The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1598–1606. "Lest Our Lamp be Entirely Extinguished." by Thomas M. McCoog (review)

Thomas McCoog, S.J., has achieved two historical feats in his books on Elizabethan Jesuits. First, he has provided the most thoroughly researched, even-handed account of early modern English Jesuit activities to date. Second, and just as importantly, his work hearkens back to (unfortunately) bygone days of history-writing that was meticulous, exhaustive, and confident in its ability to describe events as they were, or better put, as the sources suggest they were. His "trilogy" on Elizabethan Catholicism is a testament to McCoog's exemplary scholarship steeped in a rich mix of secondary sources and an unmatched intimacy with Jesuit primary sources, especially those at the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu. The third installment of his magnum opus under review here only confirms that his work should be essential reading for anyone interested in early modern (English) Catholicism, Jesuits, and Elizabethan political culture.

Here McCoog starts where he left off in a previous volume, in 1598, when Philip II of Spain died, and describes Jesuit activities in Ireland, England, and Scotland through the third year of James I's reign in 1606. Eight years are covered in over five hundred pages of lucid prose and leisurely summary of (mostly) Jesuit letters, memorials, and printed polemic. The book focuses on two large themes. First, it tells of the many and varied tensions within the English Catholic community centering on arguments for and against Jesuit efforts in England. These tensions were not new to the period in question, but they reached a fever pitch during the so-called Appellant Controversy, a moment of polemical viciousness between secular priests and Jesuits that spread in print, manuscript, rumor, and face-to-face quarrels throughout England, Flanders, and Rome among several different English Catholic factions. Second, the book studies in great detail the politics of succession leading up to James I's accession to the English throne and the ways in which a range of wary Catholics dealt with that reality after years of wrangling over whom to support when Elizabeth died. A prominent thread used to tie these two themes comes in the form of the indefatigable and perennially controversial figure of Robert Parsons, whose various historical personae as inveterate politico and man of solid faith inspired awe and disdain in equal measure from different quarters.

McCoog's contribution is essential amid a historiography that until recently has been confessionally motivated. A thorough reading of the sources has revealed just how lacking black and white portraits (or caricatures) of the past have been. Just as scholarship on Jesuits in general has moved away from a simplified corporate or even military model of the Society, McCoog has shown that British members of the order often disagreed among themselves and that their responses to British questions were varied. In describing this, the author takes issue with one of the great historians of English Catholicism: John Bossy. While Bossy ultimately emphasized the stagnation of "Elizabethan Catholicism," McCoog emphasizes dynamism. Throughout, McCoog ably shows that instead, the sources on Jesuits reveals "flexibility and adaptability more than inertia" (p. 542). There is no greater example of this than Parsons who, though knee deep in political contrivances of all sorts, was nevertheless quite malleable and far from the monochromatic schemer of legend.

Each subsequent volume in McCoog's (mostly) Elizabethan trilogy has been bigger than the last. What each has gained in rich description and scholarly rigor has, however, been at the expense of other elements. McCoog, from the first volume of this series, has admitted that there would be an English focus to his work, as demanded by the sources and the importance of the English story for a broader British one. Here, however, sections...