Being Catholic in post-Reformation England - Life-writing, memory, polemics and piety

This book advances a view of the post-Reformation with godly life-writing at its heart. By writing the Lives of persons of exemplary godliness, both Catholics and Protestants hoped to refute the accusations of corruption and error lodged against them by the confessional other, while putting forward their own versions of just what it was to be Catholic or Protestant in the post-Reformation period. In this way they could realise both devotional and polemical agendas; presenting their co-religionists with striking examples of sanctity, whilst also doing down their enemies amongst their co-religionists and on the other side of the confessional divide. As a study of life-writing amongst English Catholics, this book contributes to the history of English Catholicism and to the connections between memory, life-writing and the formation and defence of various religious identities in the post-Reformation. -- .