The Protestant Reception of Catholic Devotional Literature in England to 1700

Discussion of the dispersal of Catholic literature in post-Reformation England tends to focus on the tenacity of recusants and ‘church papists’ in perpetuating allegiance to Rome. Relatively little attention has been paid to the extent to which Catholic texts, either in their original form or modified for a Protestant readership, formed a part of the mainstream culture of the reformed Church. This paper attempts to demonstrate the significance of Catholic literature in the Protestant context by showing the range of Protestant adaptations, the extent of Protestant readership and the influences of Catholic literature on Protestant writers.