ABSTRACT

This chapter asks what music and the sensory experience of sounds such as song, chant, prayer, and the ringing of bells, can offer to our understanding of the post-Reformation English Catholic exile experience. I consider the soundscapes of five sacred institutions in the Spanish Habsburg territories: the Benedictine convent of Our Lady of the Assumption in Brussels (founded 1598); the Augustinian convent of St Monica’s in Louvain (founded 1609); the double monastery of the Syon Abbey Bridgettines that settled in Lisbon in 1594; the seminary college of St Omer, established for the education of English Catholic boys in 1593; and the Royal English College in Vallodolid (founded 1589). In so doing, I argue that it was aural engagement that supported English Catholic exiles’ sense of place on the continent. By sensing the sacred through sounds, English Catholics were spiritually and physically located amongst their co-religionists, both at home and abroad.