“The sense of sight which is very keen”: English history as shown in 1580s Rome

Unwelcome in Elizabeth I’s England, English (and Welsh) Catholics set up colleges on the continent, first at Douai and then at Rome. In Rome the old national pilgrim hostel was converted into a seminary, the Venerable English College, which still exists today, where priests could be trained safely. These colleges were key parts of a European network of scholars who debated and refuted Protestant claims. In the early 1580s, the Rome college church—England’s national church in the city—was embellished with a visual programme that made the arguments visually, precisely because this mode was unavailable to their combatants. While only a small part of the original scheme survives, this lecture will reconstruct the original programme from engravings that ensured the imagery was spread far and wide. What it will show is that Tudor Catholic art and history was a transnational concern.