The Horrors of Catholicism: Religion and Sexuality in Gothic Fiction

Abstract In classic gothic fiction (between 1764 and 1820) a Mediterranean setting invites the expansion of Roman Catholic motifs, and indeed Catholicism itself becomes a standard and flexible trope in gothic fiction. The monastery, the convent, religious life, confessions and confessionals, nuns, monks, and friars are familiar features in gothic novels. “The Horrors of Catholicism” discusses the ways in which gothic writers use these materials to motivate their tales and what doing so means in the context of anti-Catholic eighteenth-century England. I explain how Catholic motifs can be understood in relation to other central gothic obsessions, such as sexual transgression and dysfunctional family life, and I demonstrate how these features aid novelists in exploring what would later be understood as personal sexual identity. In that way, these writers contribute to what we understand as the history of sexuality.

“Decently and order”: Scotland and Protestant pastoral power

Critical Research on Religion ◽

10.1177/2050303216676519 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 79-93 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Alistair Mutch

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Good Deal ◽

Roman Catholic ◽

Pastoral Power ◽

History Of ◽

Foucault’s conceptualization of “pastoral power” is important in the development and application of the notion of “governmentality” or the regulation of mass populations. However, Foucault’s exploration of pastoral power, especially in the form of confessional practice, owes a good deal to his Roman Catholic heritage. Hints in his work, which were never developed, suggest some aspects of Protestant forms of pastoral power. These hints are taken up to explore one Protestant tradition, that of Scottish Presbyterianism, in detail. Based on the history of the church in the eighteenth century, four aspects of Protestant pastoral power are outlined: examination, accountability, ecclesiology, and organizing as a good in its own right.

An ‘Unnatural Alliance’ for Religious Toleration: The Philosophes and the Outlawed Pastors of the ‘Church of the Desert’

Church History ◽

10.2307/3164970 ◽

1973 ◽

Vol 42 (4) ◽

pp. 505-523

Author(s):

John Dunning Woodbridge

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Roman Catholic ◽

Religious Toleration ◽

Life Imprisonment ◽

Southern France ◽

Protestant Church ◽

Religious Services ◽

History Of ◽

Reformed Churches ◽

The struggles and sacrifices of those pastors and laymen who reconstructed the Reformed churches in southern France during the eighteenth century compose one of the intriguing chapters of the history of the “Church of the Desert.” Members of an outlawed Protestant church in a country which was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic by religion, these pastors and their flocks ran great risks in holding open-air religious services in the secluded and rugged countryside of the Midi—or the “Desert”—in southern France. Attendance at their services was punishable by perpetual service in the king's galleys for the men and life imprisonment for the women; the Reformed pastors who led these meetings did so on pain of death. Not a few of these Calvinists suffered extreme physical and mental anguish because of their obstinate refusal to abandon the faith of their fathers.

Genres for the Prosecution: Pornography and the Gothic

PMLA ◽

10.2307/463463 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 114 (5) ◽

pp. 1043-1054 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Michael Gamer

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Eighteenth Century ◽

Legal History ◽

Reception History ◽

Charles Robert Maturin ◽

Gothic Fiction ◽

Matthew Lewis ◽

Charlotte Dacre ◽

Recent accounts of genre have asserted that all texts participate in multiple genres and that genre works as a kind of contract between writers and readers. In the legal history of eighteenth-century British prosecutions for obscene libel and the reception history of gothic fiction at the turn of the nineteenth century, however, the model of genre as contract breaks down. At the end of the eighteenth century, several texts we now call gothic faced threatened prosecution under existing obscene libel laws. The reception histories of the fiction of Matthew Lewis, Charlotte Dacre, and Charles Robert Maturin demonstrate that public denouncements and threatened prosecution forced gothic texts, even as they theoretically participated in at least one genre, to belong to a legal category (obscenity) for which their writers never intended them.

The Romance of the Forest

10.1093/owc/9780199539222.001.0001 ◽

2009 ◽

Author(s):

Ann Radcliffe

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Travel Literature ◽

Roman Catholic ◽

Aesthetic Theory ◽

The Novel ◽

Intellectual Life ◽

Philosophical Debate ◽

The Past ◽

Gothic Novels ◽

The Mysteries Of Udolpho

The Romance of the Forest (1791) heralded an enormous surge in the popularity of Gothic novels, in a decade that included Ann Radcliffe’s later works, The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian. Set in Roman Catholic Europe of violent passions and extreme oppression, the novel follows the fate of its heroine Adeline, who is mysteriously placed under the protection of a family fleeing Paris for debt. They take refuge in a ruined abbey in south-eastern France, where sinister relics of the past - a skeleton, a manuscript, and a rusty dagger - are discovered in concealed rooms. Adeline finds herself at the mercy of the abbey’s proprietor, a libidinous Marquis whose attentions finally force her to contemplate escape to distant regions. Rich in allusions to aesthetic theory and to travel literature, The Romance of the Forest is also concerned with current philosophical debate and examines systems of thought central to the intellectual life of late eighteenth-century Europe.

The Adventures of Miss Sophia Berkley: Piracy, Print Culture, and Irish Gothic Fiction

Irish University Review ◽

10.3366/iur.2019.0403 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 49 (2) ◽

pp. 229-244

Author(s):

Christina Morin

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Print Culture ◽

Gothic Literature ◽

Literary Production ◽

Gothic Novel ◽

Gothic Fiction ◽

Publication History ◽

Late Eighteenth Century ◽

Late Eighteenth ◽

Published in Dublin by the prominent Catholic printing firm of James Hoey, The Adventures of Miss Sophia Berkley (1760) has been identified in recent years as an earlier Irish gothic fiction than Horace Walpole's putatively pioneering gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764). The discovery that Sophia Berkley is, in fact, a re-print of an earlier London publication, The History of Amanda (1758), casts significant doubt on the novel's contribution to the development of Irish gothic literature. This article argues that attention to the particulars of the novel's publication history as well as its later misidentification paints a revealing picture of popular publishing in Dublin in the latter half of the eighteenth century. It further contends that Sophia Berkley's identification as early Irish gothic – although mistaken – has proven instrumental in scholarly re-evaluations of late-eighteenth century Irish gothic literary production.

Catholic Revival in the Eighteenth Century

Studies in Church History Subsidia ◽

10.1017/s0143045900001356 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 7 ◽

pp. 99-108

Author(s):

Sheridan Gilley

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Catholic Church ◽

Roman Catholic ◽

The United States ◽

Roman Catholic Church ◽

American Scholar ◽

Counter Reformation ◽

The Reformation ◽

History Of ◽

In his famous essay on von Ranke‘s history of the Popes, Thomas Babington Macaulay remarked that the ‘ignorant enthusiast whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy… the Catholic Church makes a champion’. ‘Place Ignatius Loyola at Oxford. He is certain to become the head of a formidable secession. Place John Wesley at Rome. He is certain to be the first General of a new Society devoted to the interests and honour of the Church.’ Macaulay’s general argument that Roman Catholicism ‘unites in herself all the strength of establishment, and all the strength of dissent’, depends for its force on his comparison of the Catholic Regular Orders with the popular preachers of Nonconformity. As the son of a leader of the Clapham Sect, his witness in the matter has its interest for scholars of the Evangelical Revival, and has been echoed by Ronald Knox in his parallel between Wesley and the seventeenth-century Jesuit, Paolo Segneri, who walked barefoot 800 miles a year to preach missions in the dioceses of northern Italy. More recently the comparison has been drawn again by Owen Chadwick, with the judgement that the ‘heirs of the Counter-Reformation sometimes astound by likeness of behaviour to that found in the heirs of the Reformation’, and Chadwick’s volume on the eighteenth-century Popes contains some fascinating material on the resemblances between the religion of the peoples of England and of Italy. An historian of Spanish Catholicism has compared the Moravians and the mission preachers of eighteenth-century Spain, not least in their rejection of modern commercialism, while an American scholar has traced some of the parallels between nineteenth-century Protestant and Catholic revivalism in the United States. Not that Wesleyan historians have been attracted to study the great movements of revival religion in the Catholic countries in Wesley’s lifetime—a neglect which is hardly surprising. One point of origin of the Evangelical revival was among refugees from Roman Catholic persecution, and for all the popular confusion, encouraged by men like Bishop Lavington, between Methodists and Papists, and for all Wesley’s belief in religious toleration and tenderness for certain Catholic saints and devotional classics, he was deeply hostile to the Roman Catholic Church, as David Hempton has recently shown. Yet there are many points of likeness as well as difference between the enthusiasts of Protestant and Catholic Europe, and both these need to be declared if Catholics and Protestants are ever to attempt to write an ecumenical history.

The Reacculturation of Missionary Families: A Dynamic Theory

Journal of Psychology and Theology ◽

10.1177/009164719302100108 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 66-73 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Edward M. Stringham

Keyword(s):

Emotional Support ◽

Family Life ◽

Family Of Origin ◽

Dynamic Theory ◽

Life Cycle Stage ◽

Mutual Support ◽

Dysfunctional Family ◽

Home Culture ◽

History Of ◽

First Time

Case descriptions and a grounded theory of missionary reacculturation were generated incorporating the perspectives of individual members and the dynamics of three missionary family systems. Repatriated subjects reported grieving over loss of reinforcing events associated with their lives overseas and altered frames of cultural reference. Adult subjects reported greater awareness of management stresses that had accentuated problems related to vocational adjustment and family life cycle stage. Reentry of families was associated with decline in family cohesiveness, greater dependence of wives on husbands’ emotional support, and interpersonal tensions resulting from childrens’ readoptation to the home culture. This study positions for the first time in the literature on missionary reacculturation four theoretical conclusions which require empirical validation: (a) a history of dysfunctional family-of-origin relationships is predictive of reentry transition difficulties for women, (b) concurrent transitions in other life dimensions after reentry are complicated by stresses associated with completing the intercultural cycle, (c) favorable sojourn outcomes facilitate adaptive grieving processes, and (d) couples whose marriages develop symmetrical power distributions following repatriation benefit to a greater extent from mutual support than couples whose relationships assume more asymmetrical distributions.

‘Damn these printers … By heaven, I'll cut Hoey's throat’: The History of Mr. Charles Fitzgerald and Miss Sarah Stapleton (1770), a Catholic Novel in Eighteenth-Century Ireland

Irish University Review ◽

10.3366/iur.2018.0353 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 48 (2) ◽

pp. 250-264

Author(s):

Ian Campbell Ross

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

New Species ◽

Great Britain ◽

Middle Class ◽

English Language ◽

Roman Catholic ◽

Prose Fiction ◽

Marriage Plot ◽

The Third ◽

The History of Mr Charles Fitzgerald and Miss Sarah Stapleton (Dublin, 1770) is a satirical marriage-plot novel, published by the Roman Catholic bookseller James Hoey Junior. The essay argues that the anonymous author was himself a Roman Catholic, whose work mischievously interrogates the place of English-language prose fiction in Ireland during the third-quarter of the eighteenth century. By so doing, the fiction illuminates the issue, so far neglected by Irish book historians, of how the growing middle-class Roman Catholic readership might have read the increasingly popular ‘new species of writing’, as produced by novelists in Great Britain and Ireland. The essay concludes by reviewing the question of the authorship of The History and offering a new attribution to the Catholic physician and poet, Dr Dominick Kelly, of Ballyglass, Co. Roscommon.

Friedrich Von Hügel's Spirituality of Empowerment

Horizons ◽

10.1017/s0360966900028516 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 21 (2) ◽

pp. 270-287 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ellen M. Leonard

Keyword(s):

Catholic Church ◽

Religious Life ◽

Roman Catholic ◽

Roman Catholic Church ◽

Critical Study ◽

Difficult Time ◽

Creative Tension ◽

Spiritual Director ◽

AbstractAs a Catholic lay person Friedrich von Hügel developed a spirituality which sought to integrate scholarship, including the critical study of religion, with a full religious life, one which holds the institutional, the intellectual, and the mystical elements in a creative tension. He did this during and after the period known as “Roman Catholic Modernism,” a difficult time in the history of the Roman Catholic Church as it responded to perceived threats with severe restrictions. This essay explores how von Hiigel's spirituality was one of empowerment by considering him as advocate and networker, writer, and spiritual director. He not only developed a lay approach to spirituality but a spirituality of scholarship which can still inspire contemporary Christians.

Writing the History of the English Bible in the Early Eighteenth Century

Studies in Church History ◽

10.1017/s0424208400015874 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 38 ◽

pp. 268-278 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Scott Mandelbrote

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Church Of England ◽

Roman Catholic ◽

Early Years ◽

Christian Belief ◽

Rule Of Faith ◽

The Bible ◽

The Reformation ◽

History Of ◽

The letter of Scripture suffering various Interpretations, it is plain that Error may pretend to Scripture; the antient Fathers being likewise dead, and not able to vindicate themselves, their writings may be wrested, and Error may make use of them to back itself; Reason too being bypassed by Interest, Education, Passion, Society, &c…. Tradition only rests secure.The 1680s were a difficult decade for the English Bible, just as they were for so many of the other institutions of the English Protestant establishment. Roman Catholic critics of the Church of England, emboldened by the patronage of James II and his court, engaged in controversy over the rule of faith and the identity of the true Church, much as they had done in the early years of the Reformation or in the 1630s. Nonconformists and freethinkers deployed arguments drawn from Catholic scholarship, in particular from the work of the French Oratorian Richard Simon, and joined in ridicule of the Bible as a sure and sufficient foundation for Christian belief.