A Catholic International or Transregional Catholicism? The Printing Press, English Catholics, and their hosts in the early modern Ecclesiastical Province of Cambrai.
Alexander Soetaert and Violet Soen, 'A Catholic International or Transregional Catholicism? The Printing Press, English Catholics, and their hosts in the early modern Ecclesiastical Province of Cambrai”, Catholic Historical Review 106:4 (2020), 551-575
Using Impressa Catholica Cameracensia (ICC), a new database of early modern Catholic books printed in the Ecclesiastical Province of Cambrai, a border zone in the south of the Habsburg Low Countries, this article examines encounters and exchanges between expatriate English Catholics and their francophone hosts in the continental book world. It is argued that religious book production represents an illuminating case for the study of these interactions between Catholics across, along, and beyond borders. From this perspective, the continental production process of English Catholic books rather testifies to the "transregional" character of early modern Catholicism as a whole, rather than to English Catholicism's specific "international" orientation.