Priesthoods and Apostasies of Pierce Connelly a Study of Victorian Conversion and Anti- Catholicism

". . . [Paz] turns his attention to an oft-forgotten aspect of Victorian religious controversy, the role of the apostate priest, welcomed in popular Protestant circles as an authority figure from the rival camp who validated their suspicions about Roman Catholic institutions and practices such as clerical celibacy, convents, confessionals, and casuistry." - Albion "The author's painstaking research deserves congratulation." - Anglican Episcopal History "The breadth and complexity of the themes with which Paz deals would be daunting to all but the scholar (for whom the study is a `must') were it not for the clarity and grace of his style and his integration of complex factors into a flowing narrative. These make the book useful for the undergraduate, too. The specialist will profit by the abundant documentation and the appendices containing four lengthy anticatholic pamphlets by Connelly." - Records of the American Catholic Historical Society

". . . Paz successfully shows that his encounters with Roman Catholicism and his `descent' into the underworld of anti-Catholicism can tell us much about the religious environment of the nineteenth-century English-speaking world." - The Catholic Historical Review "Connelly's biography is interesting for its extremes. . . . Scholars of Victorian religion may find points worth further investigation." - Religious Studies Review "[This] biography rescues Pierce from . . . oblivion and places him centre stage in a tale unique among 19th-century apostate clergy." - The Heythrop Journal "meticulously researched" - Church History

"the result of extensive research in archives in the United States, Rome, and Great Britain" - Theology Digest "The first section of the book will especially interest students of religion in the antebellum American South. . . . Pierce Connelly's amazing career of apostasy and reconversion found him in the antebellum American South, in Victorian England, and in strife-ridden mid-century Italy. Paz's little book affords useful and fascinating insights into the religious politics . . . of each of those cultures . . . ." - Journal of Southern History "[Paz's] protagonist may hold the record for conversions [`apostasies'] and reconversions. . . . Paz examines Connelly as . . . an example of the interconnectedness of American and British religious history." - American Historical Review

"Extensive notes, a bibliography, the inclusion of Connelly's major writings as appendixes, and an index enhance the value of this book for scholars. . . . Appropriate for graduate students and upper-division undergraduates." - Choice ". . . thorough a