Irish Voices From The Spanish Inquisition

This book explores the activities of early modern Irish migrants in Spain, particularly their rather surprising association with the Spanish Inquisition. Pushed from home by political, economic and religious instability, and attracted to Spain by the wealth and opportunities of its burgeoning economy and empire, the incoming Irish fell prey to the Spanish Inquisition. For the inquisitors, the Irish, as vassals of Elizabeth I, were initially viewed as a heretical threat and suffered prosecution for Protestant heresy. However, for most Irish migrants, their dual status as English vassals and loyal Catholics permitted them to adapt quickly to provide brokerage and intermediary services to the Spanish state, mediating informally between it and Protestant jurisdictions, especially England. The Irish were particularly successful in forging an association with the Inquisition to convert incoming Protestant soldiers, merchants and operatives for useful service in Catholic Spain. As both victims and agents of the Inquisition, the Irish emerge as a versatile and complex migrant group. Their activities complicate our view of early modern migration and raise questions about the role of migrant groups and their foreign networks in the core historical narratives of Ireland, Spain and England, and in the history of their connections. Irish Voices from the Spanish Inquisition throws new light on how the Inquisition worked, not only as an organ of doctrinal police, but also in its unexpected role as a cross-creedal instrument of conversion and assimilation.

Forming Catholic Communities assesses the histories of Irish, English and Scots colleges established abroad in the early-modern period for Catholic students. The contributions provide a co-ordinated series of case studies which reflect the most up-to-date research on the colleges.

Spain and the Irish Mission, 1609-1707 examines Spanish confessional policy in 17th-century Ireland. Cristina Bravo Lozano provides an innovative perspective on Spanish-Irish relations during a crucial period for Early Modern European history. Key historical actors and events are brought to the fore in her account of the missionary networks created around the Irish Catholic exile in the Iberian Peninsula. She presents a comprehensive study of this form of royal patronage, the changes and challenges Irish Catholicism had to face after the peace of London (1604) and the role that Irish missionaries played in preserving its place within the framework of Anglo-Spanish relations.

This book explores the endeavors and activities of one of the most prominent early modern Irishmen in exile, the Franciscan Luke Wadding. Born in Ireland, educated in the Iberian Peninsula, Wadding arrived in Rome in 1618, where he would die in 1657. In the "Eternal City," the Franciscan emerged as an outstanding theologian, a learned scholar, a diplomat, and a college founder. This innovative collection of chapters brings together a group of international scholars who provide a ground-breaking analysis of the many cultural, political, and religious facets of Wadding’s life. They illustrate the challenges and changes faced by an Irishman who emerged as one of the most outstanding global figures of the Catholic Reformation. The volume will attract scholars of the early modern period, early modern Catholicism, and Irish emigration.

This book builds upon research on the role of Catholicism in creating and strengthening a global Irish identity, complementing existing scholarship by adding a ‘Roman perspective’. It assesses the direct agency of the Holy See, its role in the Irish collective imagination, and the extent and limitations of Irish influence over the Holy See’s policies and decisions. Revealing the centrality of the Holy See in the development of a series of missionary connections across the Atlantic world and Rome, the chapters in this collection consider the formation, causes and consequences of these networks both in Ireland and abroad. The book offers a long durée perspective, covering both the early modern and modern periods, to show how Irish Catholicism expanded across continental Europe and over the Atlantic across three centuries. It also offers new insights into the history of Irish migration, exploring the position of the Irish Catholic clergy in Atlantic communities of Irish migrants.

This book reconstructs the efforts that were made to establish a missionary network between the two Irish Colleges of Rome, Ireland, and the West Indies during the seventeenth century. It analyses the process which brought the Irish clergy to establish two dedicated colleges in the epicenter of early modern Catholicism and to develop a series of missionary initiatives in the English islands of the West Indies. During a period of great political change in Ireland, continental Europe and the Atlantic region, the book traces how and through which key figures and institutions this clerical channel was established, while at the same time identifying the main obstacles to its development.

In March 1757 – early in the Seven Years’ War – a British privateer intercepted an Irish ship, the Two Sisters of Dublin, as it returned home from Bordeaux with a cargo of wine and French luxury goods. Amongst the cargo seized were 125 letters from members of the Irish expatriate community, which were to lay undisturbed in the British archives for the next 250 years. Re-discovered in 2011 by Dr. Truxes, this cache of (mostly unopened) letters provides a colorful, intimate, and revealing glimpse into the lives of ordinary people caught up in momentous events. Taking this correspondence (published by the British Academy in 2013) as a shared starting point, the ten essays in this volume are not so much "about" the Bordeaux–Dublin letters themselves, but rather reflect upon themes, perspectives, and questions embedded within the mail of ordinary men, women, and children cut off from home by war. The volume’s introduction situates these essays within a broad Atlantic context, allowing the succeeding chapters to explore a range of topics at the cutting edge of early-modern British and Irish historical scholarship, including women in the early-modern world, the consequences of war across all classes in society, the eighteenth-century penal laws and their impact, and Irish expatriate communities on the European continent. Leavening these broad themes with the personal snapshots of life provided by the Bordeaux-Dublin letters, this edited collection enlarges, complicates, and challenges our understanding of the mid-eighteenth-century Atlantic world.

Describes Henry Piers's journey in 1595 to Rome through the Low Countries, Germany, and Italy.

Jesuit Intellectual and Physical Exchange between England and Mainland Europe, c. 1580–1789: ‘The World is our House’? gathers an interdisciplinary group of scholars to explore the Jesuit English Mission’s wider impact within the Society and early modern European Catholicism.

In the Early Modern period, the religious refugee became a constant presence in the European landscape, a presence which was felt, in the wake of processes of globalization, on other continents as well. During the religious wars, which raged in Europe at the time of the Reformation, and as a result of the persecution of religious minorities, hundreds of thousands of men and women were forced to go into exile and to restore their lives in new settings. In this collection of articles, an international group of historians focus on several of the significant groups of minorities who were driven into exile from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The contributions here discuss a broad range of topics, including the ways in which these communities of belief retained their identity in foreign climes, the religious meaning they accorded to the experience of exile, and the connection between ethnic attachment and religious belief, among others.

The role of migration for Christianity as a world religion during the last two centuries has drawn considerable attention from scholars in different fields. The main issue this book seeks to address is the question whether and to what extent migration and diaspora formation should be considered as elements of a new historiography of global Christianity, including the reflection upon earlier epochs. By focusing on migration and diaspora, the emerging map of Christianity will include the dimension of movement and interaction between actors in different regions, providing a more comprehensive ‘map of agency’ of individuals and groups previously regarded as passive. Furthermore, local histories will become parts of a broader picture and historiography might correlate both local and transregional perspectives in a balanced manner. Behind this approach lies the desire to broaden the perspective of Ecclesiastical History – and religious history in general – in a more systematic manner by questioning the traditional criteria of selection. This might help us to recover previously lost actors and forgotten dynamics.

Hydrocriticism and Colonialism in Latin America is organized around the critical and theoretical “turn” known as hydro-criticism, an innovative approach to the study of the ways in which bodies of water (oceans, seas, rivers, archipelagos, lakes, etc.) impact the study of history, culture, and society. This volume proposes a hydro-critical approach to issues related to the colonial period. The analysed texts demonstrate not only the presence of water and oceanic trajectories as metaphorical devices, but the inherent implication of navigation, ports, islandic territories, drainage systems, floodings and the like in configuration of collective imaginaries, from colonial times to the present. This book encompasses studies of the decisive role water played in the world view from/about the “New World” since the discovery, both for the monarchy and the church, and the impact of oceanic journeys for the advancement of colonization and slavery. In chapters that combine historical, linguistic, literary and ethnographic approaches, this volume constitutes an attempt to expand the scope and methodology of colonial studies. At the same time, the continuity of maritime perspectives reaches the analysis of contemporary literature, thus demonstrating the importance of this critical paradigm for the study of Caribbean cultures. In this respect, studies particularly illuminate the connection between popular beliefs and oceanic dimensions, as well as on issues of gender and ethnicity.

This book repositions early modern Catholic abroad colleges in their interconnected regional, national and transnational contexts. From the sixteenth century, Irish, English and Scots Catholics founded more than fifty colleges in France, Flanders, Spain, Portugal, the Papal States and the Habsburg Empire. At the same time, 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. Traditionally, these institutions were treated within limiting denominational and national contexts. This collection, at once building on and transcending inherited historiographies, explores the colleges' institutional interconnectivity and their interlocking roles as instruments of regional communities, dynastic interests and international Catholicism.

This book is the first encompassing history of diasporas in Europe between 1500 and 1800. Huguenots, Sephardim, British Catholics, Mennonites, Moriscos, Moravian Brethren, Quakers, Ashkenazim... what do these populations who roamed Europe in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries have in common? Despite an extensive historiography of diasporas, publications have tended to focus on the history of a single diaspora. Each of these groups was part of a community whose connections crossed political and cultural as well as religious borders. Each built dynamic networks through which information, people, and goods circulated. United by a memory of persecution, by an attachment to a homeland—be it real or dreamed—and by economic ties, those groups were nevertheless very diverse. As minorities, they maintained complex relationships with authorities, local inhabitants, and other diasporic populations. This book investigates the tensions they experienced. Between unity and heterogeneity, between mobility and locality, between marginalisation and assimilation, it attempts to reconcile global- and micro-historical approaches. The authors provide a comparative view as well as elaborate case studies for scholars, students, and the public who are interested in learning about how the social sciences and history contribute to our understanding of integration, migrations, and religious coexistence.

Liquid Borders provides a timely and critical analysis of the large-scale migration of people across borders, which has sent shockwaves through the global world order in recent years. In this book, internationally recognized scholars and activists from a variety of fields analyze key issues related to diasporic movements, displacements, exiles, "illegal" migrants, border crossings, deportations, maritime ventures, and the militarization of borders from political, economic, and cultural perspectives. Ambitious in scope, with cases stretching from the Mediterranean to Australia, the US/Mexico border, Venezuela, and deterritorialized sectors in Colombia and Central America, the various contributions are unified around the notion of freedom of movement, and the recognition of the need to think differently about ideas of citizenship and sovereignty around the world. Liquid Borders will be of interest to policy makers, and to researchers across the humanities, sociology, area studies, politics, international relations, geography, and of course migration and border studies.

Facing persecution in early modern England, some Catholics chose exile over conformity. Some even cast their lot with foreign monarchs rather than wait for their own rulers to have a change of heart. This book studies the relationship forged by English exiles and Philip II of Spain. It shows how these expatriates, known as the “Spanish Elizabethans,” used the most powerful tools at their disposal—paper, pens, and presses—to incite war against England during the “messianic” phase of Philip’s reign, from the years leading up to the Grand Armada until the king’s death in 1598. Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez looks at English Catholic propaganda within its international and transnational contexts. He examines a range of long-neglected polemical texts, demonstrating their prominence during an important moment of early modern politico-religious strife and exploring the transnational dynamic of early modern polemics and the flexible rhetorical approaches required by exile. He concludes that while these exiles may have lived on the margins, their books were central to early modern Spanish politics and are key to understanding the broader narrative of the Counter-Reformation. Deeply researched and highly original, Radicals in Exile makes an important contribution to the study of religious exile in early modern Europe. It will be welcomed by historians of early modern Iberian and English politics and religion as well as scholars of book history.

Monty Python’s Flying Circus was one of the most important and influential cultural phenomena of the 1970s. The British program was followed by albums, stage appearances, and several films, including Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian, and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. In all, the comic troupe drew on a variety of cultural references that prominently figured in their sketches, and they tackled weighty matters that nonetheless amused their audiences. In Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition:Cultural Contexts in Monty Python, Tomasz Dobrogoszcz presents essays that explore the various touchstones in the television show and subsequent films. These essays look at a variety of themes prompted by the comic geniuses: Death The depiction of women Shakespearean influences British and American cultural representations Reactions from foreign viewers This volume offers a distinguished discussion of Monty Python’s oeuvre, exhibiting highly varied approaches from a number of perspectives, including gender studies, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies. Featuring a foreword by Python alum Terry Jones, Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition will appeal to anyone interested in cultural history and media studies, as well as the general fans of Monty Python who want to know more about the impact of this groundbreaking group.