Father Andrew White, The Jesuit Order, and the Marketing of Colonial Maryland

Father Andrew White, a leading Jesuit and esteemed promoter of the Maryland colony, kept a journal of his voyage to Maryland, which was subsequently published as Relatio Iteneris in Marylandiam.1 White also composed Declaratio Coloniae Domini Baronis de Balltimore, a document that masterfully marketed the colonial venture to lay English Catholics. The Relatio is an engaging account of the voyage to and initial settlement of Maryland; the Declaratio is a promotional tract written to ensure the successful creation of the new colony. Together the documents promoted the enterprise to the Jesuit Order, but also provide valuable economic, religious, and legal data about English Catholics. White's promotion of the colony to the Jesuit Order and the elite British Catholic community reveals underlying patterns of religious and material consumption. Interactions between British Catholics, the Jesuit Order, and non-Catholics both in England and in the Americas form a secondary focus in order to contextualize the English Catholic experience in the Early Modern Atlantic. The analysis of White's texts exposes the means by which English Catholic identity was constructed in the trans-Atlantic world during the seventeenth century and elucidates the schisms within the English Catholic community that ultimately led to the loss of Catholic power and religious liberty in Maryland.;1To report Upon Maryland. This document is alternately called Declaratio iteneris in Marilandia. Andrew, White, S.J. Relation in Marylandiam: Declaratio Coloniae Domini Baronis de Batlimoro. Excerpta Ex Diversis Litteris Missionariorum Ab Anno 1635, Ad Annum 1638. Vatican Library. William McSherry, Ed. Trans by Rev. E. A. Dalrymple, S.T. D. (Baltimore, February 1874), Fund Publication, No. 7.