Archpriest Controversy

The Archpriest Controversy was the debate which followed the appointment of an archpriest by Pope Clement VIII to oversee the efforts of the Roman Catholic Church's missionary priests in England at the end of the sixteenth century.

The discussion became an acrimonious church intrigue, active approximately from 1598 to 1603. The English government saw advantage in its continuation and supported the appellants or opponents of the archpriest; the controversy is also widely known as the Appellant Controversy. Sit produced a rich pamphlet literature. Interpretations of its underlying substance have differed: one question to the fore was the allegiance of recusants to the English crown, but it is now argued that internal church matters were central. Other factors were the role of the Jesuits in the English mission and tensions between Catholic clerics and laymen.

At the time, under Queen Elizabeth I's Protestant religious settlement, the Roman Catholic faith suffered legal disabilities. Foreign powers, most notably Spain and France, supported the training of English Catholic clergy on the European mainland. These priests came principally from two backgrounds: Jesuits and seminary priests. The seminary priests were trained at the English College, Douai in Northern France, an establishment set up by Cardinal Allen and associated to the University of Douai.

The root of the controversy stemmed from two different views of the state of the Roman Catholic Church in post-Reformation England. The Jesuits saw England as a missionary field, almost a clean slate, while many of the secular clergy saw their church's survival as a continuation of the institutions of the past. There were also suspicions in England that Jesuit missionaries supported Spanish foreign-policy aims, endangering English Catholics through their political entanglements

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