- published: 05 Oct 2015
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Papist is a sectarian term referring to the Roman Catholic Church, its teachings, practices, or adherents. It is usually understood as a disparaging term. The word gained currency during the English Reformation, as it was used to denote a person whose loyalties were to the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church, rather than to the Church of England. Attested from 1534, papist derives (through Middle French) from Latin papa, meaning "Pope".
The word was in common use by Protestant writers until the mid-nineteenth century, as shown by its frequent appearance in Thomas Macaulay's History of England from the Accession of James II and in other works of that period, including those with no sectarian bias. It also appeared in the compound form "Crypto-Papist", referring to members of Reformed, Protestant, or nonconformist churches who at heart were allegedly Roman Catholics.
The word is found in certain surviving statutes of the United Kingdom, for example in the English Bill of Rights of 1688 and the Scottish Claim of Right of 1689. Under the Act of Settlement of 1701, no one who professes "the popish religion" or marries "a papist" may succeed to the throne of the United Kingdom. Fears that Roman Catholic secular leaders would be anti-Protestant arose after the Roman Catholic Church was banned in England in the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), author of Gulliver's Travels, employed the term throughout his satirical A Modest Proposal, in which he proposed selling Irish babies to be eaten by wealthy English landlords.