Narratives of Tradition and Truth

Essays on a wide range of issues in the history of Catholicism in Britain since the Reformation, by many noted names in the field, in memory of Michael Hodgetts.Michael Hodgetts, KSG, was an active and valued member of the Catholic Record Society for several decades. He is most widely known for Secret Hiding Places (1989; 2024) which combined the romance and the horrors of the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics in England and Wales with the technical intricacies of architectural and local history, communicating their fascination to a wide readership that included a new generation of young researchers.This volume brings together contributions in Michael's memory from many of his fellow experts on British Catholic history, ranging in time and space from the Marian bishops and the exile wanderings of the English Jesuit Robert Persons, through questions of local, national and international historiography, biography and hagiography in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, to Cardinal Manning's participation in the First Vatican Council, the oversight of Catholic military chaplains in the First and Second World War, and the mid-twentieth-century artistry and mysticism of Caryll Houselander.It also includes Michael's uncompleted essay reconstructing the missionary journey of Robert Persons through the Welsh Marches in 1580, painstakingly mapping the clandestine Catholicism of the English Midlands after a decade of persecution.