Catholic devotion in Victorian England

by Mary Heimann

This is the first full study of English Catholic spirituality in the modern period. Dr Heimann reassesses Roman Catholic piety as practised in Victorian England, stressing the importance of devotion in shaping the characteristics of the Catholic community. Prayers, devotions, catechisms, confraternities, and missionary work enabled traditional English Catholicism not only to survive, but to emerge as the most resilient Christian community in twentieth-century England. Heimann offers a controversial analysis of the influence of long-established recusant devotions and attitudes in the new context of the reestablishment of Roman Catholicism in England from the mid-nineteenth century. Challenging widely held assumptions that Irish influences, government legislation, or directives from Rome can account for English developments after 1850, Catholic Devotion in Victorian England offers important new insights into religion and culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.