6 - Networked: The Convents and the World of Catholic Exile

Summary

The book’s sixth chapter focuses on the convents’ role within the wider English and Catholic Mission. It considers the convents’ contact with other exile institutions from the western peripheries of Catholic Europe. This chapter asks whether the exile convents and colleges were concentrated only on their own survival or were male and female expressions of the Catholic Reformation bound by national interest? It is argued that the English convents were fully part of the English Catholic endeavour, the nuns overcoming traditional gender boundaries to act as committed partners in the exile enterprise; they were not isolated institutions defined by insularity. The final part of this chapter examines whether Catholic identity trumped national interests. It asks whether archipelagic Catholic identities were formed in the Catholic diaspora through the relationship of the English convents with the continental Irish and Scottish colleges. It is evident that national allegiances won out. In this, the English convents were not behaving any differently to the rest of Catholic Europe: this national approach to mission and Catholic renewal was part of Catholic Reformation methodology.