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CASSIAN 0F STANLEY, O.F.M.Cap. FATHER ARCHANGEL OF PEMBROKE AND THE CONVERSION OF GROTIUS Among the notable members of the Capuchin Province of Pads at the end of the sixteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth century was the English friar, Father Archangel of Pembroke. Whilst many of his contemporaries in religion have in comparatively recent years found their historians, he still awaits his 1 • The significance of his achievements has scarcely received the attention it deserves, for his influence was not confined to any narrow sphere and his career was an eventful one. When the history of the Capuchin Province of Paris is carried a few stages further than the late Pere Godefroy was able to achieve, then, perhaps, the note– worthiness of Father Archangel's memory will be more apparent and better appreciated than it has so far 2 • It may be that a long-continued rnisunderstanding and miscon– struction regarding the friar's farnily and its position in the social scale deterred atternpts to investigate his career with any fulness, for fantasy and fiction have been interwoven with fact in rnany extant accounts of Father Archangel, and his portrayal in severa! standard works of reference and other works of sorne consequence leaves rnuch to be desiredª. 1 Among such stuclies we may mcntion OPTAT DE VEGHEL, O.F.M.Cap., Benoit de Canfield (1562-1610). Sa. vie, sa. doctrine et son inf/'uence, Romc 1949; M. Dunois-QmNARD, Laurent de París. Une doctrine clu pur a111our en France au début du 17i!me siecle, Romc 1959; F.X. MAR– TIN, O.S.A., Friar Nugent. A study of Fra11cis Lava/in Nugent (1569-1635), agent of the Counter– Reformation, Romc-Lonclon 1962. There are, of coursc, carlicr accounts of still bettcr known :contcrnporarics as, for inslance, Lours DE GoNZAGUE [DE INGRANDES], O.F.M.Cap., Le Pere Ange de .Toyeuse, Frere Minew· Capucin Maréc/u,l de France (1563-1608), París 1928; L. Dmo1.1vRES, Le Pere .Toseph de París, capucin. L'Éminence Grise, 2 vols., Paris 1932. 2 GonEFROY DE PARIS, O.F.M.Cap., Les Freres Mineurs Capucins en France. Histoire de la province de Paris, 2 vols., París 1937-1939, 1949. Thc seconcl volume of this work takes the story of thc province to 1601. 3 The conft~sion surrounding Father Archangel's origin is contínuecl 1 far cxample, in Lexicon Capuccinum, Romae 1951, col. 120. The article of Father Archangel by M. PREVOST in the Dictionnaire ele biographie frmu;:aise III, Paris 1939, col. 374, rcquircs corrcction, as does lhe mcntion of this friar in thc work of METOIHO DA NEMBRO, O.F.M.Cap., Storia. dell'at-

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