Lecture: ‘A Catholic International, or Transregional Catholicism? Print, Exiles and Hosts in and beyond Cambrai (1559-1659)’

By professor Violet Soen

University of St. Andrews Reformation Studies Institute Seminar, 18 February 2016 (https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/reformation/seminars.html)

Reformation Studies have long argued for a ‘Calvinist International’ branching out through exiles under persecution, yet over the last years Alexandra Walsham has pointed out similar processes emanating from Catholic English exiles settling on the continent. If we have come to acknowledge the importance of English exiles arriving in Douai and Saint Omer, buttressing a ‘Catholic International’ in the early modern era, we still know virtually nothing about their interactions with the host society in the ecclesiastical province of Cambrai, as well as about their exchanges with exiles from France or more northern parts of the Low Countries. Through the lens of print culture in Cambrai, an online database developed in Leuven provides now the necessary evidence to unravel the transregional dynamics in this border region. Hence, this lecture will discern the impact of the ‘Catholic International’ on a local, regional and global level, and it will show that the melting pot of Cambrai spurred a transregional Catholicism.

Seminars take place at 5.15 in the New Seminar Room, St John’s House, 69 South Street, University of St. Andrews