This article examines certain aspects of the history of the doctrines of equivocation and mental reservation in early modern Catholic elaborations. It argues that the first Catholic theologians who engaged systematically with these doctrines, Domingo de Soto and Martin de Azpilcueta (Navarrus), used them as tools to investigate the potentialities and limitations of human language as a means to communicate meaning between a speaker and a listener. This article also shows that between the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries Catholic theologians, both Jesuit and non-Jesuit, changed the debate over these doctrines into a debate over the moral quality of the speaker's intention. By analyzing the developments of the Catholic debate over equivocation and mental reservation, this article seeks to offer a fresh interpretation of the links between theology, morality, and hermeneutics.

This article seeks to explain some political and theoretical layers of Robert Persons's Conference about the next succession (1595). By examining a Latin manuscript version of the text which appeared in Rome in 1596 and by analysing the context in which this Latin version was composed and the aims which it was intended to fulfil, this article elucidates the political and religious implications of Persons's text, not only in the context of English or British debates over the succession to Elizabeth, but also in a European-wide scenario. Such an approach, I argue, can allow historians of early modern England to gain a deeper and wider understanding of English Catholicism and of its relevance in European political and religious history.

Thomas White alias Blacklo, an English Catholic priest, natural philosopher and theologian, was the leader of a small group of Catholics, known as ‘Blackloists’, who in the 1640s and 1650s wrote in support of Oliver Cromwell. This article seeks to explain the ecclesiological, theological and political arguments put forward by White and his followers in order to justify their approach to the Independents and later to the Lord Protector. After putting into context and interpreting some of the issues elaborated in White's circle, the reaction of the Holy See to Thomas White and to his political and theological positions is examined. While contemporary historiography seems to agree that the majority of English Catholics were on the king's side during the civil war, the evidence that emerges from White's case shows that the Roman hierarchy was of a different opinion.

With the accession of James VI of Scotland to England’s throne as James I, many English Catholics began hoping that the vexing question of religion would soon be resolved in a manner not unfavourable to their faith. James, after all, was the son of the Catholic Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and it seemed not impossible that he would convert to the Catholic faith. The diplomatic contact with Spain that would eventually produce the Treaty of 1604 was already in process and religious toleration was one element in the discussion. But the more significant grounds for Catholics’ hope came most certainly from the position on the English religious question enunciated by the King himself. As his reign began, James seemed to be demonstrating a more favourable attitude towards Catholics than towards Puritans. His Basilikon Down declared the Church of Rome and the Church of England ‘agree in the grounds’, while his first speech to Parliament in March 1604 characterized Catholicism as ‘a religion, falsely called Catholik, but trewly Papist’, while defining the Puritans, as ‘a sect rather than a Religion’.