Writing to one of his brother monks in September 1790, Augustine Kellett, a senior figure at St Edmund’s, Paris, referred, rather despairingly, to the English Benedictine monasteries in exile as ‘our expiring congregation’. Kellett's comments were undoubtedly framed by the rapidly worsening political situation that he then was living through and by the increasing incursions made by the revolutionary government on religious communities in France. However, whilst then current events were especially worrying, his despondency may also have been shaped by the much longer evolution that monasticism underwent in the eighteenth century in the shadow of the Enlightenment. To some a lamentable malaise that worked against the unity and long-established traditions of monastic life, whilst to others a modernisation and engagement with changing ways of philosophical and scientific knowledge, monasticism's engagement with the Enlightenment had nonetheless long-lasting consequences. Changes were, of course, not limited to the houses of the English monks, but their experiences were part of a much wider phenomena that had been replicated in male monasteries the length and breadth of Catholic Europe.

From a purely numerical perspective, the English Benedictines underwent a period of undeniable contraction in the eighteenth century. There were 293 professions spread amongst the four houses for the years 1700–1800, which represented a significant drop from the 512 in the previous century.4 By the time revolution in France arrived at the doors of their houses in 1789, it has been suggested that they were all experiencing a serious decline in new entrants that was putting their future existence in doubt. One commentator has suggested that this downturn amounted to a ‘sharp reduction’, which resulted in a ‘corresponding nosedive of morale’ amongst the houses. Some monks certainly did fall victim to the seductions of revolutionary politics and elements of Enlightenment thought put an unenviable strain on religious life, while others succumbed to more conventional carnal and intoxicant temptations.

Yet whilst the Congregation was faced with considerable challenges, both from internal and external forces, it responded actively in a number of ways which attempted to ensure its future existence.

The last two decades have seen a total shift in the study of early modern Catholicism. These changes are underlined on a wider scale by the launch of the Catholicisms, c. 1450–c. 1800 series of which this collection is the first volume. Moreover, the archival riches of Church bodies, especially religious orders, have stimulated multiple research projects based on Catholic sources written in a non-confessional manner. These upheavals in the field are particularly evident in scholarly approaches to British and Irish Catholicism, as a growing number of researchers have recognised the importance of the subject both to national and global history. This burgeoning interest is indicated by the renaming of the journal Recusant History as British Catholic History, and the launch of the biennial Early Modern British and Irish Catholicism conference jointly organised by Durham University and the University of Notre Dame. A sign of the subject's coming of age is that, at the time of writing, work is ongoing on the five volumes that will result in The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism.

Rather than embark on an in-depth study of all the publications that have contributed to this surge, the editors wish to instead use this Introduction to make a historiographical intervention in how the field has rapidly developed. This collection seeks to reorientate the recent direction of scholarship on early modern Catholicism, and especially in relation to Britain and Ireland, by focusing on the activities of the conventual and monastic religious orders. Current research trajectories have resulted in a historiographical imbalance, which has led to an over-emphasis being placed on the role of the Society of Jesus in the development of British and Irish Catholicism following the Protestant Reformation. In reality, the stable communities of conventual religious in mainland Europe acted as important centres of religious and secular activity. This volume explores the ways in which these communities, both male and female, engaged with the seismic religious and philosophical developments of the early modern period, such as the Catholic Reformation and the Enlightenment in mainland Europe, as well as important political developments at ‘home’, exploring the connections between centres and peripheries. It seeks to recapture the roles played by conventuals and religious, and recover their place in a historiography that is in danger of overlooking them.