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 marks 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. The timeframe being considered is broad, from c.1530 to 1800.

For more information and for details on submitting a paper to this conference please use the following link.