The papal excommunication of Elizabeth I is probably one of the most infamous, and lesser explored, moments in late-sixteenth century British history. Issued in 1570, over a decade after Elizabeth I acceded to the throne, the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis declared the English queen a heretic and questioned her legitimacy. The excommunication changed the course of the Elizabethan regime’s dealings with Catholics across England and Ireland, affected Elizabeth’s choices regarding the succession, and shaped her diplomatic relationships with Catholic nations. In turn, Elizabeth’s excommunication presented her Catholic subjects with a dilemma about expressing their loyalty while not relinquishing their spiritual allegiance to the pope and Catholic Church. Aislinn Muller’s monograph The Excommunication of Elizabeth I places the papal excommunication at the forefront of the Elizabethan historiographical narrative. She focuses on Regnans in Excelsis’s long-term impact on Elizabeth’s authority as queen, how it affected the queen’s foreign diplomatic relations and international reputation, as well as how knowledge about the excommunication became widespread within the public consciousness and shaped demonstrations of loyalty and resistance from her subjects.

A key theme Muller examines throughout is how the excommunication influenced Elizabeth and her regime’s standing in international politics. In Chapter One, she discusses how Elizabeth’s excommunication was not a kneejerk reaction from the pope after news of the Northern Rebellion reached him in 1569, but in fact had long been in the making. She points out that Pope Pius IV had asked legates at the 1563 Council of Trent to communicate with European leaders about whether Elizabeth should be anathematised, a question which split European leaders between those who, like the Holy Roman Emperor, wanted to strike diplomatic and marital ties with the Elizabethan regime, and others who were in favour of excommunication, like the French and Spanish monarchs, albeit for different political agendas. A fascinating point Muller makes was the innovativeness of Regnans in Excelsis in comparison to other bulls of excommunication, explaining that, historically, papal bulls were issued with formal deadlines for monarchs or other individuals, providing time to repent. Elizabeth I was automatically excommunicated without warning.

Muller assesses the long-term implications of Regnans in Excelsis on Elizabethan politics and international diplomacy further in Chapter Four. She describes how the Elizabethan government implored the papacy to rescind the excommunication due to fears of unrest, heightened periodically by fears of invasion from Catholic nations between the 1570s and 1590s, particularly the Spanish Armada threat and the Desmond Rebellions in Ireland. Interestingly, Muller argues that, at times, Elizabeth exploited the excommunication for her own political advantage, referencing how she used the Anjou Match negotiations to gain concessions from her ministers. She builds upon this theme in Chapter Five by scrutinising the emergence of different groups of Catholics who questioned and defined their allegiance to their monarch and the pope by their reaction to the papal bull. She reveals that James Fitzgerald, Earl of Desmond used the papal bull to instigate the Desmond Rebellions against Elizabeth by claiming that the religious settlements of 1559 violated the historic pre-conditions between the English monarchy and the papacy, arguing that the Irish were not obligated to give Elizabeth loyalty or obedience. Muller likewise shows that Catholics resisted the Elizabethan regime in different ways, paying attention to the circulation of Catholic devotional materials, including rosaries, agnus dei, crucifixes, devotional and polemical books were acts of resistance which developed after the missionary arrivals to England.

Muller’s chapters on the transmission and distribution of Regnans in Excelsis and the use of its content in Protestant discourse are particularly strong, although a full copy of the papal bull’s text in the monograph would have been of benefit for readers wanting to compare the bull’s text to these contemporary works. In Chapter Two, Muller examines how the bull was printed and circulated across Europe. She argues that while few copies have survived, informal manuscript copies in Latin and English reveal the bull reached a wider literate audience. Building upon the research of Earle Havens, Elizabeth Patton, Michael Questier, and Krista Kesselring, Muller shows that circulation and communication about the bull could both inspire and be perceived as acts of resistance against the Elizabethan regime. She emphasises how the re-publication of the papal bull in 1580, in preparation for the Campion and Persons’ Jesuit mission to England, strengthened these acts of resistance. Muller describes in Chapter Three how Protestant discourse enabled widespread knowledge of the papal bull across England and Ireland, with over 100 works published from 1570 to the death of Elizabeth referencing the bull in a variety of mediums, including sermons, polemics, poems, and ballads. These works continued to keep alive the discussions surrounding Elizabeth’s excommunication well after 1580. They indicate the, after 1580, bull had far graver consequences for Elizabeth regarding Catholic resistance, Protestant anxiety, and England’s position in Europe than what historians have previously assumed.

Muller provides a vivid account of the importance of Regnans in Excelsis throughout. She successfully demonstrates the widespread impact the papal bull had upon the fabric of sixteenth-century British politics and society, as well as how it influenced Elizabeth’s English and Irish Catholic subjects’ methods to define their loyalty to the queen. It would have been interesting to know if there was surviving ecclesiastical material from the sees of Canterbury and York to discern the extent to which knowledge about the papal bull was dispersed or suppressed across the different dioceses and parishes, although understandably the survival of manuscript material might not have enabled this. Nevertheless, Muller gives a valuable insight into why Regnans in Excelsis warrants greater attention in Elizabethan historiography and her book will be useful to scholars interested in material culture, diplomatic history, and political history.