Catholic Performance Culture in Early Modern England (follow-up project)

A follow-up from the eponymous project funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, ‘Catholic Performance Culture in Early Modern England’ (CaPer) is an ambitious interdisciplinary project exploring how practices of representation and recreation were vital to shaping and sustaining Catholic minority in early modern Protestant England. It investigates how Catholics used performing arts, sports and ceremonies to create communal bonds, negotiate their place in a hostile society, and advance Catholic Reformation in the period between Elizabeth I’s accession to the throne in 1558 and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. 

In early modern Europe, moderate and seemly recreation was often essential to forging religious communities and to spreading of reformed ideas. Whereas sacraments and worship provided an essential glue for dispersed Catholics in England, theatricals and leisure activities, such as dancing, singing and hunting, were equally vital to their survival, offering occasions for evangelisation, sociability and self-presentation. Systematic investigation of Catholic performance culture allows us to pay greater attention to sources routinely overlooked by scholars, as well as to juxtapose and study a wide variety of seemingly ephemeral practices of a single community in a coherent and sustained way. Relying on a variety of archival and literary sources, CaPer aims to rethink the cultural history of English Catholics, introduce to historiography previously neglected actors and practices, and expand our knowledge of religious coexistence in early modern Europe.

The project is funded by the ʽEuropean Union – NextGenerationEU’ within the framework of the Recovery and Resilience Plan, Investment ʽ(Co)financing projects to enhance the international mobility of Slovenian researchers and research organisations and to promote the international involvement of Slovenian applicants’.

Project funds awarded: 167.790,00 EUR.