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

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 Using manuscripts, letters, diaries, logbooks, mission reports, and unpublished accounts, this book explores how the Capuchin archives bring new perspective on a range of important historical moments, including nineteenth century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.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Names and terminology List of abbreviations Glossary of key terms List of illustrations Introduction Part I: Establishing a Presence 1. Reformation to Revolution, 1525-1850 2. Pioneers on the Peripheries, 1850-73 3. Anti-Catholicism on the Missions, 1850-73 Part II: A Province in Motion 4. Stabilizing and Instability, 1873 – 89 5. Renewal and Reform, 1890 – 1914 6. The Province at its Prime, 1915 –45 7. The Age of Apostolates, 1946 – 79 8. Itinerancy Renewed, 1980-2022 Part III: Missions at Home and Abroad 9. The Hopfields 10. America 11. India Conclusion Appendix Select Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Liam Temple is Capuchin Fellow in the History of Catholicism at Durham University, UK

Review :
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 Poverty is a pioneering study in the largely unexplored history of male religious institutes in Britain from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Temple has recovered from scattered and diverse archival sources the history of one of 19th and 20th century Britain's most dynamic and influential groups of Catholic men. This is completely new and also completely accessible to those interested - not just in Catholicism - but in the social and political ferment that made the vocational voluntarism of groups like the Capuchins so essential to the shaping of modern British society. Previously forgotten in accounts of the period, Temple has unearthed the story of the Capuchins in Britain through extensive research in a wide range of archives. What he has discovered is not only an influential movement within the revival of Catholicism in Britain, but one deeply committed to the social activism that underpinned society more generally. Placing the Capuchins' activities in a domestic and international context, Temple's groundbreaking work restores them to the wider story. Through the lens of the history of the Capuchins, Catholicism in modern Britain is seen with fresh eyes. This volume recovers the history of Catholicism in the peripheries of Britain, paying noteworthy attention to Wales, which was previously a lacuna in Catholic studies. It is a national history, embedded in the local but also engaging with the global relationship with the Holy See and beyond. Its richness lies in rigorous research, based on the wealth of archival evidence. This is an exciting new study that fills a critical gap in the historical literature of male religious life.