The ‘Oxfordizing’ of the universities in Douai and Rheims
One could certainly say that without the ‘Oxfordizing’ of the universities in Douai and Rheims, there might not have been higher education for England's Catholic youth and the Jesuits might not have stepped in to administer seminaries to accommodate the rise in priestly vocations among English Catholic men -- not to mention a spike in English scholarly priests choosing to be Jesuits. Without Douay and Rheims, there might not have been a regrouping of English Catholics. These English exiles prayed together and worked to implement various daring strategies to abort the total protestantizing of England’s religious heritage and to counter the zealous and violent erasure of everything Catholic from England.
A.O. Meyer described these priests as “worthy representatives of the spunk of the English national character.” They had to adapt to a strange way of life; in public, the priest wore a disguise; in hiding spaces he was priest. His life was spent “laid low in the attic room which contained a bed, a table and an altar, and was told to walk along the beams so that the floor would not creak and to be careful about opening windows and showing lights; he was not allowed to go about the house, might only slip out after dark, and must not come back until the servants were at supper or in bed. In an otherwise bustling household he might spend weeks or months alone, seeing only those who came to mass, the maid who brought his dinner, and with luck after meals one of the children, or their mother looking in to apologise for not having been able to pay him a visit sooner.”
Jesuits: 'Men of New Light'
Naturally, men who worked under such conditions were perceived as major threats. An elite corps formed under military standards who vowed obedience to the Pope, these former Oxford Catholics had a vested interest in preventing the total eclipsing of England’s Catholic heritage. Jesuits were an entirely different breed of priests from the type English Catholics were used to: “men of new light equipped in every continental art, armed against every frailty, bringing a new kind of intellect, new knowledge, new holiness.”
Even before the first Jesuit missionaries were sent to England, secular priests from Douai were already being deployed. They were ordered not to engage in disputation but to simply focus on the pastoral care of English Catholics. Their movements were limited to covert activity, under the radar to avoid apprehension and execution. Regulations for Jesuits were different in that they were expected to be “responsible for adjustments” and to adapt to time, persons and places. This suggests that the Jesuits were expected to execute pastoral agility.
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