This is the slide show for the latest class in the 'Romancing the Gothic' series - 'Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?: Gothic Faith and Monstrous Religion'.

1. Who will rid me of this
troublesome priest?
Gothic Faith and
Monstrous Religion
@RomGothSam
#romancingthegothic

2. Monstrous Clergy of the Early Gothic

3. Father Hubert
T. J. Horsley Curties -Ethelwina, Or The House of Fitz-Auburne
• Wheedles his way into the
heroine’s house with a sob story
• Can be bribed to anything
• Betrays her into a forced
marriage with the iniquitous
Leopold!
• Conspires in kidnapping, forced
marriage, seduction and murder
in the pay of Leopold

4. Monstrous Clergy of the Early Gothic

5. Father Schedoni
Ann Radcliffe – The Italian, Or, The Confessional of the Black
Penitents
• Arranges the death of his brother
• Rapes and forcibly marries his sister-in-
law
• Attempts to kill her
• In league with the Marchesa de Vivaldi to
break up Ellena and Vivaldi
• Uses his confederates to trick Vivaldi with
fake ghost monks
• Kidnaps Ellena
• Attempts to kill her
• Sends Vivaldi to the Inquisition
• Kills his confederate
• Laughs maniacally at his death

6. Monstrous Clergy of the Early Gothic

7. Madre Vittoria Bracciano
W. H. Ireland – The Abbess
• Uses Father Ubaldo to bring young
men to her for sexual adventures
• Drugs and rapes Marcello
• Maligns her love rival and has her
confined by her father in a Gothic
castle
• Rules her convent with a rod of
iron
• Has her love rival and Marcello
confined to the Inquisition
• Enjoys/presides over torture

8. Monstrous Clergy of the Early Gothic

9. Ambrosio
Matthew Lewis – The monk
• Refuses aid to a young nun
• Unhealthy obsession with his Virgin
Mary painting
• Sexual congress with
Rosario/Mathilda
• Gets tired of Mathilda
• Deals with Satan for a magic
creeper myrtle
• Kills his mother
• Kidnaps and rapes his sister
• Kills his sister
• Signs his soul over to the devil

10. Monstrous Clergy of the Early Gothic
Honourable
Mention

11. Rosario/Mathilda
Matthew Lewis – The Monk
Actual Demon

12. Monstrous Clergy of the Early Gothic

13. Father Jerome
The Libertines
• Opens with planning a murder
• Abandoned his wife and daughter
• Tries to seduce his daughter
• Kidnaps various women
• Rapes various women
• Imprisons various women
• Kills various women
• Teams up with Alexo’s uncle to disinherit him
• Disguises himself as a Jew and runs a bandit ring
• Precipitates the suicide of Father Francis…
• Uses the Inquisition as his own personal vengeance machine
• Forces his confederates to kill themselves
• Becomes a field preacher
• Forces his followers to recant the Catholic Church
• Dies a heretic in flames

14. Pornographic Anti-Clericalism
• Owen Lewis - The Unmasking of all
Popish monks, friers and Jesuits -
1628
• (Jean Barrin) - Venus in the Cloister
- 1683
• Antonio Gavin - The Frauds of the
Romish Monks - 1691
• Antonio Gavin – A Master Key to
Popery – 1726
• (Jean-Charles Gervaise de
Latouche) – History of Dom Bougre
– The Porter of Chartreux - 1746

15. Justine, Or the Misfortunes of Virtue
• Marquis de Sade – Justine –
1787
• Libertine Novel
• The sentimental novel gone
wrong
• Monstrous monks
• A Gothic novel?
• Interconnections with the Gothic

16. A Sign of the Times?
Give him no Tutor — throw him to a punk,
Rather than trust his morals to a Monk —
Monks we all know — We, who have liv'd at home,
From fair report, and Travellers, who roam,
More feelingly — nor trust him to the gown,
'Tis oft a covering in this vile town
For base designs; Ourselves have liv'd to see
More than one Parson in the Pillory.
…
Loud ‘gainst all other crimes is silent here,
And thinks himself absolve’d, in the pretence
Of Decency, which meant for the defence
Of real Virtue, and to raise her price,
Becomes an Agent for the cause of Vice.’
Charles Churchill – The Times – 1764
• Dissatisfaction with the Anglican Church
• Evangelical Revival
• 1731 – Isaac Watts – A Humble Attempt towards the Revival
of Practical Religion
• the hypocrisy of divines, both Anglican and Dissenting, who did
not practise the imitation of Christ
• Sinecures, nepotism, non-residence, rigid parochial
structures…
• ‘Catholic body in the Gothic is often the shadow of …
Protestantism’ (Robert Miles)

17. Anti-Catholic Rhetoric and
The Catholic ‘Threat’• Resistance to the expansion of the legal
rights of Catholics
• 1780 Gordon Riots
• Catholic Church as a ‘persecuting Church’
• Catholic Church as ‘anti-Christ’ or ‘Whore
of Bablyon’
• Catholicism as a political entity – Jacobite
rebellions, Gunpowder Plot, ‘Popish Plot’
• Memorialisation in the public
consciousness
• 1793 Aliens Act
• Charles Maturin - Five Sermons on the
Errors of the Roman Catholic Church -
1826

18. The Dangers of the Confessional
‘Through the confessional,
priests had access to the
inner thoughts and desires of
their parishioners, giving the
clergy the power to control
females in ways that were
viewed as dangerous to the
control that women should be
under from their fathers and
husbands’. (Hoeveler)

19. The Confessional –
What’s the Worst that Could Happen?
Ann Radcliffe – The Italian – 1796
Schedoni and the Marquesa de Vivaldi
The worst that could happen?
Conspiracy to kidnap and murder
Family breakdown
Charles Maturin – Melmoth The Wanderer –
1820
Family divided
Uses threat of damnation to terrorise a
mother into forsaking her son
Forcing a man into a monastery and
torturing him
Murder of younger son

20. Persecutor persecuted

21. Persecutor Persecuted in The Italian
• The Confessional and Penitential Theology as frame
• The problem of Catholic Penitential Theology (as conceived by 18th/19th century Protestantism)
• Maturin, in his Five sermons, attacks the sacrament of penance, which he associates with the confessional and
priestly absolution of sin. This ‘monstrous doctrine’, he argues, ‘notoriously substitutes the phrase “Do
Penance!” for the ‘Repent Ye!’ of Acts 3:19.
• ‘The doctrine of penance replaces the internal revolution and rejection of sin understood by ‘repentance’
with the idea of an external penance or ‘price’.’
• Absolution sought through penance: Frequent rigorous penance ‘the consequences of some
hideous crime gnawing upon an awakened conscience’.
• Guilt without repentance. He dies with a ‘demoniacal sound of exultation’ after murdering his
former accomplice.
• His penitential practice is, therefore, not only revealed as fruitless but, in accordance with
Maturin’s claims, a ‘deadly delusion’ that bars the way to salvation by replacing an awareness of
the need for repentance with a system of barter disassociated from any internal revolution.
Schedoni is both oppressor and victim within the Catholic system, winning temporal power but
separated by doctrine, rather than simply by his own iniquity, from salvation.

22. A False Harbour in the Storm
Get thee to a Nunnery… …then run back out again
Ann Radcliffe – A Sicilian Romance –
1790
Ann Radcliffe – The Italian – 1796
(San Stefano)
Anon. – The Libertines - 1798
W. H. Ireland – The Abbess – 1799

23. A False Harbour in the Storm
What’s the Problem?
• Vow of celibacy as unnatural and
vitiating
• Cloistral separation from a secular life
as a cowardly retreat from the world
productive of only ‘negative virtue’
• Legalistic practices as the fount of
hypocrisy
• Connected to Church’s attempt to
usurp riches and power
From the Horse’s Mouth
• They ‘have spread a beautiful illusion
over the sanctified retirement of a
nun, that almost hid from her view
the selfishness of its security’
(Udolpho - Emily)
• I have been shut in a cloister from the
view of these beautiful appearances,
which were designed to enchant all
eyes, and awaken all hearts. How can
the poor nuns and friars feel the full
fervour of devotion, if they never see
the sun rise, or set? (Udolpho -
Blanche)

24. The Horrors of the Inquisition
Top 5 Most Horrifying Inquisitions
5. St. Leon – William Godwin
4. The Italian – Ann Radcliffe
3. Valperga – Mary Shelley
2. The Libertines – Anon.
1. The Abbess – William H. Ireland

25. How to write an Inquisition scene
• Create an appropriate atmosphere by describing (at
length) the shadowed, winding halls and squalid
conditions of the small cells
• Have your prisoner questioned by a tribunal (bonus
points for including his persecutor on the panel)
• No allegation should be alleged and the prisoner must
be assumed guilty
• Have your inquisitors threaten the prisoner with being
‘put to the question’ but usually you will want to
simply send him away to stew
• Depict a miserable rogue, a spy of the inquisition,
appearing in his cell and attempting to coax his secret
from him

26. How to write an Inquisition scene
• To increase the psychological terror you may
choose to echo the Inquisitorial technique of
creating a false demonic show for the prisoner
• Depict the second questioning of the prisoner.
There are two variations going forward: Dark and
Light
• Dark variant – torture your protagonist
• Light variant – depict the appearance of a key
witness who can counter accuse your persecutor
• Choose the method by which your protagonist
exits the Inquisition: escape, victory or … death!

27. What’s so bad about the Inquisition?
William Godwin - St Leon – 1799
Declaiming that the Inquisition offers only a ‘mockery of a trial’, St Leon critiques:
1) the anonymity of the accusation
2) the refusal to state a charge clearly
3) manipulative and deceptive questioning techniques
4) the baseness of agents attempting to ensure confession through feigned
sympathy
5) the barbarity and inefficacy of the mortification of the flesh to impact the
beliefs of the victim.
6) According to Hoeveler, these criticisms of the Inquisition offer a condemnation
of specifically Catholic ‘legal, religious and political injustices’, which implicitly
contrasted the ‘British legal system with this earlier tyrannical, corrupt and
ecclesiastical one’.

28. Break Time
Time to put me to the question!

29. The Problem with the Anti-Catholicism argument
Claims
• The Gordon Riots demonstrate the
popular anti-Catholic feeling of the period
• The influx of immigrants in the French
Revolution increased public rejection of
Catholicism
• As in the period of the 7 years war, a fear
of French invasion was connected to a
fear of Catholic invasion
• Anglicans sought to provide a justification
of the connection between the Catholic
and Anglican Churches. A ‘double
movement’ of ‘critique and
appropriation’ (Milbank)
Counter-claims
• Catholic Emancipation Acts – 1778, 1791,
1829
• The influx of immigrants and persecution
of the Catholic Church arguably aided
public perception
• Fear of French invasion was connected to
a fear of Jacobin principles and radicalism
linked to atheism and Dissenting churches
• There were several different stances
within the Anglican Church based
specifically on different attitudes to
toleration

30. The Context for Tolerance
Catholic Oppression and Emancipation
• 1778, 1791 and 1829
• 1828 – Removal of the Test and
Corporation Acts (Catholics)
Dissenting Oppression and Emancipation
• Expansion of political toleration set back by
fears of the Unitarians and radical
Dissenters
• The 1790s saw the rise of ecumenical
movements, such as the London
Missionary Society, which was composed of
Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Calvinist
Methodists and Evangelical Anglicans
• 1812 – Repeal of Five Mile Act and
Conventicles Act
• 1813 – Repeal of Blasphemy Act
• 1828 Removal of the Test and Corporation
Acts (Socinians and Quakers)

31. The Gothic’s depiction of the Catholic
It is NEVER only about
Catholicism

32. The Gothic’s Depiction of the Catholic
‘Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
both Dissenters and Catholics were targeted at various
times for particular persecution. There is a shared
history of oppression and of increased toleration that
makes it impossible to separate Catholic Emancipation,
and the representation of the Catholic, from a wider
discourse of toleration more frequently found to be
critical of an Anglican confessional state than
supporting it.’

33. The Gothic and Toleration
Political Toleration
Theo-political Toleration
Theological Tolerance

34. Toleration and the Gothic
Charles Lucas – The Castle of Saint Donats –
1798
‘Though I was brought up in the Roman
Catholic faith, since I came to the years of
mature judgment I have made profession of
none other but the Christian. I abhor all
separating names of sectaries and
distinction; I am neither of Paul, or Apollos
or of Cephas, but Christ. Luther or Calvin,
Wesley or Priestley, Papist, Protestant, or
Dissenter are nothing to me!’

35. Toleration and the Gothic
Irene Bostrom – ‘The Novel and Catholic Emancipation’ – 1963
How to spot a Pro-Toleration text
The characters ‘will be balanced quite obviously’
The individual and the Institution are differentiated
San Stefano The Italian La Pieta

36. The Ruined Abbey
The specific theo-political context of Anglo-Irish Anglican/Catholic
rapprochement in late 18th/early 19th century Ireland
Regina Marie Roche - The Children of the Abbey - 1796
A ‘long low building’ which is ‘encompassed by ruins’ of a
formerly wealthy abbey
• Sacred Awe
• Current use
• Diminished power

37. The Gothic and Toleration
Paul Canuel – Religion, Toleration and British Writing – 2002
How to spot a Pro-Toleration text – Part 2
The repressive measures of the Inquisition and oppressive monastic spaces of the Gothic
represent a suspicion towards and rejection of a persecuting ‘confessional state’
William Godwin – St Leon – 1799
The Inquisition as a case in point
• ‘Why had Providence thought proper to generate
an alliance between church and state, and to place
the powers and authority of human society in the
hands of the adherents of the Christian faith?’

38. Be Tolerant!
Matthew Lewis – Venoni – 1806
A classic tale of murderous monks
and cloistral imprisonment…
• Coelestino vs. Michael
• Monastic monstrosity vs.
Toleration discourse

39. Superstition as Catholic-coded
Superstition Enthusiasm
Bishop George Lavington’s three volume The Enthusiasm of the Methodists and Papists compared (1749).

40. Superstition and Enthusiasm
William Hogarth
Enthusiasm Delineated
1795

41. Superstition/Enthusiasm
The Libertines
• Father Jerome leaves the Catholic Church and studies ‘the religious
principles of Luther’
• He begins a field mission, which ‘gained a few illiterate followers’
• His manipulative methods of religious control remain the same. He
continues to exert unchecked control when he ‘commanded’ his
‘illiterate followers’ to sign a ‘recantation of their Catholic beliefs’.
• Burnt as a heretic.

42. What about everyone else?
Disclaimer: This is not my principle field of expertise
Jewish Emancipation, Anti-Semitism and
the Gothic
1858 – Jewish Emancipation
Stock Jewish Figures
• The hidden ‘converso’
• The Wandering Jew
• Sympathy and Scorn
Muslim and Identity and the Early Gothic
Robert Southey – Thalaba the Destroyer –
1801
The Protestantised Muslim
William Beckford – Vathek – 1786
• Exoticisation
• Transgression
• Orientalism
• (Nebulously Religious Orthodoxy as
contrary position)

43. Break Time - Confess your questions

44. Gothic Faith and Monstrous Religion
Is Gothic Faith always monstrous?
Are all Gothic texts atheist texts?
Are all Gothic texts ‘heretic texts’?

45. Monstrous Providence
Horace Walpole
The Castle of Otranto – 1764
• Monstrous excess
• Escapes Catholic framework
• Monstrous punishment
• Queried moral
• Critique of Original Sin

46. A monstrous divinity
William Godwin
Caleb Williams – 1794
• Unending pursuit
• Unending punishment
St Leon – 1799
• Immortality/divinity
• The inherent inhumanity of the immortal
• The inherent monstrosity of immortality
• ‘How unhappy the wretch, the monster
rather let me say, who is without an
equal.’

47. A Graceless God
Matthew Lewis
The Monk – 1796
• Exclusive use of terror sublime
• The Burkean (accidental) heresy
• A God of Wrath
• Daemonising the Divine
• Implicit critique or questioning
of determinism (theodicy)

48. A Fearsome Father
Mary Shelley – Frankenstein, Or, The
Modern Prometheus – 1818
‘Did I request thee, Maker, from my
clay,
To Mold me man?’
• Frankenstein as Adam, God and
Satan
• The Creature as Adam, Eve, God
and Satan

49. A Demonic Doctrine
James Hogg - 1824
The Private Memoirs and
Confessions of a Justified Sinner
• Demonic Doubles
• Antinomian heresies
• Rejection of Calvinist extremities

50. Break Time - Time to test your Faith… In me!

51. Bibliography
Primary Texts
Anonymous The Libertines 1798
(Jean Barrin) Venus in the Cloister 1683
Edmund Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790
Charles Churchill The Times 1764
http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/1764chur.htm
T. J. Horsley Curties Ethelwina, Or, The House of Fitz-Auburne 1799
Antonio Gavin The Frauds of the Romish Monks 1691
Antonio Gavin A Master Key to Popery 1726
William Godwin Caleb Williams 1794
St Leon 1799
James Hogg The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner 1826
David Hume ‘Superstition and Enthusiasm’
W. H. Ireland The Abbess 1799
(Jean-Charles Gervaise de Latouche) History of Dom Bougre – The Porter of Chartreux 1746

52. Bibliography
Matthew Lewis The Monk 1796
Venoni 1806
Owen Lewis The Unmasking of all Popish monks, friers and Jesuits 1628
Charles Lucas The Castle of St Donats, or, The History of Jack Smith 1798
Charles Maturin Five Sermons on the Errors of the Roman Catholic Church 1826
Melmoth The Wanderer 1820
Ann Radcliffe The Italian 1796
The Mysteries of Udolpho 1794
A Sicilian Romance 1790
Regina Marie Roche The Children of the Abbey 1796
Catherine Selden The English Nun 1797
Mary Shelley Valperga 1823
Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto 1764

53. Bibliography
Secondary Sources
Paul Canuel Religion, Toleration and British Writing 2002
Robert Geary The Supernatural in Gothic Fiction 1992
George Haggerty Queer Gothic 2006
Diane Long Hoeveler The Gothic Ideology 2014
Jarlath Killeen Gothic Ireland 2005
Alison Milbank God and the Gothic 2018
Robert Miles ‘Europhobia’ in European Gothic 2017
Douglas Newton Catholic London 1950
Joel Porte ‘In the Hands of an Angry God’ in Essays on Dark Romanticism 1974
Maria Purves The Gothic and Catholicism 2009
Julie Peakman Mighty Lewd Books 2003
Clara Tuite ‘Cloister Closets: Enlightenment Pornography, The Confessional State, 2007
Homosexual Persecution and The Monk’ on Romanticism on the Net
https://doi.org/10.7202/005766ar

54. The influence of a Revolution
• There was a ‘counter-revolutionary discourse … shaped mostly by
Edmund Burke’ which ‘emphasised the sanctity and supremacy of
adhering to the religious traditions of one’s forefathers’. (Maria
Purves)
• ‘The cause of the Catholic Church during the French Revolution was
identified with the cause of all churches’. (Clara Tuite)
• ‘The behaviour of the clergy, together with the sight of so many of
them about the London streets, did much at the critical time of the
Relief Bills to break down prejudices as well as familiarize the public
with Catholic services, chapels and ways of life’. (Douglas Newton)