In 1624 Simon Stock, a missionary priest of the Discalced Carmelite order in England, began correspondence with the recently founded Congregation of the Propaganda Fide in Rome in an attempt to interest it in the establishment of a novitiate for English priests of his order. Luca Codignola draws on the letters of Simon Stock and material in the archives of the Propaganda Fide and the Carmelite order to present a fascinating picture of seventeenth-century Catholic colonization.