contra mundum
‘Only one, darling.’
With the relatively small numbers of Catholics in the country, England has traditionally had only one Cardinal, the Archbishop of Westminster. In this period the Cardinal-Archbishop was Francis Bourne (1861-1935), who had been appointed archbishop in 1903 and was to occupy the position for 31 years.
instructed
All converts to the Catholic faith in modern times go through a lengthy process of familiarisation, often at the hands of priests experienced in guiding prospective members. The process has been regularised since 1924, but even then was extensive.
Clovis’s army
Julia is referring to the story of the conversion of Clovis I (c. 466-511, King of the Salian Franks from 481) as told by Saint Gregory of Tours. In brief, he was losing a battle with the Alemanni (Germans) in 496 when he remembered his Christian wife Saint Clotilda’s advice and prayed to God for help, and went on to win the battle. He was not satisfied with just his own conversion, however, and went on to proclaim the new God with considerable force to his army and all the people. Three thousand soldiers were baptised in one day. Julia rightly thinks that many of them must have done this from a sense of duty rather than through religious impulse.
plenary indulgences
A contentious issue throughout the last 500 years, plenary indulgences were (and still are) full remissions of punishment due to sin, attached by the Catholic Church to devout actions. They seem to have arisen as a means of associating the entire faithful with the supreme holy works of the Crusaders in the Holy Land in the Middle Ages (unholy as they proved to be), and many of them had the advantage of also raising money for holy purposes. This latter aspect was abolished by the Council of Trent, unfortunately long after Luther had initially inspired the Reformation by his resistance to the practice.
Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell
known collectively in the Catholic world as the Four Last Things. They would have formed the basis for a course of uncomfortable meditations in Julia’s childhood.
I can stop that, too
Lady Marchmain’s relentlessness is interesting. She is however right to say she could have stopped the marriage taking place in a Protestant church; though Catholics and Anglicans were not close, there was a sort of solidarity in the upper classes which would have operated in this situation. Low-church Protestants might not willingly have done her bidding, but at this time most of them were as much against divorce as the Catholics were.
(Cliffe)