From Country House Catholicism to City Church

Sacramental records known to survive from the Oxford Catholic Mission, 1700-1875.

This volume presents the contents of the sacramental records known to survive from the Oxford Catholic Mission, 1700-1875. These original registers are held in five volumes in the Archives of the Oxford Oratory. The Oratory's Oxfordshire archive consists of registers from Waterperry House, the chapel of St Clement's, Oxford, and the church of St Aloysius Gonzaga, Oxford. [1] The registers feature much common form and use of Latin and the contents are made accessible here in transcribed, translated and tabulated form.

The records opened up by this volume will be of use and interest to historians of religion, locality and family alike. They throw light on an era of 'country house' Catholicism, when the practice of the faith was largely linked to the presence of local landowners, they illuminate the theory and practice of legal exclusion, the gradual movement to a more public faith, and the emergence of a confident and outward-looking Roman Catholic role. The names and identities recorded in the registers help identify the nature of congregations and how they changed and varied over time.

[1] A further brief register, from the Catholic chapel of St Mary the Virgin, Bampton, 1856¬60 found its archival home in the collection but is not historically linked to the Oxford Mission. It is included here for completeness. See also Appendix B.