Law and Conscience: Catholicism in Early Modern England, 1570-1625 (review)

A burgeoning area of study of the second half of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century for the British Isles has been the re-examination of the historical trope of early modern Protestantism as an automatic response to the abuses and excess of Roman Catholicism. Recent historical enquiry has charted a less clear-cut division between Catholicism and Protestantism, and questioned whether the Reformation can really be understood as a break that signified a Catholic past and heralded a Protestant future. The Reformation staggered across the British Isles, with Scotland being the last nation in 1560 to embrace a different form of Protestantism. Gradually the narrative of polar opposition has been challenged and replaced by more subtle and sophisticated critiques of contemporary discourses concerning power, religion (both Protestantism and Catholicism) and politics. Complex and conflicting polemical debates flourished in the religious upheaval of post-Reformation society. It is the religious history of England from the decade after the Elizabethan Church Settlement until the death of James VI & I that is the focus of Stefania Tutino's study. This (p. 7) 'temporal arc' as Tutino calls it 'allows us to discern and isolate a parenthesis in English religious history that is necessary for grasping the outcomes, uncertainties, and gains of post-Reformation Catholicism.'

Tutino is concerned with the pliability and malleability of the legacy of Marian Catholicism, and the evolving Catholic theological debates that enabled Catholics to cut their spiritual cloth in accordance with their duty of obedience to their sovereign. These debates provided a rationale built by necessity but not one devoid of genuine conscience. The importance of controlling a subject's conscience was not lost on James VI & I who through the Oath of Allegiance in 1606, attempted to strengthen 'the sovereign's authority in the realm of the subjects' conscience' (pp. 223-4). James' reign ended with debates about Catholicism being far from reconciled that resulted in flare-ups during the reign of Charles I. Catholicism was one of the many sparks that ignited the repeated outbreaks of civil war throughout the British Isles during a large part of the seventeenth century.

Tutino's book comprises an introduction, eight chapters, and conclusion, and is driven by its thematic focus. Polemical debates include those within the Society of Jesus, during the First Mission to England in 1580, as well as the consequences of the succession of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England in 1603. After the Elizabethan Church Settlement, the frictions created by James's politico-theological views fundamentally shifted debates in new directions. The wedge between loyal Catholics and treacherous ones was further polarised. For Tutino (p. 1) '[t]his work aims to analyze and interpret the relationship between religion and politics in English Catholic thought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries'. Tutino attempts (p. 4) 'to consider and analyze the way in which the Catholics tried to interpret and resolve the problem of reconciling political loyalty and religious beliefs'. The issue for individual Catholics was twofold: they must recognise their sovereign's right to govern them (setting aside the perplexing issue of their monarch as a heretical Protestant); and also respond to the Catholic Church's authority to regulate their individual conscience. Catholicism between c1570 to 1625 generated divergent views on the relationship between temporal authority and secular power. The evolution of these Catholic theological views in turn forced the Church of England to re-evaluate its own position on some of these theological issues. A small criticism is that Tutino relies upon a discussion of Latin texts, and in doing so, needs to include English translations. I mention this, not because the book lacks any English translations, but because it does not include translations for all of its Latin quotations. This would have been easy to fix, and would have ensured the broadest of readerships.

The success of this books lies in its capacity to focus on the 'theologians and...