THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF ROBERT PERSONS'S CONFERENCE IN CONTINENTAL CONTEXT

This article seeks to explain some political and theoretical layers of Robert Persons's Conference about the next succession (1595). By examining a Latin manuscript version of the text which appeared in Rome in 1596 and by analysing the context in which this Latin version was composed and the aims which it was intended to fulfil, this article elucidates the political and religious implications of Persons's text, not only in Me context of English or British debates over the succession to Elizabeth, but also in a European-wide scenario. Suck an approach, I argue, can allow historians of early modem England to gain a deeper and wider understanding of English Catholicism and of its relevance in European political and religious history.