Catholics and the ‘Protestant Nation’ : Religious Politics and Identity in Early Modern England

This book brings together leading historians of Catholicism and other notable historians of early modern English society in order to pull Catholicism back into the mainstream of English historiography, and to ask readers to suspend their assumptions and prejudices about the nature of Catholic history. Catholics and the ‘Protestant nation’ focuses on subjects which contextualise Catholic experiences within the broader framework of English culture, and is for this reason a work of significant importance to our understanding of early modern English society.

By looking at Catholic readings of widely-known texts, Catholic visions of the English nation, Catholic accommodations to the royal supremacy and Catholic campaigns to manipulate public opinion, this book asserts that many of the fundamental issues of English history cannot be adequately understood without taking into account a Catholic perspective, while many of the fundamental issues of Catholic history cannot be understood in isolation from the rest of English society. -- .