The Widow's Mite and Other Strategies: Funding the Catholic ReformationThe Prothero Lecture

Abstract

It is perhaps more usual for the giver of the Prothero lecture to choose a subject which has been a part of his intellectual baggage for a long time. In contrast, what I am about to offer falls more honesdy into the category of work in progress. I am presendy at a very preliminary stage in a project that may both take me a long time and lead me up many alleyways. I am concerned to understand how the Catholic Reform of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was funded. In the term ‘Cadiolic Reform’ are included charitable and educative initiatives, the funding of missions, the conversion of die heathen, the expansion of religious orders, die provision of books and images (biblia pauperurm) to improve and elevate the minds of the simple into mysteries they could not otherwise conceptualise, and die erection and furnishing of new churches. I would argue that taken as a package this funding process, about which I will be presently more specific, represents one of the largest private money-raising processes ever undertaken. It has, perhaps, a particular interest today when attempts are being made to reinvigorate die spirit of private philanthropy and to dismande or cause to wither away public commitment to assistance or subsidy.