Questier, Michael C. (Michael Questier)

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Questier, Michael C. (Michael Questier)

PERSONAL:

Education: Sussex University, D.Phil., 1991.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Rd., London E1 4NS, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Queen Mary, University of London, England, lecturer in early modern British and European history, 2002—. Also served as senior research fellow at Worcester College, Oxford. Previously taught at London University.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Conversion, Politics, and Religion in England, 1580-1625, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor and author of introduction) Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1998.

(As Michael Questier; editor and contributor, with Peter Lake) Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560-1660, Boydell Press (Rochester, NY), 2000.

(As Michael Questier; with Peter Lake) The Antichrist's Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists, and Players in Post-Reformation England, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2002.

(Editor) Newsletters from the Caroline Court, 1631-1638: Catholicism and the Politics of the Personal Rule, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550-1640, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Michael C. Questier, a lecturer in history at Queen Mary, University of London, publishes widely on sixteenth-and seventeenth-century British politics and religion. In Conversion, Politics, and Religion in England, 1580-1625, Questier examines the political and spiritual motives of Catholic and Protestant converts during the English Reformation. "By careful attention to the writings both of proselytizing clerics and the converts themselves," wrote Journal of Church and State contributor Rachel Weil, "Questier manages to explain how religious experience might at once transcend the Catholic/Protestant divide (evangelical Catholics and evangelical Protestants uncannily resembled one another), and yet be expressed through and shaped at every turn by the existence of that divide." According to John Spurr, writing in the Journal of Modern History, "The great virtue and originality of this book is that Questier steps outside existing debates, not simply refusing to take sides with Catholics or Protestants but refusing the very terms of debate between contemporary polemicists. So he rejects the notion that conversion is simply a matter of leaving one church and joining another and challenges the state's definition of conformity as tantamount to conversion." "Conversion, Questier insists, had a deeper dimension, an inner evangelical core," noted Alexandra Walsham in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History. "It was the function of a personal experience of regeneration and spiritual grace which could be mapped on to the public ideological conflict between the two Churches, but which ultimately transcended it."

Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead contains a series of fifty-six newsletters written by European Catholic priests between 1609 and 1614. "Questier's extensive annotations, the fruit of some impressive historical detective work, are an invaluable aid to unravelling the allusive meaning of this difficult material, as is his lucid and discerning introduction," noted Walsham. In Newsletters from the Caroline Court, 1631-1638: Catholicism and the Politics of the Personal Rule, Questier collects ninety-seven newsletters that reveal conflict among English Catholics. "For historians interested in ‘the news’ in early modern Britain, these newsletters provide a fascinating insight into the workings of the English Catholic community, its concerns, and its religious and political aspirations," remarked Amos Tubb in History.

With Peter Lake, Questier edited Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560-1660, a collection of ten essays about doctrinal orthodoxy, disciplinary conformity, and Catholicism in post-Reformation England. "All the essays are interesting and important, and all relate, more or less, to the theme of shifts in orthodoxies and modes of conformity," noted Christopher Haigh in the English Historical Review. "The strength of this collection is to be found not only in its essays but also in its editorial shaping," wrote Church History reviewer Lori Anne Ferrell, who added: "This sectioning serves to fashion a disparate collection into a thesis, the architecture of which demonstrates the power of antitype." In the words of Journal of Ecclesiastical History reviewer Arnold Hunt, the volume "is one of the most important contributions to the history of the early modern Church of England to have appeared for a long time."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Albion, spring, 2002, Michael L. Carrafiello, review of Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, pp. 104-105; summer, 2003, Susan Wabuda, review of The Antichrist's Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists, and Players in Post-Reformation England, p. 280.

American Historical Review, Roger B. Manning, review of Conversion, Politics, and Religion in England, 1580-1625, pp. 505-506.

Catholic Historical Review, October, 2000, Albert J. Loomie, review of Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, p. 686.

Choice, November, 2002, A. Kugler, review of The Antichrist's Lewd Hat, p. 542.

Church History, June, 1998, Alana Cain Scott, review of Conversion, Politics, and Religion in England, 1580-1625, pp. 388-389; December, 2002, Lori Anne Ferrell, review of Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560-1660, p. 899.

English Historical Review, November, 1998, Eric Josef Carlson, review of Conversion, Politics, and Religion in England, 1580-1625, p. 1302; June, 2002, Christopher Haigh, review of Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560-1660, p. 703; February, 2003, Christopher Haigh, review of The Antichrist's Lewd Hat, p. 147.

History, January, 2007, Amos Tubb, review of Newsletters from the Caroline Court, 1631-1638: Catholicism and the Politics of the Personal Rule, pp. 119-120.

History Today, November, 1997, A.G.R. Smith, review of Conversion, Politics, and Religion in England, 1580-1625, p. 57; December, 2002, David G. Chandler, review of The Antichrist's Lewd Hat, p. 54.

Journal of British Studies, October 1, 2004, Leah S. Marcus, "At the Boundaries," review of The Antichrist's Lewd Hat.

Journal of Church and State, autumn, 1998, Rachel Weil, review of Conversion, Politics, and Religion in England, 1580-1625, p. 902.

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, October, 1997, Alexandra Walsham, review of Conversion, Politics, and Religion in England, 1580-1625, p. 779; October, 2000, Alexandra Walsham, review of Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, p. 809; July, 2002, Arnold Hunt, review of Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560-1660, p. 609; October, 2006, Thomas M. McCoog, review of Newsletters from the Caroline Court, 1631-1638, p. 782.

Journal of Modern History, September, 1998, John Spurr, review of Conversion, Politics, and Religion in England, 1580-1625, p. 675.

London Review of Books, September, 2002, Patrick Collinson, review of The Antichrist's Lewd Hat, pp. 15-16.

Renaissance Quarterly, autumn, 2002, Stephen L. Collins, review of Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560-1660, pp. 1102-1106.

Sixteenth Century Journal, summer, 1997, Erick Kelemen, review of Conversion, Politics, and Religion in England, 1580-1625, pp. 527-529; autumn, 2001, Dale Walden Johnson, review of Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560-1660, pp. 797-798.

Times Literary Supplement, July 5, 2002, Euan Cameron, review of The Antichrist's Lewd Hat, p. 32; March 24, 2006, Kevin Sharpe, review of Newsletters from the Caroline Court, 1631-1638, p. 33.