Katolisen reformaation marttyyrit protestanttisessa Englannissa: Jesuiittamission aktivoituminen ja julkinen keskustelu vainosta 1570-luvulta 1620-luvulle

The last decades of the sixteenth century witnessed the growing hold of the
Catholic Reformation on the hitherto Catholic regions of Britain. In Elizabethan and Jacobean England, the presence of Counter-Reformation priests led
to an open clash with the government. One way the Tudor and Stuart regimes
sought to challenge the Catholic mission was by executing seminary priests,
Jesuits, and laymen as traitors. These executions, however, were a stimulus for
a long-lasting public debate. This article surveys the ways in which the contemporaries debated the persecution of Catholics in pamphlets and treatises
issued between the 1570s and the 1610s. The governmental attempts to diminish the influence of the English mission was habitually challenged by a number of Catholic commentators. Whereas these writers sacralized the victims of
the scaffold as martyrs, the hired pens of the government defended the harsh
measures as a legitimate response. A close examination of these texts reveals
a diverse set of strategies to revitalize the old religion, as well as to create a
publicly acceptable account of the government’s conduct. By integrating the
Catholic missionary literature with the governmental textual responses, this
article seeks to contribute to a fuller understanding of the persecutions of
Catholics in the English context.