Suspicious Moderate: The Life and Writings of Francis à Sancta Clara (1598-1680)

by Anne Ashley Davenport, Danielle M. Peters (Editor)

Overview

The historiography of English Catholicism has grown enormously in the last generation, led by scholars such as Peter Lake, Michael Questier, Stefania Tutino, and others. In Suspicious Moderate, Anne Ashley Davenport makes a significant contribution to that literature by presenting a long overdue intellectual biography of the influential English Catholic theologian Francis à Sancta Clara (1598–1680). Born into a Protestant family in Coventry at the end of the sixteenth century, Sancta Clara joined the Franciscan order in 1617. He played key roles in reviving the English Franciscan province and in the efforts that were sponsored by Charles I to reunite the Church of England with Rome. In his voluminous Latin writings, he defended moderate Anglican doctrines, championed the separation of church and state, and called for state protection of freedom of conscience.

Suspicious Moderate offers the first detailed analysis of Sancta Clara's works. In addition to his notorious Deus, natura, gratia (1634), Sancta Clara wrote a comprehensive defense of episcopacy (1640), a monumental treatise on ecumenical councils (1649), and a treatise on natural philosophy and miracles (1662). By carefully examining the context of Sancta Clara's ideas, Davenport argues that he aimed at educating English Roman Catholics into a depoliticized and capacious Catholicism suited to personal moral reasoning in a pluralistic world. In the course of her research, Davenport also discovered that "Philip Scot," the author of the earliest English discussions of Hobbes (a treatise published in 1650), was none other than Sancta Clara. Davenport demonstrates how Sancta Clara joined the effort to fight Hobbes's Erastianism by carefully reflecting on Hobbes's pioneering ideas and by attempting to find common ground with him, no matter how slight.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780268101008
Publisher:	University of Notre Dame Press
Publication date:	05/15/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	684
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Anne Ashley Davenport is a lecturer in the Boston College Honors Program. She is the author of Descartes's Theory of Action and Measure of a Different Greatness: The Intensive Infinite, 1250–1650.

Anne Ashley Davenport is a lecturer in the Boston College Honors Program. She is the author of Descartes's Theory of Action and Measure of a Different Greatness: The Intensive Infinite, 1250–1650.

Danielle M. Peters, S.T.D., is a member of the Secular Institute of the Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary. She serves as president of the Mariological Society of America, and as the moderator of the Schoenstatt Apostolic Movement in Dallas, Texas. She is the author of Ecce Educatrix Tua: The Role of the Blessed Virgin Mary for a Pedagogy of Holiness in the Thought of John Paul II and Father Joseph Kentenich.

Editorial Reviews

"This is the full-length scholarly study of Sancta Clara’s life and writings that early modern historians have needed for so long. Richly contextualized, painstakingly researched, and brimming with fascinating insights, this book offers a comprehensive and convincing portrait of the career and ideas of one of the most intriguing religious figures of the seventeenth century." —Anthony Milton, University of Sheffield

"Anne Davenport has opened a new window onto the intellectual and spiritual history of England in the seventeenth century. Her passionate account of Francis à Sancta Clara’s life and ideas restores religious discourse and controversy—Catholic and not just Protestant or Puritan—to the world that witnessed the emergence of the Scientific Revolution. It is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the mentality of that turbulent period." —Steven P. Marrone, Tufts University

"Christopher Davenport, or Sancta Clara, is a figure who has slipped to the margins of many treatments of English Catholicism. This book does an excellent job in making the case for his recovery. Suspicious Moderate: The Life and Writings of Francis à Sancta Clara (1598–1680) is a significant and worthwhile contribution to the historiographies of English Catholicism, the politics of seventeenth-century England, and early modern philosophy and natural science." —Jeffrey Collins, Queen's University

“In this ambitious and meticulously researched work, Anne Ashley Davenport has reintroduced historians to the life and writings of the English Catholic theologian Francis à Sancta Clara in her intellectual biography. . . . Davenport’s undoubted enthusiasm for the religiointellectual writings of Sancta Clara and his contemporaries makes what could have been dull and tedious theological reading into a vibrant chronicle of a forgotten man and his significant contribution to the zeitgeist of the seventeenth century.” —Sixteenth Century Journal

From the Publisher

"Anne Davenport has opened a new window onto the intellectual and spiritual history of England in the seventeenth century. Her passionate account of Francis à Sancta Clara’s life and ideas restores religious discourse and controversy—Catholic and not just Protestant or Puritan—to the world that witnessed the emergence of the Scientific Revolution. It is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the mentality of that turbulent period."

Steven P. Marrone

"This is the full-length scholarly study of Sancta Clara’s life and writings that early modern historians have needed for so long. Richly contextualized, painstakingly researched, and brimming with fascinating insights, this book offers a comprehensive and convincing portrait of the career and ideas of one of the most intriguing religious figures of the seventeenth century."

Anthony Milton

"Christopher Davenport, or Sancta Clara, is a figure that has slipped to the margins of many treatments of English Catholicism. This book does an excellent job in making the case for his recovery. Suspicious Moderate: The Life and Writings of Francis à Sancta Clara (1598–1680) is a significant and worthwhile contribution to the historiographies of English Catholicism, the politics of seventeenth-century England, and early modern philosophy and natural science." —Jeffrey Collins, Queen's University

Jeffrey Collins