Radical Poverty: The Capuchins and Catholicism in Britain, 1850-2022 [Hardcover]

This incisive work offers the first comprehensive analysis of the history of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin in Britain.Drawing on previously closed archives, this book dives into their origins and their presence in Britain as missionaries between the Reformation and the French Revolution. It then explores the establishment of a permanent province from the 1850s onward. Using manuscripts, letters, diaries, logbooks, mission reports, and unpublished accounts, this book explores how the Capuchin archives bring new perspective on a range of important historical moments, including nineteenth century anti-Catholicism, Catholic emancipation and the rebuilding of Catholicism in Britain, both World Wars, the impact of Vatican II, and the decline of the religious orders in Britain in recent decades.Drawing on the previously closed archives of the Capuchins, this book reveals the undiscovered impact of a global order on Catholicism in Britain from the nineteenth century onwards.Liam Templeis Capuchin Fellow in the History of Catholicism at Durham University, UK

This is a meticulously researched and very readable study of the Capuchin friars. Temple explores the lived experience of the Franciscan calling to priesthood and brotherhood through changing circumstances and in locations as different as Peckham south London, the industrialising villages of north Wales and the hop fields of Kent, carefully contextualising each place and era in broader Catholic and British history. The study makes a particular contribution to the history of Catholicism in Wales but more broadly illuminates how people and places at the social and geographical 'peripheries' of Britain were connected into the global Church through this transnational religious order. Written with full access to Capuchin archives,Radical Povertyis a pioneering study in the largely unexplored history of male religious institutes in Britain from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Sulã(