CFP: Popery, Politics and Prayer: British and Irish Catholicism, 11-13 July 2023

Call for Papers, deadline – 23 January 2023

The fourth biennial Early Modern British and Irish Catholicism conference, jointly organized by Durham University and the University of Notre Dame, will concentrate on the relationship between politics and British and Irish Catholicism. 2020 marked the 450th anniversary of the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, through which Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I. From that point on, the questions surrounding British and Irish Catholicism became unescapably political, the line between the temporal and the spiritual even more blurred than previously. This conference will consider the relationships between politics and Catholicism in the widest possible framework, including through political debates and differences between English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh Catholics, as well as the global Church; the politics of religious exile; spirituality and theology as polemic; State consideration of British and Irish Catholics in the political sphere; and Catholics as political players in the non-Catholic imagination. It will consider issues both local, such as the official exclusion of Catholics from aspects of national life, and the international, in particular the experience of British and Irish Catholics on the peripheries of the Catholic Reformation. The timeframe being considered is broad, from c.1530 to 1800.

The conference is interdisciplinary and welcomes papers from researchers in fields including History, Literary Studies, Theology, Philosophy, Musicology and Art History.

We invite proposals for 20-minute communications on any related theme from any field. Panel proposals consisting of three speakers are also encouraged.

Please send proposals (c. 200 words) by email to Liam Temple (liam.p.temple@durham.ac.uk) by 23 January 2023 at the latest.