About
Research
Email: nicholas.schofield@stmarys.ac.uk
Biography
Nicholas Schofield studied Modern History at Exeter College, Oxford, and Philosophy and Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome. Ordained a priest for the diocese of Westminster in 2003, he is currently parish priest at Our Lady of Lourdes and St Michael, Uxbridge, and Area Dean of Hillingdon.
Since 2005 he has also worked as Westminster Diocesan Archivist and is a Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Antiquaries. Between 2010 and 2020 he wrote a weekly column on church history for the Catholic Times and has published several books.
He currently lectures on the period between the French Revolution and the Second Vatican Council (Church History 4).
Research
Research profile
Rev Schofield's most recent research project looked at the British and Irish Catholics who volunteered in the 1860s to join the pontifical army and defend the temporal power at the time of the struggle for Italian Unification - an unusual juxtaposition of ecclesiastical and military history!
Selected publications
As author
- A History of the Papacy (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2010)
- William Lockhart: First Fruits of the Oxford Movement (Leominster: Gracewing, 2011)
- Catholicism in Uxbridge (London: St Paul’s Publishing, 2011)
- Saints of the Roman Calendar (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2012)
- The History of St Edmund’s College (Edmundian Association, 2013)
- A Brief History of English Catholicism (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2014)
- Forthcoming
- Victorian Crusaders: British and Irish Volunteers in the Papal Army, 1860-70 (Warwick: Helion & Company, 2022)
As co-author
- The English Cardinals (Oxford: Family Publications, 2007) [with Gerard Skinner]
- The English Vicars Apostolic 1688-1850 (Oxford: Family Publications, 2009) [with Gerard Skinner]
- St John Southworth: The Parish Priest of Westminster (London: St Paul’s Publishing, 2012) [with Gerard Skinner]
As editor
- Roman Miscellany: The English in Rome 1550-2000 (Leominster: Gracewing, 2002)
- John Henry Newman, Essays Critical and Historical, Volume II (Newman Millennium Edition Vol. XIV, Leominster: Gracewing, 2019)
Journal Articles/Chapters in Books
- ‘The Crusades: Seeking the Truth’, Faith Magazine, May/June 2006
- ‘No-one Expects the Spanish Inquisition! The Truth Behind the Myth’, Faith Magazine, January/February2007
- ‘Herbert Thurston, S.J. (1856-1939), “A Kind of Ecclesiastical Sherlock Holmes”’ in John Broadley and Peter Phillips (eds), The Ministry of the Printed Word: Scholar Priests of the Twentieth Century (Downside Abbey Press, 2016)
- ‘A Church Without Bishops: Governance of the English Catholic Mission, 1594-1685’, Ecclesiastical Law Journal, 19: 2 (2017)
- ‘A Church Without Bishops: Governance of the English Catholic Mission, 1594-1685’, Newsletter of the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 189 (March 2017)
- ‘British Catholics and the Great War’, Faith Magazine, July/August 2017
- ‘St Thomas Becket, Patron of the English College and Patron of the Secular Clergy’ in Maurice Whitehead (ed), Memory, Martyrs and Mission: Essays to Commemorate the 850th Anniversary of the Martyrdom of St Thomas Becket (c.1118-1170) (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2020)