Author’s Notes

A number of terms need early definition:

Lay priest: a priest living in the community – now more often called a secular

Oblate: a person dedicated to monastic life

Recusant: a person who refuses submission to an authority or compliance with a regulation

Regular or regular priest: belonging to a religious or monastic Order

Secular or secular priest: not bound by the rules of a religious Order

Ultramontane: advocating supreme papal authority in matters of faith and discipline.

Quotations always appear in their original, neither corrected nor modernised, form. I have not followed strange usages with the explanation ‘sic’.