Radical Poverty

Liam Temple is Capuchin Fellow in the History of Catholicism at Durham University, UK

This is a meticulously researched and very readable study of the Capuchin friars. Temple explores the lived experience of the Franciscan calling to priesthood and brotherhood through changing circumstances and in locations as different as Peckham south London, the industrialising villages of north Wales and the hop fields of Kent, carefully contextualising each place and era in broader Catholic and British history. The study makes a particular contribution to the history of Catholicism in Wales but more broadly illuminates how people and places at the social and geographical ‘peripheries’ of Britain were connected into the global Church through this transnational religious order. Written with full access to Capuchin archives, Radical Poverty is a pioneering study in the largely unexplored history of male religious institutes in Britain from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day.

• AcknowledgmentsNames and terminologyList of abbreviationsGlossary of key termsList of illustrationsIntroduction Part I: Establishing a Presence1. Reformation to Revolution, 1525-18502. Pioneers on the Peripheries, 1850-733. Anti-Catholicism on the Missions, 1850-73Part II: A Province in Motion 4. Stabilizing and Instability, 1873 – 89 5. Renewal and Reform, 1890 – 1914 6. The Province at its Prime, 1915 –45 7. The Age of Apostolates, 1946 – 79 8. Itinerancy Renewed, 1980-2022Part III: Missions at Home and Abroad 9. The Hopfields 10. America 11. India ConclusionAppendixSelect BibliographyIndex