Catholic Performance Culture in Early Modern England

Project Information

CaPer

Grant agreement ID: 101028507

DOI

10.3030/101028507

Project closed

EC signature date 22 March 2021

Start date 1 March 2022

End date 31 August 2024

Funded under

EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 235 490,40

EU contribution

€ 235 490,40

235 490,40

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CaPer (Catholic Performance Culture in Early Modern England)

Reporting period: 2023-09-01 to 2024-08-31

Catholic Performance Culture in Early Modern England (CaPer) explored how practices of representation and recreation were vital to shaping and sustaining Catholic minority in early modern Protestant England. It comprehensively investigates how Catholics used performing arts, sports, and ceremonies to create communal bonds, negotiate their place in a hostile society, and advance Catholic Reformation in the period between Elizabeth I’s accession to the throne in 1558 and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Whereas sacraments and worship provided an essential glue for dispersed Catholics in England, theatricals and leisure activities, such as dancing, singing, and hunting, were equally vital to their survival, offering occasions for evangelisation, sociability, and self-presentation. Systematic investigation of Catholic performance culture allows us to pay greater attention to sources routinely overlooked by scholars, as well as to juxtapose and study a wide variety of seemingly ephemeral practices of a single community in a coherent and sustained way. This work is essential if we are to thoroughly understand how religious minorities in Britain and across early modern Europe coped with persecution and social exclusion during the long and global Reformation.

The project has five main objectives:
1. To provide a survey and analysis of all major forms and records of Catholic performance in England between 1558 and 1660.
2. To uncover and understand the role of women in Catholic performance culture, particularly in their capacity as patrons, performers, teachers, and record keepers.
3. To gauge the impact of continental Catholic colleges on performing arts and devotional practices among Catholics in England, considering in particular the role of missionary priests as reformers and conduits of new styles and fashions.
4. To lead the way in systematically advancing our understanding of British Catholic culture, introducing new methodologies and transforming scholarly debates on performance cultures of religious minorities across early modern Europe.
5. To offer a better understanding of how diverse religious communities coexisted in the early modern period and enquire how this knowledge might inform solutions aimed at reducing inequalities and social exclusion in contemporary Europe.

Relying on a variety of archival and literary sources, CaPer reconsidered cultural history of English Catholics, introduce to historiography previously neglected actors and practices, and expanded our knowledge of religious coexistence in early modern Europe. While committed to academic excellence, the project also addresses pressing issues of public concern. In Europe today, religious minorities are again facing mounting hostilities and state restrictions. Drawing on historical knowledge, this project strived to shape public opinion, offering a meaningful historical perspective on contemporary issues of religious intolerance and social exclusion. CaPer looked to the past to help addressing Europe’s challenges of the future.

CaPer project focused heavily on data collection, first at the REED head office in Toronto, and, during secondment, at the Venerable English College and other archives in Rome. The project also focused on professional development and intersectoral transfer of knowledge (workshops with seminarians at the Venerable English College). From September 2023 to February 2024, most of the work was spent on writing a substantial 23,000-word chapter for a monumental volume The English Community of Rome, 1500–1829 (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming in 2025) edited by Matteo Binasco. The chapter entitled ‘Performance Culture at the English College, Rome, c. 1579–1660’ is a major reassessment of our understanding of performance culture at the English College in Rome and is already making a vital impact on the scholarly debate. This yet unpublished work has recently been read and cited in the forthcoming work by Dr Alana Mailes, Professor Maurice Whitehead, Professor Alison Shell, and Dr Anne Marie Dragosits. Apart from disseminating the project results through academic publications and conferences, the project also communicated with the wider public. A particularly important event was a major workshop held at Shakespeare's Globe called ‘Staging Mass in Early Modern England’. The workshop brought together experts, Catholic clergy, professional actors, and the general public to consider how English early modern drama understood and responded to Catholic devotion, and how liturgy mattered in Catholic drama of the period. The workshop was well-attended and a great success, offering the opportunity to spread the awareness and results of the project, but also to help us understand how Robert Owen’s The History of Purgatory, a unique Catholic drama of the period, might have worked on stage and impacted its audience.

With its unique approach, straddling cultural history, literary studies, and anthropology, CaPer considerably advanced our understanding of post-Reformation Catholic culture in England, and opened new avenues of inquiry. Through work pursued by CaPer, a clearer picture of how the English Catholic community sustained itself, both at home and in mainline Europe, is beginning to emerge. Main project results consist of academic publications, some forthcoming, some yet to be submitted for publication (these are discussed in the technical report). Aside from understanding the precise role of performance practices within the English Catholic community and beyond, CaPer was also rethinking religious coexistence in early modern period and the usefulness of the concept of ‘religious minority’. These issues are yet to be thoroughly addressed during the planned international conference ‘Performance and Minority Cultures in Early Modern World’, which aims to explore the role of performance in a wider context of early modern religious coexistence. The conference will bring together an interdisciplinary team of scholars to explore the uses of performance in shaping early modern religious minorities, and to rethink the usefulness of the term ‘minority’ when talking about early modern religious communities.

Main conclusions of the project:
- Performance played an important part in self-definition of the Catholic community in England and in the negotiations of its relationship with the Protestant society.
- Catholic household drama in early modern England was not only entertaining and didactic, it was also a vehicle for Catholic protest and free speech. It provided an important context for persecuted Catholics to come together and articulate their beliefs and grievances.
- Catholic colleges on the continent, such as the English College in Rome, were not only institutions educating priests for the mission, but also places of inculturation and cultural mediation. They had a much wider impact on British culture as previously thought.

Staging Mass in Early Modern Drama workshop, Shakespeare's Globe, 12 June 2024

The Heritage team after Solemn Vespers held at the VEC on the eve of the coronation, 3 May 2023

Dr Gašper Jakovac at work in the Schwarzenbach Reading Room, 16 March 2023

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CaPer (Catholic Performance Culture in Early Modern England)

Download Download the content of the page