Another Recusant Scholar

From  I News:

They were monks who disavowed worldly possessions and are best known for their monastic scholarship and abstinence. 

But far from living a cloistered existence, sixteenth and seventeenth century Benedictines refused abstinence, died in duels and went off to war, a study has found. 

The Monks in Motion project led by Dr James Kelly of Durham University’s Department of Theology and Religion has also found that they spread illegal Catholic doctrine. 

It has brought together records of English and Welsh Benedictine monks exiled in Europe in a first-of-its-kind searchable database to uncover some of their remarkable histories.

Read the rest there.

Dr. James Kelly of Durham University:

I am St Cuthbert's Society Research Fellow in Early Modern British and Irish Catholicism and have been a member of Durham University's Department of Theology and Religion and its Centre for Catholic Studies since 2012. I am also Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded 'Monks in Motion' project, which is investigating the experience of the English and Welsh Benedictines in exile, c.1553-1800.

After completing my PhD at King's College, London, I was a member of the AHRC-funded ‘Who Were the Nuns?’ project and Project Manager of its AHRC-funded follow-on initiative, both at Queen Mary, University of London.

My interests are in post-Reformation Catholic history in Europe, with a particular focus on Britain and Ireland. The experience of the British and Irish Catholic communities at home and in exile is the main focus of my research.

I lead the History of Catholicism research strand within the University's Centre for Catholic Studies. I am also an associate and member of the steering committee of the Queen Mary Centre for Religion and Literature in English, as well as serving as secretary of the Catholic Record Society.

Here's more on that "Who Were the Nuns?" project. It's clear that the recusant Catholic community, clerical, religious, and lay, offers many avenues for research. A review of the table of contents for Dr. Kelly's co-edited book, Early Modern English Catholicism, demonstrates that:

Part I: Identity

1. Situating Early Modern English Catholicism by Brad S. Gregory

2. Creating an English Catholic Identity: Relics, Martyrs and English Women Religious in Counter-Reformation Europe by James E. Kelly

3. A British Catholic Community? Ethnicity, Identity and Recusant Politics, 1660–1750 by Gabriel Glickman

4. ‘Libera nos Domine?’ The Vicars Apostolic and the Suppressed/Restored English Province of the Society of Jesus by Thomas M. McCoog, SJ

Part II: Memory

5. ‘Attend to Me’: Julian of Norwich, Margaret Gascoigne and Textual Circulation among the Cambrai Benedictines by Jaime Goodrich

6. English Catholics and English Heretics: The Lollards and Anti-Heresy Writing in Early Modern England by Susan Royal

7. Joseph Reeve, SJ, the Park at Ugbrooke and the Cliffords of Chudleigh by Matthew J. Martin

Part III: Counter-Reformation

8. Underground Networks, Prisons and the Circulation of Counter-Reformation Books in Elizabethan England by Earle Havens and Elizabeth Patton

9. The Gospel, Liturgy and Controversy in the 1590s: Thomas Stapleton’s Promptuaria by William J. Sheils

10. Praying the Counter-Reformation by  Eamon Duffy

11. John Austin’s Devotions: Voicing Lyric, Voicing Prayer by Susannah B. Monta

Afterword by John Bossy

English recusant historians are discovering a world and people that were ignored for centuries. They are finding out how Catholics survived and endured through oppression and persecution, in exile and in their underground communities.