But Flint's extensive research in the Vatican archives finds that even the most skillful British campaign would have found it difficult to set up diplomatic relations that, for the most part, the Papal government did not want.".

When the British thought of themselves as a Protestant nation their natural enemy was the pope and they adapted their view of history accordingly. In contrast, Rome's perspective was always considerably wider and its view of Britain was almost invariably positive, especially in comparison to medieval emperors, who made and unmade popes, and post-medieval Frenchmen, who treated popes with contempt. As the twenty-first-century papacy looks ever more firmly beyond Europe, this new history examines political, diplomatic and cultural relations between the popes and Britain from their vague origins, through papal overlordship of England, the Reformation and the process of repairing that breach.

Britain's support for constitutional government in Italy and anxieties about the Irish Catholic Church brought Britain and the Papacy briefly together. From the time of the Reformation Anglo-Vatican relations have typically been seen as a long history of unending antagonism and mutual suspicion, but this has not always been the case. This book sheds light on one of the most curious episodes in early Victorian history when, around the time of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, a rapprochement almost developed between Britain and the papacy, and British politicians and writers referred to the new head of the Catholic Church, Pius IX, as 'the good pope'. Integrating diplomatic, political, ecclesiastical and social history, Saho Matsumoto-Best traces the factors that brought these two traditionally hostile powers together andthe reasons why this rapprochement was doomed to failure. She demonstrates how the desire to support constitutional government in Italy and to curb the activities of the Irish Catholic church led the government of Lord John Russell to build a close relationship with Pius IX, and how failure to understand the Vatican's priorities and anti-papal and anti-Catholic feeling in Britain, particularly in the context of the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in 1850, eventually destroyed this policy. This study is an important and original contribution to the current debate about the nature of mid nineteenth century-Britain and sheds new light on the British role in Italianunification. It will also be of great interest to students of nineteenth-century European international and ecclesiastical history, and of the 1848 revolutions.

The Roman orientation was the keystone of the religious revolution of the Catholic revival. New or renewed congregations, priests close to the people & militant laymen gave a decidedly social & activist turn to the faith. At this crossroad of religion & modernity, the papacy could all the more make its weight felt as the Belgian Constitution granted the clergy a unique liberty in relations with Rome. Over time, the Vatican would exert a powerful impact on the shape of modern politics in Belgium. The special relationship between Belgium & Rome was no one-way traffic. From a somewhat curious ecclesiastical court hopelessly entangled in the old spider web of the Papal States, the papacy became the institution we know today, the leader of a "modern" Catholic opinion. Belgium played a role of major importance in this transformation. The central theme of the book can therefore be defined as a process of mutual integration, if not acculturation, across the Alps.

The third volume of The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism examines the period from the defeat of the Jacobite army at the battle of Culloden in 1746 to the enactment of Catholic emancipation in 1829. The first part of the volume offers a chronological overview tracing the decline of Jacobitism, the easing of penal legislation which targeted Catholics, the complex impact of the French Revolution, the debates about the place of Catholics in the post-Union state, and - following the mass mobilisation of Irish Catholics - the passage of emancipation. The second part of the volume shows that this political history can only be properly understood with reference to the broader transformations that occurred in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The period witnessed the expansion of Catholic infrastructure (pastoral structures, chapel building, elementary education and finances) and changes in Catholic practice, for example in liturgy and devotion. The growing infrastructure and more public profession of Catholicism occurred in a society where anti-Catholicism remained a force, but the volume also addresses the accommodations and interactions with non-Catholics that attended daily life. Crucially, the transformations of this period were international, as well as national. The volume examines the British and Irish convents, colleges, friaries and monasteries on the continent, especially during the events of the 1790s when many institutions closed and successor or new ones emerged at home. The international dimensions of British and Irish Catholicism extended beyond Europe too as the British Empire expanded globally, and attention is given to the involvement of British and Irish Catholics in imperial expansion. This volume addresses the literary, intellectual and cultural expressions of Catholicism in Britain and Ireland. Catholics produced a rich literature in English, Irish, Scots Gaelic and Welsh, although the volume shows the disparities in provision. They also engaged with and participated in the Catholic Enlightenment, particularly as they grappled with the challenges of accommodation to a Protestant constitution. This also had consequences for the public expression of Catholicism and the volume concludes by exploring the shifting expression of belief through music and material culture.

This volume considers the impact of Newman's Essay on Development (1845) on Roman Catholicism of the time immediately after his conversion.