the prevailing ecclesiastical culture, may, to some, have seemed all too logical. It definitely does appear so in the account of it published recently by Steve Pincus. Pincus’s reading of James II’s programme for toleration is that it was an entirely rational response to the contemporary European political scene and to the seemingly inexorable rise of France, whether James personally and genuinely believed in some form of toleration or not. It was a way of welding together a number of domestic political interests, ones which were compatible with an Anglo-French alliance.84 Indeed, one can read James’s tolerance agenda as just one in a series of attempts since the 1640s to incorporate Catholics (among others) into a mixed

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polity, that is, to fashion coalitions out of those who were currently excluded from the centre ground. The Cromwellian regime had done something like this in the 1650s – though not, of course, using the same rhetoric.85 And Charles II tried more than once to break out of an Anglican conformist encirclement. James just took his predecessors’ agenda to its logical conclusion though without, in the end, being the kind of peerless butcher who could see off the entirely predictable opposition to his political programme. That, of course, and the ultimate failure of that initiative, is another story. But the claim being made here is that a longue-durée recovery of what historians call ‘the Catholic community’ (though usually with a mixture of boredom and derision, and an assumption that Counter-Reformation clericalism had conspired to kill off the vitality of persisting forms of folk religion which were, in some sense, the real core of resistance to the Protestant Reformation) can serve to identify one of the crucial political voices of the long seventeenth century and to suggest that no narrative of that period can be written without taking it into account. For our purposes what this also means is that the Catholic seminary colleges on the continent remained somewhere near the centre of the political process during this period – in a way that almost all mainstream accounts of the period still find it hard to recognise.





Notes

1 P. Guilday, The English Catholic Refugees on the Continent 1558–1795,Volume I,The English Colleges and Convents in the Catholic Low Countries (London: Longmans, 1914), pp. 63–120. 2 M. E. Williams, The Venerable English College Rome (Leominster: Gracewing, 2008). 3 J. A. Nice, ‘Being “British” in Rome: the Welsh at the English college, 1578–84’, Catholic Historical Review, 92 ( 2006), 1–24. 4 E. Henson (ed.), Registers of the English College at Valladolid 1589–1862, Catholic Record Society (hereafter C.R.S.), vol. 30 (London, 1930). 5 M. Murphy (ed.), St Gregory’s College, Seville, 1592–1767, C.R.S., vol. 73 (London, 1992). 6 F. Fabre, ‘The English college at Eu’, Catholic Historical Review, 37 (1951), 257–80. 7 H. Chadwick, St Omers to Stonyhurst: A History of Two Centuries (London: Burns and Oates, 1962). 8 Y. Chaussy, Les Bénédictins Anglais Réfugiés en France au XVIIe Siècle (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1967); C. Almond, The History of Ampleforth Abbey from the Foundation of St Lawrence’s at Dieulouard to the Present Time (London: R. & T. Washbourne, 1903); Abbé Melnotte, Notice Historique sur Scarpone et Dieulouard (Nancy: René Vagner, 1895). 9 P. Renold (ed.), TheWisbech Stirs, 1595–98, C.R.S., vol. 51 (London, 1958); Stefania Tutino, Law and Conscience: Catholicism in Early Modern England, 1570–1625 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). 10 See e.g. R. Persons, A Treatise of Three Conversions of England from Paganisme to Christian Religion (3 vols, St Omer, 1603–1604); V. Houliston, Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England: Robert Persons’s Jesuit Polemic, 1580–1610 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), ch. 5. When the Jesuits Edmund Campion and Robert Persons confronted Theodore Beza in Geneva in 1580, as they travelled to England to launch a Jesuit mission there, they told Beza that they adhered to ‘the religion whereunto our country was first converted from paganism’, R. Persons, ‘Of the life and martyrdom of Father Edmund Campion’, Letters and Notices, 11 (1877), 219–42, 308–39; 12 (1878), 1–68, at p. 7. 11 M.Yellowlees, ‘So Strange a Monster as a Jesuiste’:The Society of Jesus in Sixteenth-Century Scotland (Argyll: House of Lochar 2003), p. 87; T. F. Knox (ed.), The Letters and Memorials of William

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Cardinal Allen (1532–1594) (London: Nutt, 1882), p. 406; see also T. McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England 1541–1588: ‘Our Way of Proceeding?’ (Leiden: Brill, 1996), p. 131. 12 W. Lloyd, The Late Apology in behalf of the Papists Re-printed and Answered, in behalf of the Royalists (London: Henry Brome, 1667), p. 15. 13 Anon. (ed.) [Fathers of the congregation of the London Oratory], with an introduction by T. F. Knox, The First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay, and an Appendix of Unpublished Documents (London: Nutt, 1878), pp. civ–vi; W. Allen, An Apologie and True Declaration of the Institution and Endeuours of the Two English Colleges, the one in Rome, the other now resident in Rhemes: against certain sinister information giuen up against the same ([Rheims: Jean de Foigny?], 1581); W. Allen, A True, Sincere and Modest Defence of English Catholics … (2 vols, London: Manresa Press, 1914). 14 W. Allen, An Admonition to the Nobility and People of England and Ireland … ([Antwerp?], 1588); W. Allen, A Declaration of the Sentence and Deposition of Elizabeth, the Usurper and Pretensed Quene of Englande ([Antwerp?], [1588]) 15 Knox, First and Second Diaries, pp. cvi–vii. 16 E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (London: Yale University Press, 1992). 17 M. Questier, ‘The limits of conformity in late Elizabethan England: a plea for a priest’, in P.  Clarke and M. Questier (eds), Papal Authority and the Limits of the Law in Tudor England, Camden Society, 5th series, 48 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 106. 18 Questier, ‘The limits of conformity’, pp. 103–11 (quotation at p. 111). 19 Ibid., pp. 112–13. 20 P. Lake and M. Questier, ‘Puritans, Papists and the “public sphere” in early modern England: the Edmund Campion affair in context’, Journal of Modern History, 72 (2000), 587–627. 21 For the prophesyings, see R. Houlbrooke, ‘The Protestant Episcopate 1547–1603: the pastoral contribution’, in F. Heal and R. O’Day (eds), Church and Society in England: Henry VIII to James I (London: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 78–98, at pp. 89–90; P. Lake, ‘A tale of two Episcopal surveys: the strange fates of Edmund Grindal and Cuthbert Mayne revisited’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 18 (2008), 129–63, esp. at pp. 130–6; S. E. Lehmberg, ‘Archbishop Grindal and the prophesyings’, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 34 (1965), 87–145. 22 Dickens tried to prove that in Yorkshire in c.1600 only 2 per cent of the population could be classed as recusants/separatist Catholics, A. G. Dickens, ‘The first stages of Romanist Recusancy, 1560–1590’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 35 (1943), 157–82; A. G. Dickens, ‘The extent and character of Recusancy in Yorkshire in 1604’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 37 (1948), 24–48. 23 See A. Walsham, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1993). For Peter Lake’s strictures against assuming that the ‘soggy middle’ constitutes a coherent category for historical analysis, see the (i.e. his) ‘Introduction’, in P. Lake and M. Questier (eds), Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church c.1560–1660 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000), p. xv. 24 P. Lake, Bad Queen Bess? Libels, Secret Histories, and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 25 See P. Lake and M. Questier, ‘Agency, appropriation and rhetoric under the gallows: Puritans, Romanists and the state in early modern England’, Past and Present, 153 (1996), 64–107, esp. at pp. 103–4. 26 See J. Bossy, ‘The character of Elizabethan Catholicism’, Past and Present, 21 (1962), 39–59; C. Haigh, ‘The continuity of Catholicism in the English Reformation’, Past and Present, 93 (1981), 37–69. For Professor Bossy’s account of the historiography of Catholicism up to c.1960, see J. Bossy, ‘Elizabethan Catholicism: the link with France’ (PhD thesis, Univeristy of Cambridge, 1961), pp. 4–5. Haigh’s line seems to be followed by B. Kaplan and J. Pollmann, ‘Conclusion: Catholic minorities in Protestant states, Britain and the Netherlands, c.1570–1720’, in B. Kaplan, B. Moore. H. van Nierop and J. Pollmann (eds), Catholic Communities in Protestant States:

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Britain and the Netherlands c.1570–1720 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 249–64, at pp. 249–50. 27 Perhaps rather bizarrely, Bossy seemed to have little to say in reply to this, though see J. Bossy, ‘Unrethinking the sixteenth-century Wars of Religion’, in T. Kselman (ed.), Belief in History: Innovative Approaches to European and American Religion (London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), pp. 267–85; and more recently, J. Bossy, ‘Recusant history and after’, British Catholic History, 32 (2015), 271–9. 28 J. Bossy, The English Catholic Community 1570–1850 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1975); see also C. Hibbard, ‘Early Stuart Catholicism: revisions and re-revisions’, Journal of Modern History, 52 (1980), 1–34, at p. 7. 29 See esp. A. Walsham, ‘ “Domme preachers”?: Post-Reformation English Catholicism and the culture of print’, Past and Present, 168 (2000), 72–123, esp. at pp. 121–2. 30 Bossy, ‘English Catholicism’, pp. 12–13. 31 Ibid., pp. 14–16 and passim. 32 Ibid., p. 25. 33 J. Bossy, Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair (London: Yale University Press, 1991); J. Bossy, Under the Molehill: An Elizabethan Spy Story (London:Yale University Press, 2001). 34 R. Persons, A Brief Discours contayning Certayne Reasons Why Catholiques Refuse to Go to Church (Douai [imprint false; printed at East Ham]: Iohn Lyon [i.e. Greenstreet House Press], 1580). 35 Allen, An Apologie, esp. at fos. 67v.–8r., 22v. 36 A. Dillon, The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1535–1603 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 243–76. 37 Allen, A True, Sincere and Modest Defence, esp. chs 5–7; W. Allen, The Copie of a Letter Written by M. Doctor Allen concerning theYeelding up of the Citie of Daventrie … (Antwerp: Ioachim Trognæsius, 1587), pp. 1, 14–15, 16, 21, 23, 28, 29, 30; Allen, An Admonition, passim (quotations at pp. 11, 54); Allen, A Declaration. 38 See P. Renold (ed.), Letters of William Allen and Richard Barret, 1572–1598, C.R.S., vol. 58 (London, 1967), pp. 82–3 and passim; G. Anstruther, The Seminary Priests (4 vols, Ware: St Edmund’s College & Great Wakering: Mayhew-McCrimmon, 1969–1977), vol. 1, p. 14. For Persons’s and Bagshaw’s mutual enmity, dating from their time at Balliol College, Oxford, see A. Kenny, ‘Reform and reaction in Elizabethan Balliol, 1559–1588’, in J. Prest (ed.), Balliol Studies (London: Leopard’s Head Press, 1982), pp. 17–51, esp. at pp. 28–32. 39 For the impact of this way of thinking on the English political environment, see e.g. L. Parmelee, Good Newes from Fraunce: French Anti-League Propaganda in Late Elizabethan England (Woodbridge: University of Rochester Press, 1996), ch. 5. 40 The National Archives, S.P. 15/29/118, fo. 177r (Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Addenda, 1580–1625 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1872), p. 179). 41 P. Lake and M. Questier, The Trials of Margaret Clitherow: Persecution, Martyrdom and the Politics of Sanctity in Elizabethan England (London: Continuum, 2011), ch. 7. 42 Ibid., chs 7, 8. Ironically, Bell’s confrontations with other equally evangelically minded clergy such as John Mush and with lay Catholics who disapproved of his casuistical stance on this issue flipped him over into a puritan, in effect, and certainly anti-popish version of Christianity inside the national church, to which church he emphatically returned in the early 1590s, Anstruther, Seminary Priests, vol. 1, p. 30. 43 Bossy, ‘The character of Elizabethan Catholicism’. 44 Persons’s text remained almost entirely in manuscript until after the Revolution in 1688; see E. Gee, The Jesuit’s Memorial for the Reformation of England (London: Richard Chiswel, 1690). 45 See esp. P. Lake, ‘Religious identities in Shakespeare’s England’, in D. Kastan (ed), A Companion to Shakespeare (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 57–84. 46 See e.g. C. Z. Wiener, ‘The beleaguered Isle: a study of Elizabethan and early Jacobean antiCatholicism’, Past and Present, 51 (1970), 27–62, esp. at 48f. 47 S. Adams, ‘The Protestant cause: religious alliance with the west European Calvinist communities as a political issue in England, 1585–1630’ (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1973). 48 See Lake and Questier, ‘Puritans, Papists and the “public sphere” in early modern England’; L.

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E. Berry (ed.), John Stubbs’s Gaping Gulf (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1968). 49 For the leading account of the new legislation, see L. J. Ward, ‘The law of treason in the reign of Elizabeth I 1558–1588’ (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1985); see also Questier, ‘The limits of conformity’. 50 See e.g. J. Bain, W. K. Boyd, H. W. Meikle, A. I. Cameron, M. S. Guiseppi and J. D. Mackie (eds), Calendar of State Papers relating to Scotland and Mary, Queen of Scots 1547–1603 (13 vols in 14, Edinburgh: H. M. General Register House, 1898–1969), 1574–81, pp. 306–7. 51 J. H. Pollen and W. MacMahon (eds), TheVen. Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel 1557–1595, C.R.S., vol. 21 (London, 1919), p. 81. 52 T. E. Hartley (ed.), Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I (3 vols, London: Leicester University Press, 1981–1995), vol. 3, pp. 72–3. 53 H. C. Hamilton, E. G. Atkinson and R. P. Mahaffy (eds), Calendar of State Papers, Ireland (24 vols, London: H. M.’s Stationery Office, 1860–1912), 1592–6, p. 487. 54 For an account of the intellectual and other conditions which allowed for slippage of this kind, see A. Milton, ‘A qualified intolerance: the limits and ambiguities of early Stuart antiCatholicism’, in A. Marotti (ed.), Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern English Texts (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 85–115, esp at p. 110, arguing that ‘if the precepts of anti-Catholicism were the “politically correct” language of the day which could never openly be challenged without considerable danger, this did not mean that they were not effectively undermined on a daily basis by the norms of intellectual inquiry, political behaviour, commercial calculation and social intercourse’. 55 Humble Motives for Association to Maintain Religion Established (n.p. [London], 1601), pp. 11–12. 56 Digges said, as had many others, that the way to deal with popery was via an oath by which the person who took it swore to conserve and propagate ‘the religion now publiquely professed within this realme’, Humble Motives, pp. 6–7. See also P. Lake and M. Questier, ‘The public politics of regime change; Thomas Digges, Robert Parsons and Sir Francis Hastings contest the religio-political arithmetic of the Elizabethan Fin de Siècle’, Historical Journal (published online in October 2016). 57 Humble Motives, pp. 11–12. 58 Ibid., p. 14. 59 A Briefe Censure upon the Puritane Pamphlet entituled (Humble Motyves for Association to Maintayne Religion established) (n.p. [printed secretly in England], 1603). 60 Sir William Cecil, The Execution of Justice in England (London: Christopher Barker, 1583), esp. at sig. Biiv; Allen, A True, Sincere and Modest Defence of English Catholics. 61 R. Doleman [pseud.], A Conference about the Next Succession about the Crowne of Ingland (n.p. [Antwerp: A. Conincx], 1594). See also P. Holmes, ‘The authorship and early reception of A Conference about the Next Succession to the Crown of England’, Historical Journal, 23 (1980), 415–29. 62 Knox, The Letters and Memorials of William Cardinal Allen, p. 391 (translation at Archivium Romanum Societatis Jesu (hereafter A.R.S.J.) 46/12/3–6 (transcripts of letters written by Robert Persons), p. 672). 63 Lake and Questier, ‘The public politics of regime change’. 64 M. Questier, Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations 1558–c.1630 (forthcoming), ch. 5. 65 See e.g. T. Ó hAnnracháin, ‘The bishop’s role in two non-Catholic states: the cases of Ireland and Turkish Hungary considered’, Church History and Religious Culture, 95 (2015), 1–15. 66 T. M. McCoog, ‘The Society of Jesus in England, 1623–1688: an institutional study’ (PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 1984), pp. 194–5; A.R.S.J., Anglia 36/i, fos. 268r.–77r.; the second copy of the same document contained in this Anglia volume bears the note ‘Interpretatio scedularum 17 Jan. 1609’ and has a memorandum explaining that it was exhibited to the pope by Sir Oliver Manners (the brother of the earl of Rutland) and Thomas Fitzherbert in Holy Week 1609, A.R.S.J., Anglia 36/i, fo. 317r–v. I am very grateful to Dr McCoog for drawing my attention to this second document. 67 One gets a sense of the ideal way, from a Jesuit perspective, in which this was supposed to work, from John Gerard’s narrative of his time as a Jesuit missioner in England, P. Caraman (ed.), John Gerard:The Autobiography of an Elizabethan (London: Longmans, Green, 1951).

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SEMINARY COLLEGES, CONVERTS AND RELIGIOUS CHANGE 173 68 J. T. Cliffe, The Yorkshire Gentry: From the Reformation to the Civil War (London: Athlone Press, 1969), pp. 200–3. 69 M. Questier (ed.), Stuart Dynastic Policy and Religious Politics, 1621–1625, Camden Society, 5th series, 34 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), passim. 70 M. Questier (ed.), Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c.1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), chs 12, 13. 71 C. Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), ch. 3; G. Albion, Charles I and the Court of Rome (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1935), passim. 72 M. Questier (ed.), Newsletters from the Caroline Court, 1631–1638: Catholicism and the Politics of the Personal Rule, Camden Society, 5th series, 26 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 36, 244, 261–2, 264, 268. 73 Questier, Newsletters from the Caroline Court, passim. Particularly in the early 1630s we have frequent secular clergy references to the problem of puritanism. If there had been a more consistent survival of Catholic newsletters in the later 1630s we might have known what Catholic commentators were undoubtedly saying about the divisions between Laudians/ conformists and puritans in, say, Northamptonshire, for which see P. Lake and I. Stephens, Scandal and Religious Identity in Early Stuart England: A Northamptonshire Maid’s Tragedy (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2015), passim, and esp. ch. 5. 74 R. Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, ed. J. H. Pollen (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1924), pp. 382–499. 75 R. Palmer, earl of Castlemaine, To all the Royalists …The Humble Apology of the English Catholicks (London: no publisher, 1666), esp. at pp. 9–13; R. Beddard, ‘Palmer, Roger’, O.D.N.B. 76 Anstruther, Seminary Priests, vol. 1, p. 350. 77 T. Clancy, ‘The Jesuits and the Independents: 1647’, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 40 (1971), 67–89. 78 J. Miller, Popery and Politics in England 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 42–4; A. F. Allison, ‘An English Gallican: Henry Holden (1596/7–1662) part I (to 1648)’, Recusant History, 22 (1995), 319–49. 79 J. Collins, ‘Thomas Hobbes and the Blackloist Conspiracy of 1649’, Historical Journal, 45 (2002), 305–31. 80 J. Collins, The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), passim. 81 William Birchley [John Austin], The Christian Moderator … (London: printed for H. J., 1651); William Birchley [John Austin], The Christian Moderator, second Part … (London: printed for H. J., 1652); William Birchley [John Austin], The Christian Moderator. Third Part … (London: printed by J. G. for Richard Lowndes, 1653). 82 Lloyd, The Late Apology, p. 46. 83 See esp. Miller, Popery and Politics. 84 S. Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (London: Yale University Press, 2009); cf. S. Sowerby, Making Toleration:The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution (London: Harvard University Press, 2013). 85 See R. S. Spurlock, ‘Cromwell and Catholics: towards a reassessment of lay Catholic experience in Interregnum Ireland’, in M.Williams and S. P. Forrest (eds), Constructing the Past:Writing Irish History, 1600–1800 (Woodbridge: Brewer & Boydell, 2010), pp. 157–80.

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7 The Maronite college in early modern Rome: Between the Ottoman Empire and  the Republic of Letters Aurélien Girard and Giovanni Pizzorusso Introduction The Maronite college, founded by Pope Gregory XIII in 1584, was one of a number of ‘national’ colleges created in Rome in the early modern period.1 It was intended to accommodate young Maronite Christians, who were near-eastern Catholics of the ancient patriarchate of Antioch, and lived in Arabic provinces of the Ottoman Empire, under Islamic jurisdictions. Like other foreign students, they were to receive an education and formation in more hospitable Catholic territories, prior to returning home to ministry there. Maronite and Lebanese historiography has contributed significantly to a better knowledge of the history of this college, particularly since the mid-twentieth century. In 1950, Pierre Raphaël published his thesis in Beirut entitled Le Rôle du Collège maronite romain dans l’orientalisme, XVII–XVIIIe siècle. However, Sarkis Tabar, longtime director of the archives of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide, wrote the first history of the college firmly based on important archival holdings. Finally, in 1984, Nasser Gemayel, currently bishop of the Maronite Catholic Eparchy of Paris, published his thesis in Beirut entitled Les Échanges culturels entre les Maronites et l’Europe. These scholarly works drew on Propaganda Fide’s rich archives. However, because they focused only on the history of the Maronites, these historians inadvertently contributed to the isolation of the college both from the history of the other colleges, as well as from the crucially important Roman political context.2 More recently, the history of the Maronite college in Rome has also been studied in light of a new approach to the Christian minorities in the Levant and of their relationship with Roman institutions, in particular the Congregation de Propaganda Fide.3 This chapter complements and extends the existing historiography by placing the Maronite college, and its history, in a triple context. First, it examines the college in its Roman setting. Second, it sets the institution in its Middle Eastern context, tracing its evolving and sometimes contested role in the history of the Maronite Church organisation there. Third, it examines the

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college’s network of European connections in order to understand the activities of the Maronite diaspora especially, as Pierre Raphaël has already underlined, the role of its alumni in the international Republic of Letters. From missionaries in Mount Lebanon to young Maronites in Rome After the Council of Trent, and especially during the pontificate of Gregory XIII (1572–1585), the Roman Catholic Church, partly in response to the reformers, mounted a remarkable world-wide missionary operation. One aspect of this complex process was the centralising of missionary government in Rome. Challenged in Europe by Protestants, but also by Catholic monarchs anxious to bolster their own authority, the Holy See defended its role as an institutional centre of the universal church and attempted to extend its field of jurisdiction. At the same time, many of the new religious orders created at this time were interested in mission activity and they established their curiae generales in Rome. Furthermore, the general bureaucratisation of papal government in the sixteenth century drew clerics and religious from around Europe and further afield to Rome, because of the necessity or obligation of maintaining contact with the apostolic see. The development of pilgrimages to Rome and the required visits ad limina apostolorum for the bishops, also contributed to the emergence of an increasingly cosmopolitan ecclesiastical presence.4 In view of their universal ambitions, the Roman authorities had a particular interest in the Middle East. It was home to the Holy Land, where Christianity had emerged in apostolic times. In the eyes of the universal church, the Christians living there enjoyed special status as the direct heirs of the original founders of the earliest Christian churches. The separated ecclesial communities of the east, Rome argued, should be reunited to the Latin Church.5 At the end of the sixteenth century, among the eastern churches, only the Maronite Church had been united with Rome since the Crusades, and links had been weak between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries.6 In 1578–1579, a first Jesuit mission was sent to the Maronites in the Mount Lebanon region. The missionaries of the Society of Jesus noted numerous ‘abuses’ among the Maronites that they intended to reform in line with Tridentine models. For the missionaries, these abuses were rooted in the alleged ‘ignorance’ of the eastern Christians. The Jesuit Gian Battista Eliano travelled up and down Mount Lebanon to teach the priests the main articles of the faith and the rules concerning the administration of the sacraments. He also recruited young Maronites to send to Rome.7 For the Jesuits, as for Roman authorities in general, the education of Maronite clergy in the heart of the Catholic Church in Rome was an essential part of the proposed reforms.

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Accordingly, a Maronite college was founded in 1584 on the model of other national colleges in the pontifical capital. From the middle of the sixteenth century, in part to increase international representation in Rome, church authorities had been creating a number of colleges and seminaries intended to accommodate visiting foreign clergy, and above all, to educate young religious students from different nationes for their home missions and for service in the international church. Some of these institutions were especially dedicated to Catholics who lived under the domination of heretic or infidel powers. Religious orders frequently managed these colleges, which were generally intended for the formation of secular clergy. As early as 1577, a Greek college dedicated to St Athanasius was founded by Gregory XIII to accommodate young Greeks belonging to any nation in which the Greek Rite was used, including the Ruthenians and Melkites of Egypt and the Levant.8 In 1584, the attempt to create an Armenian college failed. In 1577 Gregory XIII also founded the College of Neophytes, in addition to the already established Pia Casa dei Catecumeni (1543), to welcome young Jewish and Muslim converts, but also dissidents from the eastern churches not in communion with Rome.9 The first Maronite students arrived in the capital in 1579 and 1581, and were installed at the College of Neophytes. In 1582–1583, a dedicated hospice for the Maronites was created, which shortly thereafter became the college.10 With the bull Humana sic ferunt, promulgated on 28 July 1584, and in which Gregory XIII founded the Maronite college, the pope underlined the necessity of educating Maronites, who endured the ‘Turkish yoke’. The pontiff held that the Turks prevented the Maronites from studying humanities, in order to divert them from the Catholic faith, hence his particular interest in the education of students from the Muslim-held Holy Land. Ironically, in spite of this founding principle, few of the young Maronites fully trained in Rome would ever return to preach the faith among their own ‘nation’.11 The college community was installed in the Trevi district, and given the use of a church called San Giovanni della Ficozza located close to the college. Like similar colleges for foreigners in Rome, the building had originally been a hospice for Maronite pilgrims, which was turned into a college ‘in order to educate young people (giovanotti) of this nation [Maronite] in humanities (buone lettere)’.12 The college consisted of two dormitories, accommodating eight students each. One of these overlooked a small library. From the refectory, one entered the kitchen located next to the laundry and sewing workshop. There was also a wine cellar and second cellar, and a patio with a fountain and a well in the middle. A small contiguous building was purchased in 1615 with four more dormitories, a tiny courtyard, a well and a cellar.13 Furthermore, a cardinal protector was appointed, who had to provide the college with regular or secular clergy for the celebration of Mass in the Arabic and Syriac languages.

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The protector was also expected to oversee the admission of students and to draw up the college’s constitution. More generally, he was charged with the responsibility for almost everything relating to the institution. The college and the church were exempt from the jurisdiction of the vicariate of Rome. The pope gave the institution an endowment and granted the same privileges as those enjoyed by the English, German and Greek colleges.14 The Maronite college, the Jesuits and Propaganda Fide In the early days, multiple authorities were responsible for the running of the college, resulting in a complex situation. Besides Pope Gregory, one of founders of the establishment had been Cardinal Antonio Carafa (1538–1591). Related to Pope Paul IV (1555–1559), he had been expelled from Rome following the trial and execution of members of the Carafa family in 1561. In 1566, he regained his functions in Rome, became cardinal in 1568 and was intensely involved in the intellectual and administrative activity of the Roman curia. With Cardinal Giulio Antonio Santoro, archbishop of Santa Severina, and Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto, cardinal librarian of the Vatican Library, Carafa dealt with non-Latin communities. He participated, for instance, together with the two abov­­ementioned cardinals, in the ‘congregation of the Greeks’ created by Gregory XIII in 1573, following Santoro’s initiative.15 On 9 December 1569 he was appointed protector of the Maronite nation, a role he took very seriously. It was Carafa who sent the two Jesuit-led apostolic missions to the Maronites in 1578 and 1580. Protector of the Maronite college from 1584 until his death in 1591, he proved a generous patron of the institution and endowed it in his will.16 The Jesuits administered the college from its founding in 1584 until 1773, the date of the suppression of the Society. The general, who was Claudio Acquaviva at the time of the foundation, intervened rarely in the internal life of the college. He and his successors delegated all responsibility to the college rector, who regularly informed him, the cardinal protector and the patriarch concerning college affairs.The first rector was Father Giovanni Bruno (1584–1590).Though the relations between the patriarchate and the Society were good between the 1580s and the 1610s,17 the college administration faced a number of serious challenges. One of these concerned the reluctance of young Maronites to return to the home mission after their time in the Roman college. From the beginning, some of the best students remained on in Rome to follow good professional careers.18 Furthermore, many young Maronites were drawn to enter the Society of Jesus, a problem also evident in other national colleges run by the order. Even more worryingly, the patriarch received information concerning the alleged mistreatment of students by the Jesuits. However, in 1622 the Jesuit general,

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Vitelleschi, rejected these allegations as ‘lies’ in his letters to Patriarch Mahlūf or ˘ ʽAmīra, archbishop of Ehden (then the first patriarch who was also an alumnus of the college).19 The Maronite patriarch believed he had the right to supervise the day-to-day life and training of the young Maronites he sent to Rome and who, after their return to Syria, would constitute the clerical elite of his church. For example, just before the foundation of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, the Patriarch Yūh. anna Mahluf wrote several times to the cardinals urging ˘ them to exclude the Jesuits from the college.20 In 1622, Pope Gregory XV created the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, a ministry of the Roman curia charged with the jurisdiction of missionary ­activities in non-Catholic jurisdictions. Accordingly Propaganda assumed responsibility for Catholics in Protestant jurisdictions, for Orthodox (‘scismatici’) in Muslim territories and for missionary activity in pagan territories generally. Only the conversion of the Jews was excluded from its remit. This brought under P­ ropaganda’s authority a broad range of Catholic communities including the English, Scots, Irish and Dutch, as well as oriental Catholics in the Ottoman Empire.21 The scale of Propaganda’s work required a very large number of missionaries. For clergy destined to leave Europe for foreign mission service, a knowledge of the language and culture of the target territory was essential. Consequently, from its foundation, Propaganda was especially concerned with the training of the missionary clergy and took a keen interest in the affairs of the foreign colleges in Rome. Inevitably this led to tensions between Propaganda and the Jesuits, who ran so many of these colleges. Propaganda also experienced difficulties with the Catholic authorities of the missionary clergy’s countries of origin. Catholic monarchs looked on their missionaries, who were often regulars, as part of their colonising enterprises and were not always happy to pursue Propaganda’s objectives. This helps explain Propaganda’s preference for secular missionaries and for the establishment, when possible, of diocesan-like church structures in missionary territories, under apostolic vicars.22 The congregation also strongly supported the creation of a native clergy. The missionary methodology employed by Propaganda considered the formation of an indigenous clergy to be necessary to preserve local churches and to stimulate conversions, because native clergy knew best the mentality and the customs of the people they would minister to on returning home. However, in line with general Roman preferences, Propaganda simultaneously encouraged missionary clergy to receive their cultural and spiritual formation in Rome. Even before the foundation of the Congregation, the Valencian prelate Juan Bautista Vives wished to establish a college which could train future missionaries from different ‘nations’ destined to serve their own people and convert others. He had in mind an international college, conceived to give the same Roman training to

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missionaries from very different origins.23 Vives’s globalised vision prefigured the establishment of the Propaganda college, the Collegio Urbano by Pope Urban VIII (formally with the bull Immortalis Dei Filius) at the congregation’s headquarters as early as 1627. This college was intended to accommodate students for every mission in the world.24 At this stage, Pope Gregory XV had already given (1622–1623) Propaganda jurisdiction over the national colleges in Rome and elsewhere, a concession which was also in accordance with the global ambition of the new congregation.25 Regulating daily life Gregory XIII attempted to provide every new Roman college with the means to subsist financially. The bull erecting the Maronite college granted an annual income paid by the Apostolic Dataria and drawn from two monastic properties outside Rome.26 However, the new college was constantly in financial difficulty. The cardinal protector’s visits of 1629–1630 and 1645 revealed the gravity of the situation,27 which became alarming in 1661.28 The patriarchs referred frequently to this problem in their correspondence with the pope and the Congregation and often complained about poor college management. College outgoings were considerable as they included the payment of staff and various annual expenses. It was the health of the institution’s finances that ultimately decided the number of students who might be admitted in a given year.29 As in other ‘national colleges’, young Maronites, on arrival in Rome, were required to take an oath swearing allegiance to the pontiff,30 obedience to the cardinal protector, and submission to all rules and constitutions of the college. Furthermore, they promised that they would return to their country to serve the church at the end of the studies.31 Confronted with the problem of the leakage of college alumni to the Society of Jesus, Propaganda decreed in 1625 that no alumni could be admitted to a religious congregation.32 However, the Maronite scholar Abraham Ecchellensis, alumnus of the college,33 explained that this new prohibition was not suitable for the Maronites, as some of the students wanted to join the order of Saint Antony ‘because many Maronite bishops were selected from that order’.34 For a similar reason, the congregation had already revoked an equivalent prohibition imposed on the Greek college.35 After its visitation of the college in 1629–1630, Propaganda allowed Maronites to join the order and even removed this article from the students’ oath.36 In 1660, Pope Alexander VII (1655–1667) ordered a reformulation of the oath, which was similar to the oath pronounced by students of the Collegio Urbano. The alumni of the pontifical colleges were obliged for life by their college oath, even if they subsequently obtained permission to join a religious congregation. Hence, every

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Maronite alumnus, whether returning home or taking up a mission in Europe, was obliged, by the oath, to return a report or ‘lettera di stato’ to Propaganda, outlining their activities and status.37 These oaths encouraged the maintenance of a particularly strong link between the congregation and college alumni, one that went beyond that presumed in traditional religious vows. In the case of the Collegio Urbano, the oath created a lifelong condition of juridical restraint on former students.38 The college constitution organised daily life in the Maronite college. Cardinal Carafa, the cardinal protector, drew up the first constitutions in 1584, just before the bull of foundation.39 As early as 1585, the text was translated into Arabic garšūnī (the Arabic language written with Syriac letters) by John Hesronite (Yūḥannā al-Ḥaṣrūnī), a Maronite scholar living in Rome.40 The constitutions were prepared in accordance with Tridentine norms and were quite similar to the rules of other Jesuit colleges. They were divided into four parts and thirty-two articles: the prologue (art. 1–3); the religious exercises (art. 4–8); the studies (art. 9–15); the domestic life (art. 16–32). The prologue set out the purpose of the college and the conditions of admission. Students were expected to lead an honest life and maintain a good reputation. Before leaving Mount Lebanon, the patriarch sent a letter of recommendation and, prior to full admission in Rome, students underwent a probationary period of four months, during which they could be asked to leave, if deemed unsuitable.41 Naturally, the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola were a core feature of college life and student spirituality.42 Students attended Mass daily; reception of communion was customary only once a month and on feast days, and was always preceded by confession. The rector chose students’ spiritual reading, very often the lives of saints.43 Over the years, the constitutions were revised, usually at the behest of Propaganda. After a visitation in 1629–1630 by Cardinals Bandini, Ubaldini and Barberini, the protectors, changes were suggested. For the visitors, Carafa’s 1584 constitution was not well organised and was seen as relatively lax and imprecise. As a compromise, the secretary of Propaganda, Francesco Ingoli, argued for the preservation of Carafa’s original text within the new, more detailed constitution and included suggestions made by the Jesuit general, Vitelleschi.44 The question of the reform of the student oath was especially important for Ingoli and he insisted on it. Finally, Ingoli recommended that the Maronite rector check the constitutions of the Greek college, for potentially useful parallels. Ingoli recognised that both institutions required the particular adaptations of the general Trent-inspired rules, for example to accommodate specific requirements in relation to the student oath or admission to monastic orders.45 According to Carafa’s rules, college courses were to be given in Latin and Italian, but during breaks and holidays young Maronites were allowed to

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speak their language of choice. In contrast, Vitelleschi’s proposition forbade use of students’ native languages and mandated the use of Latin and Italian instead, especially in dealings with the rector, who could punish noncompliance.46 The new constitutions, with these revisions and including other regulations for daily discipline in the college, were approved by a particular congregation constituted by Cardinal Antonio Barberini, Monsignor Marcaurelio Maraldi and the Datary on 22 September 1634.47 These detailed prescriptions covering daily life in the college (Ordo disciplinae domesticae et temporis ceterarum exercitationum, quae singulis diebus in Collegio Maronitarum Urbis sunt obeundae, distributio) were strict. The Jesuit superiors demanded that students respect a rigid timetable (temporis […] distributio) governing all their activities.48 Together with the section on domestic life in the above-mentioned Constitutions, the Ordo set the boundaries for student social life and behaviour. All the colleges in Rome had similar rules, which constituted a basic element of the ‘Tridentine training’ of the students. For very young people coming from Syria, this was another step in their ‘Romanisation’, which entailed becoming more integrated into Tridentine Catholicism, even if oriental ritual and liturgy was preserved and cultivated. Outside college walls, their Roman experience was limited to class attendance at the Collegio Romano and religious events, always under strict control. In this sense, even if the majority of eastern students did not enjoy a deep experience of actual Roman life, they were nonetheless drawn into the Tridentine discipline administered by their Jesuit superiors. Of course, in the Roman College they met other students coming from other countries, mainly Italians. Furthermore, they could see the ‘grande bellezza’ of the Eternal City when they walked to the college or to the churches on the occasion of liturgical events. Superiors strongly opposed contacts outside the colleges, considering them problematic for young seminarians.49 The life of young Maronites inside the Roman ecclesiastical milieu is well documented, but not their relationship with the outside world, the town in which they lived. Protests and grievances of students were not uncommon. The young Abraham Ecchellensis protested openly, without any shyness, against the prefect of the college, but also about practical issues like sweeping the floor.50 In 1732, a fresh set of regulations was imposed by Propaganda. It dealt first with the admission of young Maronites, ensuring that only the patriarch had the right to select students and send them to Rome, with a certificate of baptism, confirmation and papers concerning the orders they had received. The final decision concerning admission, however, actually rested with the protector. College life followed similar rules to those of other Jesuit-run establishments, introducing eastern Christians to the typical exercises of Latin piety: meditation, examination of conscience, the rosary, spiritual reading, attending daily Mass, and monthly confession and communion. The practice of following the

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way of the cross was introduced in 1777. Other factors assisted the process of Romanisation. Maronites followed courses at the Collegio Romano, courses that were delivered without any eastern specificity.The 1732 constitutions stipulated that those who knew Latin were to speak that language only, and the others Italian, except during holidays and festivals when Syriac could be used at the superior’s discretion. In the eighteenth century, however, there was a growing awareness of the necessary adaptation of education to the needs of the country where students were to return after completing their studies. The regulations of 1732, which imposed an obligation to speak Italian during recess, also provided for a daily lesson of Arabic, or at least three weekly. Furthermore training of the students in Syriac liturgy was ensured by their attendance at several masses in this language during the week. At this point, positions of teaching and management in the college were entrusted to Maronite Jesuits.51 Education According to the list published by Nasser Gemayel, 280 students passed through the Maronite college between 1579 and 1788,52 but the number present at any one time varied considerably. In 1585, there were twenty-four, but only fifteen in 1629 (during a visit of the college by the cardinals) and just nine in 1644. It seems that the maximum was reached between 1690 and 1730. The visitation of 1728 revealed that the college was full. After 1750, the number of boarders decreased. In 1769, there were only four, but the institution survived the suppression of the Society of Jesus.53 Between 1584 and 1788, more than half of the Maronite students came from Mount Lebanon. This points to the pre-eminence in the college of students drawn from certain families in the area. In 1661, during a speech to the cardinals, the rector of the Maronite college regretted the very limited geographical spread of the students and the strength of their family ties.54 Whatever their origins, the first students of the college encountered challenges in adjusting to life abroad. The trip across the Mediterranean Sea was often made on French ships. The most serious danger, apart from shipwreck and disease, was kidnap by pirates. For example, in 1679, Bishop Buṭrus ibn Maḫlūf, who went to Rome with three young Maronite students, Miḫa’īl of Miṭuši, Thomas of Jerusalem and Miḫa’ īl of Ehden, was captured and taken to Tripoli. They were bought back and released after two months of captivity.55 Once in Rome, Maronite students had to adapt to the urban lifestyle of a large Italian city. About 5 per cent fell seriously ill or died during their stay in Rome. Revealingly, thirty-three Maronites (more than 10 per cent) were expelled for non-compliance with rules or inability to study.56

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In a memorandum, Abraham Ecchellensis (Ibrahīm al-Hāqilānī), a Maronite scholar who had a prominent academic career in France and in Italy, gave a deplorable image of the fate of his six classmates of 1620. The first, after six years at the college, wanted to be a Jesuit, but gave up after a month and returned home following many difficulties. Another one became blind and went home after three years. A third died after a year and a half in Rome. Ecchellensis complained bitterly about the harassment he underwent and the humiliating chores that he was given. According to his report, only one out of the fourteen members of the class of 1638 completed his studies. One of them was sent home when he fell ill and died on the way. Another was reportedly caned and apparently died from the resulting injuries.57 The patriarchs expressed their dissatisfaction about the alleged poor treatment meted out to students. For example, in 1632, the patriarch Mahlūf asked Propaganda to improve the situation of the ˘ students.58 In 1636, patriarch ʽAmīra (1634–1644) regretted that, during forty years, the college trained only four priests who served the nation.59 The college was essentially a hostel, a Roman residence for these young eastern Christians.Though some specific courses were provided within the college, for the bulk of their studies students attended Jesuit masters in the Collegio Romano. On the benches Maronites joined the Greeks, Germans and others.60 The educative project of the Maronite college, explained in a memorandum of the eighteenth century,61 had two objectives: students were to practise Christian piety and learn the soundest human sciences. This spiritual and intellectual training was, of course, common to all Roman colleges.62 However, as a national college, the Maronite college had some specificities, especially in the eighteenth century. As already mentioned, there was provision for courses in Arabic and Syriac. Arabic was the maternal language of the Maronites. However, reflecting the experience of the Irish too, long sojourns abroad meant that they sometimes forgot it or proved unable to translate into their maternal language the more complicated theological concepts they studied in the Collegio Romano. Syriac was the ecclesiastical language of the Maronites, creating a parallel between Syriac and Latin on the one hand, and Arabic and another vernacular language (such as Italian or Irish) on the other. So the future priests had to learn Syriac for their pastoral ministry.63 Their Roman training naturally included formation in the oriental rite. Maronites were required to have a grounding in oriental liturgy, ceremonial and sacred literature, all essential for their pastoral activity. They also studied moral and controversial theology, and canon law, which were important especially for those who were marked for senior positions in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. To ensure competency in Syriac, the college authorities organised ‘Syriac exercices’, a language class, which met during the week. As was common in other colleges, senior students (of theology) assisted more junior colleagues. The Mass was sung in Syriac for the great occasions: Palm

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Sunday, Easter, Pentecost and Christmas.64 The celebration of the feast of Saint Maron was a special occasion, marking the national character of the college in the Roman context.65 On his feast day, the college also celebrated Saint John Evangelist, who was the titular saint of the church of the college.66 The duration of student residence at the college varied, with health and intellectual ability as determining factors. For example, in 1671 Gratia Beniamin Edensis returned home, aged only thirteen years old, because he failed to show any aptitude for study. Other students completed their studies with aplomb, such as Giovanni Aldoense who left the pontifical capital after success in his philosophical and theological studies in the Maronite college.67 Like other graduates of the Collegio Urbano, Aldoense petitioned Propaganda to supply him with the books he would need to minister in Syria, all works published by the congregation.68 These included an Arabic Bible, which had just come off the press, after a long and difficult process lasting half a century.69 He also obtained the Officium simplex Maronitarum cum Processione S. Crucis, the Breviarium Maronitarum (pars hyemalis et aestiva), the recently published Novum Testamentum in Syriac, the Fabrica Magna Linguae Arabicae and the Doctrina christiana Carsciuni [Arabic language written with Syriac characters] Italiana. He also requested an Arabic translation of the Imitatio Christi by Thomas a Kempis,70 another Doctrina christiana, the grammars of Joseph Accurensis and Abraham Ecchellensis, the Institutiones Linguae Arabicae by Filippo Guadagnoli,71 the Doctrina christiana of Bellarmin in Arabic and Italian, the Annales Ecclesiastici by Cesare Baronio translated by Brice de Rennes into Arabic,72 the Antithesis Fidei in Arabic,73 the Doctrina christiana in Syriac, the grammar Agrumia by Tommaso da Novara, and the Eutychius vindicatus by Ecchellensis.74 This was a rich collection for a particularly brilliant student.75 Aldoense’s petition was only a small part of the complex relations between the Maronite college and the Congregation of Propaganda Fide involving jurisdictional issues, visits and economic links with requests for books and money for the journey back to the near east.76 Students leaving Rome were provided with an attestation of the rector who certified that they had carried out their cursus studiorum, and to what level, as appropriate.77 However, sometimes students left the college without being ordained, as was remarked in 1727. To avoid confusion between the Latin and the oriental rites, the Maronite patriarch refused to permit young Maronites to be ordained according to the Latin rite. Because of the absence of a Maronite bishop in Rome, and despite the oath which imposed ordination, students did return un-ordained to the Levant, where they were normally ordained by the patriarchs. But there were some exceptions, even quite notorious ones. Abraham Ecchellensis, Giuseppe Banese, Stefano Nacchi, all Maronite students, were never ordained. Because so many students failed to progress to ordination, there were calls for a Maronite bishop in Rome.78

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The college and the Maronite diaspora in Europe As the historian Bernard Heyberger remarked, most of the eastern Christians who sojourned in Europe passed through Rome, which seemed a natural stop on their journey.79 Does the presence of young Maronite seminarians in Rome also suggest the existence of a Maronite community in the Urbs? It seems not, though some Maronites settled permanently in western Europe. Some families did settle in Rome, notably the Ecchellensis and Naironus: Faustus Naironus (born in 1628, died between 1708 and 1712), known as Fausto Nairone (or Naironi) in the Italian sources or Mirhiğ ibn Miḫa’īl ibn Maḫlūf al-Bānī by his Arabic name, was one of the brothers (Giovanni, Matteo and Nicola also had Roman careers) of Constance, the Maronite wife of Abraham Ecchellensis. His family was originally from Bān (a village in north Lebanon) but had already settled in Rome, where Naironus was born.80 The Assemani family, from Ḥaṣrūn (another village in north Lebanon), sent several members to Rome. Moreover, Simone Assemani, who made a name for himself in Padova, was born in Rome (1752) by a Maronite father (Antonio Assemani) and an Italian mother (Marta Maria Devoti).81 In the eighteenth century, Lebanese monks settled in Rome, often accommodating Maronites travellers or pilgrims.82 In 1743, Pope Benedict XIV gave some ‘orders and rules for ecclesiastic and lay eastern Christians who left in Rome’, stressing on discipline for the clergy and on the religious practices with oriental rites for lay persons: ‘li quali come affatto ignari, e poco periti della lingua Italiana, non possono ricevere da Parrochi latini le necessarie Istruzioni’.83 There were also other attempts to create colleges for Maronites elsewhere, but these were unsuccessful or, at best, short lived. On 12 March 1647, a Maronite college was created in Ravenna, and formally erected by Pope Innocent X (in the brief Ex quoniam fondatio, 6 July 1648). The financial base was the inheritance of the Maronite Naṣrallah Šalaq al-’Āqūrī (d. 1635)84 whose name was ‘translated’ in Italian sources as Vittorio Scialac Accorense, as well as a legacy of Cardinal Ubaldini, and 300 ecus provided annually by Propaganda. The new college was entrusted to Cardinal Luigi Capponi, bishop of Ravenna. It adopted the same rules as other colleges, including those prescribing strict obedience to Propaganda. The number of students admitted was very limited (four) and the college failed quickly. In 1663, the Congregation decided to transfer the students to the Maronite college in Rome and to shut down the institution in Ravenna, which was sold. The profit and the books from the library returned to Propaganda.85 In Paris, a project involving a college for eastern Christians (including Maronites) had also been mooted. A former ambassador in Istanbul and Rome and famous orientalist, Savary de Brèves, first had the intention in 1611 to create a college to teach oriental languages, thanks to the presence of two Maronite scholars (alumni of the college of Rome), Gabriel Sionite (Ğibra’īl

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al-Ṣahyuī) and Victor Scialac.86 Soon after, he envisaged a school for ‘a dozen of students from eastern nations’ who could ‘become afterwards rectors of college’.87 However, in letters written in 1612, Victor Scialac and Gabriel Sionite seemed to model the Parisian college on the Roman example: students were to return to the near east to minister to Maronite Catholics, administer sacraments to Latin merchants, and bring back those considered schismatics and heretics to the Catholic Church.88 This college was never created,89 but at the end of the century, a college for eastern Christians was founded as part of the École des Jeunes de langues. Though the Maronite patriarch asked Secretary of State Pontchartrain to accept young Maronites at the Parisian college, Catholics were not the priority. The experiment ended in 1720.90 The Maronite college developed as a very important centre for oriental studies in early modern Rome. Recent historiography has underlined the importance of intellectual life in the papal capital, and the centrality of Rome in the international Republic of Letters.91 Roman Maronites, alumni of the college, worked for oriental presses, which were a rarity in Europe.92 For instance they collaborated with all of the presses printing Arabic and Syriac in early modern Rome: the Medicean typography, the ‘Tipographia linguarum externarum’ of the Maronite Yaʻqūb b. Hilāl and the polyglot printing operation of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide. There was also an oriental press in the college from 1614 until the foundation of the Propaganda press in 1626. The Stamperia ex collegio maronitarum printed six books, as far as is known: five grammars for Syriac or Arabic language and a book of Syriac liturgy. For European orientalists, the college was of course famous for its library.93 Numerous manuscripts, brought from the near east by the students, were unique.94 This ensured that the library was well known among erudite travellers: Joseph Juste Scaliger received a letter from Dupuy who spent some time in the library and who explained that Maronites sold copies of their books.95 In some cases, Maronite scholars who were engaged in the construction of an apologetic version of their church’s history, claimed that they had found evidence to support their arguments in the manuscripts of the library. These claims ignited controversies, notably that between the Maronite Faustus Naironus and the French orientalists Eusèbe Renaudot and Richard Simon.96 Numerous Maronites brought with them their skills in oriental languages, which opened doors to teaching positions in the great European universities and to cataloguing collections of oriental manuscripts or to work with various oriental presses. For example, Abraham Ecchellensis was professor of Syriac and Arabic at the ‘Collège des Lecteurs royaux’ in Paris and at the La Sapienza ­University in Roma. He was also scriptor orientalis at the Vatican Library.97 Moreover, secular rulers looked to the Maronite college to recruit experts in oriental languages (periti linguarum orientalium) as required. For example when

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Federico Borromeo founded the Ambrosian library in Milan, he wrote several letters to the rector of the Maronite college to recruit a scholar (ultimately Michele Maronita) who knew Latin and Italian, but also Syriac and Arabic for the oriental manuscripts of his library.98 The results of a Roman education The pastoral usefulness of the college and the alumni was regularly questioned by the Congregation de Propaganda Fide itself, as well as by missionaries and eastern Christians. One of the most frequent criticisms was that the best students found positions in Europe, and failed to return to their respective countries. For this reason the papacy had imposed an oath on students of colleges to return home, as already noted, and forbade them to join religious orders. They were also obliged to send lettere di stato, or activity reports, back to Rome.The lettere were normally written in Italian, the language learned during the student’s stay in Rome.99 For example, on New Year’s Day 1700, Donato Aldoense, alumnus of the Maronite college, wrote three letters from Qannūbīn, to Pope Innocent XII, to the cardinals of Propaganda and to Cardinal Francesco Nerli (protector of the Maronites) respectively. All three referred to the obligation of providing an account of the author’s personal situation and his pastoral activity. The first letter was a tribute to the pope, an act of devout submission without any reference to the concrete situation of his missionary work. The second one reminded the cardinals that he had already written three times to seek directions about his ministry, but the congregation had failed to respond. He explained that he had left Aleppo to settle in the Maronite patriarchate (Qannūbīn). In the third letter, he paid homage to Nerli and gave an account of the poor situation of the country, denouncing the ‘unusual tyrannies’ of the Turks who had tripled taxes. The miserable population, he explained, had fled as a result and the patriarch (Isṭifān al-Duwayhī) was powerless. Another alumnus, Thomas Hesronite, who came to Qannūbīn to be ordained by the patriarch, probably wrote Donato’s letters.100 Duwayhī was an alumnus of the Maronite college who, from 1658 to 1668 (when he was appointed bishop of Maronites in Cyprus), also sent his lettere di stato.101 One of the difficulties for former Roman students was to adjust when they returned to their country. ‘Ten or twelve years of their youth spent in the artificial milieu of a Roman boarding school did not prepare for life in a Syrian town or in the mountains, so repulsive to the Europeans of that time’, writes Bernard Heyberger, who notes several examples of alumni who did not return home as missionaries. Often crossing between Levant and Europe, they acted as agents of European consulates or served the business interests of their families. To an extent, their careers illustrate the ‘limits of Roman education for the training

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of Catholic propagandists’.102 Even the memorandum of 1727 had denounced ‘the students who, preferring their own interests, instead of the good of their nation, either did not come back to their homeland, or, just come back to leave again for the richest towns of Europe where they settled down as religious friars or teachers’.103 It also criticised the alumni who joined religious orders.104 The report suggested that all the alumni should return to Mount Lebanon to fulfill their vow and carry out their duty: ‘it is the only way to ensure that the great spending made by the Holy See to support the college in Rome would not be fruitless and useless’.105 The memorandum mentioned twenty-three alumni in Syria, and six who had joined religious orders. Names included Antonio Nacchi, superior of the Jesuits in Syria and Egypt; Pietro Benedetti, a Jesuit, former lector of oriental languages in Pisa, and the casa professa in Rome; Giorgio Beniamini, former bishop of Ehden in Mount Lebanon, then a Jesuit in the Maronite college; Michele Jari, Jesuit and teacher in Livorno; Agostino or Antonio Fortunati, a reformed Franciscan in the Holy Land; and Dionisio Ecchellensis, who had joined the Caracciolini in Rome. Five others were not in a religious order. These included Michele Maronita who was in Malta teaching Turkish slaves; Giuseppe Assemani who worked at the Vatican Library, and taught Syriac and Arabic in the Collegio Urbano; Andrea Scandar, teacher of Arabic at La Sapienza University; Paolo Linci; Antonio Benedetti, who was in Rome involved in a legal case against his patriarch.106 However, even those who stayed in Europe, and thus did not exercise the function for which they were intended, played an important role for their communities, and in the relationship of eastern Christians with the west. Those who made careers in Europe continued to intervene with the Roman curia and other agencies in favour of their community, their families and their friends, in both temporal and spiritual affairs. Those who distinguished themselves in the Republic of Letters helped raise general awareness of eastern Christians in Europe.107 In Syria, one of the difficulties for the alumni who remained loyal to their initial vocation was material want. In his report on the missions presented to Pope Innocent XI (1678), the secretary of Propaganda, Urbano Cerri, claimed that a native clergy would relieve the congregation of the expense of financially maintaining missionaries. This was not, in fact, the case.Young clerics returning from Rome faced a dilemma: either remain faithful to their oath and live in extreme poverty or integrate to make a living but abandon apostolic work. The alumni did not always find a parish to serve and sometimes waited for years before being ordained. This situation was denounced by the missionaries who pleaded with Propaganda to ensure a pension to its former students to relieve their poverty and enable them to benefit from their education. The congregation was not insensitive to the material plight of its disciples. It sometimes gave

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them pensions making them ‘Apostolic missionaries’. The pastoral activity of these missionaries differed little from that of the Jesuits: they preached, taught and confessed like their mentors. Alumni of the Maronite college were active in rural missions but also in cities. They were numerous and active in Aleppo in the eighteenth century, and perhaps better supported materially by the Congregation of Propaganda Fide than before.108 Thus the objective of educating an elite for the Maronite Church according to the Tridentine principles was largely achieved. The college produced seven Maronite patriarchs and about thirty bishops. Characters with more modest careers also worked earnestly. Patriarch Isṭifān al-Duwayhī (1670–1704), ­recognising the importance of the college for his church, wrote a short history in Arabic. It listed the sixty-eight alumni of the Maronite college from 1639 to 1685. Twenty-six had become religious or married priests without accessing a higher position. Among them was the monk, Yūsuf al Rami, who had to interrupt his studies for medical reasons. He taught children in Ashqut, Baskinta, Cyprus and Bayt Shabab for fifty years. He also founded a monastery in this final location. ‘He was the master of many’, wrote Duwayhī and the patriarch listed other examples of this kind.109 Conclusion In Europe, at least from the first half of the seventeenth century, the Maronite college was a central location for oriental studies thanks to its library, its oriental printing press, and its students trained both in oriental and European languages. In the near east, the emergence of an eastern clergy trained in the Roman mould is obvious. Of course, Tridentine religious practices were not taught to believers exclusively by the Latins. The eastern Catholic churches became missionaries themselves, devoting a portion of their own clergy to teaching, preaching, spreading the rosary, the training of priests and the administration of the sacraments to the faithful. One of the major concerns of Roman alumni was precisely to establish, in their turn, schools in Syria: in Aleppo, Duwayhī founded the Maronite school which was headed by Buṭrus al-Tūlāwī, another former Roman. It constituted an intellectual crucible for eastern Catholicism, Maronite, Greek and Armenian. In 1797, a school was created in the Ayn Warqa convent on the model of the Maronite college in Rome. In the eighteenth century, thanks to these facilities, it became progressively possible not to have to travel to Rome for training and these institutions in turn became vectors of westernisation in the east. The Roman education of the Maronite clergy was not the only function of the college. Its role must also be evaluated within the institutional and

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cultural network of the Roman curia. The jurisdiction of Propaganda over all the missionary colleges and the standardisation of the rules make for an interesting comparison between these ‘foreign’ institutions in Rome and their relationships with the missionary congregation or with the cardinal protector. Furthermore, not only did many students of the college become teachers of oriental languages in Roman colleges and at the university, but some were also embedded in the curial bureaucracy as consultors at the Holy Office or at Propaganda, or s­ criptores at the Vatican Library. Maronite scholars such as Ecchellensis, Naironus and Assemani were known in the Roman palaces where they worked closely with other foreigners (such as the Irishman Luke Wadding or the Greek Leone Allacci) linked with their own national colleges. For this, the Maronite college was part of the history of cosmopolitan Rome, and it is best understood, perhaps, when set within the context of its relationships with the other bodies of the papal curia.

Notes

1 This chapter is the result of the research and reflection of both authors. A. Girard has written parts 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8. G. Pizzorusso has written parts 3, 5 and 7. The authors would like to thank Joseph Moukarzel (Holy Spirit University of Kaslik) for his invaluable suggestions and comments. The present Maronite college in Rome is well known by the Lebanese, particularly by Lebanese Christians. The college is now located at 18 via di Porta Pinciana near the Borghese gardens after being built on new foundations by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. This pope showed particular interest in the churches of the east and their union with Rome, while stressing their ‘dignity’. At the same time, the Maronite Patriarch Hadj also focused on the education of his clergy and welcomed the long-desired restoration of the Maronite college, officially abolished in 1808, after twenty years of stagnation. See P. Dib, Histoire des Maronites (2nd edn, 3 vols, Beirut: Librairie Orientale, 2001), vol. 3, pp. 230–1 and 243–4; Y. Moubarac, Pentalogie antiochienne/domaine maronite (5 vols, Beirut: Cénacle Libanais, 1984), tome I, vol. 1, pp.  583–5. 2 P. Raphaël, Le Rôle du Collège maronite romain dans l’orientalisme, XVII–XVIIIe siècles (Beirut: University Saint Joseph, 1950); S. Tabar, ‘Fondation et premier siècle de vie du Collège Maronite, 1584–1684’ (PhD thesis, Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 1978–1979); S. Tabar, ‘Fondation et premier siècle de vie du collège maronite de Rome (1584–1684)’, Parole de l’Orient, 9 (1979–1980), pp. 317–22; S. Tabar, ‘La S. Congrégation et les Maronites’, in J. Metzler (ed.), Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide Memoria Rerum (3 vols, Rome, Freiburg, Wien: Herder, 1971), vol. I/1, pp. 606–23; N. Gemayel, Les Échanges culturels entre les Maronites et l’Europe (2 vols, Beirut: n. p., 1984).The publications for the fourth centenary of the foundation of the college are in the same vein: L’Université Saint-Esprit-Kaslik célèbre le IV centenaire de la fondation du Collège Maronite de Rome 1584–1984, Catalogue des manuscrits et des livres exposés du 29 novembre au 5 décembre (Kaslik: University of the Holy Spirit, 1984); Le IV Centenaire du Collège Maronite de Rome 1584–1984, proceedings of a conference held at the University of the Holy Spirit (Kaslik: University of the Holy Spirit, 1985); special issue of al-Manara, 25 (1984). 3 B. Heyberger, Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient au temps de la Réforme catholique (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1994). 4 G. Pizzorusso, ‘Agli antipodi di Babele: Propaganda Fide tra immagine cosmopolita e orizzonti romani (XVII–XIX secolo)’, in L. Fiorani and A. Prosperi (eds), Storia d’Italia. Annali 16. Roma, la città del papa:Vita civile e religiosa dal giubileo di BonifacioVIII al giubileo di papaWojtyla (Turin: Einaudi, 2000), pp. 477–518; Molnár, G. Pizzorusso, M. Sanfilippo (eds), Chiese e nationes a Roma: dalla Scandinavia ai Balcani. Secoli XV-XVIII (Rome: Viella, 2017).

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5 A. Girard, ‘Entre Croisade et politique culturelle au Levant: Rome et l’union des chrétiens syriens (première moitié du XVIIe siècle)’, in M. A.Visceglia (ed.), Papato e politica ­internazionale nella prima età moderna (Rome: Viella, 2013), pp. 419–37; A. Ruiu, ‘Conflicting visions of the Jesuit missions to the Ottoman Empire, 1609–1628’, Journal of Jesuit Studies, 1 (2014), 260–80. 6 On the origins of the Maronite Church, see H. Suermann, Die Gründungsgeschichte der Maronitischen Kirche (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1998). 7 S. Kuri (ed.), Monumenta Proximi-Orientis, vol. I, Palestine-Liban-Syrie-Mésopotamie (1523–1583) (Rome: Institutum historicum Societatis Iesu, 1989), esp. pp. 239–42; S. Kuri (ed.), Monumenta Proximi-Orientis, vol. III, Palestine-Liban-Syrie-Mésopotamie (1583–1623) (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1994); J. Dandini, Voyage du Mont Liban, traduit de l’italien par le P. Richard Simon, et suivi de ses remarques, ed. by K. Rizk (Kaslik: Cedlusek, 2005); A. Girard, ‘Giovanni Battista Eliano’, in D. Thomas and J. Chesworth (eds), Christian–Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, vol. 7. Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and South America (1500– 1600) (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 724–31. 8 J. Krajcar, ‘The Greek college under the Jesuits for the first time (1591–1604)’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 31 (1965), 85–118; A. Fyrigos, ‘Catalogo cronologico degli alunni e dei convittori del Pont. Collegio greco in Roma (1576–1640)’, Bollettino della Badia Greca di Grottaferrata, 33 (1979), 9–51 and 34 (1980), 75–103; A. Fyrigos (ed.), Il Collegio Greco di Roma: Ricerche sugli alunni, la direzione, l’attività (Rome: Pontificio Collegio Greco S. Atanasio, 1983); C. Santus, ‘Tra le Chiesa di Sant’Atanasio e il Sant’Uffizio: note sulla presenza greca a Roma in età moderna’, in Molnár, Pizzorusso & Sanfilippo (ed.), Chiese e nationes a Roma, pp.  153–83. 9 M. Caffiero, Battesimi forzati: Storie di ebrei, cristiani e convertiti nella Roma dei papi (Rome: Viella, 2004). On the other Roman colleges, see the Introduction. 10 T. Anaissi (ed.), Bullarium Maronitarum (Rome: M. Bretschneider, 1911), pp. 81–3 and 86–9. 11 ‘Cum enim in partibus illis, sub gravi Turcarum iugo et tyrannide constitutis, vix facultas detur bonarum litterarum studia excolendi, et exinde multos a fide catholica aversos aeternis tenebris detineri, simplicesque et rudes a susceptae veritatis cultu abduci facile contingat, futurum omnino speramus ut, successu temporis, ipsius Collegii alumni, pietatis et verae religionis odore a Montis Sion cypressis, et Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae, quae sola caput est aliarum, documentis largius imbuti, illum in cedros Libani, nationemque suam refundant, ac collabantem et perturbatam in suis regionibus fidem Dei beneficio sustineant atque resarciant; et ita praedictum corporale opus, quod paucis in hac Urbe tantum profuturum erat, in magis spiritualem ac totius nationis utilitatem et salutem convertatur.’ Vatican Apostolic Library (hereafter B.A.V.), Vaticano Latino (hereafter Vat. lat.) 5528, fos. 12v.–13r.; ‘Humana sic ferunt’, in Anaissi (ed.), Bullarium Maronitarum, pp. 92–3 ; R. Grégoire, ‘Les Constitutions de l’ancien collège maronite de Rome’, Mélanges Mgr Pierre Dib, special issue of Melto, 3 (1967), 71–104; R. Grégoire, ‘Costituzioni, visite apostoliche e atti ufficiali nella storia del collegio maronita di Roma’, Ricerche per la storia religiosa di Roma, 1 (1977), 175–229. 12 Archivio Storico della Congregazione per l’Evangelizzazione dei Popoli or de Propaganda Fide, Vatican City (hereafter A.P.F.), Scritture Originali riferite nelle Congregazioni Generali (hereafter S.O.C.G.), vol. 362, fo. 42v. 13 Gemayel, Les Échanges culturels, t. 1, pp. 34–6. 14 A.P.F., S.O.C.G., vol. 362, fo. 42v. 15 J. Krajcar, Cardinal Giulio Antonio Santoro and the Christian East: Santoro’s Audiences and Consistorial Acts (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1966); V. Peri, ‘Chiesa latina e Chiesa greca nell’Italia postridentina (1564–1596)’, in La Chiesa greca in Italia dall’VIII al XVI seculo (Padua: Antenore, 1973), pp. 271–469; V. Peri, Chiesa romana e “rito” greco. G. A. Santoro e la Congregazione dei Greci (1566–1596) (Brescia: Paideia, 1975). 16 Kuri, Monumenta Proximi-Orientis, vol. I, ad indicem; Kuri, Monumenta Proximi-Orientis, vol. III, ad indicem. 17 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (hereafter A.R.S.I.), Epistolae Nostrorum (hereafter Epp. NN.) 2, fos. 33v., 43r., 44r., published in Kuri, Monumenta Proximi-Orientis, vol. III, pp. 177–8, 191–3.

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18 Ibid., fo. 168v., published in Kuri, Monumenta Proximi-Orientis, vol. III, pp. 299–300. 19 Ibid., fos. 234rv., 254v., published in Kuri, Monumenta Proximi-Orientis, vol. III, pp. 326–7, 329–30. 20 A.P.F., S.O.C.G., vol. 181, fo. 47rv. 21 G. Pizzorusso, ‘La Congregazione pontificia de Propaganda Fide nel XVII secolo: missioni, geopolitica, colonialismo’, in M. A. Visceglia (ed.), Papato e politica internazionale, pp. 149–72. 22 G. Pizzorusso,‘Le Pape rouge et le pape noir: aux origines des conflits entre la Congrégation “de Propaganda Fide” et la Compagnie de Jésus au XVIIe siècle’, in P.-A. Fabre and C. Maire (eds), Les Antijésuites: Discours, figures et lieux de l’antijésuitisme à l’époque moderne (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010), pp. 539–61; G. Pizzorusso, ‘La Congregazione romana “de Propaganda Fide” e la duplice fedeltà dei missionari tra monarchie coloniali e universalismo pontificio (XVII secolo)’, in M. Rivero Rodriguez (ed.) La doble lealtad entre el servicio al Rey y la obligacion a la iglesia, special issue of Librosdelacorte.es, 6 (2014), 228–41 (www.librosdelacorte.es). 23 I. Fosi, ‘Roma e gli ‘ultramontani’: conversioni, viaggi, identità’, in Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 81 (2001), 351–96; G. Pizzorusso, ‘Milano, Roma e il mondo di Propaganda Fide’, in M. Catto and G. Signorotto (eds) Milano, l’Ambrosiana e la conoscenza dei Nuovi Mondi (secoli XVII–XVIII) (Milan/Rome: Biblioteca Ambrosiana-Bulzoni Editore, 2015), pp. 75–107. 24 Vives was the donor of the palace and a member of Propaganda. On the Collegio Urbano, see M. Jezernik, ‘Il Collegio Urbano’, in Metzler (ed.), Sacrae Congregationis, vol. I/1, pp. 465–82, vol. II, pp. 283–98; G. Pizzorusso, ‘Una presenza ecclesiastica cosmopolita a Roma: gli allievi del Collegio Urbano di Propaganda Fide (1633–1703)’, Bollettino di Demografia Storica, 22 (1995), 129–38; G. Pizzorusso, ‘I satelliti di Propaganda Fide: il Collegio Urbano e la Tipografia Poliglotta. Note di ricerca su due istituzioni culturali romane nel XVII secolo’, Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome Italie et Méditerranée, 116:2 (2004), 471–98; G. Pizzorusso, ‘ “Ecco recise queste piante”: La crisi del Collegio Urbano di Propaganda Fide tra Repubblica romana e dominazione napoleonica (1798–1817)’, in L. Fiorani (ed.), Ricerche per la storia religiosa di Roma, vol. 11, Roma religiosa nell’età rivoluzionaria 1789–1799 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2006), pp. 125–40. 25 R. J. Wiltgen, ‘Propaganda is placed in charge of the pontifical colleges’, in J. Metzler (ed.), Sacrae Congregationis, vol. I/1, pp. 483–505. 26 B.A.V., Vat. lat. 5528, fos. 17r.–18v., published in Anaissi (ed.), Bullarium Maronitarum, pp. 98–100; A.P.F., Scritture riferite nei congressi (hereafter S.C.) Collegi Vari, vol. 45, fos. 13v.–15r. 27 A.P.F., S.C. Visite e Collegi, vol. 7, fos. 177r.–178v.; Acta, vol. 16, fos. 231r.–231v. 28 A.P.F., S.O.C.G., vol. 375, fos. 2r.–3v. and 20r.–21v. 29 Gemayel, Les Échanges culturels, t. 1, pp. 36–9. 30 A. Girard, ‘Comment reconnaître un chrétien d’Orient vraiment catholique? Élaboration et usages de la profession de foi pour les Orientaux à Rome (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles)’, in M.-H. Blanchet and F. Gabriel (eds), L’Union à l’épreuve du formulaire: Professions de foi entre Églises d’Orient et d’Occident (XIIIe–XVIIIe s.) (Paris: Collège de France – CNRS Centre d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, 2016), pp. 235–58. 31 B.A.V., Vat. lat. 5528, fo. 25rv. 32 A.P.F., Acta, vol. 3, fos. 93r., 108rv., 126v.–127r., 195v.–196r., 276r.–277r., 288v.–291v.; S.O.C.G., vol. 362, fos. 140r.–141r. 33 B. Heyberger (ed.), Orientalisme, science et controverse: Abraham Ecchellensis (1605–1664) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010). 34 ‘nam ex illis episcopi creantur apud Nationem Maronitarum’. See A.P.F., Acta, vol. 7, fo. 121v. 35 Ibid., vol. 7, fo. 110r. 36 Ibid., vol. 7, fos. 265v.–266r. 37 A.P.F., S.O.C.G., vol. 362, fo. 160r.; Tabar, ‘Fondation et premier siècle de vie du Collège Maronite, 1584–1684’, pp. 230–9. 38 P. Prodi, Il sacramento del potere: Il giuramento politica nella storia costituzionale dell’Occidente

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(Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992), p. 332: ‘si tratta, a mio avviso, di un interessante superamento del voto religioso tradizionale, deformato, con il giuramento, per stabilire una perpetua situazione di minorità o almeno di non complete capacità giuridica’. 39 A.P.F., S.C. Collegi Vari, vol. 45, fos. 49r.–56v. Another Latin copy, with several corrections, is in a manuscript at the Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 5528, fos. 22r.–25r. It was published in Grégoire, ‘Les Constitutions de l’ancien collège maronite de Rome’, pp. 76–80, and Grégoire, ‘Costituzioni, visite apostoliche e atti ufficiali nella storia del collegio maronita di Roma’. See also Gemayel, Les Échanges culturels, t. 1, pp. 45–8. 40 A.P.F., S.C. Collegi Vari, vol. 45, fos. 61r.–66v. 41 Ibid., vol. 45, fo. 49rv. 42 Ibid., vol. 45, fo. 50rv. 43 Ibid., vol. 45, fo. 51r. 44 A.P.F., S.C. Visite e Collegi, vol. 12, fos. 52r.–59v. 45 Ibid., vol. 12, fo. 38rv.The ‘Constitutiones collegii Maronitarum Urbis’ of 1630 are published in Grégoire, ‘Les Constitutions de l’ancien collège maronite de Rome’, pp. 84–98 (B.A.V., Vat. lat. 7262, fos. 21r.–27v.). More generally, see: A. Girard, ‘Nihil esse innovandum? Maintien des rites orientaux et négociation de l’Union des Églises orientales avec Rome (fin XVIe–mi-XVIIIe s.)’, in M.-H. Blanchet and F. Gabriel (eds), Réduire le schisme? Ecclésiologies et politiques de l’Union entre Orient et Occident, XIIIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Collège de France – CNRS Centre d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, 2013), pp. 337–52. 46 A.P.F., S.C. Visite e Collegi, vol. 12, fo. 58 and fo. 67rv. 47 Ibid., vol. 12, fos. 61r.–78r. 48 Grégoire, ‘Les Constitutions de l’ancien collège maronite de Rome’, pp. 98–102. 49 Ibid., pp. 79–80: ‘Sine Rectoris permissu ac comite, quem idem designaverit, nemo e Collegio egrediatur, et cum eodem praescripta sibi hora redeat, neque ullus aliquo eat, nisi superiorem admonuerit. Qui deambulandi gratia egrediuntur simul cum sociis sibi assignatis, atque cum suis Praefectis exeant, quos nulla ratione aut occasione deserant, et domum saltem ad vigesimam quartam horam revertantur, et cum per plateas incedunt, modestiae sint memores, et cum externis non tractent. Cibum extra Collegium nemo sumat, nisi impetrata a Rectore facultate, quam tamen raro et ob graves causas concedere oportebit. Littera mittere aut accipere nemo debet sine licentia superioris, cui et ostendendae erunt ut si velit legere possit. Ne morentur in fenestris aut insidiant ubi possint externas domos spectare, aut ipsi conspici ab aliis. Tempore studiorum per Collegium ne vagentur neque uspiam colloquantur nisi quid breve necessitas postularet, sed ad studia se conferant. Loca etiam ministrorum domesticorum aut opificum ne adeant, neque cum iis tractent vel quicquam ab eis, aut a quovis alio accipiant, nisi a superiori prius impetrata venia. Eo tempore quod animorum et corporum relaxationi conceditur, nihil agant immodeste, neque locum recreationi attributum egrediantur sine superioris facultate. Nobilium aut amicorum visitationibus non facile se occupent, et quandocunque aliquod negotium expediendum acciderit, mature Rectorem admoneant et ab eo facultatem obtineant.’ 50 B. Heyberger, ‘Abraham Ecchellensis dans la République des Lettres’, in Heyberger (ed.), Orientalisme, sciences et controverse, pp. 9–51, at p. 13; Gemayel, Les Échanges culturels, t. 1, pp. 63–4. 51 The ‘Regole da osservarsi nel Collegio de Maroniti di Roma’ of 1732 are published in R. Grégoire, ‘Les Constitutions du collège maronite romain de 1732 et de 1778’, Parole de l’Orient, 41 (1968), 5–32 (A.P.F., Collegi Vari, vol. 46); Gemayel, Les Échanges culturels, t. 1, pp. 48–52. 52 Gemayel, Les Échanges culturels, t. 1, pp. 95–144. 53 Tabar, ‘Fondation et premier siècle de vie du Collège Maronite, 1584–1684’, pp. 76–94, 109–13, 141–5 and 215; Gemayel, Les Échanges culturels, t. 1, pp. 39, 49, 89–4 and 95–151; Heyberger, Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient, pp. 408–10. 54 A.P.F., S.O.C.G., vol. 375, fos. 41r.–41v.: ‘Postremo advertere opportet, omnes istos Alumnos praenotatos, Patria vicinissimos esse Monti Libani, quod non videtur consonum huius Collegii Institutioni, quae amplectitur Montem Libanum, et Syriam universam, passim inhabitatam a multis Maronitis. Inde fiet, ut in posterum non veniant huc quasi semper eadem familia, et

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cognationes, et non evadant maroniticae Missiones haereditariae revelatae solum a carne, et sanguine, et non a Patre Nostro Caelesti’. Gemayel, Les Échanges culturels, t. 1, p. 41; Heyberger, Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient, p. 411. 55 B.A.V., Vat. siriaco (hereafter Vat. sir) 410, fo. 71rv., quoted in Gemayel, Les Échanges culturels, t. 1, p. 61; B. Dīb, ‘Asr al-muṭrān Buṭrus Mahlūf wa-t-talāmida alladīna kānū maʽahu’, Al-Manāra, ˉ ˉ 4 (1933), 696–702. 56 Heyberger, Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient, p. 413 57 B.A.V., Vat. syriacus 410, fo. 77rv., extracts translated in Gemayel, Les Échanges culturels, t. 1, pp. 62–4. 58 A.P.F., S.O.C.G., vol. 180, fo. 121v.; Lettere, vol. 13, fo. 7r. 59 A.P.F., Acta, vol. 12, fos. 84r.–85r. 60 P. Broggio, ‘L’Urbs e il mondo: Note sulla presenza degli stranieri nel Collegio Romano e sugli orizzonti geografici della ‘formazione romana’ tra XVI e XVII secolo’, Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia, 56:1 (2002), 81–120. 61 A.P.F., S.C. Collegi Vari, vol. 45, fos. 124r.–125v. 62 See, for example, G. Pizzorusso, ‘Romani d’intelletto e di cuore: seminaristi canadesi del Collegio Urbano di Propaganda Fide (1829–1908)’, in Viaggiatori americani in Italia, special issue of Il Veltro, 38:3–4 (1994), 151–62. 63 See also A. Girard, ‘L’Enseignement de l’arabe à Rome au XVIIIe siècle’, in B. Grévin (ed.), Maghreb-Italie: Des passeurs médiévaux à l’orientalisme moderne (Rome, École Française de Rome: 2010), pp. 209–34. 64 A.P.F., S.C. Collegi Vari, vol. 45, fo. 126r. 65 See A. Girard, review of ‘Fauste Nairon de Bane, Essai sur les Maronites, leur Origine, leur Nom et leur Religion, introduction et édition du P. Abbé Paul Naaman, traduction, indices et tables de Benoîte, Kaslik, Cedlusek, 2006’, Revue Mabillon, 19 (2008), 351–4. 66 A.P.F., S.C. Collegi Vari, vol. 45, fo. 122rv. See also the book of the Roman Maronite Andreas Scandar, Breve ragguaglio della vita di S. Marone abbate, Protettore della Nazione Maronita: La cui Festa si celebra ai 9. di Febraro nella Chiesa di S. Giovanni del Collegio de’ Maroniti à strada Nuova, Rome, 1793 (1st edn, Rome, 1741), p. 22: ‘Si celebra solennemente la Festa di S. Marone à di 9 Febraro nella Chiesa del Collegio de’ Maroniti, detta anticamente S. Giovanni della Ficoccia, forse per un Albero di Fico Selvatico, che si ha per tradizione de Maggiori, fosse avanti questa Chiesa. Ivi si celebrano ancora le Feste dell’Assunzione della Santissima Vergine Maria, e di S. Giovanni Evangelista: facendosi poi in Rito Siriaco la solenne Benedizione, e Processione nella Domenica delle Palme.’ 67 A.P.F., S.C. Collegi Vari, vol. 45, fos. 150r., 337r. 68 See also: B. Heyberger, ‘Livres et pratique de lecture chez les chrétiens (Syrie, Liban), XVIIe– XVIIIe siècles’, in F. Hitzel, Livres et lecture dans le monde ottoman, special issue of Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 87–8 (1999), 209–23; Pizzorusso, ‘I satelliti di Propaganda Fide’. 69 Biblia Sacra Arabica Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide iussu edita Ad Usum Ecclesiaum Orientalium (Rome: Typis Eiusdem Sacrae Congregat[ionis] de Propaganda Fide, 1671). See R. Vollandt, ‘Che portono al ritorno quì una Bibbia Arabica integra: a history of the Biblia Sacra Arabica (1671–1673)’, in S. K. Samir and J. P. Monferrer-Sala (eds), Graeco-Latina et Orientalia: Studia in honorem Angeli Urbani heptagenarii (Beirut – Córdoba: Oriens AcademicCneru-Cedrac, 2013), pp. 401–18. 70 On this translation, see A. Girard, ‘Une traduction arabe pour la Propagande (1663)’, in M. Delaveau and Y. Sordet (eds), Un succès de librairie européen: l’Imitatio Christi 1470–1850 (Paris: Editions des Cendres et Bibliothèque Mazarine, 2012), pp. 150–2. 71 On this book, see A. Girard, ‘Des manuels de langue entre mission et érudition orientaliste au XVIIe siècle: les grammaires de l’arabe des caracciolini’, in I. Fosi and G. Pizzorusso (eds), L’Ordine dei Chierici Regolari Minori (Caracciolini): religione e cultura in età postridentina, special issue of Studi medievali e moderni, 14–1 (2010), 279–96. 72 On this book, see A. Trentini, ‘Baronio arabo: vicende e tematiche dell’Annalium ­Ecclesiasticorum Arabica Epitome’, in L. Gulia (ed.), Baronio e le sue fonti (Atti del convegno

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internazionale di Studi Sora 10–13 ottobre 2007) (Sora: Centro di Studi Sorani ‘Vincenzo Patriarca’, 2009), pp. 719–42. 73 On this book, see A. Girard, ‘Teaching and learning Arabic in early modern Rome: shaping a missionary language’, in C. Burnett, A. Hamilton and J. Loop (eds), The Teaching and Learning of Arabic in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp 189–212. 74 On this books’ production for Maronites, see also A. Girard, ‘Le Christianisme oriental (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles): Essor de l’orientalisme catholique en Europe et construction des identités confessionnelles au Proche-Orient’ (PhD thesis, École Pratique des Hautes Études, 2011). 75 A.P.F., S.C. Collegi Vari, vol. 45, fo. 136rv. A similar selection can be found in the request of the Maronite alumnus Simone Avodio in 1698 (fo. 233r.), who also asked for the profession of faith in Arabic, the Arabic and Latin Psalterium, the Arabic and Latin Isagoge by Tommaso da Novara: eighteen books in total (sixteen for Aldoense who also had the Antithesis Fidei). 76 These requests sometimes provoked conflicts: numerous cases in A.P.F., S.C. Collegi Vari, vol. 45, passim. 77 Several cases in A.P.F., S.C. Collegi Vari, vol. 45, fos. 280–6. 78 Ibid., vol. 45, fos. 339r.–340v. 79 B. Heyberger, ‘Chrétiens orientaux dans l’Europe catholique (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles)’, in B. Heyberger and Ch. Verdeil (eds), Hommes de l’entre-deux: Parcours individuels et portraits de groupes sur la frontière de la Méditerranée (XVIe–XXe siècle) (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2009), pp. 61–93; J. P. Ghobrial, ‘The secret life of Elias of Babylon and the uses of global microhistory’, Past & Present, 222 (2014), 51–93. 80 A. Girard, ‘Was an Eastern scholar necessarily a cultural broker in early-modern academic Europe? Faustus Naironus (1628–1711), the Christian East, and Oriental studies’, in N. Hardy and D. Levitin (eds), Faith and History: Confessionalisation and Erudition in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). 81 Gemayel, Les Échanges culturels, t. 1, pp. 417–49; A. Pontani and B. Callegher, ‘Un orientalista a Padova: primi appunti su “l’arabico assemani” (1752–1821)’, in Simposio Simone Assemani sulla monetazione islamica Padova, II Congresso Internazionale di Numismatica e di Storia Monetale (Padova, 17 maggio 2003) (Padova: Esedra, 2005), pp. 11–29; A. Pontani, ‘Nuovi contributi all’archivio di Simone Assemani (1752–1821): la biografia e il carteggio con Giovanni Cristofano Amaduzzi’, Quaderni per la storia dell’Università di Padova, 46 (2013), 61–104. 82 Heyberger, Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient, pp. 435–7. 83 Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Fondo Benedetto XIV, vol. 24, fo. 349r. 84 On him, see Gemayel, Les Échanges culturels, t. 1, pp. 377–85 and pp. 475–80. 85 A.P.F., S.C. Collegi Vari, vol. 44 (this volume is about the college in Ravenna); A. Diotallevi, L’abate Vittorio Scialac e il Collegio Maronita di Ravenna (Bologna: CLUEB, 1991); A. Diotallevi, ‘Ricerca dei manoscritti del Collegio maronita di Ravenna’, Studi e ricerche sull’Oriente cristiano, 1–2 (1978), 39–48. 86 On 27 November 1611, Savary de Brèves wrote to Jacques-Auguste de Thou, president of the Parlement of Paris: ‘Je vous veux entretenir d’une envie grande que j’ai de rendre les langues arabicque et turquesque familières parmi nous, si j’étais aidé du roi ou de quelques autres personnes qui voulussent faire la dépense. J’ai auprès de moi un Turc que vous avez connu qui parle les susdites trois langues et écrit merveilleusement bien icelles. Il sait maintenant notre langue française et entend assez bien le latin. […] J’ai retiré chez moi deux chrétiens maronites, de ceux qui vivent dans le Mont Liban et qui par conséquent savent la langue arabicque avec leur langue paternelle. Ils ont fait leurs études en cette ville dans un collège que les défunts saints Pères les Papes ont fondé à cet effet de façon qu’ils sont passés docteurs en philosophie et théologie. Moyennant cela j’ai un moyen de faire un collège d’un bon nombre de jeunes gens qui pourraient étudier les dites langues. J’ai aussi eu soin depuis que je suis ici d’apprendre le moyen de faire imprimer des livres des caractères desquels les dites langues se forment. J’ai dépensé jusqu’à cette heure plus de deux mil écus pour en venir à bout ce qui m’a réussi, de façon que si vous pouviez induire Sa Majesté à vouloir fonder un collège des dites langues, l’université de Paris en recevrait de l’honneur et le christianisme de l’utile,

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car par ce moyen nous aurions la communication de toutes les sciences de ces trois nations. Les Maronites desquels je vous parle sont aussi fort versés en la langue chaldée. Mandez moi à la libre votre opinion afin que je ne m’embarque pas plus avant qu’il n’est approuvé de vous et de votre prudence.’ (Bibliothèque Nationale de France (hereafter B.N.F.), collection Dupuy, vol. 812, fo. 195); A. Hamilton and F. Richard, André Du Ryer and Oriental Studies in Seven­­teenthCentury France (London–Oxford: the Arcadian library–Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 42.. 87 A. Hamilton and F. Richard, André Du Ryer and Oriental Studies in Seven­­teenth-Century France, p.  42. 88 Ibid., vol. 806, fos. 214–17. 89 H. Omont, ‘Projet d’un Collège Royal à Paris au début du règne de Louis XIII’, Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Île de France, 22 (1895), 123–7 ; G. Duverdier, ‘Du livre religieux à l’orientalisme. Ğibraʽīl āṣ-Ṣahyūnī et François Savary de Brèves’, in C. Aboussouan (ed.), Le Livre et le Liban jusqu’à 1900 (Paris: Unesco-Agecoop, 1982), pp. 159–73; R. Vollandt, ‘The Arabic Pentateuch of the Paris Polyglot: Saadiah Gaon’s advent to the republic of letters’, in S. Binay and S. Leder (eds), Translating the Bible into Arabic: Historical,Text-Critical and Literary Aspects (Beirut: Orient-Institut Beirut, 2012), pp. 19–35. 90 A. Rabbath, Documents inédits pour servir à l’histoire du Christianisme en Orient (Paris: A. Picart, 1905), pp. 522–44; G. Dupont-Ferrier, ‘Les Jeunes de langues ou Arméniens à Louis-le-Grand’, Revue des Études Arméniennes, 2 (1922), 189–232; F. Hitzel (ed.), Istanbul et les langues orientales (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997); P. M. Doll (ed.), Anglicanism and Orthodoxy: 300 years after the ‘Greek College’ in Oxford (Oxford/Bern: Peter Lang, 2006). 91 A. Romano (ed.), Rome et la science moderne entre Renaissance et Lumières (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2008). 92 Aboussouan, Le Livre et le Liban; J. Balagna Coustou, L’Imprimerie arabe en Occident (XVIe, XVIIe, XVIIIe siècles) (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1984). 93 N. Gemayel, ‘Les Imprimeries libanaises de Rome’, in Aboussouan (ed.), Le Livre et le Liban, pp. 190–5; Gemayel, Les Échanges culturels, t. 1, pp. 72–81; J. De Clercq, P. Swiggers and L. van Tongerloo, ‘The linguistic contribution of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide’, in M. Tavoni (ed.), Italia ed Europa nella linguistica del Rinascimento: confronti e relazioni, Atti del Convegno internazionale (Ferrara, 20–24 marzo 1991) (2 vols, Ferrara: Panini, 1996), t. 2, pp. 439–57; Pizzorusso, ‘I satelliti di Propaganda Fide’. 94 Gemayel, Les Échanges culturels, t. 1, pp. 67–71, 174–90. 95 Epistres françoises des Personnages illustres et doctes à Mons: Joseph Juste de la Scala, ed. Iaques de Reves (Harderwyck: Chez la Vesve de Thomas Henry, 1624), p. 166: ‘Depuis peu de jours j’ay veu quantité grande de livres Arabes au college des Neophytes et au seminaire des Maronites lesquels sont faciles à avoir pour copier seulement, car de les acheter ils ne le veulent permettre, et s’offrent à en escrire tant que lon voudra.’ 96 Girard, ‘Was an Eastern scholar’; Girard, review of ‘Fauste Nairon de Bane’. 97 Heyberger, Orientalisme, science et controverse. 98 E. Galbiati, ‘L’orientalistica nei primi decenni di attività’, in Storia dell’Ambrosiana, Il Seicento (Milan: Cariplo, 1992), pp. 89–120; M. Lezowski, L’Abrégé du monde: Une histoire sociale de la bibliothèque Ambrosienne (v. 1590–v. 1660) (Paris: Garnier, 2015), pp. 90–2, 128–9; Pizzorusso, ‘Milano, Roma e il mondo di Propaganda Fide’, pp. 83–7. 99 Dandini, Voyage du Mont Liban, pp. 99–100; Tabar, ‘Fondation et premier siècle de vie du Collège Maronite, 1584–1684’, pp. 124 and 230–8; Heyberger, Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient, p. 417. 100 A.P.F., S.C. Maroniti, vol. 1, fos. 263r.–266v. 101 Heyberger, Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient, pp. 424–5. His lettera di stato for 1659 is published at pp. 607–8. See also N. Gemayel, Al-Baṭriyark Isṭifān al-Duwayhī, Ḥayātuhu wa-Mu’allafātuhu (Beirut: n. p., 1991). 102 Heyberger, Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient, pp. 417–23, quotations at pp. 418 and 420. 103 ‘gli alunni preferendo al bene della sua Natione i loro privati commodi o non facevano più ritorno alla patria, o poco dopo ritornati, se ne allontanavano, portandosi nelle città più cospicue d’Europa e fermandosi in esse in qualità di religiosi, o di lettori pubblici’.

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104 On the careers of eastern Christians who entered in the Society of Jesus, see S. Kuri, ‘Vocations orientales à la Compagnie de Jésus aux XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles’, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 56 (1987), 117–54. 105 ‘che è l’unico mezzo per non far riuscire vane tante spese che dalla S. Sede si fanno per beneficio de’Maroniti nel mantenere il loro Collegio in Roma’. 106 A.P.F., S.C. Collegi Vari, vol. 45, fos. 337r.–338r. 107 Heyberger, Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient, p. 429; B. Heyberger, ‘Sécurité et insécurité: les chrétiens de Syrie dans l’espace méditerranéen (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles)’, in M. Anastassiadou and B. Heyberger (eds), Figures anonymes et figures d’élite: pour une anatomie de l’Homo ottomanicus (Istanbul: Isis, 1999), pp. 147–63; B. Heyberger, ‘Les Nouveaux horizons méditerranéens des chrétiens du Bilād al-Šām (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècle)’, Arabica, 51–4 (2004), 435–61; Heyberger, ‘Chrétiens orientaux dans l’Europe catholique’; Heyberger, ‘Abraham Ecchellensis’; Girard, ‘Was an Eastern scholar’ (and the bibliography of this article). 108 U. Cerri, Etat présent de l’Eglise romaine dans toutes les parties du monde écrit pour l’usage du pape Innocent XI (Amsterdam: Chez Pierre Humbert, 1716; first published in 1678), pp. 139–40 (original manuscript ‘Relazione di Mons.r Urbano Cerri alla Santità di N.S. P.P. Innocenzo XI dello stato di Propaganda Fide’, A.P.F., Miscellanee Varie XI, fos. 109v.–110r.); Heyberger, Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient, p. 420 and pp. 424–9. 109 I. al-Duwayhī, ‘Histoire des élèves du Collège Maronite de Rome’, in Moubarac (ed.), Pentalogie antiochienne, t. I/1, pp. 569–85 (french translation); Heyberger, Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient, pp. 430–1.

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8 English women religious, the exile male colleges and national identities in  ­Counter-Reformation Europe James E. Kelly In 1598, the first English convent was established in Brussels and was to be followed by a further twenty-one establishments across Flanders and France with around four thousand women entering them over the following two hundred years. Most were enclosed convents, in theory cut off from the outside world. However, in practice the nuns were not isolated and their contacts and networks spread widely. These contacts included other Catholic exile institutions. In some instances, English colleges were located nearby, such as in Paris, where three communities of English women religious shared the city with a college for secular clergy. This chapter will explore how much these male and female English institutions mixed. Were they concentrated only on their own survival or were male and female expressions of the Counter-Reformation bound by national interest? In a city like Lisbon – where the Bridgettine community and the College of Saints Peter and Paul were geographically separated from the majority of their fellow countrymen and women in exile – was the need for collaboration and shared networks a vital means of survival? The final part of this chapter will examine whether Catholic identity overrode national interests. It will ask whether identities were formed in the Catholic diaspora through the relationship of the English convents with the continental Irish and Scottish colleges: was there a shared Catholic identity among those originating from the British Isles? By answering such questions, this chapter will investigate whether gender and national boundaries were overridden for the sake of Catholic survival. Collaboration with the English colleges In 1568, William Allen capitalised on the sizeable English Catholic diaspora following the Elizabethan ‘purges’ at Oxford and Cambridge to found Douai college. While gaining a reputation as the first Tridentine seminary, it was more pointedly the first institutional outlet for English Catholic religious life following

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Elizabeth I’s accession and the return of the state to a position of official Protestantism. Douai was to be followed by numerous other male colleges that spread throughout France, the Low Countries and Spain, not to mention the ­reimagining of the English Hospice in Rome as a seminary. Institutional expressions on the other side of the gender divide arrived a little later. By 1598, English women had finally found a nationally specific outlet for their religious life having previously entered local ‘foreign’ convents, such as the Flemish Augustinian convent of St Ursula’s in Louvain. Over the following two hundred years, until the French Revolution forced many of these exile houses to disperse or move to England, a map of English male and female institutions developed, yet little consideration has been paid to the interaction between the sexes. On one level, there were obvious connections. Drawing from the same pool of Catholic families in England, members of the convents inevitably had relatives in the colleges. For example, Isabella Corby and her husband lived in exile but decided to separate and pursue religious vocations, he becoming a Jesuit lay brother and she professing as a lay sister at the Ghent Benedictines in 1633. Four of the couple’s sons were educated at the English Jesuit college of St Omer, three subsequently entering the Society of Jesus. Two of their daughters became lay sisters at the Brussels Benedictines.1 At the Louvain Augustinian house, it was recorded with evident pride of Anne Worthington, who professed in 1615, that her father was ‘nephew to Doctor Worthington of happie memorie that was many years President of the Colledge at Doway’.2 A similar hint of pride can be found at the Paris Augustinians in 1697, when they recorded the arrival of Elizabeth, Mary and Dorothy Witham at the convent school, brought by ‘Mr Robt Witham their Unkle Master of Divinity at Douay, who went from thence to meet them at Brudges accompanied & brought them to the Monastery’.3 Social grandstanding could work both ways: the keeper of the college diary at Douai recorded the arrival of Marmaduke Langdale as a student in 1735, remarking that he was a relation of the abbess at the Dunkirk Poor Clares.4 An equally expected relationship, but on a more institutional level, was the provision of confessors. A gendered reading of the relationship between confessors and women religious has frequently commented on the high level of control involved, the word ‘control’ being particularly loaded.5 This does recognise, albeit backhandedly, the vital role of confessors; steeped in the ethos of the institution of their training, they represented a direct influence from college to convent. Though this position could be a source of conflict when the holder did not work in harmony with his penitents, it can instead be argued that it is inaccurate to think of the relationship always in terms of potential gender conflict.6 It was not necessarily a case of nuns meekly accepting what was placed before them: like lay women in the Counter-Reformation more generally, they knew what was expected of a confessor and it is more accurate to see the relationship in terms

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of negotiated spiritual authority with their male counterparts.7 In short, it was in many cases a mutually beneficial relationship and one where some nuns were not afraid of speaking truth to power.8 As Evangelisti comments, ‘Priests served as confessors and spiritual advisors of pious and penitent women, both lay and religious, who laid bare their interior lives, mystic experiences, and visions, but also gave counsel in return, establishing with their confessors relationships of mutual spiritual exchange.’9 This is borne out in the convents’ relationships with the English colleges, the latter regularly recommending to the nuns suitable candidates for the important job of spiritual direction. For example, the former prefect general of Douai college, Charles Corne, was recommended by the college president to the Paris Conceptionists as a confessor in 1761 and was highly valued by the sisters.10 Moreover, it was not just any old priest who would be foisted upon the convents, the colleges sending former officials, such as professors of syntax, college procurators and even college superiors.11 Indeed, two serving rectors of the English Jesuit college at Liège seem to have acted as confessors or spiritual directors at the English Sepulchrine house in the same city in the latter half of the eighteenth century.12 Not that college presidents were averse to seeing the convents as a useful means to be rid of troublesome members of their own communities. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, prefect general Joseph Digby had been involved in rebellions against reforms of the hierarchy at Douai college. A couple of years later, in 1693, he was sent to be confessor at the Dunkirk Poor Clares, thus negating any influence he may have had over quarrelsome students.13 Nevertheless, these men frequently maintained contact with their alma maters, acting as a link between their former and current institutions, writing letters or visiting.14 In the eyes of the nuns, the confessors’ successes were reflections on the glories of the training received at their colleges. For example, in January 1687, the Louvain Augustinians recorded the death of their confessor, Richard White, noting his piety, wisdom and prudence, declaring him, ‘A man extremely proper to direct religious women and all that could be desired in one of his calling’. The canoness chronicler added approvingly, ‘Douai College breeding; for he had no other’.15 Similarly, in 1742, the Rouen Poor Clare chronicler recorded the death of their confessor, Roger Trentham, who had been sent by ‘Bishop Smith who was then President of Doway College, & say’d he sent us the flower of the college, which has bin truly verifyed by the beauty & odeur of his vertus & saintly life, sent by God, & did soon make appear that he was truly invested with his spirit in all respects.’16 It is little wonder, therefore, that convents would expressly request confessors from certain colleges, such as the Bruges Augustinians from Douai in 1630.17 Geographic isolation could heighten these relational aspects. As the only two English institutions in Portugal (and separated from the small Iberian

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peninsula English colleges at Valladolid, Madrid and Seville), the Bridgettine convent of Our Lady of Syon and the College of Saints Peter and Paul in Lisbon offer an ideal case study of relations between the male and female institutions. The Bridgettine house was a dual one, housing both a male and female community, yet recruitment to the former was seemingly a constant headache. As the ordained males acted as confessors and spiritual directors to the women religious, this prompted the reliant female community to intervene when the funding fell through for George Griffin during his training for the priesthood at Lisbon college.18 However, problems continued and by 1675 the convent had not received a male vocation for over a decade, prompting Bishop Richard Russell to write to the president of Lisbon college, Matthias Watkinson, asking him to help as he could: ‘Your charity will not be wanting in affording what comfort you can to them all in their distress and particularly to my sister who has not yet so much of a Religious person as not to be solicitous for the future, which she is even to anxiety in things of the nature which she with all her thoughtfulness can not mend.’19 By 1695 the male part of the community had finally died off and the sisters naturally turned to the English college, asking for priests to fill in during their search for a confessor.20 Owing to the small size of the college, this was not always possible, prompting the community to look further afield. For example, in 1696, the abbess of the Bridgettines received a reply from the head of the order in Rome who had been searching for a potential confessor for them at the city’s English college. However, he could not secure the best man due to the college’s students taking the missionary oath on entering, a fact confirmed by Cardinal Howard, protector of the English and the colleges.21 Sometimes, though, the confessor link could prove particularly strong and result in a close mutual relationship, even leading to the establishment of a new college. The founders of the Paris Augustinian convent were the same as those who subsequently founded the college of St Gregory’s in Paris. With Thomas Carre, the procurator at Douai college, Letitia Tredway had the idea of a convent that would be the college’s sister establishment. Initially, the plan was to do this at Douai, but Tredway instead opted for Paris in an effort to avoid the danger of a secular versus regular clergy split. Apparently, Gallican Paris was a safer bet than the Jesuit-riddled Spanish Netherlands. With the added influence of bishop of Chalcedon, Richard Smith (in exile following his disastrous handling of relations with the Jesuits in England), the convent was founded in 1634.22 Despite Smith’s death in 1655, Tredway and Carre remained keen on the deceased bishop’s idea to found a college in Paris and by the mid-1660s were discussing the plans, Tredway having ‘pleged herself to provide some land’. In June 1666, Carre was writing to explain the leading role Tredway was playing in the establishment of this college: ‘My Lady desired me speak to what she hinted at, which relates to two things, the first is her zeal for a house for our clergy at

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Paris for which truly our body is much obliged to her; she offers, and many times hath offered fair as to a garden and other helps.’ A year later, Tredway – acting in her capacity as prioress of the Paris Augustinians – was supplying funds and buildings to three priests forced to move to Paris following a fall-out at Douai college in 1667. Carre, by then confessor to the convent, supplied a house for the three clergymen next to the convent and this informal college, which allowed secular clergy to continue their studies at the Sorbonne, remained there until its formal institution in 1684–1685. The convent annals recorded that Tredway, in her role as prioress, made substantial contributions to this venture, ‘taking them in all things into her care as persons of her family’ and seeking the full integration of St Gregory’s ‘into the life of the convent’, with the priests taking turns to say daily Mass for the sisters for free and inviting them to preach on public occasions when many of the English living in England would be present.23 Claire Walker has concluded that ‘Tredway’s patronage of the secular clergy offers one of the clearest examples of nuns’ capacity to exert influence over those generally perceived to be in charge of them’,24 but this is to see events solely through the gender lens. Instead, what Tredway and Carre intended was a fully cooperative endeavour between English female and male institutions. Indeed, Edward Lutton, the convent’s assistant confessor, actually lived at St Gregory’s until he succeeded Carre in 1674 and sorted the muddle of the convent’s finances, his reputation ensuring he was appointed the agent for Douai and Lisbon colleges in Paris, underlining the entanglement between the male and female institutions.25 This reinforces the recent argument of Sarah Apetrei and Hannah Smith that the participation of British women of varying denominations ‘was central to the formation of new practices and discourses’ in later seventeenth-century religious culture.26 With this example in mind, it is little surprise to find the convents helping the male colleges elsewhere. Following the burning down of the English Jesuit college of St Omer, the Bruges Augustinians, in 1726, recognised the assistance they had received from that institution in the past and voted to return the favour by giving a hundred pounds sterling towards the college’s rebuilding.27 In the wake of the suppression of the Jesuits by papal brief in 1773 and the official seizure of the English Jesuit college in Bruges, the convent endeavoured to aid those ex-Jesuits remaining in the city, ‘giving all the Succour & comforts possible both to the distressed Gentlemen & to their Students’, arranging board and food.28 Similarly, the Sepulchrines buried former Jesuits associated with the colleges in their church.29 Elsewhere, in 1732, the council of the Dominican convent in Brussels entered some complex financial arrangements with Andrew Winter, the rector of the English Dominican college of St Thomas in Louvain, which ultimately saw them giving 600 gilders for the college’s use.30 Assistance could also be more routine, indicating regular contact at somewhere like Lisbon.

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In 1748, the president, John Manley, informed the college’s London agent that his rather wearisome request for a work on the Portuguese art of gilding had led him to ask the Bridgettine abbess, Susan Hill, for information about an artist she had employed to gild an altar. Hill gave him a text written by the artist, Manley commenting, ‘This same artist performed the work at Sion extremely well and consequently must be a perfect master of the trade.’31 This ‘every day’ relationship was apparently common knowledge as some priests were even contacting the Bridgettines’ confessor to intervene with President Manley about the final destination of two newly ordained Lisbon priests.32 Manley’s seeking of advice from Hill indicates that material culture relationships were not uncommon. Portraits of twelve English kings and queens were passed to the Lisbon Bridgettine house via the English college at Seville, ‘a significant donation emphasising their royal past’.33 This gift shows one English institution helping to forge and bolster the national identity of another. In the 1750s, Francis Kennedy brought with him from Douai college a relic of Carlo Borromeo when he went as chaplain to the Rouen Poor Clares.34 The same convent had previously received a piece of St Francis of Assisi’s cloak in 1723 from the procurator of the English college in Rome, which they hung in a crystal reliquary from the neck of the saint’s statue and was the subject of an annual procession on the octave of the saint’s feast.35 Indeed, Peter Leech and Maurice Whitehead have discovered further evidence of collaboration in such liturgical ‘aids’, suggesting that two Jesuits, Thomas Kingsley and Joseph Radford, who taught together at the English Jesuit college at Liège, were putting poetry and music together dedicated to and performed by English nuns in the 1680s.36 Tensions and opportunities Unsurprisingly, with interaction and the building of relationships between the institutions came disagreements. In Lisbon an angry exchange ensued over students from the college visiting the Bridgettine convent and allegedly compromising its rule of claustration, the nuns’ chaplain, John Marks, writing caustically in 1669 to the college vice-president Matthias Watkinson, ‘Had you considered the words of my letter as a considerate man would have done you might have saved yourself the labour of writing a reply and me the trouble of answering it.’ Watkinson had seemingly claimed not to have visited the convent on several occasions the previous week, despite Marks having seen him and other members of the college doing so. Rubbishing Watkinson’s claims ‘that the decrees against frequentatores monialia are of no force in Spain nor Portugal’, Marks provided a catalogue of evidence to the contrary, pointing out, ‘I have seen the decrees of several bishoprics of Portugal forbidding the frequent visits of religious women,

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not allowing any to visit them oftener than 3 or 4 times a year except they be a kin in the first or second degree […] The very superiors cannot give leave to their subjects to visit nunneries except it be to hear confessions. Only the provincials may upon urgent occasions and that very seldom grant that licence.’37 Apparently the dispute rumbled on: a year later, Marks was writing to the college president John Perrott, alias Barnesley, thanking him for his ‘ready concurrence with my intention to promote the recollection and piety of our virtuous Sisters, and y[ou]r diligent care in seeing my order perform’d with good reason’. He explained that it was forgetfulness which meant that he neglected to mention that the president was exempted from the visiting limitations, adding it was his intention ‘that at christmas easter and Whitsuntide any of y[ou]r colledgeans may visit our sisters though the time of the restraint be not expird, and likewise that those who are to goe for England may have liberty to come hither when they please one month before their departure: my Lady Abesse desird me to give leave that our Sisters might Speake to their friends about matters conteind in their late letters come from England’.38 The convent was, apparently, well able to protect itself from undue interference and influence. Clashes could also occur over the appointment of confessors. The Bruges Augustinians were frank in their chronicle about the failings of some of the men they were sent. When Edward Barker arrived in March 1658 at the behest of George Leyburn, president of Douai college, ‘and was admitted upon tryal confessarius of our cloister’, the nuns recorded at his death nine months later: ‘He was invited hither by thee President of Doway […] but being of a deep Melancholy humour, he was not fit for this employment.’ They noted the local archpriest agreed with this conclusion and was ordered by the bishop to write to Leyburn telling him to withdraw Barker: ‘The same President had himself been here at our cloister in October and found by what he understood here that father Barker was not fit for this employment, yet requested further tryal, promising our Arch Priest that if he found no alteration to the better he would upon notice from him take care to provide a fitter man.’ Providence resolved the situation when Barker died in December 1658, only nine months after his arrival.39 Leyburn followed this up by recommending (in agreement with the Jesuit provincial) one William Wall in 1659: ‘He was learned but of a harsh humour: and many difficulties were raised in our cloister, which caused much trouble, and many inconveniences.’40 Despite these clashes, the colleges could nevertheless play a role in solving confessor related difficulties within the convents, such as in 1767 at the Bruges Augustinians. The confessor, Francis Hind, having fallen out with the convent superior, threatened to walk out with immediate effect until the vice-president William Fletcher, alias Wilkinson, of Douai college and Alban Butler, president at the Jesuit St Omer college, intervened as mediators.41

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At the Brussels Dominicans, Mary Stafford Howard42 was equally scathing about Douai college following events involving her nephew, William Holman, who fled the college where he was being educated in 1704 ‘for fear of whipping’. Arriving penniless at Brussels, his aunt provided him with assistance, the college’s exasperated procurator, Edward Dicconson, noting, ‘Whatsoever the young speak sayed to make his cause good in prejudice of this Colledge, my Lord Stafford, his uncle, and his aunt took as Ghospel.’ Two priest representatives of the college travelled to Brussels but reported ‘my Lord and Lady Mary were so prejudiced that they would not hear of letting him come back, but fell a railing against the Colledge’. Dicconson claimed that the boy’s mother was happy with how the college behaved and mortified by the behaviour of her relatives but it was not until the provincial of the Dominicans stepped in that the situation was resolved.43 These examples underline that the convents were not meek victims of male superiority but could and did hold their own when they thought they were being short changed. In fact, they could even cause offence to those in the colleges. In March 1737, Lisbon college’s London agent, John Shepperd, commented in a letter to former president Edward Jones, ‘I am sorry you meet with so much ingratitude from all hands, I am sensible you have deserved all possible returns of Civility from Sion; but it is the common way of the world to be serv’d just as you are.’44 Things could even turn sour in the close founding relationship of the Paris Augustinians and the city’s English college. Following the formal institution of St Gregory’s and the college’s move from next door to the convent in the mid-1680s, the canonesses’ chaplains were no longer supplied by the college and were instead French clergymen from nearby churches.45 In 1698 the convent turned down a bequest that involved a regular Mass being said by the superior of the Paris seminary because ‘this appeared a thing which might draw bad consequences & inconueniences’ and they were unwilling to ‘submit themselues to the seruitude which was intended’.46 Things apparently got so bad that, in 1699, at the behest of the three vicars apostolic in England and the mediation of George Witham, ‘a reconciliation was made, & a good kind vnderstanding between the Seminary of St Gregory’s & our Monastery re established vpon termes and conditions proposed by their sayd Lordps Bp Leyburne, Bp Giffard, & Bp Smith’.47 However, the close working relationship apparently never returned, clergy from other colleges or anywhere in Paris being given permission to celebrate Mass at the convent.48 Nevertheless, these disputes should not be taken as necessarily indicative of a specifically gender war but could just as likely be due to the usual fallings out common in any relationship. That the convents were viewed as part of a wider movement rather than mere subjects to it was made clear by a report submitted in 1622 to the apostolic nuncio in the Spanish Netherlands by the then president

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of Douai college, Matthew Kellison. Giving details of both the male and female Catholic institutions in the region, Kellison heaped praise on the Louvain Augustinians, describing their two secular clergy confessors as ‘men of virtue’. He hailed the Gravelines Poor Clares as having ‘a great reputation for holiness and strictness of life, and are a source of admiration to those who see them’. The first cracks in the united church militant veneer appeared in his description of the Brussels Benedictines. He offered them praise but bitterly remarked, ‘Their Spiritual Fathers are nominally secular priests, but really Fathers of the Society, both because their father [confessor] has no connection with other secular priests, and also because the Fathers of the Society have been accustomed to hear confessions and to recommend subjects to them, and are almost the only ones able to do so.’ The anti-Jesuit rhetoric became even harsher when Kellison turned to the Mary Ward sisters, he blaming members of the Society for leading these women into lives of infamous scandal,‘which was none too religious, but exactly like that of lay people, except for certain prayers, which they used to boast were said privately by them, and sometimes also by faults in conduct, which were sufficiently unworthy even of lay people’. He charged that this was the women’s fault for they ‘greatly praised’ the Jesuits ‘while despising all others’.49 These verdicts show Kellison viewing the convents in the context of the increasingly savage disagreements between secular clergy and Jesuits then ripping through the English Catholic community.50 Moreover, the female houses were not just reflecting these debates but active agents within them, the communities of women making politically charged choices surrounding their spiritual and religious ethos, decisions that, in the case of the Brussels Benedictines, could have wider ramifications.51 Indeed, the secular clergy were lobbying Roman officials on behalf of the then anti-Jesuit Brussels Benedictines’ abbess, Mary Percy.52 It was not just as potential ideological partners that the convents were viewed by the male colleges; the convents also offered official outlets to college hierarchies. For example, the Bridgettines invited the president of Lisbon college to oversee the election of a new abbess in 1734.53 The rector of the English Jesuit college at Ghent, Edward Slaughter, blessed the new school at the Bruges Augustinians in 1719,54 while Thomas Angier, resident at the English Jesuit college in Bruges and its future rector, received his sister-in-law, Isabella Angier (mother of the nun of the same name), into the church in 1770 at the convent’s chapel.55 The Douai-trained priest Charles Fryer said his first Mass after ordination in 1771 in the Louvain Augustinians’ chapel.56 Indeed, in 1677, James Smith, the future president of Douai college and vicar apostolic of the northern district, said his first Mass in the chapel of the Rouen Poor Clares.The nuns recorded that during his time as Douai president, Smith ‘shew’d himself a most perticular, & true friend to the house’.57 Edward Paston, president of Douai college, sang Mass to mark the feast of the Assumption at the Paris Augustinians on several occasions, at one

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point bringing along the college procurator, Edward D ­ icconson.58 The Bridgettines frequently used the president of Lisbon college – as well as other members of the college staff – as a go-between to the outside world, delivering letters, money and news from home or members of the hierarchy like Richard Russell, indicating frequent visits to the nuns on the part of the college staff.59 Nor was the hospitality only one way: in 1664, the abbess of the Pontoise Benedictines, Jane Thorold, stopped at the Jesuit college of St Omer on her way back from conducting business on behalf of her community. There she ‘was very obligingly entertayned in that Colledge with all thos testimonyes of kyndness in theyr powre to show her’.60 Equally, during the French Revolution, the members of the Brussels Dominican convent found shelter with the English Dominicans at Bornhem.61 More than just indicative of a working relationship, these actions sometimes even spilled over into open expressions of praise and respect. As early as 1579, the author of a letter received at Douai college from England went out of his way to praise the Bridgettine nuns in England at that time: ‘For there passinge greate constancy in there fayth, singuler modesty in ther behaviour and wise and discreete answers the are thorow owte the Realme talked of and commended yea even of ther enemies.’62 The Brussels Dominicans, the English Dominican college at Louvain and the male house in Bornhem all sang weekly remembrances for the dead of the English province.63 In the early 1730s, the prioress of the Antwerp Carmelites, Mary Birbeck, asked the Jesuit, Percy Plowden, to write an edifying life of Mary Margaret Wake, which he delivered around the same time as he became rector of the English college in Rome. Plowden further advised the prioress to have a work written celebrating and memorialising the community’s history.64 In this context, it is little surprise to find the colleges playing an active role in recruitment to the convents. In the early 1620s, Agnes Tasburgh was sent to the Louvain Augustinians by Matthew Kellison, president of Douai college, while around 1625 Frances Smith was advised to enter the convent by a Jesuit living at her aunt’s house who knew of it from his time at the English Jesuit college of St John’s in the same town.65 Abbess Anne Neville noted the close relationship between the Ghent Benedictines and the town’s English Jesuit college: ‘thes good fathers dealt with severall familyes in England to send theyr children and relations to this new plantatione, so as it began much to flourish with a good reputation both at home and abroad, which invited many to setle ther’.66 Inevitably, isolated in Lisbon, the English college played a significant role in recruitment to the Bridgettines, particularly once the community’s male side had expired. In 1735, the former college procurator, Richard Green, sent a letter to the college president, Edward Jones, carried by a ‘Mrs Chambers, who comes over to Sion House to be admitted as a Lay Sister: she’s a very good woman and

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will certainly give content to the Community’.67 In 1764, the college’s London agent, John Shepperd, requested college procurator John Preston to contact the Bridgettine abbess, Winefred Hill, to ask about an unnamed potential recruit recommended by James Talbot, coadjutor bishop of the London district, but lacking in a fortune.68 The following year, Shepperd was again writing about a young woman named Fleetwood, who had been educated by the Ursulines at St Omer but not allowed to join them by her mother. Her parents having consented to her entering an English house and her being known by Richard Challoner, vicar apostolic of the London district, the tradesman father reportedly liked the sound of the Bridgettines because he knew they would be reasonable in their monetary expectations. In the letter, he sent his compliments to Abbess Hill and mentioned that the young woman would be a benefit because of her singing voice. After some negotiations between the father and the abbess, conducted seemingly through Shepperd and Preston, a dowry was agreed upon but Fleetwood apparently left soon after, finding convent life too onerous.69 Such dealings at Lisbon were nothing new: in 1744 president John Manley had to write to Shepperd twice, the original letter presumably being lost, saying Syon’s abbess needed no more recruits of ‘that sort’, presumably lay sisters.70 Indeed, an R. Carnaby of Durham was asking the president, Edward Jones, to intervene with a potential convent recruit in 1736. He expressed the concerns of the financial backers of a Mrs Smith about the sum due, mentioning that ‘she might have bin a nunn at Paris at the Blue nuns, a very good house’ and one that was much cheaper but she was apparently obsessed with going to Portugal. Carnaby said he only mentioned this ‘to let you know so much for your own conduct towards her, & for her good in sifting her thoroughly’ but did ask, if her vocation proved true, whether Jones might ‘prevail (in case so much moneys be necessary to make the vow of holy poverty among Poor Clares) with some’ of his supporters and acquaintances in Portugal.71 Equally, the male and female institutions became entangled financially in their mutual relationships. The Brussels Benedictines had investments in the English college at Douai, placing substantial percentages of several nuns’ dowries in the ‘rents’ system there in the first half of the seventeenth century.72 Between 1646 and 1647, the Louvain Augustinians received a legacy from the recently deceased president of the English college at Douai, George Fisher, alias Muscote, while a priest and ‘associate’ of the convent, Richard Worthington, established at his death ‘a perpetuall foundation’ of three hundred pounds to support poor postulants and did the same at Douai college.73 Indeed, when the Louvain ­Augustinians were looking to establish a new community in Bruges in 1629, they entered negotiations with Edward Silisdon, procurator of the Jesuit college at Ghent.74 In 1696, Abbess Elizabeth Petre of the Ghent Benedictines visited her brother, Edward Petre, rector of the English college at St Omer

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‘by whose means they expected some relief from the temporal wants of their Monastry’.75 As already mentioned, this assistance could work both ways, Letitia Tredway and the Paris Augustinians lending much financial support to the male college in Paris.76 Following the death of the last Bridgettine brother, the nuns in Lisbon seemed to share Lisbon college’s agent in London. He negotiated annuity investments for them77 and handled many donations from benefactors, asking the president of the college to transfer the money.78 This set-up could cause tensions: the London agent John Shepperd complained to the president John Manley in 1754 about the Bridgettines expecting him to pay for their post and then ask the president for reimbursement, advising Manley: ‘I think the good Ladys at Sion should advise their Friends or Relations to direct their Letters to Mr Howard the Benedictine who is their Agent, and not to me.’ Following up for good measure two months later, on 5 February 1755, he asked: ‘Pray have not the good Ladys at Sion an Agent in London? He, I think, would be the properest person to transact all their affairs here.’79 Such complaints were apparently to no avail: in May 1767 Shepperd was writing to the convent procurator about money he himself had already transferred but the procurator had failed to pay to the Bridgettines.80 The Irish and Scottish colleges So far all the relationships considered have been between English exile institutions and have shown a mutual working together for the survival and even furtherance of English Catholicism. Looking at it from the perspective of national identities, this is not necessarily surprising: after all, the English convents were primarily national interests.81 But are the same connections evident when the exile religious institutions from elsewhere in the British Isles are considered? What can these relationships tell us about English, Scottish and Irish identities and attitudes in exile? Starting with the Scottish exile communities, the first thing to note is that these were fewer in number than English or Irish institutions. Nevertheless, the initial lack of contact with the English convents is surprising. When the Poor Clare convent at Gravelines became too crowded in the mid-seventeenth century, they wrote to Rome, ‘to our deare & faithfull friend, & father’, William Thomson, a Franciscan and ‘a Scotchman by birth’, former confessor to Henrietta Maria and at the time head of the English province of Friars Minor. His influence proved vital in the foundation of the Rouen Poor Clares.82 In 1695, while their confessor was absent and their temporary replacement otherwise engaged in Jacobite matters, the Rouen Poor Clares received ‘Father Menisse a

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Scotch Canon Regular’ who ‘came twice a week in the afternoon to heare the Communitys Confessions’.83 In 1782, ‘a Scotch Secular Priest’ passed through Bruges on his way to retire at Douai college, ‘his health being impaired by too hard a Mission at Aberdeen in Scotland’. He stayed at the Bruges Augustinians for several months, saying Mass for them. In the same year, a Scottish priest named Hiver filled in at the convent until a replacement could be found following the departure of Matthew Burgess as confessor after his involvement in a drunken scandal.84 This was very limited contact: in the case of the Rouen Poor Clares, the Scottish friar they relied on was nominally a member of the English province anyway, while they used a Scottish priest for confession only in desperation, when there was no one else available. The latter was also the case at the Bruges Augustinians, no doubt still struggling administration-wise after the closure of the nearby English Jesuit college. These strands are evident in the case of the Paris Augustinians.The Scottish college was actually next door to the convent so, if there was going to be a mutual relationship between the national institutions anywhere then it would be expected to be in this instance. However, the surviving evidence suggests minimal contact. Charles Whyteford, ‘sub Principal and Procurator of the Scotch Colledg our neighbours’ provided emergency last rites to a nun in 1707.85 Previously, in 1693, due to the growing size of the community and concerns over discipline, the archbishop of Paris had appointed an external superior in his place. He chose Lewis Innes, superior of the next-door Scots college, who soon clashed with the prioress, Eugenia Perkins. She turned for assistance to the French Benedictines and by January 1696, Innes had resigned and the president-general of the English Benedictine Congregation, Joseph Shireburn, was busy lobbying for the archbishop to once more exercise the office. Instead, another English Benedictine, Benedict Nelson, was chosen by the community to fill the role. Antony Allison says that Innes, though known for his Jansenist leanings, was chosen because he was ‘on the spot’ and could speak English; Allison merely comments that the Paris Augustinians had grown close to the English Benedictines.86 Maybe this was the case but, for a community formed on such strong connections with the secular clergy, this shift to a religious order certainly appears to be a move away from the convent’s founding ethos. Moreover, it saw them actively reject a college of secular clergy in their shifting of allegiance. In short, it would seem that English nationality trumped spiritual ethos in this instance. Irish colleges were far more numerous, twenty-nine being established between 1578 and 1689. Of these, eight were in the same locations as English convents, meaning a close geographical proximity.87 Nevertheless, though more frequent, contact between the institutions remained minimal. The Louvain Augustinians accommodated the Irish Franciscans in 1607 as they needed a place to say Mass during the construction of their college in the town.88 The

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Irish secular clergy college at Paris became one of the ‘largest and most prestigious of the continental Irish colleges’; its priests sometimes preached on major feasts and celebrations at the Paris Augustinian convent.89 The English Sepulchrines in Liège allowed an Irish Augustinian friar from Paris to be buried in their church in 1780 but displayed uncharacteristic carelessness by having the wrong name inscribed on his gravestone.90 In Rouen, site of an Irish secular clergy college, the English Poor Clares adopted a policy of not accepting Irish postulants following what they perceived as community problems caused by national factions.91 Prior to that falling out, the community had recourse to Irish clergy only in times of need, such as when the confessor was absent and a nun was dying or, in 1668, when the community’s confessor was ill, ‘Mother Abbess was forc’d to have recourse to an Irish Canon call’d Father Taylor, who liv’d at the hospital.’ The canon’s superior gave grudging permission for him to hear confessions once a week. On his departure, ‘Mother Abbess was forc’d to beg Mr. Mayler an Irish Priest to assist us, he was one who lived in this town, but she cou’d never resolve to make use of him till this present necessity, he being a person whom the Community much apprehended, both in regard of his being an Irish man, as also for several other reasons, which might well give them difficulty.’92 Clearly, his Irish nationality was a source of concern to the English women religious. This sense also pervaded at the Bruges Augustinians; in 1758 the bishop was mindful that the nuns had not had an extraordinary confessor for a year and was considering an English-speaking Irish Oratorian for the job. The abbess quickly wrote to Thomas Willis, confessor to the Brussels Benedictines, and secured him in the role, all seemingly horrified at the prospect of Irish involvement.93 Necessity and lack of an English male Franciscan province meant that, at their founding in 1609, the Gravelines Poor Clares relied upon Irish Recollects from the college at Louvain as confessors. They had rejected the Englishmen suggested for the job as unfit for purpose, underlining that they would not meekly accept substandard spiritual provision for the sake of national identity cohesion. Nevertheless, in 1625, ‘they wanted the satisfaction to have a Confessour of their own nation, which they cou’d not have under their order, there being no English Convent professing the order of Saint Francis.’94 In 1641, the bishop sent as confessor an Irish priest named Dalton, ‘the pastor of the great hospital, a friend to the Community and a man without exception for ability’, as confessor to the Ghent Benedictines. They politely declined, citing their right to choose their own confessor. Unspoken was their choice of Englishmen – two Jesuits from the English college at Ghent.95 The Irish established secular clergy and Dominican colleges in Lisbon. Despite there being only one other English Catholic institution in the city – the English college – the Bridgettines had minimal contact with the Irish. As usual, they fleetingly relied on Irish confessors

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when things got desperate – in their case, when the male side of the community died out – but this caused the Bridgettines a major problem, the papal nuncio questioning why an English community should have an Irish confessor. Thus, in the opening decades of the eighteenth century they installed as primary confessor an Englishman from Lisbon college, above the unhappy Irish confessor, Archer, who eventually returned to the Irish Dominican college.96 Two presumably Irish clergy signed a financial statement in 1771,97 plus by 1774 they were again seeking the help of a Dominican from the Irish college, Andrew MacCormack, to act as confessor.98 Otherwise recorded contact was negligible; Catherine Witham did not even mention the Irish college in a letter to her mother in 1756 detailing the Lisbon earthquake, despite the college being badly damaged. However, she did find time to mourn the death of John Manley, president of the English college, in the disaster.99 Notionally, the English convents should have been united with not just English, but also Scottish and Irish exile institutions in a spirit of CounterReformation zeal; the members of these various institutions were all theoretically excluded to varying degrees by the same Protestant authorities. Instead, as Albert Loomie has noted in the Spanish context, there was little effort at rapprochement between the different nationalities: ‘religion did not prove to be a convenient bond in any degree for those who were opposed, for various reasons, to the politics of the English Court’.100 One possible argument for the lack of evidence of these relationships is that institutions may not have recorded ‘everyday’ interactions with their neighbours or, of course, documents containing such evidence may not have survived.101 Alternatively, this national segregation could partly be explained by attitudes absorbed through a form of osmosis. English national identity was developing in the seventeenth century, ‘a radical Protestant tradition that championed English sovereignty and supremacy within the British Isles’.102 Indeed, despite Protestantism and its accompanying anti-Catholicism being major components of this developing English national identity, English Protestants still regularly placed national interests before any notional form of an international Protestant alliance.103 With the exile institutions founded on a national basis – and therefore, according to Bossy, exuding ‘xenophobic ethos’104 – it is little surprise that they tapped into the same English superiority complex as their Protestant fellow countrymen and women. Moreover, English Catholics developed their own branch of this ‘greater England’ theory to the point where they could even prove wary of the concept of a unified Catholic Britain.105 True, this sense of English national identity and archipelagic pre-eminence pre-dated the Reformation and so was as much an English Catholic national identity as a Protestant one, but English Catholics could develop a dualistic approach to identity, both national and universal.106 The separateness of Ireland – and its reluctance to be part of three kingdom empire building107 – might explain why

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the English convents could stomach involvement with Irish male exile institutions more than Scottish ones; despite Irish Catholics recognising that English Catholics put national interests first by the end of the sixteenth century, there remained the potential for some collaboration.108 Ultimately, though, national identities won out over confessional ones. The exile institutions became focal points for expatriate communities, fulfilling various social, educational and political functions not normally associated with religious foundations.109 As with the gender relationships between the English institutions, so the connections between the English convents and the Irish and Scots colleges could become increasingly frequent as the institutions became more settled and secure in their exilic positions.110 In the Catholic cause, boundaries could be overcome; rather than a gendered understanding that perceives a constant battle between the sexes, the English convents and colleges, notwithstanding some disputes, could and frequently did work together in a relationship of mutual help and support. While this overriding of traditional divides between men and women has been commented on in the missionary context of England,111 it has not been acknowledged as having been at play between the exile institutions operating in officially Catholic countries. To present English women religious as potential victims of male clerics robs them of their own agency, their negotiated role in the Counter-Reformation (which was similar to the experience of secular women112) and their part in the shared goal of the conversion of England. Yet it is that shared goal that arguably undermined the English, Scottish and Irish Catholic exile experience. Hastings notes that Catholics, whether in England or Ireland, ‘went on refusing to see national loyalty in religious terms’, despite the efforts of the Elizabethan settlement to do just that. He puts this down to the success of the Counter-Reformation.113 Maybe in the short term, this is correct, the flow of clergy trained in continental Tridentine seminaries halting the erosion of national Catholic identity. However, in the long term, this nationally focused approach may more realistically signal a failure of the Counter-Reformation, as throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Catholics from England, Scotland and Ireland failed to harness their potential in exile to override parochial interests and create a shared identity that could achieve their goals and that of the Counter-Reformation’s united church militant front. Notes

My thanks to Caroline Bowden and Gabriel Glickman for their very helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter. 1 Lady Abbess and Community, ‘Obituary notices of the nuns of the English Benedictine Abbey of Ghent in Flanders 1627–1811’, Miscellanea XI, Catholic Record Society (hereafter C.R.S), vol. 19 (London, 1917), pp. 54–5. ‘Who Were the Nuns?’ website (http://wwtn.history.qmul. ac.uk) (hereafter WWTN): GB052, BB047, BB048. 2 Douai Abbey, Archives of St Monica’s, Louvain and St Augustine’s, Newton Abbot, C2, pp. 151–2. 3 Westminster Diocesan Archives (hereafter W.D.A.), Paris Diurnal, 9 August 1697.

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4 E. H. Burton and E. Nolan (eds), The Douay College Diaries: The Seventh Diary, 1715–1778, Preceded by a Summary of Events, 1691–1715, C.R.S., vol. 28 (London, 1928), p. 201. This was Elizabeth Langdale: WWTN, DP081. 5 For example, see S. Evangelisti, Nuns: A History of Convent Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 74. For such skewed gendered readings, see D. Donohue, ‘Writing lives: nuns and confessors as auto/biographers in early modern Spain’, Journal of Hispanic Philology, 13 (1989), 230–9; O. Niccoli, ‘The end of prophecy’, Journal of Modern History, 61 (1989), 667–82. 6 For instance, nun authors sometimes worked with male collaborators: J. Goodrich, ‘Translating Lady Mary Percy: authorship and authority among the Brussels Benedictines’, in C. Bowden and J. E. Kelly (eds), The English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800: Communities, Culture and Identity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 109–22. For examples of the disputes surrounding the behaviour of confessors at the Grevelines Poor Clares and the Paris Conceptionists, see J. E. Kelly (ed.), ‘Convent management’, English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, gen. ed. C. Bowden (5 vols, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012–2013), vol. 5, pp. 409–39. 7 For example, see P. Ranft, ‘A key to Counter-Reformation women’s activism: the confessorspiritual director’, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 10:2 (1994), 7–26; J. Lay, ‘An English nun’s authority: early modern spiritual controversy and the manuscripts of Barbara Constable’, in L. Lux-Sterritt and C. Mangion (eds), Gender, Catholicism and Spirituality: Women and the Roman Catholic Church in Britain and Europe, 1200–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 109–11. 8 See, for example, J. Bilinkoff, ‘Confessors, penitents, and the construction of identities in early modern Avila’, in B. B. Diefendorf and C. Hesse (eds), Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Natalie Zemon Davis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), pp. 83–100; C. M. Seguin, ‘Ambiguous liaisons: Catholic women’s relationships with their confessors in early modern England’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 95 (2004), 156–85. 9 Evangelisti, Nuns, p. 219. 10 He showed himself to the community ‘a true Father, helping us in our necessities, spiritual and temporal, and edifying us by the example of his virtues, especially meekness and patience’: J. Gillow and R. Trappes-Lomax (eds), The Diary of the ‘Blue Nuns’, C.R.S., vol. 8 (London, 1910), p. 341 and P. R. Harris (ed.), Douai College Documents, 1639–1794, C.R.S., vol. 63 (London, 1972), p. 222. 11 Harris, Douai College Documents, p. 320; Gillow and Trappes-Lomax, The Diary of the ‘Blue Nuns’, p. 389; Burton and Nolan, The Douay College Diaries, pp. 23, 154, 230, 243–4, 253. 12 R. Trappes-Lomax (ed.), ‘Records of the English Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre of Liège, now at New Hall, 1652–1793’, Miscellanea X, C.R.S., vol. 17 (1915), pp. 87, 92, 99. They were John Holme, alias Howard, S.J. and Charles Rousse, alias Roels, S.J. 13 Burton and Nolan, The Douay College Diaries, pp. 7, 12. 14 Ibid., pp. 49, 59, 246, 283, 288, 292. Thomas Winkley, confessor at the Dunkirk Poor Clares, returned to Douai for about a month to recover his health in 1737: ibid., pp. 212–13. 15 Douai Abbey, C2, p. 623. 16 C. Bowden, ‘History writing’, English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 1, p. 256. Similar expressions can be found on pp. 264, 265, 270. At the Bruges Augustinians, James Blomfield was recorded as arriving in 1630 ‘from the English Colledge at Doway, where his life had been most exemplar in all piety, devotion and innocency’. His subsequent life was described as ‘always most saint like’: English Convent, Bruges, MS CA, ‘Annals, Vol. 1: 1629–1729’, p. 75. 17 Bruges ‘Annals, Vol. 1’, pp. 5–6. This does not necessarily mean the request could always be fulfilled or was always forthcoming: when the Rouen Poor Clares requested a confessor from the president of Douai, Edward Paston, at the start of the eighteenth century, ‘he refus’d it’ so they instead approached the president of St Gregory’s in Paris, Thomas Witham, who duly obliged: Bowden, ‘History writing’, p. 199. 18 Exeter University Library, MS 262/Add. 1/B/158, pp. 82–4. For trouble in the male numbers and the links to the colleges, see P. Cunich, ‘The brothers of Syon’, in E. A. Jones and A.Walsham (eds), Syon Abbey and its Books: Reading,Writing and Religion c.1400–1700 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010), pp. 74–5.

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ENGLISH WOMEN RELIGIOUS IN COUNTER-REFORMATION 215 19 Ushaw College, LC/P7/109. 20 Cunich, ‘Brothers of Syon’, p. 78; Exeter University Library, MS 262/Add. 1/B/158, p. 132. 21 Ushaw College, LC/C40, 42. Similarly, in 1768, the nuns could not secure their chosen confessor because his local bishop, Richard Challoner, said he could not spare him from the mission in England: Ushaw College, LC/C487, 488. The question of releasing newly ordained priests trained at the English college in Lisbon from the missionary oath so that they could act as confessor for the Bridgettines was a vexing one for several of the college’s presidents: S. Johnson, The English College at Lisbon: From Reformation to Toleration (Bath: Downside Abbey Press, 2014), pp. 342–4. 22 A. F. Allison, ‘The English Augustinian Convent of Our Lady of Syon at Paris: its foundation and struggle for survival during the first eighty years, 1634–1713’, Recusant History, 21 (1993), 453–8. 23 A. F. Allison, ‘The origins of St Gregory’s, Paris’, Recusant History, 21 (1992), 11–25. The convent confessor was to deal with the convent agent in England and still had to be a member of the secular clergy from Douai college though, by 1675, the assisting chaplains were from St Gregory’s: Allison, ‘English Augustinian Convent’, 473–4. 24 C. Walker, Gender and Politics in Early Modern Europe: English Convents in France and the Low Countries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 114. 25 Allison, ‘English Augustinian Convent’, 470, 485. Carre was not alone in doubling up the role of convent confessor and college agent: see Burton and Nolan, The Douay College Diaries, pp. 24, 261; Monastery of the Poor Clares, Much Birch, Herefordshire, Gravelines Chronicle, p. 153. This is not the only example of convents helping to run a college. In 1640, the Ghent Benedictines rented a garden house outside the convent walls for the running of a Catholic school for Welsh youngsters. Funded by ‘my Lord of Worster’, it was maintained by the convent: M. J. Rumsey (ed.), ‘Abbess Neville’s annals of five communities of English Benedictine nuns in Flanders 1598–1687’, MiscellaneaV, C.R.S., vol. 6 (London, 1909), p. 27. On the other side, the English Sepulchrines deliberately chose to establish their house in Liège in order to be close to the English Jesuit college there, the college’s professor of theology, Joseph Simons, S.J., helping them secure permission for its foundation in 1642. Underlining the close tie, the canonesses heard Mass at the college before moving into their new premises: Trappes-Lomax, ‘Records of the English Canonesses’, pp. 102–4. 26 S. Apetrei and H. Smith, ‘Introduction’, in S. Apetrei and H. Smith (eds), Women and Religion in Britain, c.1660–1760 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 1–22. 27 Douai Abbey, C2, p. 425. 28 English Convent, Bruges, MS CX, ‘Annals,Vol. 2: 1729–93’, pp. 214–15, 217, 338. The con­­­vent’s prioress, Elizabeth More, was even questioned in 1783 about what had happened to the belongings of the college: ibid., pp. 269–70. It should be noted that More was sister to the then-Jesuit provincial, Thomas More, who expressed his thanks for the convent’s help: ibid., p.  215. 29 Trappes-Lomax, ‘Records of the English Canonesses’, p. 173. 30 The Prioress and community of Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight (eds), ‘Records of the nuns of the second order’, Dominicana, C.R.S., vol. 25 (London, 1925), p. 232. 31 Ushaw College, LC/V217, John Manley to John Shepperd, 20 November 1747, 17 January 1748. 32 Ibid., LC/V217, John Manley to John Shepperd, 14 October 1741. The priest in question was John Prichard, apparent superior of a tiny community of secular clergy at St Lucar: G. Anstruther, The Seminary Priests (4 vols, Ware: St Edmund’s College & Great Wakering: MayhewMcCrimmon, 1969–1977), vol. 4, pp. 224–5. 33 C. Bowden, ‘Books and reading at Syon Abbey, Lisbon, in the seventeenth century’, in Jones and Walsham (eds), Syon Abbey, pp. 186, 188. For this and a link to the English college at Valladolid, see M. E. Williams, ‘Paintings of early British kings and queens at Syon Abbey, Lisbon’, ­ Birgittiana, 1 (1996), 123–34. 34 Bowden, ‘History writing’, p. 270. 35 Ibid., pp. 87–8, 236. The cloak relic was bequeathed to them by Fr Richard Howard, brother to the duke of Norfolk.

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36 The nuns were Susan Warner at the Dunkirk Benedictines and Catherine Tasburgh at the Ghent Benedictines (WWTN, DB179, GB125): M. Whitehead and P. Leech, ‘The mysterious Thomas Kingsley (1650−1695): from Anglican cathedral chorister to English Jesuit composer’, paper given at the ‘What is Early Modern English Catholicism?’ conference, Ushaw College, Durham University, 28 June–1 July 2013. 37 Ushaw College, LC/P7/4. 38 Ibid., LC/C34. 39 Bruges ‘Annals Vol. 1’, pp. 78–80. 40 Ibid., p. 82. Memories of perceived Douai incompetence apparently survived well in the convent: in 1710, Augustine Poyntz arrived as confessor at the recommendation of Louis Sabran, S.J. It was noted he had finished his priestly training in Rome having left Douai ‘upon some occasion of dissatisfaction in that Colledge’. The nuns seemingly approved of their new confessor: ibid., p. 243. 41 Bruges ‘Annals Vol. 2’, pp. 186–90. To the nuns’ satisfaction, face was saved by Butler’s appointment of Hind as vice-president at St Omer. Tellingly, Butler, who served as extraordinary confessor after his appointment as St Omer’s president, was buried at the convent chapel following his death in 1767, paying for memorial plaques to be placed at St Omer, Douai and in the Bruges Augustinian choir, underlining his view of a shared English Catholic enterprise: ibid., p. 217; Anstruther, Seminary Priests, vol. 4, pp. 52–3. 42 WWTN, BD041. 43 Ushaw College, M1/60. 44 Ibid., LC/C126. 45 Allison, ‘English Augustinian Convent’, 474. 46 W.D.A., Paris Diurnal, 2 May 1698. 47 Ibid., 23 August 1699. Witham was vicar-general to Bishop Smith of the northern district. The deterioration in the relationship between the Paris seminary and Augustinian convent may have been exacerbated by the convent’s confessor, Edward Lutton, giving shelter to James Rigby, who had been dismissed from St Gregory’s by its superior, Anthony Meynell, but was subsequently ordained at Douai and returned to St Gregory’s to undertake further studies at the Sorbonne following the agreement negotiated by the vicars apostolic: ibid., 7 August 1697, 23 May 1699, 27 August 1699, 11 September 1699; Anstruther, Seminary Priests, vol. 3, pp. 186–7. 48 W.D.A., Paris Diurnal, 1 May 1696, 25 May 1697, 28 October 1697. 49 E. H. Burton and T. L. Williams (eds), Douay College Diaries: Third Diary, 1598–1637, C.R.S., vol. 10 (London, 1911), pp. 396–8. 50 For overviews of these, see M. C. Questier (ed.), Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, Camden Society, Fifth Series, 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); A. F. Allison, ‘A question of jurisdiction: Richard Smith, bishop of Chalcedon, and the Catholic laity, 1625–31’, Recusant History, 16 (1982), 111–45; M. C. Questier (ed.), Newsletters from the Caroline Court, 1631–1638: Catholicism and the Politics of the Personal Rule, Camden Society, Fifth Series, 26 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). In 1757, the Bruges Augustinians became entangled in the growing mood that would result in the suppression of the Society. In echoes of the approbation affair in England, the local bishop insisted on all confessors receiving their faculties from him, which the Jesuits rejected as all checks were carried out in their own Order. Thus, the nuns’ extraordinary confessor, Thomas Clifton, rector of the English college at Ghent, was refused faculties, causing the nuns ‘great concern and not finding anyone willing to come we had no exercise this year’: Bruges ‘Annals Vol. 2’, p. 132. 51 For nuns’ active participation in these wider debates, see J. E. Kelly, ‘Essex girls abroad: family patronage and the politicisation of convent recruitment in the sixteenth century’, in Bowden and. Kelly (eds), English Convents in Exile, pp. 44–51. For the Brussels split, see C. Walker, ‘Securing souls or telling tales? The politics of cloistered life in an English convent’, in C. van Wyhe (ed.), Female Monasticism in Early Modern Europe: An Interdisciplinary View (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 227–44.

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ENGLISH WOMEN RELIGIOUS IN COUNTER-REFORMATION 217 52 Questier, Caroline Court, p. 299. When Tredway and Carre were working on the foundation of the Paris Augustinian convent and determining to ensure its close links with the secular clergy, members of the latter wrote approvingly of the scheme, not least because it might halt plans to found one under Jesuit control. Nevertheless, John Southcote of the English chapter did voice a small note of caution about potential competition between institutions: ‘God speed it well, but for my part I affect not such courses, and in my opinion the clergy hath to[o] much to do already with Lisboa college and with the nunnery at Bruxelles, yet I shall be ready to concur with the rest, and follow the major part’: ibid., pp. 219–20, 183–5. 53 Ushaw College, LC/C100. 54 Bruges ‘Annals, Vol. 1’, p. 356. In 1723, Slaughter’s successor as rector at Ghent, Edward Saltmarsh, received the vows of the convent’s confessor Augustine Newdigate Poyntz as a member of the Society, shortly before his death at the college: ibid., pp. 392–3, 397. 55 Bruges ‘Annals, Vol. 2’, pp. 201–2; WWTN, BA005; G. Holt, The English Jesuits 1650–1829: A Biographical Dictionary, C.R.S., vol. 70 (London: 1984), p. 20. 56 Harris, Douai College Documents, p. 349; Anstruther, Seminary Priests, 4, p. 106. He had been ordained by Patrick Brady, O.F.M., the Irish bishop of Dromore. 57 Bowden, ‘History writing’, p. 148. 58 W.D.A., Paris Diurnal, 15 August 1696; 15 August 1699; 21 September 1707. 59 Ushaw College, LC/P7/22, 70, 109, 122; LC/V217, John Manley to White and Fisher, 7 October 1744; John Manley to John Shepperd, 1 June 1745, 3 July 1745, 5 September 1746, 19 December 1747; Ushaw College, LC/C285, 440, 459, 464, 472. 60 Rumsey, ‘Abbess Neville’s annals’, p. 58. 61 The Prioress and community of Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight, ‘Records of the nuns of the second order’, pp. 239–40. 62 Anon. (ed.) [Fathers of the congregation of the London Oratory], with an introduction by T. F. Knox, The First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay, and an Appendix of Unpublished Documents (London: Nutt, 1878), p. 149. 63 The Prioress and community of Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight, ‘Records of the nuns of the second order’, p. 197. 64 K. Daemen-de Gelder, ‘Life writing II’, English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 4, pp. xiii–xiv, 2–3. 65 Douai Abbey, C2, pp. 258–9, 297–8. Elizabeth Lombard, who professed as a lay sister at the convent in 1623, had been converted to Catholicism by a Jesuit resident at St Omer college: ibid., pp. 261–2; WWTN, GP222. Another future president of Douai, George Fisher, alias Muscote, had received Elizabeth Hone into the church and recommended several convents to her before she was professed at the Gravelines Poor Clares in 1630. Her aunt paid her dowry and also gave a substantial donation to Douai college: Bowden, ‘History writing’, p. 136. 66 Rumsey, ‘Abbess Neville’s annals’, p. 20. In 1717, several months after her clothing, Rebecca Pigott departed the Bruges Augustinians having sought advice about her vocation from the novice master at the Ghent college, who recommended she join the Gravelines Poor Clares: Bruges ‘Annals, Vol. 1’, pp. 334–5: WWTN, GP222. 67 Ushaw College, LC/C117. An Ann Chambers (WWTN, LB037) had entered as a lay sister in 1698 but there is no record of another, so either this individual was not accepted or Green mistook her for a postulant rather than returning from some business in England. 68 Ushaw College, LC/C450, 451, 454. 69 Ibid., LC/C462, 463, 465, 467, 469. There is no record of her in WWTN. 70 Ibid., LC/V217, John Manley to John Shepperd, 13 March 1744, 14 April 1744. 71 Ibid., LC/C121. Also referred to in LC/C126. 72 By the 1620s, there were also investments in an unnamed English Jesuit college, as well as a Dutch Jesuit college in Brussels: Downside Abbey, Brussels Benedictines archive,‘The Receipts, Disbursements and Debts Of our Monastery, from the year 1599 to 1736’, printed in Kelly, ‘Convent management’, pp. 77, 78, 84. A rent was an annuity purchased by an individual or, in this case, an institution, from a provider which led to a guaranteed annual payment – usually made up of the interest of the loan – for whatever period had been specified in the contract. The provider in this case was the English college at Douai.

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73 Douai Abbey, The Archives of St Monica’s Louvain and St Augustine’s Newton Abbot, 1609–1976, P1, fos. 21v., 38r.; P3; Anstruther, Seminary Priests, vol. 2, pp. 365–6. In 1698, Edward Hunt, ‘a Priest of Douay-Colledg’ visited the Paris Augustinians to discuss with his niece what she planned to do with some money she had inherited: W.D.A., Paris Diurnal, 5 April 1698; Kelly, ‘Convent management’, pp. 10–11. 74 Douai Abbey, C2, pp. 340–2; Bruges ‘Annals, Vol. 1’, pp. 1–2. 75 They lodged at the Bruges Augustinians for one night on their journey: Bruges ‘Annals, Vol. 1’, p. 192. 76 See above pp. 201–2 and Allison, ‘Origins of St Gregory’s’, 20–1. 77 Ushaw College, LC/C478, 480, 482. The Louvain Augustinians and Douai college apparently had ‘cross-over’ dealings with the latter’s agent in London: Burton and Nolan, The Douay College Diaries, p. 95. 78 Ushaw College, LC/C290, 305, 329, 330, 392, 408, 420, 457, 468, 481. The Bridgettine accounts held at Ushaw from 1762–1777 (uncatalogued at the time of writing) show numerous receipts and confirmations of these payments. They also illustrate how money passed from agent to president to nun: Ushaw College, Syon Accounts, uncatalogued. 79 Ibid., LC/C295, 298. 80 Ibid., LC/C483. In 1741, Cecily Tunstall, the procurator for the Louvain Augustinians, wrote to their London agent, Mannock Strickland, that the president of Douai, William Thornburgh, had apparently forgotten to pay some money to him that Tunstall had sent: R. Williams (ed.), ‘Strickland Papers’, in Kelly, ‘Convent management’, p. 212. In 1722, the Brussels Dominicans were involved in a protracted entanglement with the male college at Louvain about money owed: The Prioress and community of Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight, ‘Records of the nuns of the second order’, pp. 216–19. 81 C. Bowden, ‘The English convents in exile and questions of national identity, c.1600–1688’, in D. Worthington (ed.), British and Irish Emigrants and Exiles in Europe, 1603–1688 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 297–314. 82 Bowden, ‘History writing’, p. 1. 83 Ibid., p. 368. 84 Bruges ‘Annals, Vol. 2’, pp. 261, 267. The priest, Oliver, may have been Andrew Oliver: D. A. Bellenger, English andWelsh Priests 1558–1800: AWorking List (Bath: Downside Abbey, 1984), p. 93. 85 W.D.A., Paris Diurnal, 5 June 1700, 1 March 1707. On the former date, in an odd reference, Whitford was sent a ‘Swarm of bees’ by the convent. In 1698, Whitford had proposed Agnes Warcope for entry into the convent: she was accepted but only on the condition she use the same spiritual directors as the rest of the community, presumably meaning she did not separate herself under Scottish ‘influence’. In 1714, Whitford became principal of the college: Kelly, ‘Convent management’ p. 107. 86 W.D.A., Paris Diurnal, 6, 8, 19 January 1696, 19 October 1697; Allison, ‘English ­Augustinian Convent’, 479–81. Ironically, in 1704 Innes would argue against plans to merge the Scottish, English and Irish colleges as a ‘British’ college and advise the retention of national rectors: M.  Dilworth, ‘Beginnings 1600–1707’, in R. McCluskey (ed.), The Scots College Rome, 1600–2000 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2000), pp. 36–7; M. E. Williams, ‘A British college in Rome?’, in McCluskey (ed.), The Scots College Rome, pp. 145–50. My thanks to Liam Chambers for this information. It was not the first time such amalgamations had been mooted: Robert Persons, S.J., had rejected any attempt to combine Irish and English students under one roof in Valladolid in 1589: T. Morrissey, ‘The Irish student diaspora in the sixteenth century and the early years of the Irish College at Salamanca’, Recusant History, 14 (1978), 246. 87 There were Irish secular clergy colleges in Paris (founded 1578), Antwerp (1600), Rouen (1612), Louvain (1624) and Lisbon (1590), the latter being particularly small; Dominican colleges at Lisbon (1659) and Louvain (1626); and an Irish Franciscan college also in Louvain (1607): P. O Connell, ‘The early-modern Irish college network in Iberia, 1590–1800’, in T.  O’Connor (ed.), The Irish in Europe, 1580–1815 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), p. 52. 88 Douai Abbey, C2, pp. 72–3. The chronicler caustically remarked that the friars offered to pay

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ENGLISH WOMEN RELIGIOUS IN COUNTER-REFORMATION 219 for wine and candles used but they could not afford to do so. The guardian of the college, a Fr. Hugh, acted as interpreter to the Infanta’s confessor during a visit to the community at the time while from 1624 to 1630, after the English Jesuits had left Louvain, an Irish priest named Peter Wadding assisted the convent confessor until his superiors sent him to Germany: ibid., pp. 83, 351. Due to the Franciscan college’s ongoing financial issues, the friars sought funds from such local chaplaincy work: T. O’Connor, ‘Irish Franciscan networks at home and abroad, 1607–1640’, in Worthington (ed.), British and Irish Emigrants, p. 281. An Irish Dominican college was also founded in Louvain in 1626, one for secular clergy two years before that. 89 P. O’Connor, ‘Irish clerics and French politics of grace: the reception of Nicholas Madgett’s doctoral thesis, 1732’, in T. O’Connor and M. A. Lyons (eds), Irish Migrants in Europe after Kinsale, 1602–1820 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003), p. 184; W.D.A., Paris Diurnal, 27 November 1695, 4 December 1695, 18 December 1695, 1 April 1696, 20 April 1696, second Sunday of Advent 1697, 12 April 1699, 16 July 1708. An Irish priest said the funeral rite of a nun at the Paris Conceptionists in 1786: Gillow and Trappes-Lomax, The Diary of the ‘Blue Nuns’, p. 268. 90 Trappes-Lomax, ‘Records of the English Canonesses’, p. 173. His name was Thadeus Maddon but the nuns admitted to putting Thomas ‘on his grave stone by mistake’. 91 See M.-L. Coolahan, ‘Archipelagic identities in Europe: Irish nuns in English convents’, in Bowden and Kelly (eds), English Convents in Exile, pp. 211–28. Though the chapter at hand is focused on the relationship between English women religious and male exile colleges, it should be noted that the English Benedictine convent at Ypres was transferred to the Irish nation in the 1680s in fractious circumstances: see P. Nolan, The Irish Dames of Ypres: Being a History of the Royal Irish Abbey ofYpres Founded A.D. 1665 and Still Flourishing (Dublin: Browne and Nolan, 1908); J. E. Kelly, ‘Bringing it all back home: Mary Butler (1641–1723) – Benedictine Abbess of Ypres’, in S. Ryan (ed.), Treasures of Irish Christianity,Volume III:To the Ends of the Earth (Dublin: Veritas Publications, 2015), pp. 64–6. 92 Bowden, ‘History writing’, pp. 89–90. The exiled Bishop of Kilfenora, Andrew Lynch, also visited the convent on official diocesan business on several occasions: ibid., pp. 84–5, 121, 146. My thanks to Eamon O Ciosáin for his advice about the Irish presence in Rouen and the activities of Andrew Lynch. 93 Bruges ‘Annals, Vol. 2’, pp. 134–5. In 1668, in the absence of a confessor, the community relied upon ‘Rd Mr. Saxfield an ancient Irish Priest who lived in town’, to provide emergency cover. 94 Gravelines Chonicle, pp. 45–7, 142. 95 Rumsey, ‘Abbess Neville’s annals’, pp. 28–9. 96 Exeter University Library, MS 262/Add. 1/B/158, pp. 121–42. 97 Kelly, ‘Convent management’, pp. 57–8. One was a Dominican so probably from the order’s Irish college in the city. 98 Ushaw College, LC/A19/30. 99 N. Hallett (ed.), ‘Life writing I’, English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, gen. ed. Caroline Bowden, vol. 3, pp. 309–12. Interestingly, the English college did have contact with Lisbon’s Irish college, but overwhelmingly in the late eighteenth century. This lack of contact before then – and with the Bridgettines – could be explained by the fact that the small Irish college was run by Jesuits, while the English college was vehemently secular clergy in ethos: P. O Connell, The Irish College at Lisbon: 1590–1834 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 75, 91, 93, 98, 122, 127–8, 131; O Connell, ‘The early-modern Irish college network in Iberia’, pp. 53, 62–3. 100 A. J. Loomie, The Spanish Elizabethans:The English Exiles at the Court of Philip II (London: Burns & Oates, 1963), p. 231. As Karin Schüller has pointed out, much work is required on the conflicts between the migrant groups in exile and their separation into different social spheres and institutions: K. Schüller, ‘Irish migrant networks and rivalries in Spain, 1575–1659’, in O’Connor and Lyons, Irish Migrants, p. 88n. See also C. Highley, Catholics Writing the Nation in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 84. 101 The Lisbon College archive held at Ushaw College is admittedly very full, but it would militate against the suggestion that evidence of the relationship with neighbour institutions was not recorded, containing as it does a number of references to the Bridgettine community.

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102 W. Maley, ‘The British problem in three tracts on Ireland’, in B. Bradshaw and P. Roberts (eds), British Consciousness and Identity: The Making of Britain, 1533–1707 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 181. 103 C. Kidd, ‘Protestantism, constitutionalism and British identity under the later Stuarts’, in Bradshaw and Roberts (eds), British Consciousness, pp. 338–9; A. Fletcher, ‘The first century of English Protestantism and the growth of national identity’, in S. Mews (ed.), Religion and National Identity, Studies in Church History, 18 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), pp. 309–17; W. B. Patterson, ‘King James I and the Protestant cause in the crisis of 1618–22’, in Mews (ed.), Religion and National Identity, pp. 319–34. 104 J. Bossy, ‘Catholicity and nationality in the North European Counter-Reformation’, in Mews (ed.), Religion and National Identity, p. 288. 105 Ibid., pp. 290–5; Highley, Writing the Nation, pp. 98–111, 123–37. For this in the exile English male colleges, see M. Netzloff, ‘The English colleges and the English nation: Allen, Persons, Verstegan, and diasporic nationalism’, in R. Corthell, F. E. Dolan, C. Highley and A. F. Marotti (eds), Catholic Culture in Early Modern England (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), pp. 236–60. For a moment when some people seriously considered a united Catholic Britain in the second half of the seventeenth century, see G. Glickman, ‘A British Catholic community? Ethnicity, identity and recusant politics, 1660–1750’, in J. E. Kelly and S. Royal (eds), Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory and Counter-Reformation (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). 106 A. Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 4–5, 35–6, 51, 59–60, 202–3. 107 J. Morrill, ‘The British problem, c.1534–1707’, in B. Bradshaw and J. Morrill (eds), The British Problem, c.1534–1707: State Formation in the Atlantic Archipelago (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996), p. 12; B. Bradshaw, ‘The Tudor reformation and revolution in Wales and Ireland: the origins of the British problem’, in Bradshaw and Morrill (eds), The British Problem, p. 43. 108 Highley, Writing the Nation, pp. 140, 142, 145. 109 For the example of the Irish colleges, see O’Connell, ‘The early-modern Irish college network in Iberia’, pp. 51, 53. 110 Only one foundation of English women religious was forced to close, the Pontoise Benedictines collapsing under financial strain in 1786: Walker, Gender and Politics, pp. 81–3. 111 For example, L. Lux-Sterritt, ‘ “Virgo becomes virago”: women in the accounts of seventeenthcentury English Catholic missionaries’, Recusant History, 30 (2011), 537–53. 112 For example, see B. Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); S. Laqua-O’Donnell, Women and the Counter-Reformation in Early Modern Münster (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 113 Hastings, Construction of Nationhood, p. 81.

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Accurensis, Joseph 184 Acqua, Claudio 177 Adams, Simon 156 Adolphus, Gustavus 14 Adrian VI, Pope 8, 73, 77 al-’Āqūrī, Nas. rallah Šalaq (aka Vittorio Scialac Accorense) 185 Alcalá de Henares Irish college 9, 98, 105 Alcalá, University of 95 Aldoense, Donato 187 Aldoense, Giovanni 184 al-Duwayhī, Isṭifān 187, 189 Alexander VII, Pope 179 Allacci, Leone 190 Allen, Cardinal William 4–5, 95, 142, 144, 150, 152–3, 161, 198 Allison, Antony 210 Almo Collegio Capranica seminary, Rome 36 al Rami,Yūsuf 189 Alticollense college (Cologne, moved to Louvain 1680s) 8, 14, 61, 74, 77 al-Tūlāwī, Buṭrus 189 Amersfoort Catholic seminary (Netherlands) 65 Amersfoort humanities college (Netherlands) 61, 67 ʽAmīra (Maronite patriarch, 1633–44) 183 Amsterdam, University of 64 Anabaptists/Anabaptism 57 Anderson, P. J. 16

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Anderson, Sir Edmund 145 Angers, University of 63, 66 Angier, Isabella 206 Angier, Thomas 206 Antwerp Carmelite convent 207 Antwerp Dutch college 81–2 Antwerp Irish college 7, 21, 96 Apetrei, Sarah 202 Appelants movement 64 Archer (Irish confessor, Lisbon English college, early eighteenth century) 212 Archer, James 99 Archivium Hibernicum 16–17 Assemani, Antonio 185, 190 Assemani, Giuseppe 188 Assemani, Simone 185 Assendelft, Willem van 70 Augustinians 12, 93, 199–202, 204–11 Austin, John 167 Ayn-Warqa college, Lebanon 189 Baal, Joachim 118 Bagshaw, Christopher 153–4, 161 Bancroft, Bishop Richard 160 Bandini, Cardinal Ottavio 180 Banese, Giuseppe 184 Barberini, Cardinal Antonio 180–1 Barberini, Cardinal Maffeo see Urban VIII, Pope Barberini, Cardindal Francesco 126–8 Barclay, Robert 130

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Barker, Edward 204 Baronio, Cesare 184 Bar sur Aube Irish college 102 Bavaria-Landshut, duke of (George the Rich) 36 Beaton, Archbishop James 10, 116 Begijnhof, Amsterdam 64 Bellegarde, Abbé Gabriel Dupac de 64 Bell, Thomas 154–5, 161 Benedetti, Antonio 188 Benedetti, Pietro 188 Benedictines 10–11, 14, 16, 18, 22–4, 74, 142, 199, 206–8, 210–11 Society of St Edmund 23 Benedict XIV, Pope 185 Beniamini, Giorgio 188 Bentivoglio, Guido 100 Bernard, Eugene 100 Bernoulli, Johannes 80 Bertius, Petrus 69 Bérulle, Pierre de 78 Bidloo, Govert 70 Birbeck, Mary 207 Bird, James 145 Blackwell, George 142 Blount, Richard 13 Blue nuns (Order of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady) 208 Bobadilla, Cardinal Francisco Mendoza 43 Bois-le-Duc college 82 Boîte à Perrette 65 Bologna, University of 2, 5, 67 Bonaparte, Napoleon 19 Boonen, Archbishop Jacques 79 Bordeaux Irish college 10, 12, 98, 105 Borghese, Cardinal Camillo see Paul V, Pope Bornhem Dominican convent (Flanders) 207 Bornhem Dominican house (male) (Flanders) 207 Borromeo, Carlo 45, 78, 203 Borromeo, Federico 187 Bossy, John 4, 147, 149–52, 154, 212

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Boswell, Sir William 127 Boucquet, Blasius 67 Boulay Irish college 102 Bourges, University of 66 Bourgoing, François 78 Bourk, John 19 Boyle, Patrick 16, 24 Brabant, University Court of 61 Braniewo (Braunsberg), college and pontifical seminary 6, 14, 23, 37 Brederode family 65 Brèves, Savary de 185 Bridgettines 198, 201, 203, 206–9, 211–12 Brockliss, Laurence 10, 17–18, 22, 24 Bruges English college 202, 204, 206 Bruno, Fr Giovanni 177 Brussels Benedictine convent 198, 206 Brussels Dominican convent 207 Buchelius, Arnoldus 67 Buckingham, 1st Duke of 124 Burgess, Matthew 210 Burghley, Lord (William Cecil) 158, 161 Burgundy, duke of 71 Butler, Alban 204 Caen, University of 66 Calvinists/Calvinism 56–9, 65, 67–70, 74, 120, 122, 135, 157, 161 Cambridge University 4, 11, 198 Campion, Edmund 95, 146 Canisius, Petrus (Peter) 40, 43, 46, 66, 70 Capponi, Cardinal Luigi 185 Capuchins 8 Carafa, Cardinal Antonio 177, 180 Carlow seminary 104 Carnaby, R. (Durham) 208 Carre, Thomas 201–2 Carthusians 64 Castelli, Giovanni Battista 143 Castlemaine, earl of 166–7 Catholic Committee 106 Catholic Convention 106 Catholic Inquisition 69, 93 Catholic Record Society 16, 21

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Cecil, Sir Robert 158 Cerri, Urbano 188 Chadwick, H. 16 Challoner, Richard 208 Chambers (lay sister, Lisbon, 1735) 207 Charles I, King 124, 127 Charles IX, King 3 Charles V, Emperor 39, 41 Cheney, Charles 123 Chrichton, Francis 123 Cistercians 64 Cleary, Gregory 17 Clement VIII, Pope 72 Clynnog, Morys 5 Codde, Petrus 59–60, 75, 79 Coeverden, Theodorus van 67–8 Coimbra, University of 93 Colegio Imperial, Madrid 93 Collectanea Hibernica 16–17 Collège de Montaigu, Paris 96 ‘Collège des Lecteurs royaux’, Paris 186 Collège des Lombards, Paris 10, 19, 102–3 College of Neophytes, Rome 176 College of Saints Peter and Paul, Lisbon see Lisbon English college College of the Holy Spirit, Louvain 36 College of the Immaculate Conception, Prague 11, 14, 23, 105 College/Seminary of Our Lady, Utrecht 68 Collegio dei Neofiti, Rome 5, 37 Collegio Romano 4–5, 7, 15, 36, 43, 45, 47, 181–3 Collegio Urbano (Collegium Urbanum), Rome 73, 80, 179–80, 184, 188 Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum (Rome) 5, 34, 37 see also Collegium Hungaricum, Rome Collegium Germanicum (Rome) vii–viii, 4–6, 14–15, 19–20, 34, 37–50, 73, 80 see also Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum (Rome); Santa Maria dell’Anima seminary, Rome Collegium Helveticum, Milan 5

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Collegium Hungaricum, Rome 5, 47–9 see also Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum (Rome) Collegium Regium Stockholmense 6 Collegium Vaulxianum, Louvain 77 Cologne Dutch college 8, 61 Cologne seminary 73 Cologne, University of 66–7, 72–3, 81–2 Colvenerius, Georgius 67 Comerford, Nicholas 95 Conceptionists (Order of the Immaculate Conception) 200 Confraternity of Saint Patrick, Lisbon 97 Conn, George 128 Conn, Patrick 128 Convent of Our Lady of Syon, Lisbon (Bridgettines) 198, 203, 205–9 Corby, Isabella 199 Corne, Charles 200 Cornel (Cornelius), Eugene 47 Corpo Santo church, Lisbon ­(Dominicans) 12 Cousebant (or Vigerius), Claes Wiggers 74 Creagh, Archbishop Richard 7, 95 Creusen, Archbishop Andreas 79 Crichton, William 7 Cum adolescentium aetas (conciliar decree, 1563) 90 Cusack, Christopher 7, 10, 96 Dalton (priest, Ghent, 1641) 211 Dease, Thomas 7 Delaney, Bishop Daniel 104 Delft grammar school 67 Dempster, Thomas 116 Deventer, University of 65 Devoti, Marta Maria 185 Dicconson, Edward 205, 207 Dickens, A. G. 147 Dieulouard English college (Lorraine) 11, 14 Dieulouard school (Lorraine) 142 Digby, Joseph 200

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Digges, Thomas 159–60, 162 Dilworth, Mark 16 Dodds, Charles 15 Dodonaeus, Rembertus 69 Dole, University of 71–2 Dominicans 12, 202, 205, 207, 211–12 Donellus, Hugo 69 Dort [Dordrecht], Synod of (1618–19) 56 Douai Dutch college 61 Douai English college 7, 11, 13–14, 15–16, 20, 22, 96, 118, 124, 142, 144, 198–208 Douai Irish college 7–8, 12, 20–1, 105 Douai Scots college 7, 13, 21, 96, 115, 117–19, 123, 131, 134, 210 Douai, University of 66–8, 71–2, 81–2 Dousa, Janus 69 Dowdall, Sir John 158 Drummond, James (duke of Perth) 131, 133 Drummond, John (earl of Melfort) 131–2 Duffy, Eamon 4, 145 Dum sollicita (papal bull, 1552) 4 Dunkirk Poor Clares convent 199–200 Dupuy, Claude 186 Ecchellensis, Abraham (Ibrahīm al-Hāqilānī) 179, 181, 183–6, 190 Ecchellensis, Dionisio 188 École des Jeunes, college for eastern Christians, Paris 186 Edensis, Gratia Beniamin 184 Eliano, Gian Battista 175 Elizabeth I, Queen 4 Emmerich college (Germany) 81–2 English colleges Bruges 202, 204, 206 Dieulouard (Lorraine) 11, 14 Douai 7, 11, 13–14, 15–16, 20, 22, 96, 118, 124, 142, 144, 198–208 Ghent 206–7, 211 Liège 200, 203 Lisbon (College of Saints Peter and Paul) 9, 13, 166, 198, 201–2,

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205–8, 211–12 Louvain 207, 211 Madrid 9, 201 Paris 10–11, 124, 205, 209 Reims 150 Rome 5, 7, 13, 19, 21–2, 37, 47, 118, 123, 142, 199, 203, 207 Seville 9, 13, 118, 124, 142, 201, 203 St Malo 11 St Omer 7, 13, 15, 20, 24, 118, 142, 199, 202, 204, 207–8 Valladolid (St Alban’s) 9, 13, 21, 97, 118, 142, 201 Walloon 13 Erfurt Scots college 119 Eu school (France) 7, 142 Ex Collegio Germanico (papal bull, 1584) 49

Fagan, Bishop Luke 80 Fallon, Malachy 11 Farnese, Cardinal Alessandro 43 Farnese, Ranuccio 43 Farrell, Daniel 95 Ferdinand I, Emperor 39, 44 Ferté, Patrick 17, 22 Field, John 146 Fisher (alias Muscote), George 208 Fitzgerald, James Fitzmaurice 7 Fitzsimon, Henry 7 Fleetwood (young woman, St Omer, 1765) 208 Fletcher (alias Wilkinson), William 204 Fortunati, Agostino (Antonio) 188 Fourth Lateran Council (1215) 35 Franciscans 7, 11–12, 14, 17, 21, 23, 59, 72, 92–3, 98, 100, 105, 188, 209–11 see also Recollects (Franciscans) Franeker, University of 65 Freux, André des 43 Frijhoff, Willem 8, 17 Fryer, Charles 206

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Gallagher, Bishop Redmund 96 Gallicans/Gallicanism 23, 60, 64, 201 Garstein, Oskar 6, 17 Gasquet, F. A. 16 Geddes, John 134 Gemayel, Bishop Nasser 174, 182 Gerard, John 168 Ghent Benedictine convent 207–8, 211 Ghent English college 206–7, 211 Giblin, Cathaldus 17 Giffard, Bishop Bonaventure 205 Gordon, Adam Lawrence 123 Gordon, Gen. Alexander 133–4 Gratley, Edward 153, 161 Gravelines Poor Clares convent (France) 206, 209, 211 Greek college, Rome 180 Green, Richard 207 Gregory I, Pope 143 Gregory XIII, Pope viii, 5–7, 14, 34, 37–8, 46–50, 143, 174–7, 179 Ex Collegio Germanico (papal bull, 1584) 49 Postquam Deo placuit (papal bull, 1573) 46, 48 Quoniam divinae bonitati (papal bull, 1579) 5 Gregory XV, Pope 126, 178–9 Griffin, George 201 Grindal, Archbishop Edmund 146 Grisy-Suines Scots college (Paris) 2–3, 6 Groningen, University of 65 Grootschool, Mechelen 79 Guadagnoli, Filippo 184 Gymnasium Tricoronatum (Cologne) 74 Haigh, Christopher 149 Halloran, Brian 16 Hamilton, William 127–8 Harderwijk, University of 65 Hastings, Adrian 213 Hastings, Sir Francis 159–60, 162 Hay, George 134 Hepburn, Bishiop Patrick 2

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Hervey, Walter 128 Hesronite, John (Yūh. annā al-Ha . s. rūnī) 180, 187 Heyberger, Bernard 185, 187 Hill, Susan 203 Hill, Winefred 208 Hind, Francis 204 Hiver (priest, Bruges, 1782) 210 Hobbes, Thomas 167 Holden, Henry 167 Holland college, Louvain 78 Holman, William 205 Holy Cross at St Agatha-Cuijk school (Netherlands) 59 Holy League (France) 153 Hosius, Cardinal Stanislaus 6 Hospitale S. Birgittae, Rome 6 Howard, Cardinal Philip 201 Howard, Mary Stafford 205 Howling, John 9, 97 Huguenots 59, 64, 77, 150, 156, 161 Huissen Dutch college (Netherlands) 8, 60, 75 Immortalis Dei Filius (papal bull) 179 Ingoli, Francesco 180 Ingolstadt Georgianum seminary 36 Innes, Alexander 134 Innes, David 116 Innes, Louis 130–3, 210 Innes Review 16 Innocent X, Pope 185 Innocent XI, Pope 188 Innocent XII, Pope 187 Irish in Europe Project (2014) vii, 21 Irish colleges Alcalá de Henares 9, 98, 105 Antwerp 7, 21, 96 Bar sur Aube 102 Bordeaux 10, 12, 98, 105 Boulay 102 Collège des Lombards, Paris 10, 19, 102–3 Douai 7–8, 12, 20–1, 105 Lille 7–8, 12, 21, 96, 105

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Lisbon (Dominicans) 12, 97, 105, 211–12 Lisbon (Jesuits) 9 Louvain (St Anthony’s) 8, 11–12, 17, 20, 23, 98, 210 Louvain Irish pastoral college 105 Madrid 9, 98 Nantes 12, 102, 105 Paris 10, 19–20, 22, 99, 102–7, 211 Prague (College of the Immaculate Conception) 11, 14, 23, 105 Rome (Augustinians) 12 Rome (St Isidore’s) 7, 11, 19, 23, 98 Rouen 211 Salamanca 9, 15, 19, 92, 97–9, 101, 105 Santiago de Compostella 9, 98, 105 Seville 9, 98, 105 Toulouse 10, 22, 98 Tournai 7, 21, 96 Wassy (France) 102 Jacobites/Jacobitism 14, 24, 120, 129–36 James II, King 24 James VI, King 6 Jansen (Jansenius), Cornelius 8, 77–9 Jansenists/Jansenism 14, 23, 55, 59–60, 64–5, 73–7, 79–80, 82, 132–3, 210 Janssen, Geert 8, 18, 25 Jari, Michele 188 Jay, Claude 39–40 Jennings, Brendan 17 Jews/Judaism 58, 176, 178 John III, King (Sweden) 5 Johnson, Simon 16 Jones, Edward 205, 207–8 Joseph II, Emperor 14–15, 49 Julius III, Pope 4, 42 Dum sollicita (papal bull, 1552) 4 Kagan, Richard 17 Kaplan, Benjamin 25 Kearney, Charles 106 Kellison, Matthew 19–21, 206–7

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Kelly, James E. 25 Kelly, Malachy 102 Kempis, Thomas  a 184 Kennedy, Francis 203 Kilkenny secondary school (1782) 104 Kingsley, Thomas 203 Knox, Thomas 16, 144 Lainez, Diego 35, 38, 43–6, 50 Lake, Peter 146, 148 Lamspringe Abbey (Benedictines; Hildesheim) 11, 14 Langdale, Marmaduke 199 La Sapienza University (Rome) 186, 188 Laud, Archbishop William 165 Lauretano, Michele 47–8 Leech, Peter 203 Leiden, University of 8, 65, 68–73 States College 69 Leith, Alexander 123, 128 Leith, William Forbes 120 Le Mans college 63 Lennox, earl of 157 Lesley, Bishop John 10 Leslie, Walter 131–2, 134, 136 Leslie, William 131 Lewis, Owen 5 Leyburne, Bishop John 205 Leyburn, George 204 Liège English college 200, 203 Lille Irish college 7–8, 12, 21, 96, 105 Linci, Paolo 188 Lipsius, Justus 69 Lisbon English college (College of Saints Peter and Paul) 9, 13, 166, 198, 201–2, 205–8, 211–12 Lisbon Irish college (Dominicans) 12, 97, 105, 211–12 Lisbon Irish college (Jesuits) 9 Lloyd, William 143, 167–8 Lombard, Archbishop Peter 7, 12 Longolius, Thomas 47 Loomie, Albert 212 Lorraine, University of 71 Louvain English college 207, 211

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Louvain Irish college (St Anthony’s) 8, 11–12, 17, 20, 23, 98, 210 Louvain Irish pastoral college 105 Louvain school 60 Louvain Scots college 7 Louvain seminaries (‘Holland colleges’) 73 Louvain, University of 59–60, 62, 66–7, 72–4, 77–82, 94–5 College of the Holy Spirit 36 Collegium Vaulxianum 77 Loyola, Ignatius of 34–5, 39–45, 48, 50, 180 Ludovisi, Cardinal Ludovico 7 Lunn, David 16 Lutherans/Lutheranism 57–8, 70 Lutton, Edward 202 Maagdenhuis Catholic girls’ orphanage, Amsterdam 64 Maastricht college 82 MacCarthy, Diarmuid 98 McCarthy, Eugene 9 McCarthy, Killian 98 McCloskey, Raymond 16 McCoog, Thomas 9, 18, 115, 164 MacCormack, Andrew 212 Macdonald, Bishop Hugh 133 McEvoy, Robert 106 McInally, Tom 11, 13, 16, 22, 120, 131, 136 Madrid English college 9, 201 Madrid Irish college 9, 98 Madrid Scots college 9, 13, 100, 105, 115, 117, 119, 123, 125–6 Maginn, Patrick 102 Maḫlūf, Archbishop Yūḫanna 178 Maḫlūf, Bishop But. rus ibn 182–3 Manley, John 203, 208–9, 212 Maraldi, Monsignor Marcaurelio 181 Marcellus II, Pope 42 Marks, John 203–4 Maronita, Michele 187–8 Maronite college, Rome viii, 5, 7, 22–3, 37, 47, 174–89, 190

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Marprelate, Martin 146 Mary I, Queen 4 Mary, Queen of Scots 3, 7, 10, 116 Matthews, Archbishop Eugene 8 Mayler, Bishop William 124, 165 Mayler, Fr (Rouen, 1668) 211 Mayler, Henry 124 Mayne, Cuthbert 22 M’Donald, W. 16 Mechelen college 59–60, 74, 79–80 Meere, Jacobus (Jan) de 63 Meindaerts, Petrus Johannes 79 Melfort, Lord 131 Mennonites 58, 63, 70 Mercadier, Fr Honoré 65 Messingham, Thomas 7, 99 Mexican Inquisition 92 Middleton, earl of 132 Miḫa’īl of Ehden (Maronite student, 1679) 182 Miḫa’īl of Miṭuši (Maronite student, 1679) 182 Milan, University of 5 Millet, Benignus 17 Miraeus, Aubertus 59, 79 Mooney, Canice 17 Moray, bishop of (David) 2 Morgan, Thomas 161 Morin, Jean 59 Morone, Cardinal Giovanni 4, 34, 39, 42, 45–6, 48 Morton, earl of 157 Mulryan, Bishop Cornelius 97 Münster college 82 Murdoch, Steve 18, 120–1 Murphy, M. 16 Nacchi, Antonio 188 Nacchi, Stefano 184 Nadal, Jerónimo 40 Naironus, Giovanni 185 Naironus, Matteo 185 Naironus (Nairone; Naironi), Fausto (Mirhiğ ibn Miḫa’īl ibn Maḫlūf al-Bānī) 185–6, 190

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INDEX

Naironus, Nicola 185 Nantes Irish college 12, 102, 105 Neercassel, Johannes (Joan) van 59, 70, 74–7, 80 Nelson, Benedict 210 Nerli, Cardinal Francesco 187 Neville, Anne 207 New Spalding Club 16, 21 Nilis, Jeroen 8 Noordwijk Latin school 63 Norvegus, Laurentius 6 Novara, Tommaso da 184 Nugent, Francis 8 Oates, Titus 168 Oblates of St Ambrose 78 O’Connor, Priscilla 23 O’Connor, Thomas 10, 23–4 O’Hurley, Bishop Dermot 95 Olomouc pontifical seminary 14, 37 Olomouc, University of 6 O’Malley, John W. 34–5 Ó Maol Chonaire, Flaithrí (Florence Conry) 11, 97–8 O’Neill, Hugh 97–8 Orange, Prince William of 65, 68 Oratorians 59–60, 63, 65, 74–5, 78–9, 211 Oratory of Flanders, Louvain 78–9 Orléans, University of 66 O’Sullivan Beare, Domnall Cam 9 Oxford University 4, 11, 198 Padua, University of 66 Paget, Charles 161 Panzani, Gregorio 126–9, 165 Paris Augustinian convent 201, 211 Paris English college 10–11, 124, 205, 209 Paris Irish college 10, 19–20, 22, 99, 102–7, 211 Paris Scots college 10, 13, 24, 115–17, 119, 123, 129–34, 136, 210 Paris, University of 3, 10–11, 66, 81, 95 Parrott, David 121

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Parvum Collegium Theologicum, Louvain 62 Passau college (Germany) 81 Paston, Edward 206 Paul IV, Pope 42, 60, 177 Paul V, Pope 126 Percy, Mary 206 Perkins, Eugenia 210 Perrott (alias Barnesley), John 204 Persons, Robert 7, 9, 19, 142, 144, 146, 150–3, 155–6, 161–3 Peruschi, Giovanni Battista 46 Petre, Edward 208 Petre, Elizabeth 208 Philip, Fr Robert 124, 126–8, 130 Philip II, King 9, 66, 71, 96–7, 158 Philip III, King 98 Pia Casa dei Catecumeni, Rome 176 Pincus, Steve 168 Pius IV, Pope 45 Pius V, Pope 5 Regnans in Excelsis (papal bull, 1570) 5 Plowden, Percy 207 Plunkett, Patrick 106 Poitiers Irish college 102 Pont-à-Mousson Dutch college 81 Pont-à-Mousson Scots college 6–7, 10, 119 Pont-à-Mousson university 82 Pontchartrain, Louis 186 Pontoise Benedictine convent (France) 207 Poor Clares 199–200, 203, 206, 208–11 Pope college, Louvain 8 Pope college, Utrecht 77 Possevino, Antonio 6, 17, 19 Postquam Deo placuit (papal bull, 1573) 46, 48 Prague Irish college (College of the Immaculate Conception) 11, 14, 23, 105 Prague, University of 93 Presbyterians/Presbyterianism 58, 143, 157, 160, 167 Preston, John 208

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Propaganda Fide, Congregation of viii, 8, 59, 66, 68, 73, 80, 82, 98, 104, 174, 177–81, 183–90 Collegio Urbano (Collegium Urbanum), Rome 73, 80, 184, 188 Pulcheria College (Collegium Pulcheriae Mariae Virginis), Louvain 8, 59, 61, 74, 76–7, 79 Quoniam divinae bonitati (papal bull, 1579) 5 Radford, Joseph 203 Raphaël, Pierre 174–5 Ravenna Maronite college 185 Recollects (Franciscans) 59, 72, 211 Recusant History 16 Reformed Church 56–7, 64, 70–1, 82 Regensburg Scots college 119 Reims English college 150 Reims, University of 102 Renaudot, Eusèbe 186 Rhynwyck seminary (nr. Utrecht) 64 Richelieu, Cardinal Armand Jean de 101 Ridder-Symoens, Hilde de 3 Rigby, John 146 Roermond college (Netherlands) 82 Rogers, Thomas 157 Roman Inquisition 93 Rome Dutch college 61 Rome English college 5, 7, 13, 19, 21–2, 37, 47, 118, 123, 142, 199, 203, 207 Rome Greek college 5, 37, 47, 176 Rome Irish college (Augustinians) 12 Rome Irish college (St Isidore’s) 7, 11, 19, 23, 98 Rome Maronite college viii, 5, 7, 22–3, 37, 47, 174–89, 190 Rome Scots college 13, 19, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 126, 128–30 Rome Scots Hospitum (hospice) 6, 117 Rome, University of 95 Rothe, David 7 Rothe (Rothus), Thomas 47 Rouen Irish college 211

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Rouen Poor Clares convent 203, 206, 209–11 Rouffiac, Nathalie Genet 18 Rovenius, Philippus 78, 81 Russell, Bishop Richard 201 Russell, Richard 207 Salamanca Irish college 9, 15, 19, 92, 97–9, 101, 105 Salamanca, University of 95 San Clemente church, Rome (Dominicans) 12 San Giovanni della Ficozza, Rome 176 Santa Maria dell’Anima seminary, Rome 73 Santiago de Compostella Irish college 9, 98, 105 Santoro, Cardinal Giulio Antonio 177 Saumur Protestant Academy (France) 59 Saumur seminary (France) 59 Scalan Scots college 119 Scaliger, Josephus Justus 69, 186 Scandar, Andrea 188 Scered, Nicolaus 47 Schmidt, Peter 17, 38, 40 Schottenklöster (Benedictine monasteries Regensburg, Erfurt, Würzburg) 10–11 Schroeder, Friedrich 41 Scialac, Victor 186 Scots colleges Douai 7, 13, 21, 96, 115, 117–19, 123, 131, 134, 210 Erfurt 119 Grisy-Suines (Paris) 2–3, 6 Louvain 7 Madrid 9, 13, 100, 105, 115, 117, 119, 123, 125–6 Paris 10, 13, 24, 115–17, 119, 123, 129–34, 136, 210 Pont-à-Mousson 6–7, 10, 119 Regensburg 119 Rome 13, 19, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 126, 128–30

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Scalan 119 Tournai 119 Valladolid 119 Würzburg 119 Scott, Geoffrey 16 Scudamore, Viscount 127 Sedgrave (Sedgradius), Nicholas 47 Seminarium Romanum, Rome 45–6 Semple, Col. William 100, 117, 125 Semple, Hugh 116, 125 Sepulchrines (Canonesses Regular of the Holy Sepulchre) 202, 211 Seville English college 9, 13, 118, 124, 142, 201, 203 Seville Irish college 9, 98, 105 Shepperd, John 205, 208–9 Sherlock, Paul 93 Shireburn, Joseph 210 Siena, University of 66 Silisdon, Edward 208 Simon, Richard 186 Sionite, Gabriel (Ğibra’īl al-S. ahyuī) 185–6 Sirleto, Cardinal Guglielmo 177 Slaughter, Edward 206 Smith, Bishop Richard 201 Smith, Bishop James 200, 205 Smith, Frances 207 Smith, Hannah 202 Smith, James 206 Smith, Richard 165, 167 Soanen, Bishop Jean 65, 75 Société des Amis de Port-Royal 65 Society of Jesus (Jesuits) vii, 3–7, 9–11, 13–15, 18, 20–2, 34–50, 59, 66–7, 70–4, 78, 81–2, 91–3, 96–8, 100–2, 105, 115, 117, 126, 128, 131–2, 142–4, 146, 150–1, 153, 155, 157–8, 160, 162–4, 166–8, 175, 177–83, 188–9, 199–204, 206–8, 210–11 Sorbonne, Collège de (Paris) 78, 202 Spitholt, Egbert 62 Stackpoole, John (Johannes Stacpull) 47 Stanley, Sir William 153

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St Anthony’s (Irish college), Louvain 8, 11–12, 17, 20, 23, 98, 210 Stapleton, Thomas 9, 98 States College, Leiden 69 Steenoven, Archbishop Cornelis 60–1, 80 Steinhuber, Cardinal Andreas 16–17, 37–8, 40 St Gregory’s college, Paris 201–2, 205 St Isidore’s (Irish college), Rome 7, 11, 19, 23, 98 St John’s college, Douai 207 St Magloire seminary, Paris 59, 63, 76 St Malo English college 11 St Omer English college 7, 13, 15, 20, 24, 118, 142, 199, 202, 204, 207–8 St Omer Ursuline convent 208 Stone, Laurence 17 St Patrick’s, Maynooth 106–7 Strachan, George 126 St Thomas college, Louvain 202–3 Stuart, Esmé 157 Stubbs, John 157 St Ursula’s convent, Louvain 199 St Willibrord college (Bosch College), Louvain 76 Swaen, Martinus de 79 Swieten, Gerard van 70 Szántós, Stephan 48 Szechi, Dan 132 Tabar, Sarkis 174 Talbot, James 208 Tasburgh, Agnes 207 Taylor, Fr (Rouen, 1668) 211 Taylor, Maurice 16 Third Lateran Council (1179) 35 Thomas of Jerusalem (Maronite student, 1679) 182 Thomson, William 209 Thorold, Jane 207 Toulouse Irish college 10, 22, 98 Tournai Irish college 7, 21, 96 Tournai Scots college 119

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INDEX

Tredway, Letitia 201–2, 209 Trent, Council of (1545–63) 35–6, 38, 44–5, 50, 66, 73, 76, 90, 92–3, 115, 175, 180 Cum adolescentium aetas (decree, 1563) 90 Trentham, Roger 200 Trim, D. J. B. 121 Troy, Archbishop Thomas 104, 106 Truchsess, Cardinal Otto von 42 Ubaldini, Cardinal 180, 185 Underwood, Lucy 21 Unigenitus (papal bull, 1713) 64 Uppsala, University of 14 Urban VIII, Pope 117, 126–8, 179 Immortalis Dei Filius (papal bull, 1627) 179 Utrecht, University of 59, 65, 67, 70 Valladolid English college (St Alban’s) 9, 13, 21, 97, 118, 142, 201 Valladolid Scots college 119 Van Basten Batenburg family 62 Varlet, Bishop Dominique-Marie 60, 64 Veken, Hans van der 58 Verhagen, Jacob 63 Vianen Catholic boarding school (Netherlands) 65 Vianen, François van 75, 77 Vicarie Sancti Nicolai (Winterswijk) 62 Viglius college, Louvain 80 Vilna pontifical seminary 6, 14, 37 Vitelleschi, Mutius 178, 180–1 Vives, Juan Bautista 178 Vladislav IV, King 127 Voetius, Gisbertus 70 Volder, Burchard de 70 Vondel, Joost van den 63 Wadding, Ambrose 93 Wadding, Luke 7, 11, 93 Wadding, Michael 7, 11, 92–3, 98, 190

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231

Wadding, Peter 92 Wadding, Richard 93 Wake, Mary Margaret 207 Waldburg, Cardinal Otto Truchsess von 43, 46 Walker, Claire 202 Walloon English college 13 Wall, William 204 Walsh, William 96 Walsingham, Sir Francis 153–4, 157 Ward, Mary 206 Wassy Irish college (France) 102 Watkinson, Matthias 201, 203 Weilun friary 12 Weston, William 164 Westphalia, Peace of (1648) 56 Whitehead, Maurice 13, 203 White, John (Johannes White) 47 White, Richard 200 White, Thomas (alias Blacklo) 9, 97, 166–8 Whyteford (Whitford), Charles 132, 201 William, Michael 16 Willis, Thomas 211 Winter, Andrew 202 Winzet, Ninian 10 Witham, Catherine 212 Witham, Dorothy 199 Witham, Elizabeth 199 Witham, George 205 Witham, Mary 199 Witham, Robert 199 Wolfe, David 96 Worthington, Anne 199 Worthington, David 18–19, 121 Worthington, Dr Richard 199, 208 Würzburg Scots college 119 Wuytiers, Cornelis-Johannes Barchman 75–6 Wynterhop, Thomas 2–3 Zawadski, Jan 127 Zoesius, Nicolaus 76

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