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The Root of all Evil? Money and the Scottish Catholic Mission in the Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

J. F. McMillan
J. F. McMillan*
Affiliation:
University of York
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Extract

We are all familiar with the idea that the Church is in the world but not of it, and that too great a preoccupation with earthly things may compromise the Church’s other-worldly objectives. One thinks of the extravagance of a Renaissance pope such as Leo X, reputed to have said, ‘Let us enjoy the papacy, since God has given it to us’: or of an ancien régime prelate like the Archbishop of Mainz, who arrived for the coronation of the Emperor Joseph II with a retinue of fourteen sumptuous carriages: or, in our own time, the Vatican’s reported links with some of the shadier elements in the world of international finance. Yet, it is equally obvious that lack of adequate material resources can act as a serious impediment to the Church’s mission to go forth and teach all nations. Excessive poverty, like excessive wealth, brings its own problems. As the adage has it, not money itself but the desire for money is the root of all evil. Excessive poverty and the desire for money are the themes which I wish to pursue in this paper, in the context of the Scottish Catholic Mission in the eighteenth century, and more specifically as they relate to the so-called Jansenist quarrels which divided the Mission in the 1730s and 1740s.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 24: The Church and Wealth , 1987 , pp. 267 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1987

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References

1 Chadwick, O., The Popes and European Revolution (Oxford, 1981), p. 183.Google Scholar

2 The best single volume to date is P. Anson, F., Underground Catholicism in Scotland 1622–1878 (Montrose, 1970)Google Scholar. The starting-point for research is Rev. Dilworth, M. O.S.B., ‘The Counter-Reformation in Scotland; a Select Critical Bibliography’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, 22 (1984–6), pp. 85–100 Google Scholar. I am much indebted to Fr Dilworth and his assistants at Columba House for their many kindnesses to me on my visits to the Scottish Catholic Archives.

3 Darragh, J., ‘The Catholic Population of Scotland since the Yeat 1680’, IR 4 (1953), pp. 49–59.Google Scholar

4 Archives of Propaganda Fide [hereafter APF], Congregazioni Particolari [hereafter CP], 86, 1736, fol. 120.

5 The fullest account of the Mission’s funds is J. Carmont, ed., History of the Scottish Clerical Quota Fund (privately printed, Girvan, 1883), which reproduces Bishop Hay’s A Full State of All Company’s Funds with an Historical Account of the Same as They Stand in This Present Year 1772. Also valuable is J. Carmont, A History of the Scottish Secular Mission (or Quota Fund). From Authentic Documents (Blairgowrie, 1902). I am grateful to Dr Alasdair Roberts for sending me a copy of the latter.

6 SCA Blairs Letters, John Irvine to Thomas Innes (Paris), 24 Jan. 1706.

7 Ibid…John Irvine to Lewis Innes (Paris), 27 April 1706.

8 SCA, Canon W. Clappetton, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, no 31, Rev. John Irvine.

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10 Carmont (1902), pp. 35–6.

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14 I am currently writing a book on the subject of these quarrels. The fullest account to date is in my forthcoming article ‘Jansenists and Anti-Jansenists in Eighteenth Century Scotland: the Unigenitus Quarrels on the Scottish Catholic Mission 1732–1746’. See also McMillan, J. F., ‘Scottish Catholics and thejansenist Controversy: the Case reopened’, IR 22 (1981), pp. 22–33 Google Scholar and ‘Thomas Innes and the Bull Unigenitus’, IR 23 (1982), pp. 23–30.

15 APF CP 86, 1736.

16 The original report (in Italian) is in the Vatican Secret Archives, Nunziatura di Francia vol.262, fols 156–63. An English translation (somewhat abbreviated) is given in A. Bellesheim, History of the Catholic Church of Scotland, tr. D. O. Hunter Blair, 4 (Edinburgh, 1890), pp. 408–13.

17 APF 87, 1737.

18 APF 87, 1741.

19 Bishops Gordon and Smith to Propaganda, 5 Feb. 1743. Cited and translated in Bellesheim, History, pp. 395–9.

20 SCA, J. Thomson, Some Account of the State of Religion and of the Mission in Scotland since the Reformation, Compiled from Letters and Other Original Monuments. After Thomson’s death in 1792 abbé Paul McPherson took up the story from 1732.

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22 McMillan, ‘Thomas Innes and the Bull Unigenitus’.

23 APF Scritture riferite [hereafter SR] Scozia, vol. 2, fols 369–80, letters of Charles Cruickshank and William Reid, written in 1740.

24 McMillan, ‘Jansenists and Anti-Jansenists’.

25 APF CP 86, 1736, fols 245–9.

26 SCA, Blairs Letters for 1732. Thomson/McPherson, under 1732.

27 Ibid., 1733.

28 Ibid.

29 Thomson/McPherson, under 1734.

30 APF CP 86, 1736, fols 245–9.

31 Ibid., fols 17ff.

32 Ibid., fol. 307. Alexander John Grant was the bishop-elect who went out to Rome in 1726 but never returned.

33 APF CP 86, fols 226–7.

34 Carmont(1883), pp. 13–14.

35 APF CP 87, fol. 19.

36 SCA, Blairs Letters Alexander Drummond to Bishop Gordon, 17 Oct. 1733.

37 SCA Clapperton, Memoirs, no 71, Rev. Colin Campbell.

38 SCA, Blairs Letters, Bishop Gordon to Peter Grant (Rome), 7 Jan. 1740 (in French).

39 APF CP 87, Mgr Lercari (Paris) to Cardinal Secretary of State (Rome), 30 March 1739 (in Italian).

40 Thomson/McPherson, under 1740.

41 SCA Clapperton, Memoirs, no 76, Rev. Alexander Grant.

42 APF CP 86, fol. 289 Neil McFie to William Stuart (Rome), 3 Aug. 1735.

43 SCA, Blairs Letters, Peter Grant (Rome) to George Innes (Paris), 28 Aug. 1738.

44 SCA, Blairs Letters, Peter Grant (Rome) to Thomas Innes (Paris), 28 March 1738.

45 APF CP 87, fol. 314, James Leslie (Paris) to Propaganda, 14 Jan. 1741 (in Italian).

46 McMillan, ‘Jansenists and Anti-Jansenists’.

47 Thomson/McPherson, pp. 81–2.

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49 Abbot Bernard Stuart to Propaganda, letter quoted and translated in Bellesheim, History, pp. 374–7.

50 Thomson/McPherson, under 1753.

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54 Ibid., p. 199.

55 Ibid., p. 203.

56 Hay, M. V., ‘Too Little and Too Late’, IR 6 (1955), pp. 19–21.Google Scholar

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