The Catholic Historical
Review
VOL. LXXXIX

APRIL, 2003

No. 2

“I WILL OBSERVE ABSOLUTE AND PERPETUAL
SECRECY:” THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF
THE RIGID SECRECY FOUND IN PAPAL ELECTIONS
BY

FREDERIC J. BAUMGARTNER*

The title of this address is taken from the oath that cardinals participating in the next papal election will swear repeatedly in the course of
a conclave. The oath is found in Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution on papal elections published in 1996.1 It is an oath that all others—
secretaries,physicians,confessors,and housekeepers—who are present
within the precincts of the conclave also swear under pain of excommunication. If I were to provide all of the text in that Constitution on
the obligation of maintaining secrecy and how it is to be done, there
would be little time to discuss the topic of this address—the historical background of that secrecy. One irony of studying the history of
papal elections is that there is a great deal more firsthand source material for the conclave of 1549–50, for example, than for the most recent
ones.
It will come as no surprise to those who know the history of the papacy that secrecy had no place in the papal elections of Christianity’s
first millennium. While little is known of the elections of the bishops of
Rome before 1059, it is clear that they were public affairs. Cyprian of
*Dr.Baumgartner is a professor of history in the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University, Blacksburg. He read this paper as his presidential address at a luncheon held in
the Hilton Chicago Hotel on Saturday, January 4, 2003, during the eighty-third annual
meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association.
1
Universi Dominici Gregis, February 22, 1996, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, Vol. LXXXVIII,
No. 4 (April 11, 1996), 305–343; translation in Origins, Vol. 25, No. 37 (March 7, 1996),
617–630.

165

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THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE RIGID SECRECY FOUND IN PAPAL ELECTIONS

Carthage tells a charming story about the election in 236 of St. Fabian.
Fabian was not among the candidates whom the assembled brethren
were considering, until a white dove landed on his head.“Thereupon
the people, all as if impelled by one divine spirit, with one united and
eager voice cried out that he was worthy, and immediately they set him
on the episcopal seat.”2 After Fabian fell victim to Emperor Decius’s persecution, the Romans put off electing a new bishop for a year. During
that time factionalism erupted in the Church over the issue of what to
do with those who had given in to the command to burn incense to the
emperor. A rigorist group demanded that they be rebaptized before being readmitted, while a lenient faction only required penance. Both factions elected bishops: Cornelius by the forgivers, Novatian by the
rigorists. Both sought support from Cyprian, who sided with Cornelius.
He wrote to others laying out the reasons why he supported Cornelius
as the true bishop of Rome:“Cornelius was made bishop by the choice
of God and His Christ, by the favorable witness of almost all of the
clergy, by the votes of the laity present, and by the assembly of bishops.”3 The election of the bishop was a public matter for the entire
Christian community of Rome.
By 600 elections were being held in the Lateran Basilica. It was the
clergy’s domain, which suggests that they dominated the elections, and
the basilica certainly was too small to hold all the people, but the use of
the phrase “with the whole people” indicates there still occurred some
sort of lay ratification of the clergy’s choice.4 In the centuries that followed, papal elections were so confused that it is impossible to generalize about the process except to say that lay participation continued in
some fashion. The low point of papal history probably occurred in 931
when the son of Pope Sergius and his mistress became John XI through
his ties with the Roman nobility. Such a sorry state of affairs led to a reform movement, led by the Cluniac monks, which demanded that the
clergy be free of the secular powers and the Roman clerics select the
pope without interference.
The popes, under the thumb of the Roman nobility in the early
1000’s, were slow to reflect the Cluniac reform. Holy Roman Emperor
Henry III brought it to the papacy by appointing popes influenced by
it. When Henry died in 1056, leaving a child as his successor, the re2
The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage, Vol. III, translated and annotated by G. W.
Clarke (“Ancient Christian Writers,”Vol. 46 [New York, 1986]), Letter 55, p. 38.
3
Ibid.
4
Thomas F. X. Noble, The Republic of Saint Peter: The Birth of the Papal State,
680–825 (Philadelphia, 1984), pp. 188–205.

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167

formers were ready to apply their principle of an independent papacy
by electing Nicholas II. Noting that the disorders that followed the
death of his predecessor were so severe that the “Chief Fisherman”
came close to shipwreck, in 1059 Nicholas issued rules “lest the same
evils arise in the future.”5 The cardinal-bishops were given the responsibility to identify a candidate from the Roman clergy; if a suitable man
could not be found among them, one could be chosen from elsewhere.
The rest of the cardinal clergy then gave their consent to the candidate
so identified followed by the remaining clergy and the laity. The election should take place in Rome, but “if depraved men shall so prevail
that a pure, genuine, and free election can not be held in Rome,” then
the cardinals along with the clergy and laity, even if few in number,
could meet wherever it seemed to them most suitable.There is no mention of keeping the procedures secret.
The first pope elected under the new process was Alexander II.At his
death in 1073,the Romans moved swiftly to acclaim Hildebrand as Gregory VII before the Holy Roman Emperor could act to control the election. The official protocol of the election states that a huge assembly
met in St. Peter’s basilica:“We—the cardinals, subdeacons, deacons and
priests of the holy Roman church . . . and with the acclamation of many
crowds of both sexes and various orders—elected as our pastor and
supreme pontiff . . . the archdeacon Hildebrand.”6 Gregory himself referred to the great tumult of people who fell on him like madmen and
forced him with violent hands onto the apostolic throne. While Gregory’s election violated the electoral decree of 1059, it showed that lay
participation still occurred and the election remained a public affair.
Over the next century,the election of the supreme pontiff fell more and
more into the hands of the fifty-three cardinals. Alexander III’s election
in 1159 was the last one in which the traditional phrase “with the consent of all the brethren of Rome” was used. It has been described as being “semi-public.”7 After the mid-twelfth century a small group selected
the pontiff, which was far more conducive to secrecy than the previous
arrangements.
The decree of 1059 assumed that elections would be unanimous; so
it made no provision for when a divided College could not agree on a
5
Ernest F. Henderson (trans.), Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages (London, 1892; reprint New York, 1965), pp. 361–365.
6
Ephraim Emerton (trans.),The Correspondence of Pope Gregory VII (New York,1932;
reprint New York, 1966), pp. 2–3.
7
Marshall W. Baldwin, Alexander III and the Twelfth Century (Glen Rock, New Jersey,
1968), p. 45.

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THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE RIGID SECRECY FOUND IN PAPAL ELECTIONS

candidate, leading to antipopes at virtually every election after 1059. In
1179 the Third Lateran Council required a two-thirds majority of all voting cardinals for election, if unanimity was impossible. Excommunication was mandated for those who refused to accept a pope elected by
two-thirds majority.8
But even two-thirds proved to be difficult to achieve in many elections after 1179. The most notorious began in 1268 at Viterbo, since it
had become practice to hold the election where the pope had died. It
is clear from the sources that the cardinals came and went between the
cathedral and their homes in the first months of the election process.
After fourteen months with no conclusion to the endless balloting (we
do not know how often it took place), the cardinals allowed themselves
to be locked in a palace. That failed to persuade them to agree on a
pope. As the election slipped into 1270, the people of Viterbo began to
put pressure on the cardinals, reaching the point of taking the roof off
the palace.The people supposedly acted on a cardinal’s humorous comment that the roof should be removed to give free access to the Holy
Spirit. The cardinals threatened to put the whole city under interdict,
and a makeshift roof was put back on. The hardship of the long enclosure resulted in two cardinals dying and a third leaving because of ill
health. Finally Gregory X was crowned after a vacancy of forty months.9
The conclave,from the Latin cum clave,“with a key,”now became the
process by which the pope was chosen. After his election Gregory issued a bull that required that the conclave begin ten days after the
pope’s death normally in the same city where he died. The chief officers of the city where the conclave took place were obliged to see that
it was conducted properly. The cardinals would be locked in with two
conclavists each. Once locked in, they could not communicate with the
outside until the election was over except by the agreement of all. A
turnstile was set in a window to pass food inside. Only a small amount
of food would be provided per person, and there was a timetable for reducing the cardinals’ food and comfort level if the conclave dragged on.
Imposing more urgency on the cardinals to finish their task was the
rule that they could not draw their incomes during a conclave.The conclave would change only in details after 1274.

Ibid., pp. 227–228.
A good account of the election of 1268–71 is found in Giancarlo Zizola, Il conclave:
Storia e segreti (Rome, 1993), pp. 52–56.
8

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BY FREDERIC J. BAUMGARTNER

169

One purpose of the strict rules of conclave was to reduce the outside
political pressure on the cardinals during the time they were involved
in electing a pope, which in this era came more from the Roman nobility than the Catholic princes. More important, the rules were intended
to persuade them to act quickly.They certainly were not meant to keep
secret the details of the voting process once it was over.The new popes
continued to write to the Catholic rulers, as they had been doing since
about 1100, with the details of their elections. Accounts of the conclaves by those who participated, both cardinals and their conclavists,
began to appear soon after the rules were created, as did chronicles
written by outsiders who had sources within.
In 1378 the papal electoral system failed in the worst possible way,
setting up two men with strong claims to be the rightful pope and creating the Great Schism.10 By requiring secrecy, the rules of conclave
helped produce the circumstances in which it could be questioned
whether Urban VI was rightfully elected. For four decades Catholic Europe had to endure the impossible situation of having two and then
three popes.The solution was to convene a council at Constance,which
persuaded two of the rival popes to resign and then proceeded to the
election of a new one. Present in Constance were twenty-three out of
thirty-one men who had a claim to the title of cardinal.11 The council,
not trusting them to make a decision in the best interests of the Church,
added thirty prelates,six from each of the five nations deemed to be present in the council. Before entering conclave the fifty-three men swore
an oath before the whole council to observe the regulations of the conclave. Those rules emphasized the requirement that no one make contact with the electors while they were in conclave except by universal
consent of the electors, but there was no obligation of secrecy after the
election was concluded. The record of the conclave at Constance also
includes the first mention of burning the ballots, although it is probable
that it was done as soon as written balloting was introduced in the

10
For the case that Urban’s election was valid, see Walter Ullmann, The Origins of the
Great Schism:A Study in Fourteenth-century Ecclesiastical History (Hamden, Connecticut, 1967). For the argument against his legitimacy, see Alexander Lamont Glasfurd, The
Antipope: Peter de Luna, 1342–1423 (London, 1965).
11
Louise Ropes Loomis,The Council of Constance,edd. John Hine Mundy and Kennerly
M. Woody (London, 1961); Ludwig von Pastor, History of the Popes from the Close of the
Middle Ages, Vol. I, trans. Frederick Ignatius Antrobus, 6th ed. (reprint Liechtenstein,
1969), p. 302. Pastor’s work is a major source for all the conclaves from 1417 to 1775. For
several it is the only one in English available.

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THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE RIGID SECRECY FOUND IN PAPAL ELECTIONS

thirteenth century. The purpose of burning the ballots was to ensure
that there would be no attempt after an election to demand a recount.12
There is no sense that the smoke was used as a signal to the outside on
the election’s status; that did not develop until the nineteenth century.
Then the electors were locked into a warehouse that was converted
for their use. Although their voting was conducted in secret, they were
obliged to report to the council the results of each day’s balloting. The
idea that the council should play a significant role in electing the pope
became a major point of conciliarism, which proclaimed that the council was superior to the pope. One point of the conciliarist agenda was
eliminating the secrecy of the papal election. Some conciliarists proposed that the cardinals and a representative group of prelates hold
their deliberations in public with a voice vote in order to eliminate the
chicanery that they believed occurred in the conclaves.
Martin V,the pope elected at Constance,owed the tiara to the council,
but he and his successors worked diligently and successfully to eliminate conciliarism.Even Aeneas Piccolomini,the noted humanist who was
active at the Council of Basel (1431–1439), abandoned conciliarism
once he was elected pope in 1458. His memoirs provide the most extraordinary source for the history of papal elections.13 He had taken part in
the two conclaves as a conclavist;then in 1458 he was a cardinal-elector.
The number of cardinals had declined since 1159, and there were
only eighteen at the conclave of 1458. They included ten non-Italians,
the last time before 1958 in which they constituted a majority of the
voters. The first ballot gave Aeneas five votes. None were cast for Guillaume d’Estouteville, the Cardinal of Rouen, the French favorite, who
was known to covet the office. When they broke for the day, as Aeneas
puts it, “the richer and more powerful members of the college . . .
begged, promised, threatened, and some, shamelessly casting aside all
decency,pleaded their own cause and claimed the papacy as their right.
Their energy was unbounded. They took no rest by day or sleep by
night.”14 They met in the privies, said Aeneas, “a secluded and retired
place,” to engage in their bargaining.“Where could one more appropriately enter into a foul covenant!”

“Diary of Cardinal Fillastre” in Loomis, op. cit., p. 424.
Aeneas Piccolomini (Pius II), Memoirs of a Renaissance Pope:The Commentaries of
Pius II, trans. Florence A. Gragg (New York, 1959), pp. 65–66.
14
Ibid., p. 80.
12

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BY FREDERIC J. BAUMGARTNER

171

The efforts of Rouen and his friends appeared to have succeeded,
since they expected that Rouen would get eleven votes and needed
only one more in the balloting the next morning. Aeneas commented:
“They did not doubt that they would at once get the twelfth. For when
it has come to this point, some one is always at hand to say,‘I too make
you pope,’ to win the favor that the utterance always brings.”A friend of
Aeneas woke him early with the news that the election was as good as
won by Rouen. He urged the humanist to go quickly to Rouen, as he
himself was going to do, and tell him he was going to vote for him, out
of fear that if Rouen was elected without him, he would make trouble
for Aeneas. The friend commented that this had happened to him in respect to the previous pope, who had never forgiven him. Aeneas responded that if Rouen forced him to live in poverty, the Muses “are all
the sweeter in poverty. . . . Tomorrow will show that the Bishop of
Rome is chosen by God, not by men.”He went to several other cardinals
exhorting them about the dangers of electing a Frenchman who would
transfer the Holy See back to France. When an Italian objected that he
had pledged to vote for Rouen and could not break his word, Aeneas
thundered:“You now have to choose whether you prefer to betray Italy
and the Church or the Bishop of Rouen.”15
In the balloting that morning, Rouen was one of those counting the
votes. Aeneas and his allies were fearful that he might try to cheat; so
they wrote down each name as it was read off the ballot. When Rouen
announced that Aeneas had received eight votes, Aeneas objected that
his own tally showed nine.A recount verified Aeneas’ charge to Rouen’s
chagrin. The cardinals then moved to accession, which was an opportunity after the ballots were counted for a cardinal to switch his vote to
one of the stronger candidates in hope of completing the election. (It
no longer is used.) It was done verbally in this era. For some time
everyone sat silently. Then two cardinals announced that they were
changing their votes to Aeneas, making him one short of victory.A third
then rose with the intention of putting him over the top. Rouen and a
friend physically tried to restrain him from speaking but could not prevent him from shouting:“I accede to Cardinal [Piccolomini] and I make
him pope.”16 Pius II’s description of his election is by far the most extensive to come from a pope.He surely embellished the dramatic tale of
his election, but there is no reason to suppose that he was deceitful in
Ibid., p. 81.
Ibid., p. 90.

15

16

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THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE RIGID SECRECY FOUND IN PAPAL ELECTIONS

his description of the political machinations that went on in a conclave.
His memoirs demonstrate the loss to historians that the rigid secrecy of
recent times has caused.
Pius II’s election was the second to take place in the Vatican palace,
which has been the site for all but six conclaves since then. With its location consistently in one place, it was easier to establish a routine for
enforcing secrecy, and the conclave took on the characteristics that
were standard for five centuries.The conclave was kept by three sets of
guards—ambassadors, Roman citizens, and prelates. Each set checked
items that were passed into the conclave to ensure they did not carry
any message from the outside; for example, they poked into the food
that a cardinal’s servants brought to the revolving window for their
master’s meals. The dishes returned to the outside often had messages
scratched on the bottom usually indicating who was the frontrunner.
The conclave of 1458 was also the first one for which the diplomatic
correspondence is extensive, as the city-states of Italy began to take a
strong interest in the papal elections. Henceforth, there would be good
information on who were the papabili (“popeables”), a term by then in
use.17 From the dispatches to and from the diplomats in Rome, we can
get a clear idea of the political maneuvering that went on before and
during the conclave. The best reported conclave was the one that took
place after Paul III’s death in 1549. The rules of conclave were blatantly
disregarded. Ambassadors’ reports, letters to and from the rulers and
their agents and the cardinals within the conclave, and diaries of conclavists provide amazingly detailed information about the politicking
within it.18 That the royal agents could inform their masters on exactly
what was going on in the conclave was one of the scandals of that election, as was the ease with which the royal commands reached cardinals
inside the Vatican.The French ambassador boasted to Henry II how easily he could communicate with the head of the French faction, and a
17
Sources for the conclaves of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries include
Johannes Burchard, Diarium, ed. Enrico Celani (2 vols.; 1911–1942); Marino Sanuto, I Diarii, ed. F. Stefani (58 vols.;Venice, 1879–1903),V, 73ff.; Francesco Guicciardini, History of
Italy, trans. A. Goddard (10 vols.; London, 1753–1756), III, 238ff.; and A. Giustinian, Dispacci, ed. Pasquale Villari (3 vols.; Florence, 1876), II, 175–178.
18
For detailed studies of the conclave of 1549–50, see Baumgartner,“Henry II and the
Papal Conclave of 1549,” The Sixteenth Century Journal, XVI (1985), 301–314; and
Thomas F. Mayer, Cardinal Pole in European Context (Burlington, Vermont, 2000). The
most useful primary source is the diary of Angelo Massarelli, a conclavist, printed in Concilii Tridentini Diariorum . . . nova collectio (11 vols.; Freiburg, 1901–1911), Vol. XI, ed.
Sebastian Merkle, pp. 1–185.

BY FREDERIC J. BAUMGARTNER

173

conclavist wrote that Emperor Charles V “knows when they urinate in
this Conclave.”19
Ambassadors and agents were not the only ones who had full knowledge of the conclave’s proceedings; equally well informed were the
bookmakers of Rome. This conclave provides extensive information on
the practice of betting on who would become pope, which was at least
a century old by 1549. The Venetian ambassador kept close track of the
betting odds on the papabili. He reported: “It is clear that the merchants are very well informed about the state of the poll, and that the
cardinals’ attendants in Conclave go partners with them in wagers,
which thus causes many tens of thousands of scudi to change hands.”20
We learn from the extensive reporting on the conclave of 1549–50
how the cardinals acted in conclave. For example, the English Cardinal
Reginald Pole’s supporters secured the agreement of three cardinals
who had not been voting for him to accede to him at the scrutiny of December 5. Pole’s friends were so confident he would be elected that
they ordered papal vestments tailored for him. On December 5 he received twenty-three written ballots, and two more cardinals, neither
among those who made the agreement the previous evening, acceded
to him. Pole’s friends looked with eager anticipation at the three cardinals who had promised their votes, but they remained silent. It was
soon revealed that the three cardinals had said that they would vote for
Pole only if he had twenty-six votes (two short of the required majority
of the cardinals present), and he needed one more. His supporters
thought they had that one vote from Giulio del Monte, but Pole’s conclavist had failed to visit him in his cell the night before to confirm his
vote, and out of pique del Monte refused to vote for Pole.
Del Monte’s pique served him well, as he was elected pope two
months later, becoming Julius III, after instructions arrived from the
French king authorizing the French faction to vote for a neutral candidate. The election of 1549–50 serves as a prime example of political interference in a conclave, not because it was more blatant than in many
other conclaves, but because it was so thoroughly reported. It demonstrates that the Catholic monarchs viewed the papal election as an entirely political event and many cardinals were tools in their service.
Whether or not Pole would have been a better pope than del Monte
proved to be, the detailed reporting of the conclave reveals the process
19
Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, relating to English affairs existing in
the archives and collections of Venice (38 vols.; London, 1864), IX, 298.
20
Ibid., p. 281.

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by which the lightly regarded del Monte and not the highly respected
Pole emerged as pope.
Efforts by the popes over the next sixty years failed to achieve the
goal of preventing the monarchs from influencing the elections. Since
most conclaves lasted at least a month, there was plenty of opportunity
for the kings to sway the cardinals. Many conclavists and even some cardinals put down money on the elections and kept the bookmakers informed. In 1591 Gregory XIV banned wagering on papal elections and
length of papal reigns.21 It is difficult to believe the bull had much effect
on bookmakers and gamblers, but reports on the odds are less common
after it, which in turn reduces our sense of the ebb and flow of the balloting in the conclaves.
Fortunately for historians, the secrecy applied only while the conclave was ongoing. Once it was over, those who participated still were
free to report on what had happened in it. Memoirs by conclavists are
the major sources on the internal workings of the conclaves for the next
three centuries.They contain some fascinating albeit not always edifying
stories. In 1592, for example, Cardinal Carlo Madruzzo, serving as leader
of the Spanish party, was certain that he had the votes to elect Cardinal
Giulio Santori pope by acclamation (without a written ballot) on the
first day. Santori was so sure he was the new pope that he revealed he
would be called Clement VIII.As Madruzzo led him to the Sistine chapel
to be acclaimed pope, sixteen cardinals refused to participate and remained in the Pauline chapel. Cardinal Mark Sittich von Hohenems (Altemps), their leader, was standing in that chapel’s doorway as Santori’s
party passed on its way to the Sistine chapel. Santori stepped forward
to embrace him, but Sittich stopped him dead in his tracks, the story
goes, by snarling at him, “Behold the devil’s pope!”22 Santori and
Madruzzo were shaken by his vehemence, but they continued on to the
chapel, where thirty-four cardinals were assembled, one over the twothirds majority. Madruzzo told the dean that there were enough cardinals present to acclaim Santori pope and wanted him so proclaimed.
The dean insisted on counting the votes, and in the dim chapel lit by
too few candles and with cardinals milling about, he could not get an
accurate count. A cardinal suddenly shouted that he could never vote
for Santori and fled from the chapel. Since Santori could not vote for
himself, it turned out that he was a vote short, and as often happened in

Pastor, op. cit., XXIII, 389–390.
Traicte sommaire de l’élection des papes (Paris, 1605), folio C 1.

21
22

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175

the conclaves, a papabile who failed to be elected early on faded
quickly. A month later another cardinal became Clement VIII.
In 1621 Gregory XV made a major reform of the conclave in response
to the events of his election. Cardinal Scipione Cafarrelli Borghese,
nephew of deceased pope Paul V, expected to get Pietro Campori
elected by acclamation during the conclave’s first evening. He felt certain that he had exactly the two-thirds needed to elect. The French ambassador had a letter from Louis XIII vetoing Campori, but he wanted to
avoid using it, because such blatant exclusions always caused rancor.
Aware that two cardinals hostile to Campori were within hours of
reaching Rome, the ambassador refused to leave the Vatican despite all
efforts to get him out, thereby preventing any action. He left only when
the two cardinals arrived after midnight. They voted as expected, and
Borghese, seeing that Campori did not now have the required majority,
shifted his support to Alessandro Ludovisi, who became Gregory XV.23
Gregory’s bull first strengthened the rules on sealing the conclave,
making the French ploy of 1621 far more difficult.24 It also eliminated
the practice of election by acclamation. The expected way for the election to take place now was by written secret ballot, to reduce the pressure on cardinals to vote as demanded by a faction leader in such open
methods as acclamation or verbal accession. The bull allowed accession, but it no longer could be done verbally. After each scrutiny that
failed to produce a pope, the process of accession was permitted; but
instead of doing it verbally as in the past, a cardinal willing to accede to
a candidate filled out a new secret ballot. Gregory sought to ensure that
no one would put the same name on the ballot of accession as he had
on the first ballot, thereby skewing the vote, by requiring the same
motto on ballots of accession as used on the original ballot. Perhaps
Gregory’s greatest change was the move to two ballots a day. He intended not only to speed up the process but also give faction leaders
less time to negotiate and browbeat between ballots. The bull also required a mustering of everyone in the conclave except the cardinals at
noon of the day following enclosure to ensure that no one was there
improperly. With this bull Gregory established the conclave rules that
remained largely unchanged to 1978.
Gregory’s rules were directed toward reducing the influence of the
great Catholic monarchs during the conclave,not eliminating information
Valérie Pirie, The Triple Crown (London, 1965), pp. 150–151.
Pastor, op. cit., XXVII, 114–119.

23

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on what happened in it from coming out afterwards. Reduced access to
the electors for the ambassadors and other agents meant that the diplomatic correspondence is less informative on the developments within
the conclave than it had been for the past two centuries, but conclavists’memoirs and a few from cardinals continued to provide detailed accounts. Tally sheets from most of the conclaves to 1846 are also
accessible in the Vatican Archives with the voting patterns for the ballots. Among the curiosities they reveal is that during the three-monthlong election of 1655, there were twenty-one votes out of the sixty-six
cast for “no one” during one ballot.25
The conclaves of the eighteenth century were both long and well reported on because of the influence of the Catholic states, especially
France. The monarchs insisted that the cardinals already in Rome wait
for their cardinals to arrive before beginning serious voting, which delayed the elections by a month or longer. Usually these crown cardinals
carried vetos directed against various cardinals. The kings also expected to be fully informed on what was happening in the conclaves.
This situation largely ended with the French Revolution. After 1815 the
papacy was determined on one hand to restore everything as closely as
possible to pre-1789 conditions,but on the other,to prevent political interference in papal elections. Those who wanted a complete return to
the pre-1789 world also demanded total secrecy in the conclave to reduce the influence that had been exerted by the Catholic powers. After
1815 the ability and, to an extent, the willingness to assert that influence were reduced. When King Louis-Philippe took the French throne
in 1830, he deemed it inappropriate to interfere in the conclave and rejected the use of the veto.26 There was no longer so powerful a reason
to insist on secrecy, but rather than eliminating or at least reducing it,
the popes enhanced it further as a good in its own right.
Secrecy grew all the tighter when Pius IX became the “prisoner of
the Vatican” in 1870. He became convinced that the new Italian state
would try to control the next conclave in order to elect a pope who
would concede rule of Rome. In 1876 he issued a decree mandating enhanced secrecy during the conclave to prevent Italy from influencing
the election.27 The obligation of secrecy reduced considerably the information about the workings of the conclave that followed Pius’s death in
1878, which elected Leo XIII.
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Fondo Barberini 4440.
Comte de Chateaubriand, Journal d’un conclave, ed. Louis Thomas (Paris, 1913).
27
Zizola, op. cit., pp. 166–167.

25
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BY FREDERIC J. BAUMGARTNER

177

The conclave after Leo died in 1903 is notorious for the Austrian veto
of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla. Whether he would have been elected
without it cannot be said, but it threw the election to Cardinal
Giuseppe Sarto, who became Pius X. Rampolla’s exclusion offended
Pius because it was a blatant act of secular interference. He mandated
excommunication for anyone attempting to use it at a future conclave,
although his own election was brought into question if exclusion was
so evil that excommunication was the proper punishment.28 The extensive information on the conclave that soon appeared in the newspapers also scandalized Pius X. He knew little of the history of conclaves
but was a firm believer in the authority of his predecessors, who had
dictated that deliberations and votes be kept secret. He therefore issued
a decree that reinforced the obligation of total secrecy and made it permanent. Its major point was excommunication for anyone, whether cardinal or conclavist, who revealed what happened in a conclave even
well after it.
Thus, at a time when political interference, the original reason for secrecy,was ending,enforcement of secrecy was made all the stronger,and
it has been well obeyed since 1903. Now journalists were the ones who
were seeking to find out what was going on, and the reaction of the
popes has been to keep them at bay by emphasizing the obligation of secrecy.For centuries most cardinals had viewed at least one of the several
Catholic rulers seeking to influence the election as being essentially on
their side. They accepted the idea that those rulers had a right to know
what was happening in the conclave and influence the choice of the
pope. Even when two conclavists had been expelled from the conclave
of 1829 as Austrian agents, there had been no reaction on the papacy’s
part.29 Journalists were another matter, however, who offended by their
persistent and often devious efforts to get access to the conclave.
The conclave of 1914 that elected Benedict XV demonstrated the effectiveness of Pius X’s edict obliging secrecy. Information is limited, and
the accounts give varying results for the balloting.30 The outbreak of
World War I, with Catholic states in both alliances, also required the cardinals to be more careful about leaking information about their deliberations and voting to prevent either side in the war from charging the
new pope with bias against it. The conclave following Benedict’s death
in 1922 demonstrated the problem with journalists. A photographer
Anton de Waal, Life of His Holiness Pope Pius X (Milwaukee, 1904), pp. 10–49.
Roger Peyrefitte, Les Secrets des Conclaves (Paris, 1968), p. 27.
30
The best source for the voting in the conclaves from 1903 to 1964 is Giancarlo Zizola,
Quale Papa? Analisi delle Strutture Elettorali e Governative del Papato (Rome, 1977).
28

29

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was discovered hidden inside and expelled,and conclave officials foiled
a reporter’s plan to take the place of a waiter in the Vatican. When
shortly after Pius XI’s election a cardinal’s heirs sold his notes on the
conclave of 1922 to a newspaper, the new pope strengthened further
the enforcement of secrecy in the conclave. He ordered that all notes
and records be burned with the final ballots.31
The election of Pius XII in 1939 generated little controversy since it
was the expected result. Yet the details of the balloting remain vague, as
the ban on revealing the secrets of the conclave has been well kept. By
1958 the cardinals were well aware of interest in the papal election
from the CIA and the intelligence agencies of all major states. They also
knew that the media, including television, which was a major presence
in St. Peter’s Square for the first time, would do anything to get first
word on the election’s outcome. The conclave space was swept for listening devices and forms of secret communication. There is no word
that any were found, but there is a story of a conclavist who had a tiny
radio he used to alert the CIA in one version, or Vatican Radio in another, of the result immediately, flushing it down a toilet after using it.32
The veil of secrecy over the balloting was more complete than for previous conclaves, and the best history of this conclave can only give estimates on the balloting.33 John XXIII would later tease reporters that
while their efforts to learn the conclave’s secrets were remarkable, the
cardinals’ silence was even more so.34 His diary, published after his
death, provides some insight into the election but reveals little detail.
For the conclave that elected Paul VI in 1963, the cardinals maintained secrecy well, so that journalists and historians have developed
conflicting scenarios on the balloting from hints given out by a few of
them. Thus, it was reported by many that Paul was elected on the fifth
ballot rather than the sixth, now regarded as more probable. Cardinal
31
Francis A. Burkle-Young, Papal Elections in the Age of Transition, 1878–1922 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 149–150. Apparently it was the additional paper burned with the ballots
that provided the visible white smoke indicating a successful election. Before this the
smoke from the final ballot usually was not visible. See Raffaele De Cesare, Il Conclave di
Leone XIII con aggiunte e nuovi documenti (Città di Castello, 1888), p. 330; and The
New York Times, February 20, 1878.
32
Alberto Melloni,“Pope John XXIII: Open Questions for a Biography,” Catholic Historical Review, 72 (1986), 64n. See Roland Flamini, Pope, Premier, President: The Cold War
Summit That Never Was (New York, 1980), pp. 147–151, for a CIA memorandum to President Kennedy on the upcoming conclave.
33
Zizola, Quale Papa, pp. 160–172.
34
Peter Hebblethwaite, Pope John XXIII, Shepherd of the Modern World (Garden City,
New York, 1985), p. 296.

BY FREDERIC J. BAUMGARTNER

179

Gustavo Testa made an intriguing statement: “Hair-raising things happened in this conclave. I will have to ask the pope for permission to
speak about them.”35 However, he apparently never did, or permission
was refused, since he did not speak further on the topic.
Despite the efforts of the conclave marshals to ensure secrecy, the
CIA received word of Paul’s election within minutes.36 Aware of this,
Paul reiterated the strict rules for secrecy at the conclave and included
for the first time prohibitions against bugging devices.37 He replaced
the two conclavists for each cardinal with seventy secretaries and servants for the entire College of Cardinals both to enhance secrecy, as the
new attendants would not have intimate access to the voters, and accommodate the greater number of electors in the Vatican, since he had
increased their number to 120.
In August, 1978, the Vatican’s doors were locked behind the cardinals
only after an exhaustive search for interlopers and bugging devices.
When within a month there had to be another election, there were
complaints about leaks regarding the voting in the previous conclave,
and Cardinal Jean Villot, the camerlengo, stressed even more the obligation of secrecy. Thus, the vote counts for the election of John Paul II are
the least certain for any conclave ever. It is not known for sure how
many ballots were taken, although the number of times that black
smoke issued from the Vatican chimney and the timing of the white
smoke on October 16 suggest eight. The scenarios on how the voting
went are contradictory; and thus far no one has confirmed the accuracy
of any of them. Curiosity about the events within the Vatican was made
all the stronger by comments from two participants. Cardinal John Carberry of St. Louis said:“I would like to tell you everything. It would thrill
you. But I can’t.” And Cardinal Giuseppe Siri of Genoa, who probably
was the leader in votes for the first several ballots, indicated that it
would be good to reveal what happened in the conclave at some point;
“for secrecy, though valid at the time of the conclave, can hide some
very uncharitable actions.”38
John Paul II, elected in that second conclave of 1978, has made the
emphasis on secrecy all the greater in his Apostolic Constitution of
Margaret Hebblethwaite, The Next Pope, 2nd ed. (New York, 2000), p. 46.
Flamini, op. cit., pp. 173–174.
37
The English text of Paul VI’s decrees of 1970 and 1975 is in Francis A. Burkle-Young,
Passing the Keys: Modern Cardinals, Conclaves, and the Election of the Next Pope (Lanham, Maryland, 2001), pp. 467 ff.
38
Quoted in M. Hebblethwaite, op. cit., p. 70.
35

36

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1996.39 The cardinal-electors will repeatedly swear to follow its rules
and observe the strictest secrecy unless the new pope permits them to
reveal information. The camerlengo must make sure that the cardinals
have no contact with the outside world during the conclave, whether
in writing or by electronic means. The Sistine Chapel and adjacent areas, as well as the cardinals’ living quarters, now in the new Domus
Sanctae Marthae and not the halls of the Vatican palace, will be “swept”
periodically to ensure that all comply with these rules. All those involved in the election in any way are strictly forbidden to send or receive messages, and may not talk or communicate in any way to anyone
under pain of excommunication.The camerlengo and two trusted technicians are responsible for ensuring that there are no devices that can
transmit pictures, voices, or any information of any sort in the chapel.
Some argue that all of this will come to naught as sensitive listening devices placed in windows or on rooftops some distance from the Vatican
are capable of hearing every word uttered in the Sistine Chapel. All ballots and any notes cardinals have made are to be burned after the final
count has been ascertained.The camerlengo is obliged to write a report
on each scrutiny to be placed in the Vatican archives and kept secret
until a pope chooses to release them. Word from Rome is that records
from Pius XI’s reign will soon be opened to historians. Whether that
will include the conclave records is not clear.
The conclave system has served the Catholic Church well since the
end of the Great Schism. There has not been a serious challenge to the
legitimacy of any pope since the election of Martin V at the Council of
Constance.No other system of governance comes close to matching that
record. After every conclave some Catholics are disappointed in the
choice of pope, but only a minuscule number of them have refused to
recognize his legitimacy.40 Too much tinkering with the process would
inevitably call the election into question,as in 1978 when Paul VI’s elimination of the cardinals over eighty from the conclave led Archbishop
39
The text can be found in English also (cf. fn. 1) in Burkle-Young, Passing the Keys,
pp. 457–465, and on line at http/.www.newadvent.org/docs/jp02ud.htm.
40
Currently,four men besides John Paul II proclaim themselves to be pope.Gregory XVII,
a Spaniard, claims the papacy on the basis of a divine revelation. He accepts Paul VI but
refers to the two John Pauls as villains. Clement XV, a Canadian, received a revelation in
1950 that he would become pope and now claims to be the successor to John XXIII. He
is at least ninety years old. Michael I, based in Kansas, denounces John and his successors
as apostates. He claims that the papacy was vacant from 1958 to 1990, when the faithful
remnant of the Church elected him. Pius XIII, another American, likewise proclaims himself to be the legitimate successor to Pius XII, the last true pope. He was elected in a conclave held in Montana on October 23, 1998.

BY FREDERIC J. BAUMGARTNER

181

Marcel Lefèbvre to proclaim his intention to challenge the standing of a
pope elected with less than two-thirds majority of the full College.
Cardinals who have participated in the last two conclaves have said
that it was like being at a retreat where the working of the Spirit was
particularly obvious. It can be debated whether total withdrawal from
the world if only for a few days is appropriate for choosing someone
who is going to be very much a world figure, but the insistence on permanent secrecy after the conclave seems intended to foster the conviction that politics and personalities do not play a role in electing the
pope. Certainly, most cardinals of the past would have disagreed with
that. As a historian I lament the rigid secrecy of the recent conclaves, although a strong case can be made that the quality of popes since 1878
has improved. That, however, is probably more a result of the absence
of the political interference found in prior eras than of the secrecy.
But why all the secrecy? After all, St. Malachy told us 900 years ago
who the next pope will be—Cardinal Carlo Martini, archbishop emeritus of Milan. Malachy’s prophecies, which are brief mottoes that supposedly have identified every pope since 1143, tells us that the next
pope will be de gloria olivae,“the glory of the olive,” and who better
fits that than Cardinal Martini? Regardless of whether one sees Malachy’s
prophecies as authentic or fraudulent, he has had as good a record in
predicting popes as journalists, bookmakers, or historians.

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METROPOLITAN MIGHT AND PAPAL POWER ON THE
LATIN-CHRISTIAN FRONTIER: TRANSFORMING THE
DANISH CHURCH AROUND THE TIME OF THE
FOURTH LATERAN COUNCIL
BY

ANTHONY PERRON*

Even before the Fourth Lateran Council met in the autumn of 1215,
contemporaries believed it would be one of the greatest ever convoked. When the archbishop of Lund, Anders Sunesen, tried to excuse
himself from attending, Innocent III expressed chagrin.“Even if you had
not been summoned,”the pope wrote,“you ought to do everything possible to take part in such a great council.” Surely, no prelate would want
the “shameful stain on his glory” that would result from a failure to participate in “this great solemn event, a work so necessary and so pious.”1
Nor did the synod fail to satisfy expectation.2 “Neither eye has seen nor
ear has heard” the multitudes who flocked to the apostolic see on this
occasion and the many languages they spoke, or so one observer reported.3 This assessment is shared by modern scholars. John Watt, for
*Dr. Perron is a visiting scholar in the Department of History of Northwestern University. He presented an early version of this article at Copenhagen University’s Center for
European Medieval Studies in the autumn of 1999.He would like especially to thank Brian
Patrick McGuire of Roskilde University,Michael H.Gelting of the Danish National Archives,
and Bernard McGinn of the University of Chicago for their helpful criticism of this piece.
All translations in this article are his, unless otherwise noted. He has translated most citations contained in the body of the text, while in the footnotes he has also translated quotations from Scandinavian-language scholarship.
1
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1, Vol. 5, no. 41. The Diplomatarium consists of forty
volumes issued in four series, published under the auspices of the Danish Society for Language and Literature (Det Danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab). The volumes cited in this
article, all from the first series and printed in Copenhagen, are edited by the following
scholars:Vol. 2, Lauritz Weibull and Niels Skyum-Nielsen (1963);Vol. 3, Herluf Nielsen and
C. A. Christensen (1976–1977); Vol. 4, Niels Skyum-Nielsen (1958); Vol. 5, Niels SkyumNielsen (1957);Vol. 6, Niels Skyum-Nielsen (1978).
2
As Johannes Haller expressed it (Das Papsttum: Idee und Wirklichkeit, 2d ed., Vol. 3
[Esslingen am Neckar, 1962], p 465), “Alles war geschehen, damit die bevorstehende
Kirchenversammlung jede frühere überträfe. Die Erwartungen wurden auch nicht enttäuscht.”

182

BY ANTHONY PERRON

183

one, has called Fourth Lateran “the most comprehensive expression of
the classical policies of the medieval papacy in its heyday, at once typifying its major aspirations and identifying its goals.”4 Indeed, the agenda
outlined in Rome that November—the reform of clerical morals, the
eradication of heresy,and a renewed commitment to crusading—would
echo throughout the next century.
Given this sanguine interpretation of the council’s place in the history
of the medieval church, it is surprising to read the almost uniformly pessimistic evaluations of the success of Innocent’s great program in the various corners of Europe. While Raymonde Foreville credited Fourth Lateran
with hastening a “flowering” of provincial and diocesan synodal activity,5
when it comes to the bread-and-butter implementation of specific decrees,the verdict has been harsh.As early as 1934,Marion Gibbs and Jane
Lang criticized the English episcopate for failing to comprehend the spirit
of the pope’s plan.6 And while their judgment is tendentious and marked
by an unrealistically high estimation of what “success” might have meant
in the context of medieval reform, it continues to shape the interpretation of Langton’s church. Nicholas Vincent noted in 1996 that CardinalLegate Guala Bicchieri, notwithstanding his past as a reformer in France,
“did less than might be expected to modify the laws of the church of England” in light of the constitutions of 1215.7 The discourse of FourthLateran failure has also been reproduced for Spain by Peter Linehan,who
traced the almost comic ineptitude of the papal legate John of Abbeville
when confronted by a backward and greedy Spanish church,and for Germany, where Paul B. Pixton dissected the German bishops’ inability to effect change in the years before the First Council of Lyon (1245).8 In
Pixton’s words, “The legislation of Lateran IV had little appreciable

3
From the Giessen Anonymous. See Stephan Kuttner and Antonio García y García,“A
New Eyewitness Account of the Fourth Lateran Council,” Traditio, 20 (1964), 123.
4
John Watt,“The Papacy,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 5, ed. David
Abulafia (Cambridge, 1999), p. 119.
5
See Raymonde Foreville, Latran I, II, III, et Latran IV (Paris, 1965), pp. 314–315, and
more recently, Le pape Innocent III et la France (Stuttgart, 1992), pp. 320–324.
6
Marion Gibbs and Jane Lang, Bishops and Reform, 1215–1272 (Oxford, 1934), pp.
131–179. They wrote, for example, that “although individual bishops understood and
were inspired by Innocent’s ideal, the great majority, ready enough to carry out conscientiously their duties, did not share the vision of the great Pope and failed to realize the
magnitude of the task entrusted to them” ( p. 176).
7
Nicholas Vincent (ed.), The Letters and Charters of Cardinal Guala Bicchieri,
1216–18 (Suffolk, 1996), pp. lxxiv–lxxv.
8
Peter Linehan, The Spanish Church and the Papacy in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 20–53, and Paul B. Pixton, The German Episcopacy and the Imple-

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METROPOLITAN MIGHT AND PAPAL POWER ON THE LATIN-CHRISTIAN FRONTIER

effect on the German church in general or upon the vast majority of
German clerics as individuals. Imposed from above, the Lateran decrees
failed in their intended purpose and remained for the most part mere
bureaucratic statutes.”9
To a great extent, this historiographical disjunct can be attributed to
a difference in perspective.If the individual statutes of the council were
not applied with sufficient vigor in particular dioceses or countries, the
congress’s larger ideology did nonetheless signal a major shift in the
Western church. To be sure, priests continued to keep concubines and
canons to hoard the incomes of underserved parish churches, but the
years after 1215 marked the emergence of a new stage in papal universalism. The big issues articulated at Fourth Lateran provided a foundation for tighter Roman control felt throughout Latin Christendom. The
anxiety over crusade funding, for instance, would make the papal tax
collector a familiar character across thirteenth-century Europe,10 while
the specter of heresy and the emergence of the mendicants, whose
approval at the time of the council closed the door on new religious orders, set the stage for the papally directed medieval inquisition.11 Likewise, the decree on the devolution of vacant benefices gave further
impetus to the practice of papal provision.12 Though the momentum of
Roman hegemony had been gaining force since the time of Alexander III,
the experience of papal government, and hence the anatomy of ecclesiastical power, was markedly different in the era after Fourth Lateran
from what it had been before.
What was true for Europe was especially so for Denmark. Though no
longer heathen Vikings, the Danes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were still making a transition from pagan alterity to full citizenship
in Latin Christendom. As Robert Bartlett has observed,“The introduction of Christian ritual and the establishment of the institutions of the
Church were preconditions for the deeper cultural incorporation of
Denmark which took place from the twelfth century onwards.”13 Cenmentation of the Decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council, 1216–1245: Watchmen on the
Tower (New York, 1995).
9
Pixton, op. cit., p. 464.
10
See const. 71 (G. Alberigo et al.[eds.], Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, 3d ed.
[Bologna, 1973], pp. 267–271).
11
See const. 1, 3, and 13 (ibid., pp. 230–231, 233–235, 242), and discussion in Edward
Peters, Inquisition (Berkeley, 1988), pp. 50–51.
12
See const. 23 (Alberigo [ed], Conciliorum, p. 246).
13
Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural
Change, 950–1350 (Princeton, 1993), p. 289.

BY ANTHONY PERRON

185

tral to this development was the involvement of papal power in the
Danish church. The papacy had granted the Danes ecclesiastical freedom from the German see of Hamburg-Bremen in 1103 or 1104
through the establishment of an independent Scandinavian archiepiscopate,14 and Roman involvement continued to shape the structure of
authority in the province of Lund for the remainder of the Middle Ages.
In this article, I will trace the mission and activity of one cardinal, Gregorius de Crescentio,in Denmark in 1222.Despite the important timing
of this legate’s visit, it has never been closely examined, even in Scandinavian historiography. Like Linehan and Pixton, I will touch on the
planting of specific reform decrees from Fourth Lateran. More central
to my purpose, however, will be how Gregorius’ trip symbolized a
deeper tectonic shift in the relationship of apostolic might to ecclesiastical power in Denmark in the time of Innocent’s seminal council. Before investigating this legation more closely, however, it is necessary to
sketch the history of papal interaction with the governance of the Danish church in the century or so leading up to Fourth Lateran.
The Danish Church in the Twelfth Century

In the mid-twelfth century, during the tenure of Archbishop Eskil
(1137–1177), the enormous northern province centered on Lund was
pared down with the erection of an independent archiepiscopate in Norway at Trondheim/Nidaros (its reach encompassed Iceland, Greenland,
and the Scandinavian North-Atlantic islands as well) and a metropolitan
see in Uppsala for Sweden, over which Lund retained primacy. Despite
this loss of large tracts of his bailiwick, Eskil was perhaps the first native
Danish prelate to achieve a truly international stature. He had been educated at the cathedral school of Hildesheim and enjoyed a friendship
with St. Bernard and the other monks of Clairvaux, where he died.15
14
See Wolfgang Seegrün, Das Papsttum und Skandinavien bis zur Vollendung der
nordischen Kirchenorganisation (1164) (Neumünster, 1967), pp. 108–129 (establishment of metropolitan see at Lund) and 146–199 (cleaving of provinces of Nidaros and
Uppsala from Lund). Though today Lund is in Sweden, the town was, in the Middle Ages,
part of Denmark, culturally and politically. The southwestern portion of Sweden (the districts of Halland, Skåne, and Blekinge) were ceded only in the seventeenth century as a
consequence of the wars between Sweden and Denmark.Medieval Denmark also included
the town and district of Schleswig, which was lost to Germany in the 1860’s.
15
See especially Brian Patrick McGuire, “Why Scandinavia?” in Goad and Nail, ed.
E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1985), pp. 251–281, and, from a slightly different
perspective, the chapter “Bernard and Eskil: Friendship and Confraternity,” in his The Difficult Saint: Bernard of Clairvaux and His Tradition (Kalamazoo, 1991), pp. 107–132,
esp. 110–122.

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Indeed, Eskil was renowned for his vigorous promotion of monasticism,
and though he was not as successful as he had hoped (the failure of his
Carthusian venture stands out in particular),16 the archbishop was especially instrumental in founding the Cistercians in Scandinavia.17 In advancing the cause of Danish monasticism, Eskil, as metropolitan bishop,
exercised a powerful degree of influence in his suffragan dioceses.
When the bishop of Ribe wanted to set up the house of Løgum with
“certain possessions of the bishopric of Ribe,” he first dutifully consulted his archbishop.18 Eskil was likewise central in the early history of
the white monks of Esrom and Vitskøl, founded, respectively, in the dioceses of Roskilde and Viborg.19 And though he was not at first involved
in the establishment of the abbey of Øm, his influence soon asserted itself. Alexander III granted the monks papal ratification only after discussing the matter with the archbishop and finding that “it pleased him
and he gave his assent and favor.”20 Nor was Eskil’s reach limited to the
Cistercians. In 1139 (and again in 1171), he ratified for the Benedictine
cathedral chapter of Odense the statutes limiting the bishop’s right to
interfere in their affairs, in accordance with the provisions first laid out
by Pope Paschal II in 1117.21 Likewise, Eskil issued a decree supporting
16
A letter from Peter of Celle to Eskil (Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 2, no. 142)
reveals that Eskil had asked Peter to arrange for the monks of La Chartreuse to found a
house in Denmark. At Peter’s instigation, one Roger was sent to Denmark around 1162.
Absalon too tried to found a Carthusian convent on the property of Asserbo in northeastern Sjælland, perhaps in conjunction with Eskil’s plan (as argued by Brian Patrick
McGuire, The Cistercians in Denmark [Kalamazoo, 1982], pp. 66–67), but the Carthusians “qualitatem loci maturius explorantes causati sunt tandem huiusmodi possessionem
eorum ordini ad inhabitandum omnino non congruere et ea relicta ad propria remearunt”
(from the “Sorø Donation Book,” since the Carthusians’ property was subsequently given
to Sorø; Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 3, no. 6).
17
On the Cistercian advance in Denmark, including Eskil’s role, see especially McGuire,
The Cistercians in Denmark, and James France, The Cistercians in Scandinavia (Kalamazoo, 1992), pp. 44–60, 63–67.
18
From the later cartulary of Løgum. Document ibid., no. 163. See also Olga Bartholdy,
Munkeliv i Løgum kloster (Løgumkloster, 1973), pp. 40–44, and, most recently, Tore Nyberg, Monasticism in North-Western Europe (Aldershot, 2000), esp. pp. 199–203.
19
On Esrom, see especially Brian Patrick McGuire, “Politics and Property at Esrum
Abbey: 1151–1251,” Medieval Scandinavia, 6 (1973), 122–150. For Vitskøl, see idem,
“Why Scandinavia?” p. 272, and the foundation account in Scriptores minores, ed. Gertz,
Vol. 2, pp. 138–142.
20
Exordium monasterii Carae Insulae, in Scriptores minores, ed. Gertz, Vol. 2, p. 167.
See Brian Patrick McGuire, Conflict and Continuity at Om Abbey: A Cistercian Experience in Medieval Denmark (Copenhagen, 1976), pp. 35–42, and Nyberg, op. cit., pp.
109–114, 188–194.
21
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 3, no. 19. Eskil was here acting in his capacity as
papal legate as well as metropolitan bishop. In confirming properties held by the monks,

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the right of the Augustinian chapter in Viborg to perform various (incomegenerating) sacramental duties in their diocese.22
What is more, the papacy recognized and augmented Eskil’s “great repute and highest office.” Among other marks of respect, Rome buttressed him as the head of the Danish church by naming him papal
legate, and Eskil’s contemporaries were well aware of his papal esteem.
Saxo Grammaticus wrote that “[the archbishop’s] considerable favor
with the curia flourished at that time.”23 So it was probably no surprise
that, when Eskil wished to retire to his beloved Clairvaux, Alexander III
offered him the extraordinary privilege of designating his own successor.24 What did cause murmurs among the dignitaries gathered at the
cathedral of St. Lawrence in Lund in 1177 to hear Eskil’s decision was
that he chose Absalon, bishop of Roskilde since 1158 and loyal companion of King Valdemar the Great, with whom Eskil had clashed during the Alexandrine schism, over his own kinsman Asser, provost in
Lund. When Absalon tried to turn down the new office, claiming allegiance to the church of Roskilde,25 and appealed unsuccessfully to Rome
(as Gratian commented,“no one is to be dragged unwillingly to the episcopate”26), Eskil threatened that Absalon “would soon see whose wishes
had greater influence at Rome.”27 Eskil himself was evidently quite
proud of the curial bonds that nourished his power within the Danish
church and did not hesitate to invoke them.
Despite their initial differences, Absalon proved to be an archbishop
very much in the mold of his predecessor.One indication is that he zealously patronized the Cistercians, especially his family’s “Hauskloster” of

he referred to “apostolice pariter et nostre auctoritatis” and the diploma as a whole is
sanctioned “auctoritate . . . domini pape Alexandri nostro quoque officio.”
22
Ibid., ser. 1,Vol. 2, no. 161.
23
Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. J. Olrik and H. Raeder (Copenhagen, 1931),
p. 516. It was undoubtedly on account of Eskil’s “non mediocris apud curiam fauor” that
Abbot Brien of Øm had earlier sought out the archbishop in Clairvaux before asking the
pope to approve his convent’s move from Veng to Kalvø (Exordium monasterii Carae
Insulae, p. 169).
24
See Gesta Danorum, pp. 512–516.
25
Ibid. While Saxo may have exaggerated Absalon’s unwillingness in order to depict his
humility, there were understandable reasons for the prelate’s attitude. Roskilde was a
wealthy see near Absalon’s familial base in Sjælland, and he may well have anticipated the
violent rebellion by the people of his new diocese in Skåne that did in fact result after this
“outsider” assumed ecclesiastical power there.
26
Corpus iuris canonici, ed. E. Friedberg, Vol. 1 (Decretum Gratiani) (Leipzig, 1879),
pars 1, dist. 74, c. 7.
27
Saxo Grammaticus, op. cit., p. 515.

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Sorø in central Sjælland.28 Also like Eskil, Absalon garnered favor from
Rome, including the legatine dignity, and used it to secure power
throughout the Danish church. Indeed, his status at the Apostolic See
was in evidence virtually from the moment he was chosen archbishop.
After Absalon initially refused to accept his election, Pope Alexander III
responded by granting him a “new and unprecedented gift of the curia,”
in Saxo’s phrasing: the right to hold both Roskilde and Lund simultaneously, a dual prelacy that would last until 1192.29 Even when the papacy
formally ended the archbishop’s jurisdiction over Roskilde,it placed the
new bishop there (who was, not accidentally, Absalon’s cousin Peder
Sunesen) under the metropolitan’s close supervision.Among other provisions, Peder was to obey Absalon “like a paterfamilias,” while the
archbishop was to have “common mensa” with his relative.30 Furthermore,in the 1180’s,when the Danes,led by Archbishop Absalon,sought
papal canonization of Kjeld, the former provost of the cathedral chapter of Viborg, Clement III expressed doubts about the petition, but
rather than reject the request, the pope permitted Absalon himself to
investigate further and,“if it will seem fitting and proper to you, to canonize his memory and decree, on apostolic authority, that in the future
his feast-day is to be celebrated as that of a holy man.”31 Absalon’s mandate here recalls Thomas Becket’s license to canonize Anselm of Canterbury,with the notable difference that Alexander III had expressed no
reservations concerning Anselm’s merits.32
Finally,as with his predecessor,Absalon’s elevated status vis-à-vis papal
authority was closely linked to an impressive administrative and juris28
On the links between Danish monasteries and aristocratic families, see Thomas Hill,
Könige, Fürsten, und Klöster: Studien zu den dänischen Klostergründungen des 12.
Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main, 1992), esp. pp. 206–260 on Sorø and the Hvidslægt.
29
Saxo, op. cit., p. 519. Saxo was not entirely correct on this score.Alexander had earlier
allowed the mighty William, bishop of Chartres (and eventually cardinal-priest of Santa
Sabina), to retain his original see while taking up the archiepiscopate in Sens.To place Absalon in such company, however, is surely not to demean his prestige.
30
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1, Vol. 3, nos. 174, 194. The term mensa could simply
refer to “table,” implying that Peder was to render hospitality to Absalon when the latter
should demand it. It is perhaps more likely, however, that mensa is here employed in the
sense of “endowment” or, as Everett Crosby has defined it,“the entirety of property and
goods” controlled by the bishop (Bishop and Chapter in Twelfth-Century England: A
Study of the mensa episcopalis [Cambridge, 1994], p. 1). In other words, Absalon would
continue to exercise a degree of financial control over his old diocese.
31
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 3, no. 150.
32
For Alexander’s bull, see J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia latina, Vol. 200 (Paris, 1855),
cols. 235–236. On this case, see Eric Kemp, Canonization and Authority in the Western
Church (Oxford, 1948), pp. 83 and 95.

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dictional control within the suffragan dioceses of his province. He regularly approved the transactions and deeds of Danish bishops, especially
if the latter intended to take the further step of seeking papal ratification. For instance, when Bishop Valdemar of Schleswig reached a new
tithe agreement with the people of his bishopric and won immunity
from all royal exactions owed by episcopal tenants, Absalon sanctioned
the new provisions before they were sent on to Rome for confirmation.33
After Bishop Homer of Ribe similarly won royal prerogatives for his
church, he too asked for Absalon’s blessing before petitioning Celestine
III, a procedure followed by Bishop Svend of Århus as well once he decided to resign his office, and by his successor Peder Vognsen, who
sought to establish a chapter at his cathedral.34 So strong,indeed,was the
tendency to consult Absalon that he even appeared in matters from
which the papacy excluded him. Thus, when a dispute arose between
the Cistercians of Guldholm (diocese of Schleswig) and the “decadent”
black monks they had displaced, the pope passed the case off to judgesdelegate from Denmark, Bishop Homer of the neighboring diocese of
Ribe and Abbot William of Æbelholt. Instead of settling the matter on
their own, however, the judges “carefully sought out the will of Archbishop Absalon as to how they ought to proceed in the case.”35
Even the mighty Innocent III acknowledged Absalon’s power within
the Danish church, though the young pope’s tenure overlapped only
with the last couple of years of the aging prelate’s life. If Innocent did
not, like his predecessors, renew Absalon’s status as “apostolice sedis
legatus,” he nonetheless followed the example of earlier popes by allowing Absalon to act on apostolic authority in a number of important matters in other dioceses and across the Danish ecclesiastical province as a
33
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 3, nos. 147 and 148. Such “immunity,” of course,
merely meant that the bishop, and not the king and his magistrates, could collect these
taxes.
34
Diplomatarium danicum,ser.1,Vol.3,no.219,for Homer.On Svend’s retirement,see
Exordium monasterii Carae Insulae, pp. 189–191. The license had first been granted by
Urban III, but it was renewed by Celestine III, who stated that he had learned of Svend’s
desire “ex litteris uenerabilis fratris nostri Absalonis Lundensis archiepiscopi” and
promptly turned the matter over to the archbishop for final execution. On Peder’s project, see Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 3, no. 221.The chapter of Århus was the last
to be established in Denmark. See Hal Koch, Danmarks kirke i den begyndende Hojmiddlelalder, Vol. 2 (Copenhagen, 1936), pp. 100–116 (esp. 104).
35
De fundatione monasterii Auree Insule,in Scriptores minores,ed.Gertz,Vol.2,p.151.
It appears, furthermore, from one of Abbot William’s letters concerning this suit, that Absalon had also approved the original transfer replacement of the Benedictine with reforming white monks, a plan organized by Bishop Valdemar of Schleswig (Epistolae
Abbatis Willelmi, in Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 3, p. 489).

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whole.36 So, when complaints arose from Denmark concerning abuses
by the Hospitallers, based perhaps on the weakly enforced ninth canon
of the Third Lateran Council listing problems with the crusading order,37
Innocent left it to the archbishop to punish the guilty Johannites and
their accomplices throughout his entire province (“per totam prouinciam
tuam”).38 A similar countrywide jurisdiction was implied in a bull issued
at nearly the same time permitting Absalon to ensure the inviolability of
bequests made to churches through the Danish custom of scotatio (skø d
in Danish),a ritual that involved placing a small amount of the earth from
the donated land in a cloth (possibly a bishop’s mantle) and setting it on
the altar of the receiving church in the presence of witnesses.39
The treatment of Absalon by Innocent and the other popes of his
time would certainly back up Lucien Musset’s description of the archbishop as “la plus grande figure du Danemark médiéval,”40 but it raises
the obvious question of why Absalon, and Eskil before him, won such
honor (and jurisdiction) from the papacy and, consequently, such respect from their own country’s church. One must not discount the
power these men commanded as a result of their kin affiliations. Eskil
was a member of one of the most prominent clans in twelfth-century
Danish society, the “Thrugot”family, while Absalon belonged to the rival
“Hvide” (“White”) family.41 In the case of Absalon, his influence was further enhanced through close ties with King Valdemar the Great, who

36
The legatine office itself seems to have had at most a tangential relationship with
Lund’s extraordinary authority. For example, Clement III did not mention it at all in entrusting St. Kjeld’s canonization to the archbishop. Attributing great weight to the archbishop’s status of legate, Niels Skyum-Nielsen argued differently in his article “Das
dänische Erzbistum vor 1250,” in Kirche und Gesellschaft im Ostseeraum und im Norden vor der Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts, ed. Sven Ekdahl (Visby, 1967), pp. 113–138.
37
Alberigo (ed.), Conciliorum, p. 215. On the enforcement of this decree, see Jean Becquet,“Les religieux,” in Le troisième concile de Latran (1179): Sa place dans l’histoire,
ed. Jean Longère (Paris, 1982), p. 49.
38
Diplomatarium danicum,ser.1,Vol.3,no.245.At the heart of the Lateran decree and
the Danish complaint were charges that the Hospitallers were interfering in episcopal
governance over priests.
39
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1, Vol. 3, no. 238 (Innocent’s letter). A fuller description of skod, in the context of the sale of land, is found in Anders Sunesen’s Latin paraphrase (ca. 1220) of the law code of Skåne (Danmarks gamle Landskabslove, ed.
Johannes Brøndum-Nielsen and Poul Johannes Jorgensen, Vol. 1 [Copenhagen, 1931],
p. 516). See also the discussion by Ole Fenger in his entry on skod in Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middlelalder,Vol. 16 (Copenhagen, 1971), pp. 166–167.
40
Lucien Musset, Les peuples scandinaves au moyen âge (Paris, 1951), p. 154.
41
See Birgit Sawyer and Peter Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia from Conversion to Reformation, circa 800–1500 (Minneapolis,1993),esp.p.139.On the Hvide family,see most

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had brought Denmark out of a long period of internecine war in the
1150’s and who, from a Roman perspective, served as a critical strategic
counterweight to the German emperor.42 But there is another reason,
no less important, behind the might wielded by the twelfth-century
archbishops of Lund with papal blessing. It has to do with Denmark’s
relative position on the fringe of western Christendom. Denmark was
described by Pope Alexander III as being “in distant regions,” and Celestine III justified the “dignitatis precipue amplitudo” (best translated
perhaps as “exceptionally broad power of office”) enjoyed by Absalon
with reference to the “distance” on account of which “complaints that
arise are the more difficult to send to Rome.”43 The trek involved was,
however, less geographical (England was, after all, no further from
Rome than Denmark was) than it was cultural and psychological. Thus,
notwithstanding their friendships with Danish ecclesiastics, the French
abbots Peter of Celle and Stephen of Tournai regarded the Danes as little more than well washed barbarians.44 Naturally, one could cite to the
contrary Arnold of Lübeck’s early-thirteenth-century testimony that the
Danes “send the more aristocratic sons of their land to Paris,”but merely
by attracting Arnold’s notice, this phenomenon was likely of recent
origin and contrary to expectation.45 On balance,comparatively few Danish prelates in this era had the “cultural capital” necessary to maneuver
in Rome. Indeed, when education at Paris or Bologna had become
increasingly important for obtaining both the knowledge and the perrecently Michael Kræmmer, Den hvide klan: Absalon, hans slægt, og hans tid (Copenhagen, 1999), and Erik Ulsig,“The Estates of Absalon and the Hvide Family,” in Archbishop
Absalon and His World, ed. Karsten Friis-Jensen and Inge Skovgaard-Petersen (Roskilde,
2000), pp. 89–101.
42
Saxo referred to Valdemar and Absalon as “collactei” (“foster brothers”) (see Gesta
Danorum, p. 400). It seems that the future king was raised in the household of Asser Rig,
Absalon’s father, following the murder of his own father, Knud Lavard.
43
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1, Vol. 3, no. 91 (Alexander) and no. 175 (Celestine).
44
Peter wrote to Absalon that “uestra Dacia remota est a nostra Francia. Distant enim et
moribus hominum et consuetudinibus siue situ terrarum” (Diplomatarium danicum,
ser. 1,Vol. 3, no. 81). Stephen was more blunt. He reminded Absalon that “patres uestri secundum carnem gentili adhuc ritu et superstitione detenti, Gallias inuadentes, in fortitudine brachii sui et in robore uirium suarum, urbes, castella, ceterasque munitiones
ceperunt, uicos, uillas, et agros uastarunt, homines alios, in predam et captiuitatem abduxerunt, alios in ore gladii percusserunt, loca sancta incendio et ruina ad solum usque
deiecerunt” (ibid., no. 154). Though he claimed to be speaking “iocose” and acknowledged that “per gratiam barbaries illa antiqua christiana mansuetudine mitigata est et mutata, et septentrionale frigus calore fidei liquefactum reiectis idolis creatorem suum
recognouit,” Stephen’s remarks reveal how the Viking past continued to shape European
views of the Scandinavians even in the late twelfth century.
45
Arnold of Lübeck, Chronica Slavorum, ed. G. H. Pertz (Hannover, 1868), p. 77.

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sonal connections required to conduct affairs at the papal court, only a
handful of Danes are known to have attended these schools before the
thirteenth century. We have already noted Eskil’s links with Clairvaux
and St. Bernard, but the archbishop also had acquaintances among the
College of Cardinals.46 Absalon, in turn, had studied in Paris, where he
befriended, among others who would later be of use to him in Rome,
the well connected William of Ste.-Geneviève, whom he lured to Denmark to lead a failing monastery on Eskilsø.47 For popes wishing to manifest their power in Denmark, and for Danes wishing to access papal
jurisdiction, the archbishop of Lund was a virtually indispensable conduit.
The Fourth Lateran Council, the Danish Church,
and the Pontificate of Honorius III

The power of the Lund metropolitans would seem to have passed unchanged from Absalon to Anders Sunesen, brother of Peder Sunesen,
upon Absalon’s death in 1201. For much of his tenure,Anders displayed
a Roman-sponsored authority little different from that of his predecessor. Parlaying a student friendship with Innocent III into an impressive
arsenal of powers,48 Anders won broad jurisdiction over such matters as
crusading and papal taxation. He was, for example, empowered to collect the Peter’s Pence in Denmark and Sweden (recall Lund’s primacy
over the province of Uppsala),49 while the pope, conceding to Anders
the title of “legate of the apostolic see,”ordered the Danish and Swedish
bishops to heed him in his efforts to preach the crusade in the Baltic re46
See the correspondence related to his attempt to win back money deposited with the
church of St.Victor and then embezzled (Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 3, nos. 32,
33, 35–44).
47
In the biographical sketch of William created as part of his canonization process, it is
said that the abbot, who had been a canon at Ste.-Geneviève, was asked to come to Denmark to reform Eskilsø (in Roskilde Fjord) as an Augustinian canonry, though the congregation soon moved to Æbelholt. Absalon, the narrator wrote, had struck up a friendship
with William “cum Parisius studendi gracia moraretur” (Vitae Sanctorum Danorum, ed.
M. C. Gertz [Copenhagen, 1908–1912], p. 320). Stephen of Tournai was another figure
whom Absalon seems to have befriended at Ste.-Geneviève and who would later help him
in Rome. Around 1185 Stephen wrote to Absalon that “pro negociis uestris apud dominum papam me fuisse sollicitum” (Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 3, no. 129).
48
See especially Torben K. Nielsen, Colibat og kirketugt: Studier i forholdet mellem
ærkebisp Anders Sunesen og pave Innocent III (Århus, 1993). Nielsen has reprised these
arguments in several articles. In English, see “Archbishop Anders Sunesen and Pope Innocent III: Papal Privileges and Espicopal Virtues,” in Archbishop Absalon of Lund, ed. FriisJensen and Skovgaard-Petersen, pp. 113–132.
49
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 4, no. 94.

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gion.50 Anders was also set in charge of proclaiming the “word of the
cross”throughout Sweden and Denmark and executing all the papal orders “for the aid of the Holy Land.”51 Likewise connected to the legatine
office (though the pope did not explicitly use the title legatus) were a
range of powers allotted to the archbishop in 1206. While on provincial
visitation, he was to fill benefices that had devolved to Rome, hear cases
as a judge of first instance,and absolve persons incurring sententia promulgata (i.e., immediate excommunication) for assaulting clerics (the
crime of iniectio manuum).52 Though such mandates gave Anders important prerogatives throughout his entire province, he also acquired
jurisdiction over his suffragan dioceses not stemming from the office of
papal legate. In 1203 Innocent called upon the archbishop to tighten
the enforcement of celibacy, especially among cathedral canons. Importantly, this power was to include the scrutiny of episcopal government. The metropolitan was himself to take action against those who
“still soil themselves and return to their vomit . . . if you should find
their bishops negligent in this matter.”53
Nor did the archbishop demur in putting his inimitable authority into
effect. He was responsible for reorganizing Benedictine houses in the
Danish province under a national chapter meeting presided over by the
abbot of All Saints in Lund, well in advance of Fourth Lateran’s twelfth
constitution requiring such structure for black monks throughout Europe.54 Innocent also praised a set of statutes drafted by the archbishop
for “increasing the comeliness of ecclesiastical honor” and gave his
backing to their enforcement “in prouincia tua.”55 For their part, the
bishops and other clerics of the Danish church submitted to their metropolitan’s jurisdiction. Like Eskil before him, Anders seems actively to
have intervened in the relations between the bishop and chapter in
Viborg, lecturing Bishop Asser on the canons’ rights over the nunnery
50
Ibid., ser. 1,Vol. 5, no. 13. For discussion, see Torben K. Nielsen,“The Missionary Man:
Archbishop Anders Sunesen and the Baltic Crusade, 1206–21,” in Crusade and Conversion on the Baltic Frontier, ed. Alan V. Murray (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 95–117.
51
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 5, nos. 30–31.
52
Ibid., no. 110. See also Peter Huizing,“The Earliest Development of Excommunication
‘late sententie’ by Gratian and the Earliest Decretists,”Studia Gratiana, 3 (1955), 277–320.
53
Diplomatarium danicum., ser. 1, Vol. 4, no. 87:“. . . quidam tamen in sordibus suis
sordescunt adhuc et redeunt ad uomitum suum plures, quoniam cathedralium ecclesiarum canonici publici tenent in suis domibus concubinas . . . fraternitati tue per apostolica scripta mandamus atque precipimus quatinus tam canonicos quam alios clericos in
tua prouincia constitutos, si tamen eorum episcopos super hoc inueneris negligentes, ut
focarias quas publice tenent abiciant. . . .”
54
Ibid., no. 111.
55
Ibid., no. 112.

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of St. Margrete in Asmild and the church of St. Martin on Fur.56 Similarly,
when one of his suffragan bishops (otherwise unspecified) was confronted with a legally complicated case involving a deacon who had
been advanced “per saltum” (i.e., by skipping intervening orders), the
prelate unhesitatingly “reserved a transgression of this sort to [Anders’]
judgment.”57 In the early years of the thirteenth century, then, the old hierarchy remained in force.The papacy relied on the archbishop of Lund
to get things done in the Danish province, while the archbishop exercised a provincial power that would have impressed Carolingian metropolitans like St. Boniface and Hincmar of Rheims.
At the same time, the conditions that had undergirded the power of
Lund were disappearing. Ties to the monarchy and the family networks
remained—Anders was the scion of one of the Hvide family’s most prominent branches and had been royal chancellor before he was chosen
archbishop—but the Danish church was less and less a naïve frontier
church dependent on metropolitan mediation to take care of business
in Rome. Increasing numbers of Danish ecclesiastics were studying in
the schools of Paris; the historian Ellen Jørgensen long ago determined
that, while only four Danes are known to have studied in Paris in the
twelfth century, seventy-five can be documented for the thirteenth.58
Their training allowed these men to deal with the Curia on their own
when problems or questions arose. In 1213 Bishop Niels of Schleswig
approached Innocent III, independently of Anders, with a series of legal
quandaries, and just a few years later, the bishop even had to be reminded that, since Anders was papal legate with powers to absolve
iniectores manuum, Niels did not need to send all such offenders directly to the Holy See.59
The changing nature of the Danish church’s relationship to the papacy was apparent at the Fourth Lateran Council. On the one hand, the
synod appears to have provided the metropolitan with a chance to
strengthen his position. After all, in personally demanding Anders’ presence, Innocent III certainly underscored the archbishop’s prestige.60
Furthermore, when in Rome for the council (or so it would seem from
a later reminiscence by Honorius III), Anders harked back to Absalon’s
Ibid., no. 50.
Ibid., no. 125.
58
Ellen Jørgensen, “Nordiske Studierejser i Middelalderen,” Historisk Tidsskrift, 8
(1914–15), 331–382, esp. 338–341. See also Sverre Bagge, “Nordic Students at Foreign
Universities,” Scandinavian Journal of History, 9 (1984), 1–29.
59
See Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 5, nos. 33, 151.
60
See introductory paragraph and note 1 above.
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double prelacy by winning supervision of the church of Roskilde, vacated by the recent death of his brother.61 He likewise left for home
with a letter ordering the “bishops and other prelates throughout the
Lund province that they should obey and pay heed to the archbishop of
Lund in those matters which have been entrusted to him by the lord
pope,”62 a possible allusion to crusading business, or perhaps a general
declaration that Anders would be principally in charge of implementing the council’s agenda in Denmark.
On the other hand, a careful reading of the documentary evidence
suggests that the Fourth Lateran Council may have been an opportunity
for other Danish churches to make or tighten their connections at the
Curia and shake off the powerful metropolitan’s overlordship.It is often
said that Anders Sunesen was the only Scandinavian present at Innocent’s council. This hypothesis rests ultimately on a list of participants,
found in a single exemplar in Zurich and first published by Achille
Luchaire in 1905,63 which registers an attending “de Datia episcopus,”
grouped with the archbishops of Magdeburg, Havelburg, and Brandenburg.64 There is, however, reason to question this testimony. First, it borders on the absurd to believe that,while the distant churches of Scotland,
Ireland, Poland, and Hungary were represented by multiple bishops,
and even Estonia and Livonia could be accounted for,only a single bishop
61
Honorius recalled that he met Anders in Rome and helped him secure provisory
rights over the church of Roskilde (Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1, Vol. 5, no. 102).
While Innocent’s letter granting this privilege is not extant, a fourteenth-century table of
Innocent’s letters from his final months in office (Reg. Vat. 8A) groups the diploma in
question with others datable to May or June, 1216, (see Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,
Vol. 5, nos. 75–76). From Honorius’s letter, it seems that the man elected as Peder Sunesen’s successor, Peder Jakobsen (Peder and Anders’ nephew), was not of canonical age
(the pope referred to him as “uita et scientia commendandus,” leaving aside the qualification of etas). On the circumstances surrounding Innocent’s letters from February, 1215,
until his death in July, 1216, see C. R. Cheney and Mary G. Cheney, The Letters of Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) concerning England and Wales (Oxford, 1967), p. xx.
62
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 5, no. 78.
63
See Achille Luchaire, “Un document retrouvé,” Journal des savants, n.s. 3 (1905),
557–567. The document was also published by J. Werner as “Die Teilnehmerliste des Laterankonzils vom Jahre 1215,” Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, 31 (1906), 575–593. (Werner’s list includes a critical apparatus noting the
palaeographical details of the manuscript).
64
To cite but one scholar, Sigvard Skov wrote that Anders “was the only Scandinavian
representative” at the council. See his “Erkebisp Anders Sunesen og pavestolen,” Scandia,
19 (1948–49), 189. The list’s claim was also accepted by Georgine Tangl in her study of
the participation in the medieval general councils (“Dänemark ist . . . nur durch einen
Bischof vertreten, dessen Sitz nicht einmal näher angegeben wird”). See Die Teilnehmer
an den allgemeinen Konzilien des Mittelalters (Cologne and Graz, 1969), p. 226.

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from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Finland combined should
have made the trip, and, once there, should have been mistaken for a
member of the German delegation. Far more credible is the explanation
that a contingent of Nordic participants, parallel to the groupings for
Germany, France, and the other nations appearing at the council, was
for some reason omitted from the original list, lost subsequently, or ignored by the copyist of the Zurich manuscript. Moreover, even if one
accepts that the document is correct, it still lists only the “names of the
cardinals, patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops” who were present, leaving open the possibility that lower prelates, including abbots, priors,
deans, and provosts from certain dioceses may have attended in lieu of
their bishops. Indeed, Innocent’s original summons had included these
groups alongside the higher ranks.65
This possibility is, indeed, a fact as far as Denmark is concerned.A letter from Abbot Gervasius of Prémontré, written in the wake of the
council, discusses the sad case of a canon named Eskil from the Danish
Premonstratensian chapter of Børglum.66 The abbot wrote to the
canons of Børglum that he had met Eskil at Fourth Lateran and had assisted him in conducting “the affairs of your house” there. Eskil was illprepared for the challenge of Rome, and Gervasius had to help him
with food, clothing, and lodging, charity repeated when the Danish
canon met up again with him in Belgium and accompanied him to the
Premonstratensian general chapter meeting of 1216. After that, neither
Gervasius nor the chapter in Børglum had heard any word from or of
Eskil. The abbot of Prémontré’s testimony is significant in at least two
ways. First, it affirms unambiguously that other Danes were among the
throng at the Lateran that autumn. And second, it shows us a Danish
churchman making use of contacts other than his metropolitan to maneuver (albeit incompetently) at the papal court. Whether he intended
consciously to break with the archbishop or not, it is nevertheless
telling that when Eskil ran into trouble, he did not turn to his countryman and hierarch Anders, but to the superior of his international order.
If the distant and relatively insignificant bishopric of Børglum attended Fourth Lateran, might not other Danish dioceses have done likewise? The answer is almost certainly yes. Consider Viborg. No direct
evidence places this church at Rome in November, 1215, but the see’s
65
Printed in Patrologia latina,Vol. 216 (Paris, 1855), cols. 823–827 (Innocent’s register,
lib. 16, no. 30).
66
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1, vol. 5, no. 92. Eskil’s mission involved gaining papal
blessing for a plan to move the site of the Børglum cathedral. See P. Riemann, Børglum
klosters historie (Hjørring, 1941), p. 41.

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Augustinian canons impetrated several papal letters in May or June,
1216.67 While this may seem like a long time after the council, the
Giessen Anonymous reported that many lingered at the Curia till spring
and beyond in order to attend to business.68 Likewise, the documents
secured by Anders Sunesen in conjunction with his Fourth-Lateran visit
are dated, according to the best estimate, May-June, 1216, precisely
when the bulls relating to Viborg were written. Nor it is plausible that
the canons would have neglected to come to the council only to embark on a trying wintertime journey to Rome just a few months later in
order to beg favors of a pope who had demanded their attendance back
in November. Similar arguments might be advanced for the participation of Bishop Niels of Schleswig and representatives from Ribe according to letters issued to them around the same time.69
If indeed they were present,did the canons of Viborg make use of the
chance afforded by the council—immediate contact with the papal
court—to advance the trend away from metropolitan domination?
Again, the answer appears to be yes. The exercise of archiepiscopal jurisdiction in the diocese of Viborg had once been a regular occurrence,
as when Eskil and Anders Sunesen got involved in the chapter’s business and Absalon canonized their former provost. In three cases of delegated jurisdiction procured by the church of Viborg in the wake of
Fourth Lateran,however,the archbishop is not mentioned a single time.
Instead, the task of settling matters for the chapter was deputed to,
among others, the neighboring bishop of Århus, the abbots of Øm and
Vitskøl, and the provost of Vestervig.These commissions are, in the context of papal administration, unremarkable;70 yet they are of symbolic
importance as an indicator of the relationship of Viborg with its meddling metropolitan. Petitioners at the Curia generally named the judgesdelegates they wanted to hear the case, subject to curial approval and
open to objection by the opposing side.A diocesan church once closely
subject to its eminent archbishop could now directly engage apostolic
power and escape Anders Sunesen.71

Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 5, nos. 81, 86, 89, 90.
Kuttner and García y García,“A New Eyewitness,”p. 129.The author relates that, at the
time he was writing, in the middle of Lent,“a great many” petitioners were still conducting their affairs and would presumably continue to do so until the backlog was relieved.
69
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 5, nos. 87–88.
70
Countless such mandates are described in Jane Sayers, Papal Judges Delegate in the
Province of Canterbury, 1198–1254 (Oxford, 1971).
71
Ibid., pp. 109–118. R. H. Helmholz has asserted further that the opposing party had
the chance to demand that a judge be recused either at the Curia or during the actual trial
67

68

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When Innocent III died, then, the structure of ecclesiastical authority
in Denmark was by no means clear. Viewed from one angle, Anders resembled his mighty predecessors and acted as a papally sponsored lord
of the entire Danish church. At the same time, the personnel of the
province’s suffragan churches were becoming more familiar with curial
business, less in need of archiepiscopal intervention, and, quite likely,
less tolerant of it. Nor did Innocent’s successor, Honorius III, clear up
the ambiguity. To be sure, the new pope renewed many of Anders’ old
powers within the Danish church. Conceding the papal vices to the
archbishop, for example, the pope essentially reissued the mandate of
1206 granting Anders the authority to fill benefices that had devolved
to the papacy, absolve persons falling under canon sententie late, and
hear cases as a judge of first instance. Likewise, Honorius permitted the
metropolitan to commute crusade vows for those unable to fulfill their
promises on financial or personal (presumably physical) grounds.72 While
these powers derived explicitly from Anders’ exercise of papal administration, in other particular cases, Honorius affirmed the archbishop’s
authority over his province without reference to any delegation. For instance, in 1217, when he authorized the archbishop to ordain men of illegitimate birth (the canonical impediment of defectus natalium) in
Denmark, the pope declared that the “scarcity of priests of your prouincia” warranted this prerogative, thereby implying that the power was
valid throughout the Danish church.73 A year later, Honorius echoed the
thirty-second constitution of Fourth Lateran when he responded to the
archbishop’s inquiry concerning churches too poor to support a perpetual vicar. The pope answered that Anders should make the patrons
of such churches “in your province” provide for them according to the
prevailing custom before the council.74

on grounds of partiality, variously defined, and that cases of disputed judges could be decided by arbiters. See his “Canonists and Standards of Impartiality for Papal Judges Delegate,” Traditio, 25 (1969), 386–404 (reprinted in Canon Law and the Law of the Church
[London, 1987], pp. 21–39)
72
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 5, no. 112.
73
Ibid., no. 114.
74
Ibid., no. 137.The Diplomatarium editor, Niels Skyum-Nielsen, believed the mention
of the council referred to the twenty-ninth constitution, on pluralism, and while that certainly was a concern in such cases, insofar as the rectors of poor churches had to gather
other benefices as well without adequately providing for any of them, Honorius’ bull
more closely recalls the thirty-second constitution, which limited the use of vicars to
those with prebends and dignities in “greater churches” (most likely cathedral and collegiate churches) and insisted that these parish cures be looked after by an “idoneum et
perpetuum uicarium.”

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These endorsements of Anders’ countrywide powers aside, the pontificate of Honorius III also exemplified the move toward a more decentralized regional church in which many more people directly availed
themselves of papal justice, and in which, consequently, neither Rome
nor the individuals and dioceses of the Danish church had need for the
mediation of the archbishop of Lund.The very language used by the papal chancery reflected the declining importance of the archbishop.
While papal letters concerning the entire Danish church had once
been (and on occasion still were) addressed singularly to the metropolitan, under Honorius we begin to see decrees directed to the archbishop “and his suffragans” and asking each bishop to implement the
order in his own diocese.In the same month as the letter to Anders concerning perpetual vicars, for example, Honorius admonished the Danes
to respect the fourteenth constitution of Fourth Lateran on clerical continence by prohibiting the sons of priests from inheriting. In his order,
the pope referred to the bishops collectively (“uestre fraternitati”),with
each individually expected to act on the bull in his own bishopric (“in
diocesibus uestris”).75 A similar view of the Danish episcopate as a fraternity of peers is found in a 1218 bull criticizing the native legal
process by which the country’s clergy had recourse to ill-reputed oathhelpers in order to free themselves from crimes in which positive evidence implicated them. According to the pope, the bishops as a group
(“uestre fraternitati”) were to admit only respectable men (“bone fame
uiros”) to compurgation in ecclesiastical courts if affirmative proof of
guilt existed. The brief neither assumed nor reinforced metropolitan
supervision.76 The archbishop’s decline as a medium between Rome
and the Danish church is also encapsulated by an example from the
workaday file of dispensations from canon law. Just two years after Anders was allowed to grant exemptions from the impediment of defectus
natalium in Denmark, two Danes appeared at the papal court asking
for just such favors.77 Notwithstanding their metropolitan’s ability to issue these letters,the clerics preferred to go right to the source.It comes
as no surprise, furthermore, that both are called magistri in the letters
they impetrated, suggesting again that education in the intellectual centers of Latin Europe contributed to the breakdown of the provincial hierarchy presided over by Lund.
This was the shape of church power in Denmark as Honorius’s pontificate wore on. Remnants of the archbishop’s domination as the paIbid., no. 133.
Ibid., no. 140.
77
Ibid., nos. 186 and 175.

75

76

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pally favored chief of a frontier church mingled with a more “modern,”
collegial understanding of the province as a set of dioceses and persons
standing more or less equally under the power of the pope. With the
old prelate in Lund in declining health and a change in leadership in the
offing, a papal legation might well have served to resolve the ambiguity
and usher in a new era in Danish church history.

The Legation of Cardinal Gregorius de Crescentio

Gregorius de Crescentio, cardinal-deacon of S. Teodoro, was sent to
Denmark in early 1221. According to Alfonso Chacon’s history of the
College of Cardinals (from around 1600), Gregorius had been made a
cardinal in 1206 by Innocent III and had served as the rector of the
papal province of Campagna-Maritime.78 Accepting Chacon’s description, the Gregorius sent to Denmark would then be the same Cardinal
Gregorius of S. Teodoro who had served as legate in Apulia and received Frederick II’s oath of obedience to the papacy, as mentioned in
the bull deposing the emperor at the First Council of Lyon.79 However,
Werner Maleczek has since challenged the identification of this Gregorius with the Gregorius de Crescentio who served as legate in Scandinavia. According to Maleczek, Gregorius “de Gualgano” was cardinaldeacon of S. Teodoro from 1206 to 1216 before being named cardinalpriest of S. Anastasia, at which point he was succeeded at S. Teodoro by
Gregorius de Crescentio.80 There is no conclusive evidence to settle this
debate, but under Honorius III, Gregorius de Crescentio, by then indisputably cardinal-deacon of S. Teodoro, appears frequently as an auditor
78
Alphonsius Ciaconius (Alfonso Chacon), Vitae et res gestae pontificum romanorum
et sanctae romanae ecclesiae cardinalium,Vol. 1 (Rome, 1630), p. 644.
79
For Gregorius as legate and present at the court of Frederick II, see Innocent’s register,lib.11,nos.130–131 (Patrologia latina,Vol.215 [Paris,1855],cols.1447–1448),lib.14,
no. 81 (ibid.,Vol. 216 [Paris, 1855], cols. 440–443), lib. 15, no. 63 (ibid., cols. 575–576), lib.
16, no. 110 (ibid., col. 906). Innocent IV’s bull of deposition is printed in Alberigo (ed.),
Conciliorum, pp. 254–259, where it is stated that Frederick had proffered his “fidelitatis
iuramentum . . . coram bonae memoriae Gregorium sancti Theodori diacono cardinali,
apostolicae sedis legato” ( p. 255).
80
Werner Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalskolleg von 1191 bis 1216: Die Kardinäle
unter Coelestin III. und Innocenz III. (Vienna, 1984), pp. 151–153, 183–184. Chacon, by
contrast, identified Gregorius “de Gualgano” with Gregorius “de Sancto Apostolo,” cardinaldeacon of S. Maria in Porticu from 1188 to around 1198, at which point he was transferred to S. Anastasia, where he served until 1205 at the latest. Chacon asserted that the
Gregorius who was cardinal-priest in S. Anastasia from 1216 was in fact one Gregorius
“Theodolus.”See Chacon,op.cit.,Vol.1,p.613 (Gregorius “de Sancto Apostolo”) and p.648
(Gregorius “Theodolus”).

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of cases brought before the Curia, both before and after his legation to
Denmark.81 The date of his death is not known, but must have occurred
in March, 1227.82
The precise impetus for Gregorius’ mission is not known. The first
letter announcing his visit, dated December 4, 1220, was addressed to
King Valdemar II and states that, “both through your letters and your
messenger, you have asked that we send a legate de latere to your country.”83 Unfortunately, the document gives no indication of why Valdemar
made such a request. The more or less contemporary “Ribe Bishops’
Chronicle” alleges that the legation was occasioned by the efforts of
Bishop Tue to impose celibacy on the priests of his diocese.“With the
priests appealing,”the text alleges,“Cardinal-Deacon Gregorius was sent
to Denmark in 1222.”84 While some historians have accepted this explanation, one is hard-pressed to believe that the ubiquitous problem of
Nicolaitan priests would have resulted in the dispatch of a legate of Gregorius’ stature.85 Other historians have linked the cardinal’s visit with
the dispute over the crown in Sweden, in which Denmark was very
closely involved, as one of the contenders for the throne was King
Valdemar’ nephew, Erik Eriksson. This political fight simultaneously
spawned an ecclesiastical one insofar as the Swedish church, influenced by the anti-Erik party, challenged Lund’s primacy over Uppsala.86

81
See, for example, Regesta Honorii III, ed. P. Pressutti (2 vols.; Rome, 1888–1905), nos.
149, 910, 939, 1480, 1940, 2065, 2161, 2308, and 4654. On Gregorius as auditor from 1224
to 1227, see ibid., nos. 4981, 5007, 5070, 5475, 5565, and 5587.
82
Chacon listed Gregorius as a “cardinalis vivus” at the time of Gregory IX’s accession
to the papal throne on March 19, 1227, but the cardinal was referred to as “bone memorie” in a letter of the same pope dated just twelve days later (Les registres de Gregoire IX,
ed. L. Auvray, Vol. 1 [Paris, 1890], no. 7). According to Maleczek, the last that is known of
Gregorius directly from documentary sources is his subscription to a papal letter of May 9,
1226 (Papst und Kardinalskolleg, p. 184).
83
Diplomatarium danicum,ser.1,Vol.5,no.177.A legate “de latere”was the most powerful type of papal emissary, and was usually a cardinal. See Robert Figueira,“The Classifications of Medieval Papal Legates in the Liber extra,” Archivum historiae pontificiae, 21
(1983), 211–228.
84
Ellen Jørgensen (ed.),“Ribe Bispekrønike,” Kirkehistoriske Samlinger, 6 (1933), 32.
85
Among those accepting the Ribe chronicler’s explanation were Johannes Steenstrup
(Danmarks Riges Historie [Copenhagen, 1896], p. 801) and Hal Koch (Den danske
Kirkes Historie,Vol. 1 [Copenhagen, 1951], p. 243).
86
See,for instance,Sigvard Skov,“Erkebiskop Anders Sunesen og Pavestolen,”pp.187–188.
Uppsala’s challenge was reflected in a legation sent to Rome to procure the pallium for
a new archbishop-elect, Olof Basatömer, directly from the pope, not from the archbishop
of Lund, as the primacy demanded. See S. Ambrosiani,“Anledningen till Biskop Bengts af
Skara Romfärd, 1220–21,” Bidrag till Sverges Medeltidshistoria tillegnade C. G. Malm-

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In the end, however, the death of Erik’s rival, Johan Sverkersson, settled
the matter without the need for any legatine assistance.
Crusading has also been pointed to as a likely context for Gregorius’s
dispatch. As far back as the 1930’s, L. P. Fabricius connected the cardinal’s trip with Bishop Albert of Riga’s complaints about Valdemar II’s
actions in Estonia.87 Indeed, the sequence of events laid out in the contemporary chronicle of Henry of Livonia strongly supports such a hypothesis. The Danes, prompted by Albert himself, had launched a major
campaign in Estonia in 1219. After securing the fortress of Reval
(Tallinn), Valdemar returned to Denmark, leaving Anders Sunesen in
charge. The following year, the coalition of crusaders, Sword-Brothers,
Livonians, and Letts that protected the church of Riga pushed into the
southern reaches of Estonian territory. The Danes, however, claimed all
of Estonia for the king of Denmark. Each side named a bishop for the Estonian hinterlands, and a fierce competition for conversions began.
(Some misguided Estonians, Henry of Livonia reported with perhaps a
touch of irony,“believed there was one God of the Christians,Danes and
Germans alike, and one faith and one baptism, and thinking that no
quarrel would result from it, they indifferently accepted baptism from
the Danes.”)88 In anger, Valdemar summoned Bishop Albert and the
Sword Brothers, but only the latter obeyed. Albert instead went straight
to the papal Curia. Meanwhile,Valdemar proposed to split Estonia with
the Sword Brothers, excluding Albert altogether. At the same time, according to Henry, Valdemar sent a delegation to Rome to counter the
bishop’s challenge. The two sides aired their quarrel, and Albert left
Italy to seek redress (unsuccessfully) from Frederick II, who had then
“just been raised to the empire.”89 Since Frederick’s coronation took
place in November, 1220, Valdemar’s men and Albert would have been
at the Lateran in the autumn of that year, just before the first letter announcing Gregorius’ legation was written, in early December, 1220. Cirström af Historiska Seminariet vid Upsala Universitet, no. 7 (Uppsala, 1902). Jarl Gallén
even suggested that Gregorius might have left Rome in the retinue of Biskop Bengt (La
province de Dacie de l’Ordre des Frères Prêcheurs, Vol. 1 [Helsinki, 1946], p. 9), but since
Gregorius’s first destination was not Denmark, but Bohemia, this seems unlikely. See also
Pixton’s discussion of Gregorius (op. cit., p. 295).
87
L. P. Fabricius, Danmarks Kirkehistorie,Vol. 1 (Copenhagen, 1934), p. 259.
88
Henry of Livonia, Chronicon Lyvoniae, ed. G. H. Pertz (Hannover, 1874), pp. 148–181
(chapters 23–25). The narrative that follows is drawn from Henry’s account; the quote
here is from chapter 24 (164–165). On the rivalry of Albert and the Danish church in Estonia, led by Anders Sunesen, see Gisela Gnegel-Waitschies, Bischof Albert von Riga: Ein
Bremer Domherr als Kirchenfürst im Osten (1199–1229) (Hamburg,1958),pp.122–160.
89
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cumstantial evidence, therefore, strongly points to the Estonian situation
as one motive for the cardinal’s mission. Of course, though launched for
particular (usually political) reasons, papal legations could accomplish
many tasks at once. Michael H. Gelting, for example, has argued persuasively that part of the cardinal’s mission may have been the revision of
Danish national law in accordance with canonical norms as elaborated
at Fourth Lateran.90 Indeed, there is no evidence that Gregorius actually
dealt with the eastern Baltic in the course of his visit, perhaps because
the Danish position in Estonia changed considerably during the legation. A major revolt in 1222–1223 drove both the Danes and the Rigans
out of the Estonian hinterland, effectively removing the source of enmity between these two churches for the time being.
As was often the case, the cardinal’s legation encompassed several
kingdoms and handled a variety of affairs important to the papacy. Gregorius travelled first to Bohemia, where King Ottokar and Bishop Andrew of Prague were at odds,91 before finally arriving in Denmark, armed
with a dossier of mandates and prerogatives. Among other powers,
Gregorius was authorized to absolve persons guilty of fraud over the
five-percent tax on clerical incomes (decreed in 1215 to support the
anticipated crusade) and to collect the monies they paid out in recompense for their crime.92 Likewise, he had license to change the conditions of crusading vows for those too indigent or infirm to fulfill them;
poor people were to pool their resources to send one of their number,
while the wealthy sick were to pay for others to go in their stead.93 The
legate also had the power to grant dispensation to clerics of illegitimate
birth, owing to a perceived shortage of priests in Denmark.94 Honorius,
90
See Michael H. Gelting, “Skånske Lov og Jyske Lov: Danmarks første kommissionsbetænkning og Danmarks første retsplejelov” (forthcoming) (with thanks to him for allowing me to read this work in manuscript). A comparison with other contemporary
legations suggests how multifaceted such missions might be. See, for example, Vincent,
The Letters and Charters of Guala Bicchieri, esp. p. xxxix, which points to several agendas on the part of the cardinal in addition to what appeared to be his principal task, making peace between France and England. These included securing the Plantagenet base
within the English episcopate, re-establishing order within the country’s monasteries,
and,finally,implementing the reforms of Fourth Lateran.Likewise,while Peter Linehan examined John of Abbeville’s visit to Spain in the context of Fourth Lateran constitutions, it
seems that his legation was occasioned by larger political issues like the Reconquista and
the stability of the Portugese kingdom (Linehan, op. cit., p. 20).
91
Regesta Honorii III, ed. Pressutti, nos. 3476–3477, 3792, 4347, 5007, 5121. Pixton, op.
cit., pp. 296–297.
92
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 5, no. 185.
93
Ibid., no. 186.
94
Ibid., no. 184.

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furthermore, allowed Gregorius to deal with those guilty of assaulting
clerics,even if their crime involved “the spilling of blood or serious bodily wounds.”95 He was even able to absolve the murderers of clerics in
return for their promise to go on crusade.96 The dates of Gregorius’ stay
in Denmark cannot be pinned down with certainty. The muddled
chronology of a little text on the foundation of the Dominicans in Denmark could be used to place the cardinal in the country as early as 1221
or as late as Pentecost of 1223 (see discussion below, note 107). Yet, he
could not have entered Denmark earlier than April, 1222, when he was
in Lübeck,97 and no other Danish sources mention Gregorius after November 1, 1222, while other evidence locates him in northeastern Germany and Poland at the tail end of 1222 and the beginning of 1223.98
However long he stayed, Gregorius made an impression on his hosts,
judging at least from the array of annals and chronicles that mention
him.99
Several texts provide a more detailed picture of the legate’s activity
in Denmark. A quirky character sketch of Bishop Gunner of Viborg depicts Gregorius’ central role in securing Gunner’s election.100 According
to the account, written by a cleric in the bishop’s household, Gregorius
arrived at the monastery of Løgum, where he learned that Bishop
Torstan of Viborg had recently died. The cardinal asked after Gunner—
the two were described as “colleagues and companions” (“college et
socii”) when they were students in Paris—and praised his knowledge
of the “seven liberal [arts]” and his suitability for the “governance of
souls and the pinnacle of the episcopal office.”101 When he heard that
Ibid., nos. 183, 187.
Ibid., no. 189.
97
Pixton, op. cit., p. 300.
98
Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalskolleg, p. 184.
99
For example,the Annales nestvedienses (from Næstved) record “Cardinalis Gregorius
fuit in Dacia”under 1222,an entry reiterated in similar language in the Annales lundenses
(Lund) and the Annales ryenses (from Ryd) (see Ellen Jørgensen [ed.], Annales danici
medii aevi [Copenhagen, 1920], pp. 104–105), as well as in the Annales essenbecenses
(Essenbæk) (ibid., p. 146) and the Vetus chronica Sialandie (Sorø) (in Scriptores minores, ed. Gertz,Vol. 2, p. 59).
100
On this vivid account and its literary and historical context,see especially Brian Patrick
McGuire,“Monastic and Episcopal Biography in the Thirteenth Century:The Danish Cistercian Account of Bishop Gunner of Viborg,” Analecta cisterciensia, 39 (1983), 195–230.
101
Vita Gunneri episcopi vibergensis, in Scriptores minores, ed. Gertz, p. 266. On the
meaning of “college et socii,” Sten Ebbesen has written:“It is unclear what the expression
‘colleagues’ implies, but ‘companions’ suggests that the two men shared lodgings, as
renters, for example, under a master,” in a forthcoming encyclopedia on Danish philosophy in the Middle Ages; I thank him for sending me a copy in manuscript.
95

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his acquaintance was an abbot in the Cistercian house of Øm, only a
three-day journey from Løgum,Gregorius summoned Gunner and,without informing the abbot of his plans, asked him to deliver a homily at
the monks’ chapter meeting “because the cardinal could not speak Danish.” The monks agreed that Gunner’s “words corresponded exceptionally well with his ways,” and, after dismissing Gunner, Gregorius
proceeded to Viborg, where he won the canons’ consent to his choice
for their new bishop.102 Gunner was brought to Viborg, reportedly without knowing of his election, and installed as the new “pater et pastor.”103
The concern the cardinal showed for Gunner’s fitness as a trained
pastor was likewise visible in his promotion of the Dominicans in Denmark. While the major twelfth-century religious orders (the Cistercians,
Premonstratensians, and Johannites, for example) had existed for
decades before anchoring themselves in Scandinavia, the Preachers, followed soon by their Franciscan cousins, almost immediately targeted
the North.104 Indeed,Danes and Swedes studying abroad are first known
to have entered the order shortly after it was formally established. A
terse chronicle,“On the Order of Preachers of Toulouse in Denmark,”relates that two friars, Simon of Sweden and Niels of Lund, became
Preachers at Bologna, while a third, Solomon of Århus, joined at Verona
around the same time. In 1220 Dominic himself charged Simon and
Niels with setting up the first house in Sweden, while the following
year, after the order’s general council, he sent Solomon to Denmark
with letters addressed to Valdemar II and Anders Sunesen.105 After a tortuous journey, the friar arrived in Copenhagen. There he met Archbishop Anders, who reportedly expressed immediate enthusiasm for
the order. The chronicle then treats Cardinal Gregorius’ role as promoter of the incipient Danish Dominicans:
At that time, Cardinal-Legate Gregorius de Crescentio was in Denmark. Because Friar Solomon was learned and eloquent, Gregorius enlisted him as an
Vita Gunneri, p. 266.
Ibid., pp. 266–267.
104
Bartlett, op. cit., p. 291, sees the rapidity with which the Dominicans arrived in Denmark, compared to the pace of arrival for the Cistercians and, still earlier, the Benedictines,
as a mark of the increased momentum of Denmark’s acculturation to Latin Christianity.
105
De Ordine Predicatorum de Tolosa in Dacia, in Scriptores minores, ed. Gertz,Vol. 2,
pp. 371–372. The chronicler reported that Gaufrid, sent to retrieve the pallium for Olof,
the archbishop-elect of Uppsala (see note 86 above), had asked for Dominicans to be sent
to Sweden, though it was Olof himself who prevented the order from settling in Sigtuna
and forced them to move to Sko. One of the letters carried by Solomon to Denmark is extant in the original in the Schwerin Landeshauptarchiv (Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,
Vol. 5, no. 194).
102

103

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interpreter in his preaching. Finally, the following year around Pentecost,
with the blessing of God’s grace and at the suggestion of the said cardinal,
the lord archbishop gave the friars a site in Lund, in the year 1222 (1223?),
and provided buildings suitable for the friars.106

While the timeline laid out by the narrator cannot be correct,107 the
legate’s close involvement in the matter is evident. Nor were his efforts
wasted; soon thereafter, the chronicle informs us, the Lund priory was
teeming with friars “who had been received into the order at Paris or
Bologna.”108
While in Lund, Gregorius also facilitated a transaction between Anders Sunesen and his cathedral chapter.“With the venerable Gregorius
de Crescentio,legate of the apostolic see,cardinal-deacon of S.Teodoro,
present and arranging matters in this business,”the archbishop gave the
canons all the possessions of the church of St. Mary Major in Lund in return for the farmstead of one “Master Jens” and all its appurtenances.109
This took place in mid-June, 1222. After spending that summer visiting
the dioceses of the Lund province, the legate convoked a synod “of the
bishops of Denmark” at Schleswig on the feast of All Saints.110 While no
comprehensive set of statutes survives from that council, a partial reconstruction can be made from extant sources. According to the “Ribe
Bishops’ Chronicle,” the cardinal did at last address the problem of incontinent priests, and while he stopped short of demanding, as Bishop
Tue had, that priests be separated from their wives, he declared
nonetheless that the offspring of such unions were not to inherit.111
De Ordine Predicatorum, p. 373.
If one accepts that the donation of a locus in Lund took place at the cardinal’s
prompting around Pentecost, 1222, Gregorius could not have hired Solomon in the “previous year”(1221), since he arrived in Denmark only in 1222.The cardinal must then have
met Solomon in 1222, a date that, furthermore, makes more sense in the context of Solomon’s itinerary, the complicated course of which would all but have precluded his arrival
in Denmark, from the 1221 general council, before the end of that year. Accepting this
fact, however, it would have been impossible for Gregorius to have been involved in the
establishment of the house in Lund at Pentecost, 1223, since he was by that time in
Poland. For more on this problem, see Gallén, op. cit., pp. 9–10.
108
De Ordine Predicatorum, p. 373. Among them were the “fratres, qui missi fuerant in
Sueciam.”
109
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 5, nos. 203–204. For his deed, Gregorius earned
a mention in the chapter’s donation book/necrology.Under the entry for Anders Sunesen,
we read that the archbishop “ecclesiam etiam sancte Marie Lundis versus orientem . . .
presente apostolice sedis legato, domino Gregorio, mense fratrum in perpetuum apposuit” (C. Weeke [ed.] Lunde Domkapitels Gaveboger [“Libri datici lundenses”] [Copenhagen, 1884–1889], pp. 144–145).
110
“Ribe Bispekrønike,” ed. Jørgensen, p. 32.
111
Ibid.
106

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207

Later reissuances have preserved a further statute declaring that “marriage cases are to be decided” by “no one else but a bishop, if he should
be present and conveniently will be able . . . or [by] someone skilled in
law to whom he has specifically determined to entrust such a case in
his place,” and another constitution prohibiting “dances, games, dishonorable plays, or quarrels in church” and affirming the right of sanctuary
for those fleeing pursuers into a church.112
Gregorius’ involvement in Danish affairs continued, finally, when he
was back in Rome, by the end of 1223. There he took care of a piece of
unfinished business predating his legation. Several years before, the
Danes had made a bid to win papal canonization for Absalon’s old
friend William of Æbelholt. In 1218 Honorius III had named a committee, consisting of Anders Sunesen, Bishop Peder Jakobsen of Roskilde,
and the Cistercian abbot of Herrisvad, to gather testimony about the
late abbot’s life and miracles, and a dossier was compiled.113 The case
moldered at the Curia, but when Gregorius returned, he provided the
pope with further support for the Danish petition, and in January, 1224,
Honorius proclaimed William’s canonization.114 It is highly likely that
Gregorius also had a hand in bringing the problematic election of Anders Sunesen’s successor to a close. Complaining of an “incurable bodily illness,” Anders was permitted to resign his office in May, 1222.115
Some have suggested that the prelate’s declining health was, in fact, one
of the initial reasons for Gregorius’ mission to Denmark.116 Though this
cannot be proved, at the very least the letter granting Anders the licentia cedendi would have arrived in Denmark during the cardinal’s visit,
and, if the Danes honored the Fourth-Lateran demand for the rapid ex112
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1, Vol. 5, no. 209. The first fragment has been preserved via two later provincial-synodal decrees (1345 and 1425).The second constitution
is transmitted in a copy of a register from the chapter of Schleswig.
113
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1, Vol. 5, no. 141. The committee’s work presumably
resulted in the life and miracle report preserved at the house of Ste.-Geneviève (now
Paris, Bibliothèque Ste.-Geneviève, ms. 558, published in Gertz [ed.], Vitae Sanctorum
Danorum, pp. 300–369).
114
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1, Vol. 6, no. 5. Honorius reported that he was “super
uita fama et miraculis prefati uiri per dilectum filium nostrum .G. sancti Theodori diaconum cardinalem, qui legationis officium in partibus illis exercuit certiores effecti.”
115
Ibid., ser. 1,Vol. 5, no. 202.Anders’“infirmitas”was once believed to be leprosy, but, as
confirmed by the exhumation of his skeleton, the archbishop appears to have suffered instead from debilitating arthritis.See Otto Rydbeck,Carl M.Fürst,and Agnes Branting,Ärkebiskop Andreas Sunessons grav i Lunds domkyrka: En undersökning (Lund, 1926), and
the article by the Danish medical historian Vilhelm Møller-Christensen on “spedalskhed,”
in Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder,Vol. 16 (Copenhagen, 1971), p. 470.
116
Nielsen, Colibat og kirketugt, p. 57.

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ecution of such episcopal retirements (c.28),the chapter of Lund would
have promptly moved to choose a successor. However, when the Danes
sought papal confirmation of the archbishop-elect, Peder Saksesen, the
cathedral provost, Honorius declared the election irregular (its process
had been unduly protracted and Peder’s assent had been sought ahead
of time). In January, 1224, the pope wrote to announce that he had
nonetheless decided to provide Peder to the see of Lund because of his
merits, which he had learned of through the “testimony of many.”117 If
Gregorius was present in Denmark at the time Anders resigned,as seems
likely, he would certainly have been involved in the business of electing
the next archbishop. Furthermore, since the letter confirming his election was dated just days before the bull canonizing William of Æbelholt
on Gregorius’ recommendation, it is similarly probable that Gregorius
provided the pope with information about the election in Lund and the
suitability of the candidate.

The Significance of Cardinal Gregorius’ Legation

Gregorius’ mission resembled many of its time. The agenda of the
Fourth Lateran Council was clearly evident in both his mandates and
his activities: crusading and crusade finance; a concern for the celibacy,
learning, and behavior of clerics; an interest in safeguarding episcopal
jurisdiction; the advancement of the mendicants.118 All were codified in
1215 and reflected in the cardinal’s legation. Furthermore, what little
evidence exists concerning the implementation of his statutes indicates
that, as with John of Abbeville in Spain, Gregorius’ energy was squandered. On the legate’s decree regarding inheritance by sacerdotal progeny, the Ribe chronicler commented tersely that “it was not observed,
since the relatives of the priests did not want to disinherit their own
kin.”119 And when Denmark was next visited by a papal legate, in 1230,
Cardinal-Deacon Otto of S. Niccola in Carcere Tulliano ordered that all
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 6, no. 1.
Gregorius’ mandates on crusade dispensations and tax collection reflect the council’s final decree (c. 71). Moreover, his examination of Gunner and his possible involvement in the election of Peder Saksesen reflect c. 26’s anxiety over the examination of the
persona electi and the processus electionis. His synodal statute on celibacy draws from a
concern dating back nearly two centuries, but also prominent at Fourth Lateran (see
c. 14), while his rules about blasphemous entertainment in church, presumably directed
most vehemently at cathedral clergy themselves, bear resemblance to cc. 15–17. Finally,
c. 60, like Gregorius’ constitution on marriage suits, limited such cases to episcopal jurisdiction.
119
“Ribe Bispekrønike,” ed. Jørgensen, p. 32.
117

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209

“mistresses and concubines” be cast out of clerical households and that
no one be granted a benefice without taking an oath of continence.120
Yet, notwithstanding its specific futilities, Gregorius’ visit heralded a
real and lasting change for the Danish church. Scholars have often cited
the cardinal’s mission as the end of Anders Sunesen’s archiepiscopate,
and I have here suggested that the legate may have quite actively taken
part in closing the archbishop’s career.121 But the transformation signaled by Gregorius’ prerogatives and works was more profound than
this. It terminated not just a single prelate’s tenure, but a century-long
domination of the Danish church by the see of Lund, occasioned by
Denmark’s “fringeness” and sustained by papal favors. Prior legations
had served to reinforce this sense of archiepiscopal superiority. It was,
after all, a papal emissary,“Galandus,” who delivered Absalon’s unusual
prerogative to hold the sees of Roskilde and Lund simultaneously in
1178, while another, Cardinal-Priest Centius of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, set
up the arrangement whereby Absalon’s hand-picked successor in
Roskilde would remain subordinate to him. Even a bothersome stay by
Fidentius of S. Marcello in 1197 circuitously demonstrated the Danish
church’s sense of its archbishop’s power. When William of Æbelholt
complained that the cardinal was conspiring with the “raving mad”
bishops of Denmark to bilk already impoverished monasteries, he had
no hesitation in writing to Absalon for help; the abbot’s clear expectation was that the metropolitan could rein in both his own suffragans
and a Roman legate.122
The dynamics between papal power and metropolitan might were
fundamentally different during Gregorius’ legation. The Swedish scholar
Lauritz Weibull once noted that his legatine commission deprived Anders of his status as “apostolice sedis legatus” and that the cardinal was
120
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 6, no. 110. Since Otto’s order was repeated verbatim in a synodal statute of 1345, he would seem to have had no more success than Gregorius’.
121
See Nielsen, Cølibat og kirketugt, p. 9. As Brian Patrick McGuire has written (“Anders
Sunesen og klostervæsenet,” in Anders Sunesen: Stormand, teolog, administrator, digter,
ed. Sten Ebbesen [Copenhagen, 1985], p. 38),“In January 1221 Cardinal Gregorius de Crescentio was sent to Denmark as papal legate.Nearly two decades with Anders Sunesen as the
ecclesiastical leader of Denmark and Sweden and papal emissary were thereby concluded.”
122
On Galandus, see Saxo, op. cit., p. 520. For Centius’ dealings with Absalon, see Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1, Vol. 3, nos. 174, 177, 194. William’s complaint is found in his
epistolarium (Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1, Vol. 3, pp. 461–465). See also Wolfgang
Seegrün, “Päpstliche Legaten in Skandinavien und Norddeutschland am Ende des 12.
Jahrhunderts,” in Aus Reichsgeschichte und nordischer Geschichte, ed. Horst Fuhrmann,
Hans Eberhard Mayer, and Klaus Wriedt (Stuttgart, 1972), pp. 209–221.

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in possession of a number of prerogatives enjoyed by the archbishop.123
Indeed,the legate’s dossier of mandates seems calculated to deprive Anders of many of the powers that had previously undergirded his dominance within the Danish province. Just as Anders had, in 1217, been
handed the right to deal with those who had incurred the canon sententie late for the assault of clerics and commute crusade vows for
those too poor or infirm to fulfill them, so were both of these tasks now
entrusted to Gregorius.124 Likewise, the writ granting Gregorius the ability to erase defectus natalium in the face of a shortage of priests in
Denmark superseded an identical license assigned to the archbishop
(also in 1217).125 In the business of crusade finance too, the cardinal
stepped into a space once occupied by Anders; Innocent III’s 1213
commission of crusade business to Anders had encompassed “any offerings made for the succor of the Holy Land.”126
When we turn from the cardinal’s commission to his recorded activities, scant though the evidence is, we again see how his visit announced the decisive end of the Danish church as an archbishop’s
church. The Schleswig synod was described as a gathering of the “bishops of Denmark” as a college. In the election of Bishop Gunner, furthermore, Anders is conspicuous by his absence. Involvement in the affairs
of suffragan dioceses had once been a mainstay of Lund’s provincial supremacy, perhaps nowhere more evident than in Viborg, yet the eleva-

123
Lauritz Weibull,“Skånes kyrka från äldsta tid till Jacob Erlandsens död 1274,”in Nordisk
historia: Forskningar och undersökningar, Vol. 2 (Stockholm 1949), p. 541 (originally
published in Lunds domkyrkas historia, 1145–1945, ed. Ernst Newman, Vol. 1 [Stockholm, 1946]):“In the letter of 1215 and still in 1221, [Anders] used the legatine title. The
discontinuation that followed seems to have its explanation in the fact that a legatus de
latere, Cardinal-Deacon Gregorius de Crescentio, was sent to Bohemia and northern Europe in 1222, and as soon as he was within the legation field, other legates’ activity
ceased.In the present case,Gregorius had moreover received special instructions in cases
which earlier were reserved for Anders Sunesen.” That Anders stopped considering himself a “legatus”after Gregorius’ arrival is clear from the letters he issued in his property exchange with the Lund chapter. While he had previously referred to himself as legate in
such documents, he now gave his title as simply “Lundensis archiepiscopus, Suecie primas” (Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 5, nos. 203–204).
124
Ibid., nos. 112 (Anders) and 183, 186, 187, and 189 (Gregorius).
125
Ibid., no. 114 (Anders) and 184 (Gregorius).
126
Ibid., nos. 30–31 (Anders):“Si quid autem pro terre sancte succursu fuerit uobis oblatum, faciatis illud apud aliquem religiosum locum studiose reponi. . . .” For Gregorius, see
his mandate to collect money in settlement from those guilty of fraud concerning the crusade twentieth (ibid., no. 185).

BY ANTHONY PERRON

211

tion of Gunner to the episcopate was a matter conducted solely among
Gregorius, the chapter of Viborg, and the bishop. Certainly, Anders was
important in giving a foothold to the Dominicans, who would soon be
present throughout Denmark, but it was in his own see alone that Anders established the Preachers, and even then only at the prompting of
the legate. In the latter two instances, moreover, we can glimpse the underlying conditions that were working to dissolve the archiepiscopal
edifice in Denmark. Anders did not possess the same monopoly on curial influence enjoyed by his predecessors. Eskil could have been confident that his influence in Rome exceeded that of his countrymen;
Bishop Gunner unambiguously owed his advancement to his own powerful connections forged at the schools of Paris. Similarly, in the twelfth
century, Eskil and Absalon had gone abroad to recruit Cistercians,
Carthusians, and Augustinians for their church. The very presence of
these orders in the Danish landscape attested to Lund’s overlordship.
The Danes who launched the mendicant orders in Denmark, on the
other hand, met St. Dominic while they were studying at Paris or
Bologna, and they themselves carried the new movement home from
foreign lands. Requiring little help from their metropolitan, neither
were they beholden to him.As the bonds between Danes and the LatinChristian core grew tighter, the archbishop of Lund became ever more
an anachronism of Denmark’s vanishing frontier days.

The legation of Gregorius de Crescentio was not itself responsible for
transforming the structure of ecclesiastical authority in Denmark. The
change—from a church dominated by an archbishop who mediated, as
the papacy’s hierarch in the North, between Rome and the Danish
church, to a church that more closely resembled a fraternity of peers
equidistant from papal power—had been in progress for years and had
gained momentum around 1215. But with the cardinal’s visit, the die
was cast.The powers that once distinguished the metropolitan in Lund,
including those effectively taken away by Gregorius’ commission,
would not be given back. Anders’ successors Peder Saksesen (12241228) and Uffe Thrugotsen (1229–1252), though qualified and conscientious prelates, proved to be insignificant in Dano-papal relations and
invisible at the head of their church. We have seen that crusade preaching and financing, papal tax collection, and concessions of provincewide jurisdiction had previously combined to set the archbishop apart.
Yet, in 1225, when the pope again appointed a crusade chief for Denmark, it was to the bishop of Roskilde that he turned (and to the men-

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dicants just a few years later).127 Similarly,by the end of the 1220’s,it was
no longer the archbishop who supervised the payment of the Danish
Peter’s Pence and other revenues, but a papal scribe, “Master Simon,”
sent straight from Rome.128 Finally, the next time the papacy approved a
significant mandate valid throughout Lund’s ecclesiastical province—a
bull by Gregory IX naming protectors for the country’s Cistercians—
the metropolitan bishop of Lund had been replaced by the bishop of
Ribe and two clerics from his episcopal see.129 This loss of prestige in
Rome had ramifications for the archbishop’s place within the Danish
church hierarchy. One anecdote from the time of Archbishop Uffe captures the shift. Recall that, under Anders, a bishop facing a problem of
clerical discipline, the promotio per saltum discussed above, had immediately handed the affair over to the metropolitan, who assumed control of it in co-operation with Innocent III. When Bishop Gunner of Ribe
encountered another case of sacerdotal transgression, this time a priest
accused of murder, he convicted the man in his own episcopal court
and, when the latter refused to accept the imposed penance, dispatched
him directly to Rome for further action.130 Gunner saw no need to involve
his metropolitan.Throughout the West, papal power—how it operated,
how it was experienced in the reaches of Latin Christendom, and how
it affected local churches—was being renegotiated at the time of
Fourth Lateran. For Denmark and the “dignitatis precipue amplitudo” of
its archbishop, however, the change was nothing short of revolutionary.

127
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 6, no. 10. The bishop was Peder Jakobsen, who
was about to journey to the Holy Land himself, though he died en route. For the Dominicans as crusade preachers in Denmark, see ibid., no. 132 (1232), with discussion in
Christoph T. Maier, Preaching the Crusades: Mendicant Friars and the Cross in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1994), p. 50.
128
Diplomatarium danicum, ser. 1,Vol. 6, nos. 122 and 126.
129
Ibid., no. 195
130
Ibid., no. 204.

THY KINGDOM COME:
PATRIOTISM, PROPHECY, AND THE CATHOLIC
HIERARCHY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY POLAND
BY

BRIAN PORTER*

Few sentences have been more troublesome over the centuries than
the second line of the Lord’s Prayer:“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be
done, on earth as it is in heaven.”1 Many Christians have taken comfort
in the promise that an earthly kingdom of God was approaching, and
some have turned this hopeful conviction into a moral imperative,
building a variety of political and social projects upon a theological
foundation. When faced with a world that bore little resemblance to
anyone’s idea of a divine realm, they have assumed the responsibility of
actively creating the kingdom of God. Christianity has generated such
revolutionary utopianism from its earliest moments, but those in positions of clerical authority have almost always tried to repress the idea
that faith could serve as the inspiration for radical political change.
Within the Roman Catholic tradition in particular, theologians have attempted to domesticate the unsettling implications of the belief that
God’s kingdom was imminent.
In this article I will examine debates about the kingdom of God in
nineteenth-century Poland. The Polish example is particularly useful in
this case, because it illustrates with unusual clarity the close interaction
between theology and politics in the modern world. The enduring
strength of Catholicism in Poland allows us to explore how religion and
modernity can shape each other when they are compelled to co-exist.
In such a country, the transcendent and the mundane are intermeshed
in ways that our scholarly categories cannot easily delineate. Historians
of modern Europe now take religion seriously—gone are the days
*Dr. Porter is an associate professor of history in the University of Michigan at Ann
Arbor. He wishes to thank Dagmar Herzog, Val Kivelson, Todd Endelman, Edin Hajdarpasic, and Caroline Jeannerat for commenting on earlier versions of this article.
1
The text of the “Lord’s prayer” appears in two places, Matthew 6:10 (which includes
the full text as Christians normally recite it), and Luke 11:2 (which offers an abbreviated
version).

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when scholars predicted that organized religion would be vanquished
by the onslaught of secularization—but even as the social and political
power of faith are recognized as potent forces, we are still limited by
our inability to speak about the transcendent while using the language
of the mundane. That which cannot be explained with secular terminology is usually either ignored or relegated to the spaces we reserve
for “irrational” ideologies and beliefs. Religion, thus, is either conflated
with or sharply distinguished from the “real world” of politics, social
conflict, and secular culture. Even in some of the best recent books on
religious history, churches become social institutions, doctrines become ideologies, and rituals become cultural practices.2 Although it is
not hard for us to talk about theology as an outgrowth of political concerns, we still find it difficult to see modern politics through the prism
of theology, to interpret the actions of the faithful in their own terms.
To explore the political arguments of Catholic bishops and priests in
the context of their deeply held theological convictions will allow us to
see how the supernatural can maintain its power even after modernity
has reconfigured the public sphere. My basic argument is captured in
an aphorism offered by the Polish philosopher Bronislaw Trentowski in
1845:“Religion is the politics of heaven, and politics is the religion of
the earth.”3

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were tumultuous
for Poles, as their country was conquered and partitioned in 1795,
recreated briefly in a truncated form under Napoleonic auspices, then
absorbed once again into Russia, Prussia, and Austria in 1815. From then
until 1830 there existed a semi-autonomous Polish Kingdom, nominally
separated from Russia, but with the tsar as its king. As the incompatibility of Polish constitutionalism and Russian autocracy became increasingly apparent in the 1820’s,a movement for national independence took
shape, leading the country into a war with Russia in 1830. After this
revolt was defeated, most markers of Polish autonomy were stripped
away and a long era of heavy-handed rule from St. Petersburg began. For
a few years the focal points of Polish cultural and intellectual life shifted
2
For some examples of this tendency, see David Blackbourn, Marpingen: Apparitions
of the Virgin Mary in a Nineteenth-Century German Village (New York, 1995); Jonathan
Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton, 1984); and
Peter van der Veer,“Introduction,” in Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of
Christianity (New York, 1996), pp. 1–21.
3
Bronislaw Trentowski,Teraźniejszość i Przyszlość (Paris,1845),in Franciszek Gabryl,
Polska filozofia religijna w wieku XIX (Warsaw, 1913–1914), I, 170.

BY BRIAN PORTER

215

away from Warsaw, as most of the country’s elites either emigrated to
the West, withdrew from public activity, or were exiled to Siberia. But
the ensuing calm was illusory and short-lived: after brief insurrections
in 1846 and 1848 (in the smaller Austrian and Prussian partitions), the
Kingdom exploded once more in 1863. This rebellion also ended in defeat, and for the remainder of the century Polish intellectuals and politicians debated how—or even whether—to continue their struggle for
independence. Throughout all this, the “national question” seemed to
penetrate all aspects of public life. This applies to the Church as well,
where even bishops and theologians debated the moral and spiritual
implications of the nation’s fate.
Pope Pius IX once complained that “the Poles are seeking Poland
above all, not the kingdom of God. This is why they do not have
Poland.”4 He was mistaken: the Poles were seeking the kingdom—they
were merely looking for it in places he considered inappropriate. When
Polish intellectuals and politicians of the early nineteenth century discussed the kingdom of God, they did so within a framework commonly
known as “national messianism.”This label is shorthand for a wide range
of thinkers who shared an expectation that the world was about to enter a new age in which injustice would be resolved, human consciousness would be elevated, and strife would come to an end. Exactly how
this would come to pass was a matter of dispute, but the messianists all
believed that the nation—specifically, the Polish nation—would be the
primary agent of change.5 One of the first Poles to articulate this position was an enigmatic figure named Andrzej Towiański (1798–1878). In
1828 this minor landowner had a vision in a Wilno church revealing
that he was the new messiah, sent to announce the coming of a new
age. He began to preach that humanity’s ultimate goal was to break
away from the restraints of this world and seek a higher union with
God. Since the dawn of time, he taught, humanity has been advancing
toward this objective through progressive reincarnation,guided by a seAs quoted by Marcin Król, Konserwatyści a niepodleglość (Warsaw, 1985), pp.
172–173.
5
Andrzej Walicki has written exclusively on this topic, in English as well as Polish. His
work includes Mi3dzy filozofia, religia i polityka: Studia o mytli polskiej epoki romantyzmu (Warsaw, 1983); and Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism: The Case of Poland
(Oxford,1982).See also Brian Porter,When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth Century Poland (New York, 2000), pp. 15–42. For general
background to messianic millenarianism in the nineteenth century, see Marjorie Reeves
and Warwick Gould, Joachim of Fiore and the Myth of the Eternal Evangel in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1987); and J. L. Talmon, Political Messianism: The Romantic
Phase (New York, 1960).
4

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ries of messiahs. Jesus had been one such figure; Towiański was the
next. In 1840 Towiański moved from Poland to France, where he established the “Circle of Servants of the Divine Cause.” After a few months
he had gathered about forty-five acolytes, but successive expulsions
from Paris and Rome, combined with a Vatican decision in 1850 to
place all his writings on the Index, eroded his support to a tiny cluster
of followers.6 The details of Towiański’s teachings are unimportant
here, because few of his contemporaries paid much attention to his
new gospel, and most of his followers (among whom were such prominent figures as Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Slowacki) left the fold after only brief subordination to this overbearing master. More important
for our purposes is the very existence of a figure like Towiański,and the
fact that his message did not, by itself, marginalize him among Polish
elites in the 1840’s. Church officials would focus on Towiański as they
condemned the spread of millenarian heresies among Polish elites in
the mid-nineteenth century, but he was far too eccentric to be either
blamed or credited for inspiring national messianism. Nonetheless, the
broadest outlines of his message—a mystical vision of spiritual perfection, attainable in this world by those who understood the truth and
acted upon it—exemplified a much deeper trend.
Count August Cieszkowski (1814–1894),a philosopher with far more
prestige, social standing, and lasting influence, was less likely to earn
Rome’s public rebuke, but no less drawn to millenarian musings.7 From
1848 to 1870, this prominent member of the Polish aristocracy served
as a delegate to the Prussian assembly, acting after 1860 as chairman of
the “Polish circle” in Berlin. He was one of the first to advocate “organic
work” (a plan to serve the Polish cause within the sociopolitical status
quo), and he spoke of his desire for a “moral government” that would
guide his countrymen toward practical engagement with their circumstances, away from the dangers of revolution. By all appearances,
Cieszkowski was a moderately conservative scion of a distinguished
family, but he was as philosophically bold as he was politically cautious.
In 1838 he published the book that made him famous all over Europe,
Prologue to a Historiosophy (published first in German as Prolegomena
6
On Towiański’s life, see Gabryl, op. cit., II, 296–325; Adam Sikora,“Antypody romantycznego mesjanizmu—‘filozofia absolutna’ Hoene-Wrońskiego i mistyka Towiańskiego,”
in Andrzej Walicki (ed.), Polska mytl filozoficzna i spoleczna.Tom pierwszy: 1831–1863
(Warsaw, 1973), pp. 186–211.
7
On Cieszkowski, see André Liebich, Between Ideology and Utopia: The Politics and
Philosophy of August Cieszkowski (Dordrecht, Holland, 1979); and Walicki, “August
Cieszkowski,” in Walicki, Polska mytl, pp. 395–442.

BY BRIAN PORTER

217

zur Historiosophie and later translated into Polish). Here Cieszkowski
called history the “touchstone of all speculation,” but his understanding
of history extended beyond the part that had already happened.“The
entirety of history must consist of the past and the future,” he wrote,“of
both the path already taken and the one which we have yet to take.”8
Cieszkowski’s historiosophical speculations convinced him that a new
age of humanity, characterized by “absolute good” and a fully realized
“self-awareness,” was about to dawn.9 These ideas were elaborated in a
posthumous work entitled Our Father, in which Cieszkowski argued
that the Lord’s Prayer offered a specific blueprint for the future. He
predicted that the time would come when God and the world would be
rejoined into one integral whole, bringing to an end our present bifurcation. In this new age, Cieszkowski promised, there would be a whole
new social order, and to go with it, a new “Church of humanity.” Just as
Christianity had come into the world in order to proclaim and make
manifest the “postulates” of our current age (which Cieszkowski described as “abstract freedom” and “human dignity”), so would “the coming of the kingdom of God entail the posing of a new postulate, and the
further history of [the kingdom] would be its realization.”10
One of Cieszkowski’s friends, a fellow nobleman and a devout
Catholic named Zygmunt Krasiński (1813–1859), acknowledged the
Count’s influence on his own work.11 Krasiński’s poetry earned him a
place in Poland’s literary pantheon, but even as he was building his reputation in the conservative circles of the cultural establishment, he was
quietly composing a work of heterodox religious philosophy entitled
On the Trinity in Time and Space. No one read this book during
Krasiński’s lifetime, but in his testament he asked two close friends,
both priests, to look over the manuscript and decide whether it should
be posthumously published. The two refused to release the book to the
public, declaring it to be “unchristian both in its first principles and in
its final conclusions.”12 In this volume, Krasiński argued that the goal of
human existence was “to reach the position from which eternal life

8
Cieszkowski, Prolegomena do historiozofii: Bóg i paligeneza oraz mniejsze pisma
filozoficzne z lat 1838–1842, edd. J. Garewicz and A. Walicki (Warsaw, 1972), pp. 6–8.
9
Ibid., p. 100.
10
Cieszkowski,Ojcze nasz,in Filozofia i mytl spoleczna w latach 1831–1864,ed.Andrzej
Walicki (Warsaw, 1977), pp. 311, 323.
11
On the acknowledged importance of Cieszkowski to Krasiński, see Alina Kowalczykowa,“Poglady filozoficzne Zygmunta Krasińskiego,” in Polska mytl, pp. 318–326.
12
As cited by Walicki, “Polska myśl filozoficzna epoki mie˛dzypowstaniowej,” in Filozofia i mytl spoleczna, p. 56. See also Kowalczykowa, op. cit., p. 308.

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will begin” and “the earth will be transformed into one grand, living
temple of the Holy Spirit.”In other words,our destiny was to realize “the
kingdom of God on earth,” without which we could never achieve immortality. The attainment of the new age could only come, Krasiński
wrote, after mankind reconciled the longstanding gap between the sacred realm (the Church) and the secular realm (the state). Krasiński not
only brought together the earthly sphere of human society with the
heavenly sphere of Christ; he also introduced the nation into his
prophecy. He argued that patriotism was not about “loving the land or a
town,”but was instead a commitment to the “goal of all souls who work
under such and such a law, in such and such a distinct shape, on that
land, in this place.” And what was this goal, in the case of Poland? Here
Krasiński took the step from the generic millenarianism that was quite
pervasive in the 1830’s and 1840’s in Europe, to the national messianism that made Polish thought of the day so distinctive. Just as Christ
died and rose again in order to show us the way to eternal life,Krasiński
wrote, now it was time for a collective entity—a nation—to do the
same, and show humanity how to apply Christ’s message to the social
world. Such a nation had to be one which had demonstrated its virtues
but yet had died (as had Christ). And that nation was Poland, which
first demonstrated national immortality by attaining national Christ-ness
[Chrystusowość narodowa]. It first introduced this national Christ-ness to
the world, just as Christ revealed immortality by uniting all individual human
souls with the Word of God. Henceforth, collective souls—governments,
states, world powers, and peoples—will believe in these truths and will have
to be transformed into collective Christ-ness, just as individuals were transformed into Christians two thousand years ago—and this [transformation]
will constitute the introduction to the kingdom of God on earth, without
which our souls, as we said earlier, will never attain eternal life.13

Since this manuscript was never published, Krasiński’s effort to plug
his patriotism into a millenarian historiosophy could have had no immediate impact. But these were not merely unpublished scribblings—
they were Krasiński’s personal reflection of a much broader trend in
Polish thought. No one was more important in spreading this messianic
sensibility among nineteenth-century Poles than Adam Mickiewicz
(1798–1855). His monumental epic poems and plays retain their popularity to this day, but his most important text for our purposes was a little volume published shortly after the 1830 uprising, The Books of the
Polish Nation and the Polish Pilgrimage. This text rapidly became re13
Krasiński, “O Trójcy w czasie i przestrzeni,” in Filozofia i mytl spoleczna, pp.
617–618, 628, 636.

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219

quired reading for Polish patriots, and Mickiewicz’s language shaped
the way an entire generation talked about the nation.14 The style of this
volume evoked the Bible, as Mickiewicz blended the language of a sermon with that of a revolutionary tract. He started with Genesis:“In the
beginning there was faith in one God, and there was Freedom on earth.
There were no laws, only the will of God, and there were no masters or
slaves, only the patriarchs and their children.” Unfortunately, this primitive (and gendered) equality did not last, and soon humanity divided itself into exploiters and the exploited. Amid widespread corruption and
injustice stood Poland, the one nation that did not “bow before the new
idols.” Mickiewicz reconfigured the history of prepartition Poland into
a morality tale of brotherhood and harmony, declaring that “in the end
Poland said, Whosoever comes to me will be free and equal, for I am
Freedom.” Just as Christ was killed for his message, an evil trinity of oppressive monarchs destroyed Poland because they feared the freedom
it embodied. But this apparent death was not the end,“for the Polish nation did not die. Its body lay in the grave and its soul had gone from the
earth, that is, from public life, into purgatory, that is, into the domestic
life of [those nations] suffering from slavery. . . . And on the third day
the soul will return to the body and the nation will rise again and free
all the peoples of Europe from slavery.”15 Mickiewicz later distanced
himself from the idea that Poland would serve as a collective savior.Lecturing in Paris in the early 1840’s, he argued instead that an individual
messiah would work through the nation in order to bring the new age
to the rest of humanity.16 But whether Poland was to be the agent of
apocalyptic transformation or the vehicle for a personal messiah, the
link between the nation and a dynamic vision of historical time, culminating in a utopia of peace and brotherhood, was stressed throughout
Mickiewicz’s work.
The messianic metaphor thus placed Poland within the divine plan
of salvation, imbuing nationalist rhetoric with a teleological dynamic
that promised both the establishment of universal justice and the reestablishment of the Polish state. The result was a faith in national re14
The book went through two printings in less than a month, and within a year had
been translated into French (with an introduction by Montalambert), English, and German. In 1833 it was first printed—illegally—in Poland (in Lwów). See Maria Grabowska,
“Katechizm Mickiewicza,”in Adam Mickiewicz, Ksie˛gi narodu polskiego i pielgrzymstwa
polskiego (Warsaw, 1986), pp. 7–8.
15
Mickiewicz, op. cit., pp. 33, 35, 45, 47, 49.
16
Mickiewicz, Les Slaves: Cours professé au Collège de France. 1842–1844 (Paris,
1914), p. 204. On the difference between Ksie˛gi and Les Slaves, see Walicki,“Adama Mickiewicza prelekcje paryskie,” in Polska mytl, pp. 216–272.

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birth that was simultaneously political and religious—and enormously
popular. At a time when the re-establishment of Polish independence
through diplomatic or military means seemed impossible, a millenarian
faith in national resurrection offered much-needed hope.Among the literate (still a small segment of the Polish population,but a growing one),
national romanticism virtually defined the patriotism of the day. From
left to right, with very few exceptions, the rhetoric of Mickiewicz came
to characterize how people wrote and spoke about the nation. Messianic imagery penetrated the literature of the day, much of which still
stands at the forefront of the Polish canon. Mickiewicz, Krasiński, and
another prominent romantic nationalist named Juliusz Slowacki have
been lauded for more than a century as the “three bards” of Polish high
culture, and textbooks of Polish philosophy continue to give prominence to Cieszkowski. But messianism was not restricted to the lofty
domain of the arts; one can find millenarian ideas in everything from
political manifestos and newspaper articles, to private letters and memoirs. This was indeed the style of the day among Poles in all three partitions, and ( particularly) in the emigration, throughout the 1830’s and
1840’s.17
The messianic rhetoric of the early nineteenth century continues to
strike observers as evidence that Polish culture was (and is) thoroughly
penetrated by Catholicism, to a degree rarely seen in modern Europe.
The roots of national messianism in Christianity are so obvious as to
hardly require commentary, and most of the authors mentioned above
repeatedly proclaimed their Catholicism. Some, like Cieszkowski and
Krasiński,were explicitly devout,regularly participating in the Church’s
public worship and vehemently affirming their allegiance to Rome.
They were acutely sensitive to charges of heterodoxy, and both withheld from publication work they feared might offend the Catholic hierarchy. Other messianists were less concerned with the sensitivities of
the Church’s official leadership, and some could be overtly anticlerical,
but even in these cases the bond with Catholicism was evident. Mickiewicz was condemned by ecclesiastical authority, and his works were
placed on the Index, but he never completely abandoned Catholicism.
In 1848, in the midst of that year’s revolutionary tumult, he made a pilgrimage to Rome and met personally with Pius IX in an effort to convince the pontiff to embrace the New Era. In Florence, Mickiewicz
spoke (in Italian) to an enthusiastic crowd.
17
On the popularity of messianism, see Walicki,“Millenaryzm i mesjanizm religijny a romantyczny mesjanizm polski,” in Mie˛dzy filozofia, religia, i polityka, pp. 8–44.

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Friends! Brothers! We receive your shouts of sympathy in the name of Poland,
not for us, but for our country. Our country, though distant, claims from you
this sympathy by its long martyrdom. The glory of Poland, its only glory, truly
Christian, is to have suffered more than all the nations. . . . There came a moment in which the world doubted of the Mercy and Justice of the Omnipotent. There was a moment in which the nations thought that the Earth might
be forever abandoned by God, and condemned to the rule of the Demon, its
ancient lord.The nations forgot that Jesus Christ came down from Heaven to
give Liberty and Peace to the Earth. The nations had forgotten all this. But
God is just. The voice of Pius IX roused Italy. The people of Paris have driven
out the great traitor against the cause of the Nations.Very soon will be heard
the voice of Poland; Poland will rise again! . . . Poland, as crucified nation, is
risen again and called to serve her sister nations.The will of God is that Christianity should become in Poland, and through Poland elsewhere, no more a
dead letter of the law, but the living law of States and civil associations. . . .
We thank you, and we will now go into the church to thank God.18

According to this account, Mickiewicz did indeed proceed to a nearby
church to attend Mass. He may have been naïve in his belief that the
Pope could be won over to the cause of revolution, but his personal
identity as a Christian and a Catholic cannot be denied. Moreover, one
need not be a specialist in Catholic theology or history to recognize the
origins of Mickiewicz’s imagery: the narrative of national martyrdom
and salvation is explicitly drawn from the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and
resurrection. National messianism was a Catholic interpretation of
Poland’s fate, and it provided Catholics with a way to hope for Poland’s
future. It was not just Catholic, of course: a thorough genealogy of national messianism would have to consider Saint-Simon and other utopian
socialists, and the seminal scholarship of Jadwiga Maurer has demonstrated the Jewish inspiration behind some of Mickiewicz’s work.19 But
however complex and multifaceted the intellectual roots of this form of
nationalism might have been, the Catholic imagery and vocabulary were
there for all to see. On this level of analysis, an exploration of “Catholic
patriotism and prophecy” (which the title of this article promises)
would probably have to include just about every piece of patriotic
prose from the first two thirds of the nineteenth century.
Nonetheless—and without entering into the facile game of identifying which authors were “really”Catholic—it is worth remembering that
18
Margaret Fuller,“Things and Thoughts in Europe, No. XXIV,” New-York Daily Tribune
( June 15, 1848), pp. 1–5. The full text of this article is available on the web at http://
www.ucl.ac.uk/history/courses/europe1/chron/48text/full2_4.htm.
19
Jadwiga Maurer, ‘Z matki obcej’: szkice o powiazaniach Mickiewicza ze twiatem
Zydów (London, 1990).

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the official institutions of the Church vociferously denounced national
messianism. Mickiewicz was publicly condemned; Krasiński’s “heretical”work was suppressed; Cieszkowski’s Our Father was not published
until decades after his death, and Towiański was demonized in Catholic
textbooks well into the twentieth century. The Vatican and the hierarchy within Poland anathematized both the proponents of millenarianism and the Polish national movement in general (insofar as it was
penetrated by utopian ambitions for much of the nineteenth century).
The red/black divide so common in nineteenth-century Europe was
much weaker in Poland than elsewhere, but anticlericalism was a definite factor in political life. Even those who considered themselves to be
Catholics often struggled to differentiate between the official institutions of the Church and the broader community of the faithful.For their
part (with a few exceptions), the Vatican and the Polish bishops
strongly disapproved of the national movement. When the Polish uprising of 1830 broke out, the hierarchy of the Church remained loyal to
the tsar, and only a handful of priests joined the revolt. In the 1832 encyclical Cum Primum, Gregory XVI instructed the Poles that “the obedience which men are obliged to render to the authorities established
by God is an absolute precept which no one can violate.” The tsar of
Russia, the Pope insisted, was a “legitimate prince,” and the Poles owed
him their loyalty.20 The Vatican did become somewhat friendlier to the
Polish cause as the century wore on, but even as late as 1894 Pope
Leo XIII urged the Polish bishops to preach against “all conspiracies, intrigues, and rebellions,” and to uphold “order and peace.” To do otherwise, Leo wrote, would be to “oppose the will of God.”21 Against this

20
Gregory XVI, Cum Primum, in Claudia Carlen (ed.), The Papal Encyclicals,
1740–1878 ([Wilmington, North Carolina] 1981), pp. 233–234. On the Vatican and
Poland, see Adrjan Boudou, Stolica SÉwie˛ta a Rosja, trans. Zofia Skowrońska (Krakow,
1928), and Larry Wolff, The Vatican and Poland in the Age of the Partitions: Diplomatic
and Cultural Encounters at the Warsaw Nunciature (Boulder, Colorado, 1988). For a
general history of Catholicism in Poland during these years, see Jerzy Kloczowski, A History of Polish Christianity,trans.Malgorzata Sady (New York,2000),which is a slightly revised English rendition of Kloczowski’s Dzieje chrzetcijaństwa polskiego (Paris, 1987).
On the origins of clerical loyalism, see Hanna Dylagowa,“Na przelomie otwiecenia i romantyzmu (1795–1831),” in Chrzetcijaństwo w Polsce: Zarys przemian, 966–1979, ed.
Jerzy Kloczowski (Lublin, 1992), pp. 373–402. On the Catholic Church in the Duchy of
Warsaw, see Jan Skarbek, “W Dobie rozbiorów i braku państwowotci (1772–1918),” in
Zarys dziejów Kotciola katolickiego w Polsce, edd. Jerzy Kloczowski, Lidia Müllerowa,
and Jan Skarbek (Krakow, 1986), pp. 200–203; and Tadeusz Walachowicz, Kotciól katolicki w prawodawstwie Ksie˛stwa Warszawskiego (Lublin, 1984).

BY BRIAN PORTER

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background, it is hardly surprising that Catholicism had little appeal to
Polish patriots in the nineteenth century; indeed, the historian Hanna
Dylagowa has suggested that the only thing saving Poland from widespread de-Christianization was the tendency of authorities in St. Petersburg and Berlin to oppress the clergy out of proportion to their actual
involvement in the national movement.22 The idea that “Catholic” was a
synonym for “Polish” was firmly entrenched in Prussia and Russia, even
though the Church preached obedience to secular authority, and even
though most Polish national leaders held a more expansive and secular
understanding of their nationality. An 1894 editorial in Przeglad Katolicki, Warsaw’s leading Catholic periodical, tried to counter tsarist
hostility toward the Church. “Today’s entire clergy,” the paper complained,“is supposed to answer for the fact that years ago a few priests
took part in an uprising, even though [the clergy as a whole] does not
share any solidarity with that movement;indeed,it decisively condemns
it. . . . In a word, even though our clergy carries out its duties peacefully, even though it is the best force for peace and social order . . . we
are held in complete mistrust by the authorities.”23 Because of antiCatholic oppression in Germany and Russia, few Poles would openly attack the Church, but neither would very many nationalists affiliate
themselves with an institution that consistently proclaimed its loyalty
to tsar and kaiser.
It is all too easy to explain this hostility in secular terms. The conservative Catholic hierarchy (most obviously the Pope himself ) was
gravely threatened by nationalist revolutionaries in Italy, inspiring an indiscriminate opposition to all national movements, even those Poles
who were fighting against a Protestant kaiser and an Orthodox tsar.24 Alternatively, we might be tempted to seek an explanation for clerical loyalism in the social background of the higher clergy,most of whom came
from the landed nobility, and thus valued order and social stability over
independence. These sorts of explanations are persuasive to our secular twenty-first-century minds, but I would argue that they do not adequately explain the motivations of the bishops and priests who
21
“Encyklika ÉSwie˛tego Ojca Naszego Leona XIII z Boskiej Opatrznotci Papie{a do
biskupów polskich,” Przeglad Katolicki, 32, no. 22 (May 19–31, 1894), 338–349.
22
Hanna Dylagowa, Duchowieństwo katolickie wobec sprawy narodowej (1764–1864)
(Lublin, 1983), p. 60.
23
“Z powodu encykliki papieskiej do biskupów polskich,” Przeglad Katolicki, 32,
no. 27 ( June 23–July 5, 1894), 418.
24
See, for example, Boudou, op. cit., p. 198; Jablońska-Deptula, op. cit., pp. 72–76.

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opposed the national movement in nineteenth-century Poland. We can
gain many insights by considering the political and the sociological, but
when dealing with churchmen we must give the theological equal attention. We can learn a lot about the intersection of politics and faith in
the modern world if we consider how the Church’s official teachings
about the transcendent shaped the institution’s approach to the mundane.
If we are searching for exemplars of what we might call “official
Catholicism” in nineteenth-century Poland, we could find few better
models than Antoni Melchior Fijalkowski, the Archbishop of Warsaw
and thus the head of the Church in the Russian partition from 1856 until his death in 1861. In a pastoral letter issued on the occasion of his installation as Archbishop,Fijalkowski itemized the behavior he considered
mandatory for all good Catholics:
Read carefully and attentively the books of God, the works of the Church Fathers,and the lives of the saints,so as to take from them examples of true wisdom and inspiration for virtue and perseverance. Do not even consider
reading so-called salon literature, which dirties the mind, perverts the soul,
and teaches obscenity; and [avoid] even more those novelties, those social
theories which are so ruinous for society and so opposed to the teachings of
Christ. Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which
is God’s, and instill that holy principle into the faithful. With full respect for
the representatives of the Monarch’s authority, be subservient to the law and
submissive to the directives of the Government.25

In this passage we see the basic world-view of the mid-nineteenthcentury Polish hierarchy—“the Church,” in the narrowest sense of the
word. On many issues ( particularly on the utility of secular scholarship
and the admissibility of social change), Fijalkowski was more reactionary than some of his peers, but underlying his pastoral letter was a
point that did indeed rest on fundamental doctrinal principles: that authority was sacred,within both the Church and the state.The “give unto
Caesar” formula comes from Jesus himself (according to Matthew
22:21, Mark 12:17, and Luke 20:25), and to men like Fijalkowski, loyalism to the Russian tsar was an important Christian virtue. This was
more than just a political stance; it was an essential point of doctrine,
with a solid theological foundation.

25
Antoni Melchior Fijalkowski, List pasterski Antoniego Melchiora Fijalkowskiego
Arcybiskupa Metropolity Warszawskiego z powodu wstapienia na Archikatedr3 Metropolitalna warszawska wydany do Duchowieństwa i wiernych chrystusowych Archidyecezyi Warszawskiej (Warsaw, 1857), pp. 13–14.

BY BRIAN PORTER

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Fijalkowski’s successor, Zygmunt Szcz3sny Feliński (1822–1895),
would elaborate this theological justification for political obedience. Indeed, he was thrust into a set of circumstances that virtually compelled
him to do so. During the interim between Fijalkowski’s death and Feliński’s appointment,patriotic demonstrations in Warsaw reached a fever
pitch. Opposition leaders frequently staged protests within churches,
both for safety (it was presumed that the police would not invade sacred ground), and to soften conservative fears about the “red” patriots.
Desperate to end the protests, the Russians declared martial law on October 14, 1861, and on the next day the nationalists organized rallies inside several Warsaw churches. Two of these were broken up by the
police, provoking an enormous scandal. Even those who had opposed
the campaign of public demonstrations could not countenance the
presence of Russian troops in Catholic churches. Since there was no
archbishop at the moment, the cathedral vicar ordered that all Warsaw
churches be closed in protest. For a moment, the hierarchy of the
Church and the underground national movement seemed to be joined
in a united front, but this was not to last.
Feliński’s appointment was greeted with suspicion in Warsaw, because it was assumed that anyone approved by St. Petersburg would be
loyal to the tsar. The new archbishop fulfilled the worst fears of the nationalists: he re-opened the churches, banned the singing of patriotic
hymns, and forbade the use of church buildings for anything but strictly
religious functions. Exemplifying the tendency among Polish nationalists to try to distinguish between the hierarchy and the “genuine”
Church, an underground magazine called The Voice of the Polish Chaplain launched a broadside at Feliński in its first issue.An anonymous author claimed that “under the scarlet robes and the miter of Father
Feliński hides one of those false prophets, against whom Christ told us
to be on guard. . . . Every day brings us all sorts of new evidence that
Father Feliński does not care for the country at all, that his heart is divided between Petersburg and Rome, and that he wants to make the
clergy apathetic about the fate of the Fatherland, to turn it into an ultramontane caste that would have nothing in common with the nation.”26
This was how many in the national movement viewed the Catholic
hierarchy, not only in 1863 but throughout the partition era. It was not,
though, how Feliński viewed himself: he considered his patriotic credentials to be impeccable, and he defended his actions in 1862 and
26
Untitled, Glos Kaplana Polskiego 1 ( June, 1862), in Prasa tajna z lat 1861–1864,
edd. Stefan Kieniewicz and I. Miller (Wroclaw, 1966), p. 205.

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1863 both from a national and a Catholic standpoint. Feliński’s family
background was clear of any taint of loyalism; in fact, his mother had
been exiled for her part in a nationalist conspiracy while Feliński was
still a boy, and he only saw her again when he was a university student.
As a young man Feliński spent time living with Polish exiles in Paris,and
in 1848 (before he entered the priesthood) he participated in a Polish
uprising against Prussian rule in Poznania. He did not mince words in
using the label “traitor” for anyone willing to surrender the dream of independence.27 Poland’s right to regain its freedom,he thought,was unassailable.
The right of nations to independent existence is so holy and undoubted, and
the inborn love of the fatherland is so deeply embedded in the heart of every
true citizen, that no sophistic argumentation can erase these things from the
mass of the nation. . . . All true Poles not only want to be free and independent in their own country,but all are convinced that they have an undeniable
right to this, and they do not doubt that sooner or later they will stand before
their desires and once again be an independent nation. Whoever does not demand independence or doubts the possibility of its attainment is not a Polish
patriot.28

These were not just words. In the midst of the fighting in 1863, long
after he had lost any chance to win the support of the patriotic circles
in Warsaw, Feliński wrote to Tsar Alexander demanding not only that
Poland be given political autonomy, but that a resurrected Poland be restored to its expansive pre-partition boundaries (including what we today call Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine).29 Feliński paid for this letter
with a long internal exile in Yaroslav, a town on the upper Volga with
almost no Catholics. Significantly, Rome supported the archbishop’s
protest.In a letter he sent to Feliński in February,1862,Pius IX indicated
that the Vatican’s opposition to the Polish movement had softened
somewhat since the days of Cum Primum. Pius criticized “the existing
civil laws [in Russia], which are against the teachings, the rights, and the
freedoms of the Catholic Church,”and he urged the archbishop to work

27
Zygmunt Szcz3sny Feliński, Nawolywanie narodu polskiego do wypelniania
tlubów króla Jana Kazimierza i Stanów Rzeczypospolitej zaprzysi3{ onych imieniem
narodu w Archikatedrze lwowskiej roku Panskiego 1656 (Lwów, 1890), p. 5.
28
Feliński, Pami3tniki (Warsaw, 1986), p. 477.
29
A copy of Feliński’s extraordinary letter is reprinted ibid., pp. 598–599. For details on
the Church’s involvement in the demonstrations leading up to the 1863 revolt, see
Ryszard Bender, “Manifestacje patriotyczne i konspiracje przedpowstaniowe w Królestwie Polskim,” in Powstanie Styczniowe 1863–1864: Wrzenie, bój, Europa, wizje, ed. Slawomir Kalembka (Warsaw, 1990), pp. 198–231.

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for the release of those who had been imprisoned for defending the national cause.30 Despite all this, Felinski’s hostility toward the rebels of
1863 was implacable. In his memoirs, he explained why:
In my opinion, the question of our behavior in relation to the partitioning
governments must not be resolved wholesale, but must be divided into at
least three categories: the question of rights, the question of time, and the
question of means. Regarding justice: neither natural law, nor religion, nor international law, nor finally historical tradition forbids us from attaining with
arms the independence that was taken from us by force. From the position
of principle,then,no one can condemn us for rising up in arms,as something
unjust by its very nature. The question of time and circumstances is only a
question of prudence, and only from that perspective can it be resolved. . . .
The only area, then, in which it is permissible to judge the justice or injustice
of an armed uprising aimed at regaining independence is the means of conducting the struggle, and in this regard our historians and publicists have not
only the right, but the obligation to enlighten the national consciousness, so
as to warn patriots against adventures that would be ruinous for the national
soul.31

This last phrase was the key to Felinski’s approach to national politics:he wanted to protect his countrymen from anything that “would be
ruinous for the national soul.” Felinski shared the view of other conservatives that an ill-planned uprising was doomed, but Catholic opposition to the revolts of 1830 and 1863 was motivated by more than just
tactical qualms. We come closer to the root of the problem (from the
perspective of Catholics like Felinski) when we note the ties between
the Polish patriots and the advocates of social revolution. One of the
most popular Catholic preachers and publicists of the late nineteenth
century, Wladyslaw Chotkowski, complained that “the younger and
more ardent [patriots], almost without exception, grasped with both
hands the secret societies of the West, accepted the principles of European revolution, and, ignoring the fact that our nation is thoroughly
Christian and could never accept the principles of modern paganism,
wanted to use these principles not only to regain for the nation its lost
political existence, but to rebuild it and bring to it a new order.”32 Similarly, Felinski preached that revolution “attacked religion and the established social order, [and] must from its very nature aspire to upturn the
Pius IX, List Ojca ÉSwi3tego Piusa IX do Arcybiskupa Warszawskiego X. Zygmunta
Szcz3snego Felińskiego (Krakow, 1862).
31
Feliński, Pami3tniki, pp. 112–113.
32
Wladyslaw Chotkowski, O ideale politycznym Zygmunta Krasinskiego (Lwów,
1881), p. 7.
30

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main foundation of our national life.”33 It is possible, then, to interpret
Catholic opposition to the national movement as another manifestation
of the official Church’s social and political conservatism. As long as Polish nationalism was affiliated with the left (as it was until the very end
of the nineteenth century), then it was unlikely to gain much support
from priests and bishops.
This analysis is true as far as it goes, but if we leave the matter there
we come to a dilemma: how could someone like Felinski still talk about
independence if he shunned all co-operation with revolutionary elements? Someone who opposed radical sociopolitical change but still
longed for Polish independence faced an almost irresolvable problem,
since by the mid-nineteenth century there seemed to be no other way
to redraw the map of Eastern Europe. The conservative elites of the
Russian and German empires were too committed to Poland’s subjugation, and the Western powers had shown no inclination to intervene.
Poland’s restoration appeared unimaginable—and indeed it was, unless
one was willing to consider a fundamental transformation of European
politics.34 The prospect of such profound change would certainly intimidate representatives of Europe’s established institutions—such as
the Roman Catholic Church—and as a result the clergy was unlikely to
support nationalism, particularly as one moved higher up the hierarchy.
This does not mean, however, that a devout and orthodox Catholic
could not be a Polish patriot; it simply means that they were required to
cultivate their own distinctive forms of patriotism. I have argued elsewhere that liberal Poles could still aspire to independence after rejecting armed insurrection, because they had recourse to a Spencerian and
Bucklean historiosophy.35 Similarly, clerical patriots used a theology of
history to retain their allegiance to the nation even as they opposed the
national movement. Here we find the missing link between Felinski’s
stated love for his country and his relentless opposition to the January
Uprising; here we find a way to explain how so many priests throughout the nineteenth century could claim to be ardent Poles while still expressing loyalty to the partitioning powers. The problem did not stem
only from concern over the social content of the insurgents’ message.
Underlying the clerical world-view was an even more basic conviction:
Felinski, Pod Wodza Opatrznotci (Krakow, 1888), p. 14.
A good analysis of the dilemma of conservatism in nineteenth-century Poland is in
Król, op. cit.
35
Brian Porter,“The Social Nation and its Futures: English Liberalism and Polish Nationalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Warsaw,”American Historical Review, 101 (December,
1996), 1470–1492; idem, When Nationalism Began to Hate, pp. 58–74.
33

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229

that independence would surely come to the deserving, because God
could not fail to punish sin and reward virtue. Individuals would be
judged by God in the afterlife, but since nations could not collectively
enter heaven or hell, it was incumbent upon the divine medium of history to correct injustices.“Whoever manages to always see the finger of
Providence in the course of historical events,”wrote Felinski,“and,trusting in the justice of God, does not doubt that every nation will ultimately receive that which it has earned by its behavior, will recoil with
disgust at the thought of committing a crime, even if that would be the
only means of fighting an even greater injustice.”36 Virtue and patience
(or social reaction and political passivity, as the Church’s opponents
would have it) were thus bound together by a Catholic theology of
history.
To understand this point fully, we must return to the question of historical time, and the coming of the kingdom of God. Although Felinski
and his colleagues in the Church hierarchy were separated from the national movement by dozens of specific issues regarding politics and social policy, at the most basic level they were divided by competing
historiosophies—or more specifically, theologies of history. It was not
that one group was religious and the other secular, because both expressed belief in God,providence,heaven,hell,salvation,and damnation.
But these doctrines were not enough to create a common theological
framework. A priest named Piotr Semenenko, writing shortly after the
1863 uprising, described a conversation he often had with émigré nationalists:“You will hear,‘but who doesn’t believe in Christ? After all, we
are all Christians, and Poland is above all Christian, even ultra-Christian!’
Right. But nonetheless something is lacking. . . . Not every Christ is
real.”37 A generation later, the theologian Franciszek Gabryl complained
that too many Polish patriots were prone,“while continuing to consider
themselves to be good Catholics, to create for themselves . . . a new religion.” Gabryl acknowledged that “an attraction to religion in general
was not lacking,” but he lamented the pervasive “lack of knowledge regarding the fundamental bases of the faith.”38
Those who did understand the “fundamental bases of the faith” (as
Gabryl interpreted them) accepted the longstanding Catholic teaching
that individuals and communities alike were free to choose the path of
sin or salvation, but that they could no more transform the wider flow
Felinski, Pami3tniki, p. 113.
Semenenko, O milotci ojczyzny: nauka druga (Poznan, 1864), p. 15.
38
Gabryl, op. cit., I, 161.

36
37

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of history than they could alter the laws of nature. Certainly Catholic
theology is dynamic and mutable, and there is a great deal of diversity
among Catholic theologians, but this basic point seems relatively consistent over the last few centuries. As an anonymous Catholic author
from the Prussian partition put it in 1868,“Today people do not want to
accept that human freedom consists of the fact that everyone can believe in God or not, act in accordance with their faith or against it. Freedom does not, however, entail the desire to transform the nature of the
whole God-given system in accordance with one’s fancy.”39 Actually, the
“flow of history” is a poor metaphor, because one relatively stable point
of Catholic doctrine (then and now) is a rejection of the idea that history moves progressively toward the establishment of the kingdom of
God on earth. This is not a minor point: numerous “heretics” over the
centuries have suffered greatly for advocating the construction of an
earthly paradise. One of the key doctrinal claims of official Catholicism
is the idea that the mundane kingdom of God already exists, in the form
of the Church itself. The theological use of the term “kingdom” is important for any Christian, because the word appears repeatedly in the
New Testament. But the Greek word basileia (to this day the official
catechism of the Church cites the Greek as authoritative) is more ambiguous than the English “kingdom,” implying not only the territorial locus or physical manifestation of authority, but also the authority itself.
So the basileia discussed in the Bible could also be translated as “the
rule of God”or “the reign of God,”giving the phrase a different sense.As
the Church’s most recent official catechism (from 1992) puts it: “‘To
carry out the will of the Father, Christ inaugurated the kingdom of
heaven on earth.’Now the Father’s will is ‘to raise up men to share in his
own divine life.’ He does this by gathering men around his Son Jesus
Christ.This gathering is the Church,‘on earth the seed and beginning of
that kingdom.’”40 The phrase “kingdom of God” does not imply, in this
presentation, a perfected state of social existence on earth, but instead
refers to the community of all those who have embraced the teachings
of Jesus and subordinated themselves to the rule of God. Through
Christ’s death and resurrection, the catechism teaches, He already “accomplished the coming of his kingdom.” It exists now, as something
Christ himself created by coming to earth, and it exists in the hereafter,
39
N.a., Kotciól i Post3powotd (Poznan, 1868), p. 18.This was an offprint from Tygodnik
Katolicki.
40
Catholic Catechism, paragraphs 541–542, 763. A convenient version of the catechism
is available on-line, at http://www.christusrex.org/www1/CDHN/ccc.html. The internal
quotations in this passage are from Lumen gentium, the official “Dogmatic Constitution
of the Church,” as proclaimed by Pope Paul VI on November 21, 1964, paragraphs 2–5.

BY BRIAN PORTER

231

much as the Father and the Son are one, even though Jesus resided temporarily on earth. To support this view, Catholic theologians will often
cite Luke’s gospel: “Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the
reign of God would come, [ Jesus] replied: ‘You cannot tell by careful
watching when the reign of God will come. Neither is it a matter of reporting that it is “here” or “there.” The reign of God is already in your
midst.’”41 St. Augustine is another popular source, for he argued that the
blessings of the kingdom of God “begin in this life, of course; they are
increased in us as we make progress, but in their perfection—which is
to be hoped for in the other life—they will be possessed forever!”42 The
Catholic image of the kingdom of God, then, has two sides. It is already
here, insofar as the Church already exists and the message of Christ has
been transmitted to mankind, but it cannot be “perfected”—it cannot
come to its final realization—until we reach “the other life.”
This is why the teachings of the Church are said to be sacred, and
why its traditions are every bit as inviolable for orthodox Catholics as
the writings of scripture. The declaration of papal infallibility in 1870
was not novel in the broad sense, because the Church had long stressed
that its dogmatic definitions were not subject to error. Pius IX was innovative only insofar as he elevated the solitary role of the popes above
the body of the bishops, ending a longstanding tension between the papacy and a centuries-old conciliar movement. The Polish theologian
Franciszek Gabryl was expressing much more than just reactionary arrogance when he attacked the philosopher Bronislaw Trentowski for
offering his own idiosyncratic definition of God. This author, Gabryl
wrote, forgot “that Catholic theology . . . had time over eighteen centuries to become entirely crystallized, and did not have to wait for him
in order to discover the true meaning of the truths revealed by Christ.
Trentowski could create for himself conceptions of god to his heart’s
content, but he did not have the right to present his god as the Christian God, or his philosophy as an expression of the truest faith revealed
by God.”43 Behind this commentary lay a basic Catholic understanding
that the Church was much more than just an institution: it was the
already-present reign of God on earth, showing mankind the way to the
heavenly kingdom. As one Catholic publicist put it in 1868,“the theory
teaching that a person can be a Christian even without submitting to
the Church, or even while fighting against it, is probably a Jewish theLuke 17:20–21.
St. Augustine, Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love, trans. Albert C. Outler (Christian
Classics Ethereal Library CD-ROM, 1998), chapter 30, paragraph 115.
43
Gabryl, op. cit., I, 163.
41
42

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ory, because it excludes Christ from human life.”44 Comments like this
were not necessarily (at least, not only) anti-Semitic; they reflected a
deeply held belief that the Church was the depository for revelation—
the only possible depository. Thus, to deny the Church was to deny
Christ. The Church’s struggle to retain its authority in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries must not be described as merely the defense of
a specific interest group or political hierarchy: for believers, the Church
itself was the very embodiment of Catholic doctrine, its most integral
element. The theological foundation of Catholicism and its struggle for
political survival in the nineteenth century were alternative manifestations of the same thing.
Within this framework, the Catholic tradition has made sense of all
the biblical references to the “last days,” to the promise that Christ was
about to return. Catholicism has offered a relatively consistent historiosophy—or rather, it has consistently repudiated historiosophical
speculation. Moral and spiritual progress for humanity as a whole are
said to be impossible, because the path toward salvation was established by Jesus once and for all. In the words of Father Maryan
Morawski (the editor of Galicia’s leading Catholic weekly, Przeglad
Powszechny, and a professor of dogma at Jagiellonian University in
Kraków), revelation “stands throughout the history of humanity as the
most visible of all facts of history, surrounded by the aura of prophecy,
undeniable miracles, superhuman activities, incomprehensible social
transformations, the centuries-long struggle with all material and spiritual forces, the everlasting, immaculate, ageless vitality.”45 Time is thus
imagined as eventful but static, and the truth of revelation—embodied
and institutionalized by the Church—stands as the central, changeless
“historical fact” around which all else rotates. Time is chiliastic: that is,
it can be imagined as a series of flat lines punctuated by three key moments: (1) the creation and the fall; (2) the coming of Christ and the offer of redemption through Him (via His Church);(3) the second coming
of Christ, at which point time will stop and we will all confront the consequences of our acts. As the Polish philosopher and theologian Maksymilian Jakubowicz wrote in 1853,“philosophy is the science and art of
the temporal life of man. . . . Eternal life is the goal, and temporal life is
the means to that goal.” Everything that exists in time—“temporal
life”—is of value and meaning only insofar as it takes us toward the tranKotciól i Post3powotd, p. 8. Emphasis in the original.
Maryan Morawski, Filozofia i jej zadanie (Lwów, 1877), in Gabryl, II, 264. For more
on Morawski, see Anna Hochfeldowa and Barbara Skarga, Filozofia i mytl spoleczna w
latach 1865–1895 (Warsaw, 1980), pp. 289–321.
44

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scendent life of heaven.“One cannot even think with common sense
that humanity might make progress,”continued Jakubowicz,“because it
is created—according to the creative idea of God—with laws, with a
destiny,and with a goal for all centuries and places.”46 This is not to deny
that some things might change, only that change is epiphenomenal,
with the real transformation of the earth only to come after the apocalypse. Eleonora Ziemi3cka, a contemporary of Jakubowicz and the editor of the short-lived ultramontane periodical, Pielgrzym (1842–1847),
similarly emphasized that morality was a constant, and that only reason
could advance. While such development could bring us a deeper understanding of God,“progress rests on consistent data, that is, on truths,
which more or less reveal themselves to every man in every society.”
History, for Ziemi3cka, was a process of God ruling the earth in such a
way as to deal with the results of our imperfections; it was not dynamic
in any meaningful sense,because the basic truths of morality and nature
were always the same. There might be “thousands of historical phases,”
but underneath them all was a very different sort of progress that could
be interpreted entirely within a divine framework, without reference to
any imagined science of history.“That is why it is unlikely that we could
grasp the laws of history,” she concluded, “because its entirety lies in
that which religion calls the acts of Providence or the governing of the
world.” Given this, the great “social mission” of the Church was to teach
people “to differentiate the mundane from the eternal, the fate of the
whole from the fate of the individual; [when this is accomplished], false
hopes about the kingdom of God on earth, about earthly perfection,
vanish like a specter before one’s eyes.”47
For at least two centuries, the Church’s official teaching about the
kingdom of God on earth has remained consistent. Moreover, these
ideas have not been peripheral to Catholicism, not something one
could openly challenge and still remain in the Church.That is not to say
that the views of all Catholics have been homogeneous or static, for
such a claim would be both ahistorical and absurd. But the official institutions of the Church have been relatively steady in their defense of
certain doctrinal points with a theological no pasaran. Specifically,
Catholic authorities have repeatedly used all the tools at their disposal,
including excommunication and (in earlier centuries) physical punishment, to combat millenarian heresies.
46
Maksymilian Jakubowicz, Chrzetcijanska filozofia {ycia w porównaniu z filozofia
naszego wieku panteistyczna (Wilno, 1853), in Gabryl, II, 78, 85.
47
Eleonora Ziemi3cka, Zarysy filozofii katolickiej w czterech pogladach zawarte
(Warsaw, 1857), pp. 92, 202, 207.

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The front line of anti-millenarian defense in nineteenth-century
Poland was manned by three priests: Piotr Semenenko, Aleksander
Jelowiecki, and Hieronim Kajsiewicz. In 1842 these men formed an order called the Zgromadzenie Zmartwychwstania Panskiego (The
Congregation of the Resurrection of the Lord), specifically aimed at
stopping the spread of national messianism.48 This congregation became more important than its specifically Polish character might suggest. Semenenko, co-founder and two-time head of the congregation,
was a consultant to those two bastions of orthodoxy, the Congregation
of the Index and the Congregation of the Holy Office, and the order’s
leadership played an important role in advising the Vatican on Russian
and East European affairs. According to the Resurrectionist constitution, which was formally accepted by Pius IX in 1850, the goal of the
congregation was to “establish the kingdom of God in the human soul,”
an explicit repudiation of the dream that Poland might contribute to
the construction of a divine kingdom on earth.
Semenenko insisted that no patriotism could be virtuous “if one loves
the Fatherland without Christ. . . . Love [the Fatherland] just as it is?
No, by God, one may not! A Fatherland without God and without Christ
is not worth loving.”49 To demonstrate this Christian foundation, Semenenko wrote, the Poles had to accept two basic points: (1) that the
Church, with its traditions, its institutions, and its hierarchy, was an embodiment of divine revelation; (2) that salvation could never come on
this earth within the framework of historical time, but only after the Last
Judgment, when time itself would be transcended. All too many Polish
patriots, Semenenko complained, appeared to be good Christians on
the surface, but on the unshakable principle of faith in the Roman
Catholic Church, they fell short.
Under the pretext of various seemingly just and holy causes, they raise the
hand of blasphemy on that which alone is just and holy on earth [i.e., the
Church]. Sometimes, in the name of some sort of secular and human justice,
in the name of right and wrong, in the name of glory, honor, raison d’état, political necessity, even in the name of trade or some insignificant self-interest,
but always in the name of something that does not disturb the human ear,
that has some sort of superficial fairness, they attack that which sooner or
later leads one to Christ, to God, and not knowing what they do, they perform an act of damnation.50
48
On the Zmartwychwstancy, see Bohdan Cywinski, Rodowody Niepokornych (Warsaw, 1971), p. 257; Król, op. cit., pp. 164–176; Królik, op. cit., pp. 16–19, 159–161; Jan Skarbek, op. cit., pp. 214–215. On Semenenko, see Gabryl, II, 205–234.
49
Semenenko, O milotci ojczyzny: nauka druga (Poznan, 1864), pp. 5–7.
50
Ibid., pp. 5–6.

BY BRIAN PORTER

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It was not enough to believe in God; it was not enough to accept Jesus
Christ in some general sense; it was not even enough to trust in the intercession of saints and the Virgin, to recognize original sin, to seek solace in confession, or to fear the threat of eternal damnation.All this was
important, but still missed a key point—perhaps the key point that
made Catholicism really distinctive in the eyes of its orthodox defenders. To be Catholic, people like Semenenko insisted, one had to believe
in the Church, which meant accepting that the Church was the kingdom of God on earth, and that this terrestrial paradise was not some
sort of imagined socio-political utopia that mankind could build or that
would emerge progressively over time.
If the kingdom of God already existed in the Church and was destined to come into fullness only in the next life, it followed that no nation—no mere social body—could act as a collective savior. By
subordinating the role of the Church within a teleological vision of national salvation, the messianists had placed a human community—
Poland—in the place rightfully held by the Church and by God Himself.
Felinski criticized Krasinski for suggesting that any earthly nation could
be as virtuous as Christ.“Although my nation was the victim of a cruel
injustice,” Felinski wrote,“it did not proceed to martyrdom either willingly or without sin, as did our Savior and the martyrs following in His
footsteps.Considering our national guilt and mistakes,it would be more
appropriate to call Poland, as it pays for its sins, the Mary Magdalene of
nations, not the Christ of nations.”51 Having repudiated national messianism, these Catholic authors offered an alternative way of granting
the nation a lofty mission within their own theology of history.“Nation
of Poland! Just be faithful, and you will live,” wrote Semenenko.“Don’t
believe your own eyes when it seems to you that you have died; you
live, and you will live, and you must live. You are immortal, because you
have a mission from God.”52 Along the same lines, Felinski believed that
“just as every member of the family has an assigned task corresponding
to his or her natural abilities, so does every nation receive a mission in
accordance with the features Providence deigned to grant it.”53 So these
Catholics could also speak of a mission,but within their conceptual universe this idea looked very different. It is helpful to think of nations in
the orthodox Catholic scheme as representational rather than historical, as synchronic rather than diachronic. Each nation embodied some
eternal principle, some idea or message that they were commissioned
Felinski, Pami3tniki, p. 205.
Semenenko, op. cit., p. 13.
53
Felinski, Pami3tniki, p. 206.
51

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to present to the world, much as the Church presented and propagated
the teachings of Christ. Agaton Giller recalled a pilgrimage to Cz3stochowa in 1861, during which the faithful were promised a “happy future” if they only focused on the “moral struggle” and avoided armed
combat. Poland’s task in history was to become “a model for all countries.”54 This imagery was common in Catholic writing, with static terms
like “model” replacing more active and potentially blasphemous titles
like “savior” and “messiah.” Wladyslaw Chotkowski described the
“ideals” cherished by each nation, the “guiding stars” showing a clear
path through life. Such ideals, Chotkowski added, ought to be “in harmony with the absolute, Christian ideals” if they were to serve the nation well.55
The success of Poland’s mission, thus understood, did not necessarily
depend on national independence. Although many Catholics considered statehood both desirable and just, there was no need to work for
its fulfillment, because such things were in God’s hands.“From the fact
that we lost independent existence,”Felinski observed,“it does not at all
follow that our mission has ended. . . . The character of that mission is
so spiritual, that not by the force of arms, but by the force of sacrifices
will we accomplish that which love demands of us. If independence
would become a condition necessary for fulfilling the task that has
been laid upon us, then Providence itself would so manage the course
of events that state existence would again be returned to us, so that we
may sufficiently mature in spirit.”56 Again, humans were to embody the
message of Christ, but they could not be expected to change the order
of things, which by definition was natural and divinely ordained. The
only true actor in the grand historical drama was God Himself, and the
only way for humans to act within historical time was to pray for His intervention.
Within this framework, orthodox Catholic patriots could both make
sense of the partitions and trace a path toward national resurrection;
they could imagine political change without violating their commitment to obedience and authority. They could, in other words, be patriots while giving unto Caesar that which was Caesar’s.The first step was
to recognize that their misfortunes were set upon them for a reason.
The idea that the partitions were a mark of judgment was common
54
Agaton Giller, Polska w walce: Zbiór wspomnien i pami3tników z dziejów naszego
wyjarzmiania (Paris, 1868), p. 59.
55
Wladyslaw Chotkowski, O ideale politycznym Zygmunta Krasinskiego (Lwów,
1881), p. 3.
56
Felinski, Pami3tniki, pp. 212–213.

BY BRIAN PORTER

237

among clerics and was used to justify loyalty to the tsar during all the
nineteenth-century rebellions.“The just Lord, in his anger, has filled the
cup of misfortune on earth,” preached Bishop Marceli Gutkowski in
1830,“and the spirit of revolution and the fury of hell has overcome the
corrupted, and they have raised up a blasphemous hand against the
Rightful Monarch.”57 Archbishop Felinski made this point at a special
meeting of all the clergy of the Warsaw Archdiocese in January, 1863:
“The mission of Poland is to develop Catholic thinking in internal
life. . . . Poland was great as long as these virtues lived within it, as long
as there were no examples in its history of egoism or rapaciousness. . . .
When these national virtues fell, when decadence and egoism set in,
then the flogging and the ruin arrived.”58
Although the partitions were sent by God, they did not represent a final verdict. Insofar as Poles recognized their sins and returned to the
path of God and the fold of the Church, the nation would be “resurrected” (thus the significance of the name of Semenenko’s order). If the
Poles continued to strive for independence without repentance, however, they were doomed. As Semenenko put it,“God waits for you and
summons you, and cries, ‘Oh, my chosen nation! You have forgotten
about me, and you do not think of me, but I remember you and I think
about you constantly. . . . You look for other support, and in doing so
you resist me.’”59 Felinski offered a more optimistic spin on this message:“If it is true that God has punished us for our national sins, then it
must also be true that He will also save us as soon as we correct those
sins.”60 In keeping with Catholic teachings about sin and redemption,
Felinski believed that Poland’s transgressions would be forgiven once
they were recognized.“Nations can be healed, because the Lord God is
charitable and faithful to his promises,”the Archbishop said in a sermon
toward the end of his life;“so with trust we gather together to fix that
which the past has broken, and undoubtedly with our work we are
preparing for our heirs a fate better than ours.”61 A program of patriotic
action—a means of healing the Polish illness—did in fact emerge from
Catholicism’s theology of national history, but it was at odds with both
the revolutionary violence proposed by the “reds” and the economic
and cultural development advocated by liberals and conservatives. Both
these approaches, wrote Felinski, were flawed by the belief that “ProviAs quoted by Dylagowa, Duchowienstwo katolickie, pp. 112–113.
Felinski, Pami3tniki, p. 566.
59
Semenenko, op. cit., p. 21.
60
Felinski, Pod Wodza Opatrznotci, p. 28. See also idem, Pami3tniki, p. 482.
61
Felinski, Nawolywanie narodu polskiego, p. 6.

57

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dence has abdicated unconditionally the governing of the world, leaving it entirely up to human cunning.”62 It was pointless for humans to
willfully attempt to alter the course of history. Instead, the best way to
work for the fatherland was to spread the message of Catholicism, so as
to remove the sin that had brought such disasters upon Poland in the
first place.
In this spirit, the many lay religious brotherhoods and sisterhoods
founded in the last half of the nineteenth century take on a new meaning. One such organization was the Confraternity of the Most Holy and
Gracious Mary, the Royal Queen of Poland, founded on April 18, 1890.
The brotherhood outlined its goals as follows:
The main tasks of the Brotherhood are: (a) to elevate and propagate the religious spirit in the nation, urging through words and example the improvement of these particular defects and errors which caused our fall; (b)
undertake and support as much as possible all efforts aimed in a Catholic
spirit at improving the moral and material fate of our people and our working classes; (c) dedicate a selected day, with these oaths in mind, to the worship of the Most Holy Mary as the Royal Queen of Poland.

Anyone unfamiliar with the theological views described above would
wonder how the stated duties of the confraternity’s members were supposed to repair the flaws that had caused Poland’s fall. The Brothers
were instructed to attend Mass every Sunday “in accordance with the
ancient national tradition”; they were to lead exemplary family lives,
avoid drunkenness, work hard, save their money, and pray daily to the
Virgin.63 If we cast these instructions within the framework examined
here, however, we can see how these acts would help. Theology could
invest seemingly apolitical acts with political meaning: if one believed
in divine intervention, with the punishment of sinful nations and the rewarding of virtuous ones, then prayer became a powerful weapon in
the national struggle.
It would be an exaggeration to claim that any political stance—even
one taken by a religious institution—could be entirely motivated by
theological concerns. The Catholic Church is a human institution, and
as such it is embedded in a deep context of needs, interests, and motivations. But Catholicism is not just a human institution: in the eyes of its
Felinski, Pod Wodza Opatrznotci, p. 49.
“Bractwo Najtw.Panny Maryi Laskawej,Królowy Konory Polskiej,zatwierdzone przez
Wladze twieckie i duchowne i obdarzone licznemi laskami i przywilejami przez Ojca tw.
Leona XIII (Brewem z dnia 18 kwietnia 1890),” printed as an appendix to Felinski, Nawolywanie narodu polskiego, pp. 25–28.
62

63

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239

members, it is the embodiment of God’s rule on this earth, and the link
between the terrestrial and the divine. We do not have to share these
beliefs in order to grasp their importance, and we dare not dismiss
them as irrational or irrelevant to public life. Faith structures the way
one sees the world, much as secular ideologies generate conceptual
frameworks that delineate what one can and cannot imagine and perceive. It thus behooves us to take theology seriously, particularly when
considering those closest to the catechism ( priests, bishops, monks,
nuns, etc.). Doing so in the case of nineteenth-century Poland helps us
understand more fully the stance of the official Church throughout the
era of the partitions. It is inadequate to say that the bishops were defending their social position, or that the Church was trying to preserve
its institutional power. For believing Catholics, God and the soul were
integral players in the struggles of modern national politics.

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AMERICAN CATHOLICISM?:
JOHN ENGLAND AND “THE REPUBLIC IN DANGER”
BY

HARVEY HILL*

The first decades of the nineteenth century were a period of phenomenal growth in the Catholic Church in the United States.A relatively
small minority at the time of the American Revolution, Catholicism became the single largest religious denomination in the country by midcentury, largely on the strength of immigration from Europe. However,
this growth combined with a pre-existing distrust of Catholicism to precipitate an anti-Catholic, nativist reaction. As a largely immigrant community accused of being incompatible with the dominant culture,
Catholics experienced in a particularly sharp way the need to define exactly what it meant to be Catholic in America. Could Catholics enter
fully into American life without compromising their faith? Could American citizens divide their loyalty between a foreign ecclesiastical hierarchy and the national government? Was Catholicism in fact incompatible
with the liberal principles of the United States government as some
anti-Catholics alleged? Or could the two be reconciled? If so, how?
John England,the first bishop of Charleston from 1820 until his death
in 1842, sought throughout his American career to answer such questions about the nature of Roman Catholicism in the United States. An
Irish immigrant, he had never visited the United States before his arrival
to lead the newly created diocese of Charleston in 1820. However, he
promptly began to adapt the Catholic tradition to local circumstances
as he understood them by drafting a Constitution for his diocese, establishing a newspaper called the United States Catholic Miscellany, and
advocating regular provincial councils that could help to standardize
the discipline of the Church in America.1 Each of these initiatives, as
well as many others, contributed to England’s effort to define American
*Dr.Hill is an assistant professor of religion in Berry College,Mount Berry,Georgia.This
article is a longer version of a paper he presented to the Roman Catholic Studies Group
at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in November, 2000.
1
On England’s adaptation to circumstances in the United States, see Patrick Carey, An
Immigrant Bishop: John England’s Adaptation of Irish Catholicism to American Re-

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Catholicism in a way that was, in his view, both authentically Catholic
and authentically American.
Given this background, England was well prepared to meet an antiCatholic, nativist attack that appeared in the Southern Religious Telegraph in 1831. In an article entitled “The Republic in Danger,” the
anonymous author warned the citizens of Virginia,“Popery has invaded
the land, and is laying the foundations of an empire, with which, if it
prevail, the enlightened freedom of the republic cannot coexist.” England responded with a series of twelve letters addressed to “the candid
and unprejudiced people of America” in which he challenged the construction of Catholicism offered in the Telegraph and countered with
his own quite different construction. Although not carefully analyzed
by modern scholars, England’s anti-nativist writings like these letters
shed significant light on his vision of American Catholicism.2 Catholics
in America were, he contended in these letters, more rational and more
faithful to the principles of the American Constitution than were the
nativists who opposed Catholicism as a threat.

1. Rational Religion

England’s construction of American Catholic identity in his response
to “The Republic in Danger” appears most clearly by contrast with the
anti-Catholic allegations of his opponent. “The Republic in Danger”
began with an attack on “intemperance,”which,the author claimed,“has
invaded the whole land.”3 Two paragraphs on intemperance set up the
publicanism (Yonkers, New York, 1982); R. Frank Saunders, Jr., and George A. Rogers,
“Bishop John England of Charleston: Catholic Spokesperson and Southern Intellectual,
1820–1842,” Journal of the Early Republic, 13 (1993), 301–322; Peter Clarke, A Free
Church in a Free Society: The Ecclesiology of John England, Bishop of Charleston,
1820–1842 (Hartsville, South Carolina, 1982), and “John England: Missionary to America,
Then and Now” in Gerald P. Fogarty (ed.), Patterns of Episcopal Leadership (New York,
1989), pp. 68–84; and Virginia Lee Kaib, “The Ecclesiology of John England, The First
Bishop of Charleston, South Carolina (1821–1842)” (Ph.D. dissertation, Marquette University, 1968). For more general biographical information, see Peter Guilday, The Life and
Times of John England, First Bishop of Charleston (1786–1842) (2 vols.; New York,
1927);Dorothy Fremont Grant,John England, American Christopher (Milwaukee,1949);
and Joseph L. O’Brien, John England—Bishop of Charleston (New York, 1934).
2
Scholars of England have tended to concentrate on his ideas about the relation of
Church and State and about ecclesiology more broadly. They have especially concentrated on his Constitution. O’Brien devotes a chapter to “The Republic in Danger”(op.cit.,
pp. 103–112). However, he tends to summarize and quote England more than to analyze
England’s rhetoric and arguments. Guilday discusses “The Republic in Danger”in Life and
Times, II, 458–463.

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AMERICAN CATHOLICISM?: JOHN ENGLAND AND “THE REPUBLIC IN DANGER”

parallel attack on “Popery,” which had also “invaded the land.” The author specifically identified these two opponents,“for,” he said,“next to
the fire which burns out reason and conscience,” presumably meaning
intemperance,“that power is to be dreaded which stupifies conscience
and blinds the understanding, and withholds the only light which can
guide human reason aright, and makes the whole man a superstitious
slave to the impositions of a crafty priesthood.” He went on to refer to
Catholicism as “the beast” and Catholics as “the minions of the Pope,”
who sought “to extend his authority in our land.”“Popery,” the author
warned his readers,was such a fearful antagonist because it was able “to
excite the imagination, captivate the senses, and enslave the mind to
forms of superstition.” In contrast to Catholics were “enlightened Christians” who espoused the “religion of the Bible.”
The terms that the author used to demonize Catholics and Catholicism, particularly in contrast to the terms that he used for evangelical
Protestants, explained in part the character of England’s response.
Protestants, the author suggested, were enlightened and followed the
Bible,“the only light which can guide human reason aright.” Catholics
were the opposite. They had excited imaginations, captivated senses,
and therefore enslaved minds. Worse still, the Catholic hierarchy actively discouraged laypeople from overcoming this mental slavery by
withholding the source of enlightenment. As a result, Catholics were
dominated by their passions and their priests, as distinguished from
Protestants, who were rational and faithful to the Bible. This image of
Catholics clarifies the association between Catholicism and intemperance. The author did not claim that immigrant Catholics drank too
much, although he might have thought that. Rather he compared the effects of alcohol—burned-out reason and conscience—with the effects
of Catholicism—a stupified conscience and a blind understanding. It
was particularly this impaired conscience and intellect that made
Catholicism incompatible with the exercise of civil and religious liberty. Twice the author argued from Catholic irrationality to superstition
to slavery. The fact that those so enslaved were invaders from outside
coming into “our land” made the threat more irritating, if not more dangerous.The key,in this attack,was thus the opposition between a native
Protestant enlightenment that fostered American liberties and a sensual
imagination that blinded the Catholic understanding and virtually enslaved individual Catholics, coupled with a foreign ecclesiastical estab3
“The Republic in Danger!,” in Sebastian Messmer (ed.), The Works of the Right Reverend John England, First Bishop of Charleston (7 vols.; Cleveland, Ohio, 1908), IV,
412–415.

BY HARVEY HILL

243

lishment that withheld the only possible source of light from its adherents.
England challenged this opposition at each point, beginning with the
opposition between Protestant enlightenment and the blinded understanding of Catholics. However, he approached this opposition by way
of what at first appears to be a different issue: the author’s use of nicknames like “Popery” to characterize his opponents negatively.“The object [of using such nicknames] was,” England said, “to fasten obloquy
upon our body, to degrade us by nicknames, to mortify us by superciliousness,to estrange our fellow-citizens from us by contempt,and to deprive us of sympathy by daubing us with the colouring of the most
despicable vices.”4 This unfair characterization of Catholicism had real
consequences, according to England. It not only alienated Catholics
from their “fellow-citizens,” but also established an environment in
which Catholics were more likely to experience physical abuse. To
demonstrate his point, England recounted at length the story of two
Catholics who were tarred and feathered in Charleston in 1775 in part
because of their religious faith.5 Such abuse was, England implied, the
natural outgrowth of insulting nicknames.
Although England argued that the use of nicknames could have dire
consequences, his emphasis on nicknames initially seems out of proportion to the offensiveness of the term used. England devoted three
letters and twenty-three pages to the topic. This was seven times the
length of the tract to which he responded and more than twenty-five
percent of his response as a whole. In this extended discussion, however, he not only criticized the author to whom he responded. He also
exploited the nativist use of nicknames to reverse the characterizations
of Protestantism as enlightened and Catholicism as irrational. AntiCatholics, he insisted, used nicknames in place of reasoned discourse to
elicit an emotional reaction.As he put it, the use of nicknames “contains
no argument, but betrays a symptom, equivocal, it is true, of its absence;
for it is generally observed that he who is anxious to fasten a nick-name
upon his adversary, seldom makes the effort until he has failed in adducing a reason.”6 By contrast, England carefully refrained from nicknaming the author of the tract in his first letters, and he explicitly
4
England,“The Republic in Danger,” IV, 430. See also Guilday, op. cit., II, 457–460. As in
the United States Catholic Miscellany,so in England’s collected works,England’s response
immediately followed “The Republic in Danger!” England’s letters appeared in volume
nine, numbers four through fifteen ( July 16 to October 3, 1831).
5
England,“The Republic in Danger,” IV, 435–438.
6
Ibid., IV, 418.

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exempted the majority of Protestants from his strictures. Instead, he offered an historical survey of the use of offensive nicknames for Catholics,
and he ended with anecdotal evidence from Charleston to demonstrate
their harmfulness. In the process, he established an implicit contrast between his own use of rational discourse and his opponent’s uncharitable and irrational use of emotional appeals.
England developed this contrast between rational discourse and irrational emotional appeals in language with significant political overtones, especially for Southern readers. Just as Southerners defended
their peculiar institution, slavery, against Northern prejudices, so, England maintained, Catholics founded schools and worked in other ways
to combat “unfounded prejudices” about their “peculiar principles and
practices.” Unlike evangelical Protestants, he continued, Catholics,“do
not calumniate our brethren, we do not ‘nickname God’s creatures,’ we
do not excite hatred against our fellow-citizens, we do not sow discord
in the Union.”7 His final claim about discord in the Union took on a particular resonance, coming from Charleston in 1831, in the midst of the
nullification crisis and growing sectional hostility.8 Evangelical Christians emerge as the agitators who fanned the fires of regional and religious prejudice, as distinguished from Catholics, who combated these
fires with rational instruction.
Making this implicit point explicit, England’s sixth letter directly defended the rational character of Catholicism. First he quoted the accusation that Catholicism excited the imagination, captivated the senses,
and enslaved the mind without bringing truth to bear on the conscience or the heart.9 The tract offered no evidence to support any of
these propositions, England noted, but he conceded the first two, that
Catholicism excited the imagination and captivated the senses. However,he continued,“the Catholic religion . . . so excites the imagination,
as to aid the memory in the recollection of important facts, and their
proper bearing.” Again,“The imagination of the Catholics is rationally
excited by the representation of the great facts of religion, created in
painting, or statuary, and exhibited in ceremony; thus also Popery captiIbid., IV, 450.
There is a large body of literature on the nullification crisis. See, for example, William W.
Freehling, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina,
1816–1836 (New York, 1965, 1966); Richard E. Ellis, The Union at Risk: Jacksonian
Democracy, States’ Rights, and the Nullification Crisis (New York, 1987); and, more generally, Lacy K. Ford, Jr., Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry,
1800–1860 (New York, 1988).
9
England,“The Republic in Danger,” IV, 454.
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vates the senses.”The purpose of so exciting the imagination and captivating the senses was, he then repeated,“to excite the recollection of
those facts which are recorded in the Bible.”10 This kind of excitation
did not enslave the mind. On the contrary, it was rational, factual, and
even biblical.11
In defending Catholic appeals to the imagination and the senses as rational, factual, and biblical, England was speaking the language of his
evangelical antagonists. David Morgan has recently traced the growing
use of visual imagery in evangelical tracts aimed in part to combat
Catholicism during this period.By linking the pictures tightly to written
material, typically the Bible, evangelical Christians were able to harness
the influence of the pictorial images to biblical religion, especially for
the purpose of aiding the recollection. Thus used, imagery was a powerful tool. But there was another, more dangerous side to the use of visual imagery. In Morgan’s words,
an image’s capacity to stimulate feeling also presented a problem for American evangelical Christians because feeling could carry one away and subvert
the precepts of reason and moral restraint. We might say that images existed
on a continuum. One end was occupied by the illustrational or didactic picture, subordinate to the text, whose meaning it self-effacingly signified.At the
other end of the spectrum was the idol, as evangelicals conceived it, an image that drained its user of moral and intellectual strength.

Evangelicals associated the second use of visual images, idolatry, with
Catholicism.12 By insisting that the emotional appeals of Catholicism
were rational and aided Catholics in remembering the Bible, England
challenged the characterization of Catholicism as idolatrous and emotional to the point of irrationality. Rather, Catholicism used appeals to
the senses in exactly the same way as evangelical Christians used visual
imagery in their tracts: to support a rational and biblical faith.
England then went a step further, reversing the stereotype by accusing his evangelical opponents of irrational, emotional appeals. Evangelical Christians, he claimed, “frequently lament the want of this
Ibid., IV, 455, my emphasis.
As Saunders and Rogers show, England himself embodied this image of enlightened
Catholicism. He was an important participant in the cultural and intellectual life of
Charleston (op. cit., pp. 302–305). On the importance of rationality to “respectable”Southern Christians in this period, including England, see also E. Brooks Holifield, The Gentlemen Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture, 1795–1860 (Durham, North
Carolina, 1978).
12
David Morgan, Protestants and Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the Age of
American Mass Production (New York, 1999), p. 221.
10

11

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excitement, in what they call formal religionists.” By contrast with such
formal religion, their worship certainly did not lack excitement. England simply listed its manifestations:“revivals, outpourings of the spirit,
rhapsody, conviction, experience, the triumph of grace, the apprehension of the Lord, the enthusiasms flowing from the imagined certainty
of election and predestination; this undoubting faith, as it is called; all
this excitement of the imagination.” He concluded the list with the exasperated comment,“and yet, they talk of the excitement of the imagination by Popery! Verily, and of a truth, there are more of such
imaginings at one revival, or camp-meeting, than would suffice for ten
provinces of Popery.” He refused to sully himself by giving specific examples.“I cannot consent,” he wrote,“to enter into the disgusting and
ridiculous details.”13 Irrational appeals to imagination and emotion were
a problem in the United States, but this problem beset evangelical
Christians rather than Catholics, despite anti-Catholic accusations to
the contrary.
England identified similarly irrational appeals to the imagination
throughout “The Republic in Danger.” In one apostrophe to the anonymous author, he commented sarcastically,
Why, sir, all these tropes, and figures, and hyperbolical expressions, led me to
fear that really there was some danger; and especially when they were uttered by you. I could never have imagined that a gentleman of such wellregulated gravity, such holy calmness, so demure an aspect, so staid and
measured a gait, so plain as to the exterior man, and so sober-minded as respects the interior man, could make so vehement an outcry, and permit his
imagination to be so irrevocably bewildered in metaphor.

Aware that such sarcasm opened him to a similar charge, England followed this passage with an apology.“My friends,” he wrote,“excuse me,
if I have thus relaxed my style whilst I perused my subject. I thought
this colloquial criticism best calculated to expose the perfect folly of
the paragraphist’s apprehensions.”14 If he substituted abuse for rational
discourse, England explained, it was only because his opponent deserved no better. Once again, England had reversed the characterization
of Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism. Notwithstanding England’s occasional use of sarcasm, Catholics were rational, while nativists
relied on exaggeration and metaphorical language in a way that reflected
their bewildered imaginations.

England,“The Republic in Danger,” IV, 455.
Ibid., IV, 465.

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2. Defending Liberty

Like the author of “The Republic in Danger,” England linked reasoned
discourse to the exercise of religious liberty. Having argued that
Catholics employed reasoned discourse while his nativist opponents
did not, a point he continued to reiterate throughout his letters, England could, therefore, suggest that Catholics supported civil and religious liberty, while Protestants often did not.
England introduced this argument by emphasizing the ongoing
Catholic commitment to specifically religious work.“Our efforts,” he insisted, were “not directed to create a Christian party in politics.”Despite
evangelical accusations, Catholics did not vote as a block, nor did
Catholic leaders seek political influence by such means. Instead,“our efforts are made to diffuse learning, by the means of schools and colleges,
to erect churches, and to create pastors for our destitute flocks.”15
Catholics, that is, went about their appropriately religious business
without regard for politics. This religious business included as its first
priority the diffusion of learning, another example of the liberal and enlightened character of Catholicism.
More importantly, the Catholic schools, which diffused learning, contrasted with the “Sunday schools” established by evangelicals as “the
means . . . to secure the votes necessary to . . . [create] the dominion of
a Christian party in politics.”16 Here lay the true threat to religious liberty, claimed England. He began his first letter with the warning that his
opposition sought to enact “what it styles Christian legislation.” Their
hope is that “law [will be] gradually added to law” until they “shall have
caused church after church to disappear.”17 He returned to this theme at
much greater length in his eighth letter, where he accused evangelical
Protestants of hoping “to take Congress under the direction of the
church.”18 Most immediately, they sought “the exclusion from political
power of every one who is not of their brotherhood.” Once “give them
exclusive political power,” he continued,“and then, of course, they will
use it for legislative purposes.” As evidence of “the sectarian domination”and “petty malevolence”of evangelical politicking,England quoted
laws from colonial Connecticut outlawing Catholicism and Anglicanism
Ibid., IV, 450.
Ibid., IV, 473. See also Anne Boylan, Sunday School: The Formation of an American
Institution, 1790–1880 (New Haven, Connecticut, 1988). England surely had in mind not
only the specific proposals of the tract to which he responded, but also the slightly earlier efforts of Ezra Stiles Ely to create a “Christian Party” in politics.
17
England,“The Republic in Danger,” IV, 416.
18
Ibid., IV, 469.
15

16

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as well as disenfranchising those who were not members of a recognized church or who twice voted for a non-member. He concluded
these examples with the rhetorical question:“Are you, my friends, prepared for such domination as this? . . . I would ask whether any civilized nation, except under the dominion of this sect, ever submitted to
such a code? I would ask whether any despot that ever ruled a degraded accumulation of vassals, dared to impose such a yoke?” And yet,
these were “the consequences likely to flow from the success of these
efforts to create a Christian party in politics.”19
However, creating a Christian party in politics was only half of the
evangelical agenda. Their second goal, England claimed, was “to deliver
the republic from its enemies, . . . one of the most formidable of which
is Popery.”20 By juxtaposing these two goals, England associated them:
creating a Christian party in politics involved as one of its necessary
conditions opposition to Catholicism. However, since the true danger
to the republic lay in precisely this effort to create a Christian party in
politics, England’s reader could conclude that Catholicism was in fact
the great defender of the republic and its religious and civil liberties
against those evangelicals who threatened them.
To prove that Catholics supported religious liberty, England offered
an historical survey of the development of religious toleration in the
American colonies, particularly in Maryland, the most Catholic of the
colonies.21 Maryland, he noted, explicitly granted religious liberty to all
free Christians, Catholic and Protestant, and prohibited offensive nicknames, thus laying “the foundation of our religious liberty this side of
the Atlantic” and giving “equal protection to the feelings of their Protestant brethren as they claimed for their own.”“Catholic Maryland” could
therefore claim “the glorious prerogative of being the mother of the religious liberty of America.” However, when Protestants gained power in
Maryland,they soon revoked these laws,and,as in other colonies,passed
disgraceful legislation with disgraceful language. Furthermore, Protestant writers attacked each other with rhetoric that was almost equally
offensive.22 The danger to American liberties during the colonial period, the reader is led to conclude, was Protestant intolerance, both legIbid., IV, 472.
Ibid., IV, 475.
21
For what follows,see ibid.,IV,420–421.As Carey notes,this strategy was typical of England, who viewed the misunderstanding of religious history as one of the primary causes
of religious intolerance (op. cit., p. 91).
22
England,“The Republic in Danger,” IV, 425–427. England quoted several samples to
prove his point.
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islative and rhetorical. Catholics, by contrast, were not a threat so much
as the originators and great defenders of religious liberty and toleration.
Catholics,according to England,continued to demonstrate their commitment to liberty during the revolutionary generation. He quoted a letter from Catholic soldiers to President Washington requesting equal
rights based on their military service. Washington, England insisted, was
sympathetic, and the states had gradually come into line. England noted
that South Carolina, his home, had repealed its anti-Catholic laws and
had in his day a constitution and legislature that were “kind, liberal, and
just.”23 Furthermore, England repeatedly emphasized that the single surviving signatory of the “Declaration of Independence,” Charles Carroll,
was Catholic, and he condemned on Carroll’s behalf those who condemned Catholicism. For example, he criticized the plan “to sweep
from the valley of the Mississippi the religion of the survivor of that noble assembly that created the liberty which [nativists] enjoyed.”24 By the
fourth letter, England had virtually granted Carroll an intercessory role.
“Isolated in his grandeur,” wrote England, “he raises his modest head
amidst the graves of all his companions, linking together the past and
the present generations; all the affections which we would transmit to
the venerable fathers of our republics converge in him, and through
him are conducted to them.”25 When nativists opposed Catholicism,England suggested, they opposed Carroll and thus effectively opposed the
Revolution itself.Once again,it turns out,Catholics were identified with
the struggle for civil and religious liberty, while nativists threatened to
undermine it.
Finally, England appealed to recent United States history to show that
nativists were wrong to argue that Catholicism and religious liberty
were incompatible. He identified two “unquestionable” facts. The
United States enjoyed religious liberty, and Catholicism “has, during the
same period, made an astonishing progress in our republics.”“It is,” he
concluded,“evident that civil and religious liberty . . . and our religion,
have actually co-existed and flourished together.”The author of “The Republic in Danger” acknowledged both of these facts, England noted,
while warning that liberty and Catholicism could not co-exist. He thus
very wisely gives us the assurance of this impossibility, whilst he assures us,
that what he declares to be impossible is the fact! . . . Bless us! What a glori23
Ibid., IV, 440. By contrast, North Carolina, also part of England’s diocese, still had antiCatholic laws.
24
Ibid., IV, 416. See also Guilday, op. cit., II, 460.
25
England,“The Republic in Danger,” IV, 440.

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ous privilege it is, to be gifted with the power of looking into the imaginary
world, and proclaiming the solution of those enigmas, which are so impervious to the ken of ordinary mortals! . . . Verily, it is a good gift, to be able to
reconcile contradictions! This is a favor granted only to the elect.26

Here again, England’s appeal to facts, particularly the fact that Catholicism and religious liberty did co-exist, was set against “the imaginary
world” of his nativist opponent. But he had also expanded his efforts to
reverse the characterization of Catholicism and Protestantism. Catholics
were more faithful to the American principles of civil and religious liberty, as well as more enlightened, than their nativist attackers.27

3. Will the Real Native Please Stand Up?

Having argued that Catholics were both more enlightened and more
faithful to the American principle of religious liberty than were nativists, England turned to his boldest point; he suggested that Catholics
were in many ways therefore more native than the nativists. First, he defined Catholics as part of the mainstream in the United States, while simultaneously marginalizing his evangelical opponents. Even if the term
“Protestant” is defined broadly, he insisted, the total number of Roman
Catholics,“infidels,” and the unchurched was comparable to the number of Protestants. And when one subtracted the more liberal Protestants like “Unitarians,Universalists,Socinians,”and others,the remainder
was very much a minority. England estimated the number of committed
evangelical Protestants at perhaps one-sixth of the total population of
the United States.28 England addressed his response particularly to the
other five-sixths when he wrote,“The writer complains that you have
more sympathy for us than for any denomination of ‘enlightened Chris-

Ibid., IV, 459–461.
England was not fully consistent in his defense of human liberty, although this inconsistency represents another way in which he proved himself to have adapted to the culture of the United States, particularly in the South. Despite his apparent personal
opposition to slavery, he defended the peculiar institution publicly, and he appealed to
racial prejudice in his response specifically to “The Republic in Danger.” For example, he
complained that evangelicals in Britain “uniformly petitioned against Catholic emancipation, and for the emancipation of negroes” (ibid., IV, 451). He made similar complaints
against evangelicals in the United States (e.g., ibid., IV, 419, 422, 428). See also England,
Letters of the late Bishop England to the Honorable John Forsyth on the Subject of Domestic Slavery (1844; reprint, New York, 1969); Saunders and Rogers, op. cit., pp. 316–322;
Clarke, Free Church in a Free Society, pp. 389–413.
28
England,“The Republic in Danger,” IV, 495.
26

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tians’in the land.This does honour to your feelings.”29 For this sympathy,
England continued, “you are called ‘anti-Christian moralists.’” He concluded,“We are thus nicknamed, in company with the largest and most
respectable portion of our fellow-citizens.” That is, Catholics and tolerant Protestants, as well as others, represented the majority which a minority attacked verbally as part of a campaign to impose its religion on
the rest of the population.
Not only were Catholics part of the majority in the United States.
They also represented the liberal, republican values of the United States
far better than did their opponents.30 “The Republic in Danger” had suggested that politicians should support temperance societies and mission work. England responded with a vigorous denial
that Congress has any power whatever to interfere directly or indirectly with
the temperance societies or education, or missionary societies, or with the
conduct of individuals in respect to either. Any legislative action of Congress
upon either of these subjects would be a direct usurpation, palpably invalid,
and dangerous to the liberties of the republic: and as such, it would, and it
ought to be resisted. The paragraphist appears to be altogether ignorant of
the principles upon which our General Government has been formed,as also
of the source and the extent of its powers.31

This misunderstanding of the principles, source, and extent of federal
authority was not limited to one author alone. England quoted from the
Presbyterian Confession of Faith and added the comment that its doctrine was,“as regards our general government, a political heresy, and the
Presbyterian Confession of Faith is, so far, in direct contradiction to our
constitutional doctrine.” Other reformed bodies used similar language
and received the same criticism.32 Although England did not mention it
in this series of letters, those who knew his work at all would have
known that he had written a Constitution for his diocese. In his view,
this Constitution,unlike the Presbyterian Confession of Faith,was faithful not only to the Catholic tradition but also to the principles of the
American Constitution, on which it was partly based.33
Most ironically, the immigrant bishop of a largely immigrant communion attributed the nativist misreading of the United States Constitution
to European sources! The author of “The Republic in Danger,” England
Ibid., IV, 450–451.
See Carey, op. cit., pp. 107–110.
31
England,“The Republic in Danger,” IV, 478.
32
Ibid., IV, 480–481.
33
See Carey, op. cit., pp. 111–126; Clarke,“John England: Missionary,” pp. 77–83, and Free
Church in a Free Society, pp. 227–290.
29

30

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claimed, “appears to have embraced the doctrine respecting government which was preached up in so many parts of Europe, by the
churchmen of all denominations.”34 England expressly reserved judgment on the propriety of this doctrine in Europe, presumably because
many of its most outspoken defenders were Catholic, but he did deny
“that such power has been given to the Congress of the United States.”
Similarly, after quoting the Presbyterian Confession of Faith, he added,
“the texts of Scripture which are quoted, are precisely the same which,
in Europe, the advocates of the divine right of kings have adduced to
sustain their position.”35 He concluded the letter the same way:
I know of no tyranny more despotic and despicable than that which the
saints would exercise over our civil authorities if they were permitted: and
which they have endeavored to exercise under the pretext that the civil
powers of legislation, of judgment, and of execution, must be subordinate to
the law of God, as expounded by those men who thus seek for liberty to restrain our liberty.—They have recourse to the old European maxim, that
civil officers are God’s deputies, so that they might themselves have the
right, as God’s interpreters, to guide these deputies. . . . Yet, these are the
men who affect so deep an ‘interest in transmitting our republican institutions unimpaired to their children!’ The principles of our saints, respecting
our government, appear to be derived from their confessions of faith. . . .
The saints have mistaken our constitution.36

The evangelical attempts to dominate the civil government and limit
the religious and political freedoms of Catholics were typically European rather than American.
Against such European-style misreadings of the United States Constitution, England claimed to defend the modern secular state that resulted from the loss of religious uniformity following the Protestant
Reformation and that was profoundly shaped by often anticlerical revolutions. England had to walk a fine line here. He could not condemn
medieval teachings on Church and State, given their association with
and authority for the Catholic Church, but he wanted to condemn the
way in which his opponents allegedly drew on these teachings to support their political agenda. He avoided condemning medieval teaching
by insisting that the virtual unanimity of Europe in religion prior to the
Reformation justified “vesting a power in the government to protect the
church.”37 At the same time, he condemned contemporary American
England,“The Republic in Danger,” IV, 479.
Ibid., IV, 480–481.
36
Ibid., IV, 484–485, my emphasis.
37
Ibid., IV, 490. In making such a claim, England clearly ignored the presence of Jews
and those whom the Church defined as heretics. It is perhaps worth adding that he did
34
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253

Protestants for uncritically appropriating these teachings, because the
Reformation had shattered this unanimity, creating a new set of conditions in which civil governments had the moral obligation to tolerate religious dissent. As a result of the Reformation, Europe had experienced
and was still experiencing “a series of struggles and calamities, . . . revolution, which by gradual progress, has nearly severed the church from
its connexion with the state,” a progress that England seems to have endorsed. Even less than in Europe could one justify linking the state and
any single church in the United States, given its religious diversity. The
Constitution recognized this situation, granting to the federal government “exclusively political” powers, not the authority to interfere in religious questions.38 Under these circumstances, any effort “to apply the
rules and maxims of Europe” to the United States, as his evangelical antagonists did, was “worse than ridiculous.”39
England then went one step further. He claimed not only that
Catholics in the United States had adapted to the political changes
brought on by the Reformation better than his Protestant antagonists.
He also claimed that American Catholics were in some way more true
to the impulses of the Protestant Reformation than were many Protestants. Addressing himself to those “tolerant Protestants” who acknowledged that Catholicism was consistent with the “religion of the Bible,”
England asked,
After proclaiming that it is the right of every human being, man, woman, and
child, to judge without dictation or appeal, of the meaning of every passage
of the Bible,will they presume to deprive you of that right? Or are you to take
from this comparatively insignificant subdivision of a minority of Christendom, an interpretation, the right of giving which they deny to the vast, the
overwhelming majority?

Furthermore, he continued,“are we [Catholics] not equally competent
as either you [tolerant Protestants] or they [intolerant Protestants] to
read that sacred volume, to judge of its contents, and to compare it with
our tenets? . . . Is this their notion of Christian liberty?”40 England repeated this criticism in his last letter and then asked,“Is it a crime for
[Catholics and others] to avail themselves of the Protestant principle,
that each individual is to regulate his own religious conduct and belief
explicitly defend the religious and civil liberties of Jews based on the same arguments.
See, for example, ibid., IV, 493.
38
Ibid., IV, 492–493.
39
Ibid., IV, 486.
40
Ibid., IV, 452.

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without being accountable to his fellow-citizens, or liable to any civil or
political disability, for his exercise of this right?”41 Catholics, that is, simply wanted to exercise the Protestant principle of private judgment,
while nativist Protestants abandoned it in favor of the European theocracy normally associated with Catholicism!
4. Making a Case for Liberal Catholicism

That England sought in these letters to turn the tables on antiCatholic Protestants is clear, but one may still ask why he sought to do
so. After all, although common in the United States much earlier, antiCatholicism and nativism more generally did not emerge as a major political force until the 1840’s. Even “The Republic in Danger” was not
dominated by anti-Catholicism. Out of slightly over three pages, only a
single paragraph was devoted specifically to the danger posed by “Popery.”More space was devoted to the problems of intemperance and general immorality, both of which, the article complained, created an
atmosphere hostile to the political agenda of “Christians.” Furthermore,
England’s response to the article was out of proportion to the article itself—twelve letters totaling ninety-five pages versus three pages. By
contrast, many Catholics of England’s day, including other bishops, preferred to meet allegations such as those in “The Republic in Danger”
with silence. Why did England respond so forcefully and at such great
length?
The situation in Catholicism in the United States as England assessed
it in the early 1830’s, provides important clues. From the time of his
consecration in 1820, England had argued for the calling of regular
provincial (in effect, national) councils at which the Catholic leadership could collectively articulate what it meant to be Catholic in the
United States. Finally in October, 1829, James Whitfield, Archbishop of
Baltimore, called the first council. In a letter to Whitfield, England professed to have modest hopes for the council.These hopes were perhaps
met, but they were not exceeded.42 Nonetheless, England was eager to
have a second council three years later, as decreed at the first council,
to continue the task of articulating what it meant to be Catholic in the
United States. As early as July, 1831, the month during which he began
his response to “The Republic in Danger,” England initiated a campaign
Ibid., IV, 503–504.
On the First Provincial Council generally, including the background to its calling, see
Guilday, op. cit., II, 111–132. Guilday quotes England’s letter to Whitfield on p. 117 and discusses England’s ambivalence about the work of the council on pp. 126–127.
41

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in Rome to ensure that the second council would meet, despite the increasingly clear opposition of the Archbishop of Baltimore. Under pressure from Rome, Whitfield did convoke the second council in October,
1833, but this council was a great disappointment to England.43 The opposition that he encountered at the council from Whitfield and some of
the other bishops distressed England to the point that he contemplated
resigning his see, and he did turn his attention in other directions
(namely to serve as the leader of the Apostolic Delegation to Haiti). At
the same time, he began to de-emphasize his responses to anti-Catholic
attacks, which had been a substantial percentage of his literary activity
since the publication of his response to “The Republic in Danger” in
1831.44
Seen in this context, England’s responses to anti-Catholic accusations
appear as part of his ongoing effort to articulate his vision of American
Catholicism to his co-religionists at a time when this vision remained viable, if embattled.45 In other words, he wrote as much to Catholic readers, surely the majority, after all, of those who read The United States
Catholic Miscellany, the paper in which his letters appeared, as to
Protestants. Although he did not need to convince his Catholic readers
that the attacks of “The Republic in Danger” were unfounded, he did
need to show them that their Church was, or at least could be, a modern, liberal institution. This unstated agenda would account for the
vigor and the volume with which England responded to “The Republic
in Danger.”While defending his Church,England was simultaneously advocating a particular vision of it as rational, tolerant, and thoroughly
American.
England’s tenth letter serves as an example of the way in which his
argument against Protestants also articulated a potentially controversial
view of Catholicism. In this letter, he abandoned his more historical arguments in order to identify certain natural limitations on the power of
government to regulate religious faith and practice. Governments could
not, he said,“publish as certain, that any particular system of religion is
true, unless it has such evidence of its truth, as will remove every reasonable doubt.”Protestantism, which asserted the right of individuals to
judge for themselves, could not provide this certainty. Therefore, “no
43
On the Second Provincial Council, including its background and England’s reaction,
see ibid., II, 242–269.
44
See ibid., II, 215–230.
45
I take his response to “The Republic in Danger” to be representative of his responses
to anti-Catholic attacks more generally. O’Brien does the same. See his chapter on England’s polemical work entitled “The Republic in Danger” (op. cit., pp. 103–112).

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government can reasonably proclaim any one Protestant church to be
the teacher of the true system of God’s revelation.” Nor could governments legitimately “require any man to sustain a religion by any act that
he believes to be contrary to God’s law” apart from some infallible certainty. Even with this certainty, governments could not enact such a requirement “except it be specially charged with this duty by that power
whence it derives its authority.” The Christian revelation did not so
charge the civil government. Finally, England insisted that the government should not attempt to root out religious error if a large minority
advocated it and were “otherwise in the peace of the state.”46 England
thus argued for a principle of religious toleration in pluralistic states
even in those cases when the state could be infallibly certain of religious truth, a case that he denied was possible for Protestants.
On the basis of these general principles, England showed not only
that Protestants were wrong to use political means to oppose Catholicism, but also that Catholics should support religious tolerance.47 Even
with an infallible certainty in the rightness of their religion, American
Catholics had no more authority than Protestants to require people “to
sustain a religion” against their conscience, especially since the Christian revelation did not commission civil governments in religious questions and the United States was characterized by religious pluralism.
Although England did not develop this implication of his argument at
any length in these letters, the larger context of Roman Catholicism
demonstrates its importance. The year after England published his response to “The Republic in Danger,” Pope Gregory XVI condemned the
liberal Catholicism of Félicité de Lamennais. Writing almost eighty
years later, during the anti-Modernist reaction and shortly after the condemnation of Americanism, the American editor of England’s collected
works, Archbishop Sebastian Messmer, commented in a footnote to this
passage that “Religious Indifferentism,” which England seemed to be espousing,“has no place in Catholic theology. There is only one true religion,” Messmer insisted, “and therefore impious and absurd is the
system of dogmatic tolerance by which to every man is given the right
of unqualified freedom of thought in the matter of religion, and freedom of determining the worship to be given to God.”48 When England
England,“The Republic in Danger,” IV, 488–489.
On England’s understanding of the separation of Church and State, see Carey, op. cit.,
pp. 93–97; Kaib, op. cit., pp. 110–118; Clarke, Free Church in a Free Society, pp. 313–349,
364–373.
48
England, “The Republic in Danger,” IV, 489, n.16. See also Carey, op. cit., pp. 95–96,
163–164.
46
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countered Protestant accusations about the Catholic threat to American freedoms with a philosophical defense of religious tolerance, he
thus went farther than many of his co-religionists were willing to go in
making a case for a liberal American Catholicism.

Conclusion

England’s efforts to adapt Catholicism to the situation of the United
States illustrate one typical strategy of immigrant religions: enthusiastic
accommodation to the dominant culture. Against accusations that
Catholicism was not compatible with the American way of life, England
argued that Catholicism was more American than was the position of
his native, evangelical antagonists.At the same time, England used these
nativist accusations as a foil to promote his larger vision of a liberal
American Catholicism among his fellow Catholics at a time when this
vision remained viable but contested. His polemical writings thus serve
as an important expression of his larger vision for the Church in America, and they helped to make him “the most visible and articulate
spokesman for a liberal and constitutional American Catholic tradition.”49 Although perhaps not fully satisfying,England’s vision of a liberal
Catholicism fully compatible with the American values of enlightened
rationality and religious tolerance represented an early and influential
effort to accommodate the Catholic tradition to the American experience, and it remains a potentially valuable resource for contemporary
reflection.

Carey, op. cit., p. 85.

49

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General
The Early Modern Papacy.From the Council of Trent to the French Revolution
1564–1789. By A. D. Wright. [Longman History of the Papacy.] (London;
Harlow, Essex: Longman. 2000. Pp. ix, 335. Paperback.)
While the Council of Trent did not issue any decrees relating to the office of
the papacy, the Council left the interpretation of its decrees to the pope. In
many ways, this bolstered the position of the papacy, which had suffered in the
wake of the Protestant challenge. Yet, the common view of the papacy from the
conclusion of the Council of Trent to the outbreak of the French Revolution has
been one of decline and stagnation. It is this interpretation of the papacy that
A. D. Wright challenges. Looking back from the ability of the papacy to emerge
from the post-Napoleonic era renewed and vigorous, Wright believes that the
conventional view of the early modern papacy warrants reconsideration.
This study rests on a reassessment of historical interpretations that have colored the way in which the papacy has been viewed. Critiquing the view of the
papacy presented by Ludwig von Pastor as incomplete, Wright takes exception
with the interpretation of Paolo Prodi, to which this book is a direct response,
and Adriano Prosperi. Wright questions Prodi’s insistence on the role of the
local history of central Italian territories as the “key to the whole cycle of papal
history” ( p. 4). This perspective is too narrow for Wright and fails to take into
account the universal concerns of the papacy. Thus, Wright presents a more
comprehensive understanding of papal policies than one finds in Prodi’s argument. Similarly, Adriano Prosperi’s emphasis on the Roman Inquisition as the
source of the pope’s authority is problematic for Wright since such a view is
not applicable outside of Italy and betrays a narrowness in scope. Responding
to such views, this study argues that the early modern popes were “conscious
of the wide range of their functions and responsibilities, well beyond Rome,
Italy, and even Europe” ( p. 12).
In demonstrating this view of the papacy Wright focuses on the diversity of
roles that the popes of the early modern period assumed—Bishop of Rome,
Metropolitan of the Roman ecclesiastical province, primatial head of the Italian
Church, patriarchal leader of the Catholic Church in Western Europe, Supreme
Pontiff, and ruler of the Papal States in Central Italy. Analyzing the extent to
which the popes of this period were able to exercise the authority associated

277

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with these varied dimensions, Wright effectively portrays the paradoxical nature of papal history between 1564 and 1789.The extent and limitations of papal
power not only differed between one pontificate and another, but also within
the same pontificate. Wright demonstrates this by examining both ecclesiastical
considerations such as the problem of the relationship between the papacy and
the College of Cardinals, and the political constraints which stood in the way of
the papacy’s ability to exercise a uniform authority over all Catholics in Western
Europe. While Wright contends that the exercise of these multiple roles did not
always meet with success, he provides sufficient evidence to suggest that the
post-Tridentine popes enjoyed considerable achievements, such as the general
centralization under Roman authority.Its successes and failures notwithstanding,
Wright concludes that the papacy during this period enjoyed the loyalty of the
people, who recognized the pre-eminence of the Apostolic See.
Wright provides the reader with a comprehensive examination of the early
modern papacy that places the office and its individual holders within a broad
context, both geographically and chronologically. While the details and information provided throughout the book can at times become overpowering, especially to those with little understanding of papal history or the political
dimensions of the era, Wright effectively challenges the accepted view of the
exercise and development of papal authority as simply a reflection of the absolutism of the age. Wright provides the reader with a fresh and compelling interpretation that will add to the historiographical debates revolving around the
early modern papacy.
FRANCESCO C. CESAREO
John Carroll University

Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy. By Jay P.Corrin.(Notre
Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 2002. Pp. x, 571. $55.00.)
Not the synthesis that one might expect from the title, this book actually focuses on selected Catholic intellectuals influential in Britain and America in the
first half of the twentieth century. Taking off from his 1981 work, G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc: The Battle Against Modernity, Corrin here pursues a
twofold question. Is there something innate to Catholic thought that tends
toward authoritarian regimes and hence favored Fascism? Belloc would be a
case in point; but the hypothesis limps, as Corrin shows, even for Chesterton
and fails completely to account for the likes of Don Luigi Sturzo and the
Catholic critics of Mussolini and Franco such as Jacques Maritain. Granting this,
however ( p. 386),“what was it that made so many leading British and American
Catholics political reactionaries and apologists for fascist-type regimes, while
only a minority drew on Catholic social teachings to justify an accommodation
with liberal politics”? This is the focus that lends consistency to Corrin’s study.
In pursuit of an answer, Corrin chooses the Chesterbelloc and some fellow
Distributists,along with the editors of the Brooklyn Tablet, Our Sunday Visitor,

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279

and Francis X.Talbot,S.J.,of America and The Month,as the foremost apologists
for anti-democratic governments of the right. He also devotes three chapters to
defenders of human rights and opponents of totalitarianism such as Sturzo,
H. A. Reinhold (to whom a short and interesting chapter is devoted), Virgil
Michel, Waldemar Gurian, George Shuster, and Maritain (as well as Wilfrid Parsons, S.J.,Talbot’s predecessor at America).The connection of the liturgical and
the social-justice movements in preconciliar Catholicism is stressed repeatedly.
Three introductory chapters attempt to provide a broader context in nineteenthcentury social Catholicism,Rerum Novarum,and social Christianity in England
with a focus on Cardinal Manning, pretty much ignoring the dominant intransigent Catholicism of the Catholic revival.
In this introductory matter and again in the concluding chapter a current but
loose and imprecise use of the antithesis “conservative/liberal” bedevils the author’s efforts to offer a satisfactory explanation. The terms of his question,“liberal politics” and “Catholic social teachings,” are never specified adequately by
times and contexts. Continental social Catholics are ranked indiscriminately
with liberal Catholics of Anglo-Saxon provenance, admittedly “a broad generalization” ( p. 511). Christian democratic movements as such are hardly mentioned ( perhaps because of their variance from Distributism?). What is needed
is a frank recognition that John Stuart Mill’s paradigm is of a different spirit from
continental liberalism: anti-democratic, anticlerical (in the strong sense of combating Christian tradition and faith), committed to an individualistic view of
society, only tactically capable of an appreciation of the Catholic Church’s usefulness as a bulwark against socialism. Conversely, Frédéric Ozanam, Emmanuel
von Ketteler, and other heroes of progressive social thought among nineteenthcentury European Catholics were not “liberal democrats,”not proponents of the
atomizing freedom of these liberals,but its opponents.The elements that would
go into such necessary distinctions and nuances are present, scattered through
the long and detailed text, but are never drawn together clearly enough to influence even the author’s own usage.
Shortcomings in scholarly precision aggravate this confusion. The author’s
method of documentation, for example, leaves one wondering whether material submitted for publication, which he cites only by its archival source, ever
found its way into print. The plethora of endnotes (they could have been bundled and edited down) make a tough slog of a close reading. Finally careless
errors such as “Eduard Mournier” ( p. 287) for Emmanuel Mounier (correct elsewhere) mar the text.
Despite these problems, the book is an interesting read in many parts and
does not grievously mislead. The extensive archival work has led to some fascinating connections and revelations. One will not always trust its details, but a
discerning reader can enjoy it with caution. Its stronger sections have to do
with Belloc and Chesterton on the one hand and with the controversies over
the Spanish Civil War on the other. It is a story of prominent and obscure
Catholic writers in the English-speaking world who betrayed the cause of truth

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and humanity in their commentary on that war, as well as those few who resisted great pressures and spoke out against the crimes of anti-communists.
PAUL MISNER
Marquette University

Ancient and Medieval
Über die Entwicklungsgeschichte des armenischen Symbolums: Ein Vergleich
mit dem syrischen und griechischen Formelgut unter Einbezug der relevanten georgischen und äthiopischen Quellen.By Gabriele Winkler.[Orientalia Christiana Analecta,Volume 262.] (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute.
2000. Pp. LX; 623; 14. Paperback.)
The present study is an investigation into the historical development of the
creeds used today in the Armenian Church. Philological in approach, Winkler’s
study is divided into two parts.In Part One ( pp.11–291) the author has collated
a comprehensive collection of early Armenian literary sources of various genres
through the mid-seventh century, which contain creedal statements and fragments.For each of the more than the three dozen texts Winkler presents a short
introduction, the original Armenian text in its best available edition, along with
a German translation with copious notes and cross references. A number of relevant Georgian and Ethiopic texts receive similar treatment.A vast bibliography
( pp. XXI–LX ), a list of sigla, and a helpful introduction that already lays out the
author’s conclusions ( pp. 1–5) constitute a preface to Part One.
Part Two ( pp. 295–570) consists of a commentary in which the author traces
the development of terminology used in creedal formulations with regard to
the main thematic foci of the Nicene Creed, with particular attention to the incarnation. The volume closes with a short section entitled,“Concluding Observations,”as well as an index by language of the sources analyzed; a topical index
with the subheadings, “Anathemata,” “Symbol Fragments in Anaphoras,” and
“Synods and Councils with Credo”; a one-page list of Bible citations, and an
index of authors cited.
Winkler argues that in the oldest Armenian sources the Armenian vocabulary
for the incarnation seems to derive from early Syrian prototypes, as distinct
from the later Greek formulations that appear in the Nicene Creed. Winkler
posits a “shift” in terminology for the incarnation away from Syrian-derived
terms (for example, zgec‘aw marmin,“he put on a body”) toward the creation
of neologisms that more accurately reflect Greek terminology for the incarnation (marmnac‘aw, “he became/took body,” corresponding to the Greek
sarkôthenta). That shift, Winkler alleges, is first witnessed in the Nicene Creed
as cited in the famous Letter of Sahak to Proclus, which must be dated shortly
after the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. Winkler argues further that the Letter
of Sahak was written in response to Proclus’ famous Tomus ad Armenios at a
Synod in Astisat in 435 A.D. This hypothetical reconstruction would provide a

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plausible textual and historical context for the creation of Greek-inspired christological neologisms were it not for the serious questions that have long been
raised regarding the course of events in Armenia immediately following the
Council of Ephesus, most recently by Nina Garsoïan. Among other assertions
Garsoïan dismisses the alleged Synod of Astisat as fictive, challenging the argumentation made by Winkler in two earlier works.
Winkler’s examination of the sources reveals a second milestone, the midsixth century,around the time of the Second Synod of Duin (555 A.D.),when the
Armenian Church definitively renounced Chalcedonian christology. It is at
roughly this time that Winkler observes an increasing use of the neologism
mardac‘aw (“he became man”) derived from the Greek enanthrôpysanta.
Prior to this point, Winkler argues, Armenian creedal formulas were based on a
version of the Nicene Creed found in the Didascalia or Teaching of the 318 Fathers, a work that circulated widely in the Christian East, to which Caspari,
Hahn, and Muyldermans long ago drew attention. In this work and its Armenian
derivatives a single assertion is made with respect to the incarnation: that the
Son of God “took flesh” (sarkôthenta). Armenian sources after this date, according to Winkler, will tend to augment this assertion using the neologism
mardac‘aw (“he became man”).
Winkler’s theory of a shift in Armenian terminology regarding the incarnation is compelling. In particular, the author has demonstrated that the oldest Armenian creedal texts and fragments show a preponderance of terms that are
well supported in early Syrian sources. Winkler’s observations complement the
wave of recent scholarship documenting Syro-Antiochene influence on the earliest stratum of the Armenian Christian tradition.
Less convincing is the author’s classification of sources based on the use or
absence of Greek-inspired neologisms. While the rationale proposed by Winkler for the creation of neologisms is attractive, and a similar shift in terminology has been observed in Syriac sources, the Armenian evidence is not
unequivocal. As the author herself admits, many of the later documents preserve the early Syrian patterns alongside the neologisms. More problematic are
early texts that adduce terminology which, according to Winkler, was not even
coined until later. For each of these “mixed forms” Winkler proposes that the
presence of “later” neologisms must be the result of subsequent interpolations
into the text. Except for two cases, Winkler does not give any further evidence
to support her claims for textual manipulation. Further, in the author’s critical
analysis of several other texts based on terminology for the incarnation, the line
dividing evaluation of a text to support a hypothesis on the one hand; and application of that hypothesis—as if already proven—as an instrument in analyzing a text, on the other hand, seems blurred.
This study remains a significant achievement even if the author may have
been too aggressive in the application of her central hypothesis. Though questions remain, I do believe that Winkler is on to something, and I have no doubt

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that this work will become a springboard for other scholars. For this alone, Professor Winkler is to be commended.
MICHAEL DANIEL FINDIKYAN
St. Nersess Armenian Seminary
New Rochelle, New York

Gregorio Magno, Vita di san Benedetto, versione greca di papa Zaccaria.
Edited by Gianpaolo Rigotti. [Hellenica, 8.] (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso.
2001. Pp. 150. €15 paperback.)
Fruit of a doctorate under the direction of the lamented Italian Byzantinist,
Professor Enrica Follieri, this new edition of the Greek translation of the second
book of Pope Gregory’s Dialogues is a welcome improvement on the printed
versions so far available, the main ones being still that of Migne and the 1880
edition by Cozza-Luzi, limited to two manuscripts. Dr. Rigotti meticulously collates all the manuscripts of the Dialogues containing Book II (21 out of 35),
generating the stemmatic hypothesis of the existence of two main families of
manuscripts, alfa and beta, derived from the original translation into Greek by
Pope Zacharias, itself approximately only one century later than the writing of
the work itself. The earliest witnesses to the beta family are the famous uncial
codex, Vaticanus gr. 1666 (A), perhaps written in Rome in A.D. 800, together
with a ninth-century Patmian codex, Patm. gr. 48, perhaps from Southern Italy.
One might infer from details such as preferred name-forms that the beta family
carries a Southern Italian recension of the text,whilst the alpha family bears the
Eastern Greek version, the earliest witnesses to which are two tenth-century
Athonite codices, Kutloumousiou 51 (E) and Vatopedi 127 (I). Nevertheless, the
lessons preferred by one cultural group traveled across the Mediterranean: the
most recent exponent of the beta family is thus Florence, Laurent. gr. Conv.
⬃
Soppr. AF 2744, copied in 1367–8 at the Constantinopolitan monastery “␶␻
␯
⬃
‘⌷␦␩␥␻␯.” The diagram of the stemma on page XLI does not always accurately
reflect the dating of the witnesses; so care must be employed in assuming the
age of the codices by resorting to the century-indicator in the left margin.Given
that Dr. Rigotti even traveled to Athos to inspect firsthand all of the manuscripts
there, one particularly regrets his decision to adopt the briefest possible descriptions of the codices in the introduction, as well as the absence of plates.
The text itself is paralleled by the Latin original as reconstructed in the recent
edition by Adalbert de Vogüé, printed as “Sources chrétiennes,” 260 (Paris,
1979). The rare erudition of presenting a facing Greek and Latin text without
any translation or commentary notes does, in our age, raise the question of the
breadth of readership that might usefully approach the book. It is, nevertheless,
a blessing for those interested either in the dynamics of translation from a linguistic viewpoint, or in the subtleties of conceptual and cultural translations, to
have such an important text neatly laid out in this convenient parallel-column

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format. Rigotti’s index of Latin words and their translation, which precedes an
index graecitatis, will greatly assist both the linguist and the cultural historian.
The study of the parallel text promises to offer new insights into the intersection of the Latin and Greek spiritual worlds at a time when each was still
keen to talk to the other. While scholars of Western monasticism argue over the
attribution of the Dialogues to Gregory, it is reassuring to find the Greeks had
no doubts that it was this pope’s words they still cared to listen to. The other
books of the Dialogues should also appear in this Italian series.
BARBARA CROSTINI
University of Manchester

Adomnán at Birr, AD 697: Essays in Commemoration of the Law of the Innocents. Edited by Thomas O’Loughlin. (Dublin: Four Courts Press. Distributed in the United States by ISBS, Portland, Ore. 2001. Pp. 77. $55.00.)
This small but valuable book is the work of three distinguished scholars, one
of whom has also served as the editor. The work was occasioned by a conference held at Birr (Ireland) in June, 1997, to mark the promulgation there, 1300
years earlier, of a pioneering piece of social legislation promoted by that leading Gaelic cleric of the late seventh century, a man of great learning and practical ability,Adomnán ( pronounced Àthovnaan),heir of St.Columba and therefore
abbot of Iona (Scotland). It is suspected that this law was itself a centennial tribute to St. Columba, who died in 597.
The decree-law of Adomnán (Cáin Adomnáin, otherwise Lex Innocentium)
was designed to define a category of non-combatants (innocentes)—females,
clerics, and pre-adolescent boys—who would henceforth be protected from violence in the warlike society which was Gaeldom in the early Middle Ages. The
most important part of this book is the translation of the core-text of Cáin
Adomnáin, presented here with a brief introduction by Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha ( pp. 53–68), who is herself preparing a full new edition of this work.
Her translation shows that we may expect some marked advances over Kuno
Meyer’s spare but pioneering edition published in 1905. She has also ( p. 16) offered an important re-dating of the narrative preface of the Cáin, to about A.D.
1000. This chapter displays more typographical errors than is desirable, however, and an unfortunate habit of using bizarre anglicized plurals of Old-Irish
words (cumals, fines, ollams, séts with, moreover, inadequate local guidance
given as to what the words themselves mean.
The three other chapters—the same author’s “Birr and the Law of the Innocents” ( pp. 13–32),“The World of Adomnán” by Maire Herbert ( pp. 33–9), and
the indefatigable editor’s “Adomnán: a man of many parts” ( pp. 41–51)—provide, with a sure touch, various kinds of essential context. A paper on the larger
context of Irish canon and civil law would have been welcome too—that can
in large measure, however, be supplied by the pamphlet (only slightly shorter

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than the book under review) by T. M. Charles-Edwards, The Early Mediaeval
Gaelic Lawyer (Cambridge, 1999), to which frequent reference has been made
in Adomnán at Birr. Other aspects of Adomnán’s legislative activities (notably
his concern with Old-Testament alimentary regulations) have been studied by
Pádraig P. Ó Néill (University of North Carolina) and this reviewer in their classedition of Cáin Adomnáin and Canones Adomnani (Cambridge, 2003).
The survival of the Law is in large part due to the copying or creation of a
dossier of texts about Adomnán by Brother Míchél Ó Cléirigh, O.F.M., the leader
of Ireland’s “Four Masters,” in 1627. By that time it had long since come to be
categorized, more narrowly than its original intention, as a law against killing
women.
Marian devotion in seventh- and eighth-century Ireland—seen most vividly in
the poetry of Bláthmac mac Con Brettan (edited and translated by James Carney
for the Irish Texts Society in 1964)—has been hypothesized ( pp. 22–6) as one
of the important currents of thought underpinning Cáin Adomnáin.
Cáin Adomnáin states that it was to be enforced in Ériu and Albu, Ireland
and Britain ( pp. 57, 61, 62), but, in Britain, only what is now northern Scotland
can be meant (cf. p. 28), for kings of that region were guarantors of the Law
( p. 59, nos. 77, 85, 91). Nevertheless, Adomnán’s interests were of a pan-Insular
character: he made a number of visits to Northumbria (northern England and
southern Scotland), where Aldfrith, its king, was his friend. That range is recognized in this book, although the authors’ handling of some aspects of early English history and language is shaky (for example, p. 13 on Bishop Wihtbriht, and
p. 43 on King Ecgfrith).
The enforcement of the Law no doubt required the active co-operation of
kings and leading ecclesiastics.The Church of St. Columba ensured its own role
throughout the region by insisting in this Law (cf. p. 28) that only clerics whom
it had nominated were to preside as judges in cases brought under the terms of
this legislation. As long as this Law was in force (and its duration is not known),
the Columban Church had a large place in Gaelic (and Pictish) life.
This book is an attractively produced and welcome addition to the literature
on Adomnán. But the high price demanded by the publisher seems unjustified.
DAVID N. DUMVILLE
Girton College, Cambridge

Paradise, Death and Doomsday in Anglo-Saxon Literature. By Ananya Jahanara Kabir. [Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 32.] (New York:
Cambridge University Press. 2001. Pp. xi, 210. $70.00.)
Ananya Jahanara Kabir’s study addresses the Anglo-Saxons’ evolving understanding of a deceptively simple question: what exactly was the destination of
the souls of the righteous after death? In seven chapters, which examine the ev-

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idence provided by the Bible, Ælfric, Augustine, Bede, Boniface, and AngloSaxon prose and poetry, among other sources, Kabir identifies and analyzes the
Anglo-Saxons’ belief in the existence of an “interim paradise” as part of a fourfold eschatological model. This would, of course, gradually be reduced to the
more familiar threefold model of Paradise-Purgatory-Hell in the later Middle
Ages,but Kabir’s book deals with the “rarely noted conjunction”(p.1) of paradise
and the soul’s condition in the interim period between death and final judgment, as reflected in the literature written by and known to the Anglo-Saxons.
Her methodology (literary analysis and source study) compels her to come to
terms with the tensions between popular and learned culture, orthodox and
heterodox belief, as well as oral and literary expression. It is an important book,
and provides a richly developed answer to an ostensibly simple question.
Kabir illuminates Ælfric’s struggle with the question, how his writings reflect
his anxieties about contrasting interpretations of paradise and the interim condition. He took great pains to emulate Augustinian exegesis concerning paradise ( particularly in the latter’s De Genesi ad litteram), whom he followed in
equating heaven,paradise,and Abraham’s bosom.But Ælfric could not resist the
pull of later exegetical trends, adding in one homily a fourth locus to the tripartite scheme, a place where the “not completely good” find rest. They are not in
heaven, but neither do they suffer torment. Kabir reveals how, rather than abandon the idea entirely, Ælfric camouflages the apocryphal roots of an interim
abode for the good in order to stress the influence of alms, Masses, and intercession on the interim state ( p. 47). Herein lies the main reason for the presence of this interim state in both popular and learned schemes that include it.
Kabir next examines the concept of an interim paradise in a quite different
body of anonymous Old English prose texts—“ecclesiastical fiction”—of the
kind that Ælfric himself condemned (chap. 3; p. 49). These texts—the “Three Utterances,”the “Theban Legend”homilies,the homilies on Mary’s Assumption,and
the “Life of Margaret”—reveal similar fourfold hierarchies, as do several AngloLatin visions (chap. 4) found in the works of Bede and Boniface. Monastic ambivalence toward the concept of the interim paradise is further reflected in the
opposing views presented by private prayers on the one hand, and funeral
liturgy of the period on the other (chap. 5). The former allow for an interim paradise,a place of rest before the Final Judgment,whereas the latter clearly follows
the Augustinian model. In chapter 6 Kabir looks closely at conflicting images in
Old English poetry “as a response to two, contradictory pressures: the typological equation of paradise and heaven and the belief in an interim paradise, separate from heaven” ( p. 141). In the poetry ( particularly Andreas, Christ I, Christ
and Satan, Genesis A, Guthlac, and the Phoenix), the compromises evident in
descriptions of the Garden of Eden, heaven, and the interim paradise highlight
oppositions between “orthodoxy and poetic craft”( p.141).The picture of the interim paradise outlined by Kabir in the previous chapters is reinforced by later
Old English prose texts, including the Prose Phoenix, Adrian and Ritheus, and
a number of pieces found in Vespasian D. xiv (chap. 7).

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Again, this is an important book, particularly for anyone interested in early
(and late) medieval eschatology, but no less for those interested in the cultural
intersections of the popular and the learned. Kabir is wide-ranging in her treatment of sources, yet focused and incisive in her analysis of the material relevant
to her thesis.She demonstrates compellingly how and why the three-fold eschatological scheme, which became doctrine in the thirteenth century, gradually replaced the older fourfold scheme. Ultimately Kabir offers some convincing
revisions to Le Goff’s claims for a sudden “Birth of Purgatory”in the twelfth century: that birth was at the very least preceded by “the Death of the Interim Paradise.”
DAVID F. JOHNSON
Florida State University

St. John Damascene:Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology. By Andrew Louth. [Oxford Early Christian Studies.] (Oxford: Oxford University
Press. 2002. Pp. xvii, 327. £45.)
This book reminds me of the merchant finding a pearl of great price, and selling everything to possess it. For many years, Professor Louth has dedicated all
his spare time and energy to discovering the spirit—the mind and heart, as well
as the teaching—of John Damascene. However, unlike the merchant, he has
generously placed at the disposal of others this extraordinary “pearl” of Byzantine theology. John is an unusual theologian: clearly very intelligent and well
read in his great predecessors, especially the Cappadocians, Ps.-Denys, and Maximus the Confessor. However, he saw his theological work to be mainly that of
a transmitter. The role of the speculative theologian, or at least that of the discoverer of new relationships, was not for him. Instead, he tried to be scrupulously careful in exposing the explanation of dogmatic truth that he found in
the Fathers. This required sensitivity and firm good sense as he picked his way
through the quicksands of both Trinitarian and Christological contoversy.
Professor Louth, in one of his best chapters, identifies him as a Chalcedonian,
insisting on the two natures,but leaning over backwards to satisfy those devoted
to Cyril’s formula:“one incarnate nature of God the Word.” So John was clearly a
Neo-Chalcedonian (or Cyrilline Chalcedonian).This leads, Professor Louth points
out (e.g. pp. 162, 175), to a notable “asymmetry” in the role of the two natures:
the divine nature “does not partake of the passions of the flesh,” and while the
“nature of the flesh” is “deified,” the “nature of the Word” is not “incarnate” (quoting John himself ). It is difficult to reconcile this with the Chalcedonian definition with its emphasis on the symmetry between divinity and humanity. But
Professor Louth is ready to acknowledge other weaknesses in John’s approach,
such as his “shrilly supersessionist account of the superiority of Christians over
idolatrous Jews” ( p. 203, and for other points see pp. 166, 170–171, 177). In this
way he can give a very balanced account of John the theologian.

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The key to interpreting John is to be found (suggests Professor Louth) in his
monastic vocation. Where his personal character emerges is in his sermons,
with their almost baroque accumulation of rhetorical imagery (very well presented in a chapter on John the Preacher), and above all in his liturgical hymns,
the “canons” as the Greeks call them, which are interspersed in the singing of
the divine Office, coming between the biblical canticles. Here also John is drawing on tradition,linking phrases taken from earlier authors (many of which have
been identified by the learned Nikodimos, active on Mount Athos in the early
nineteenth century). This same devotion to the living reality of God, the Word
Incarnate, and the Virgin Mary, probably provided the motive force for the compilation of the dogmatic and polemical works ( p. 144). For Professor Louth the
structure of John’s main work based on the “century”—one hundred chapters—indicates a monastic mould (and indeed many Byzantine spiritual writings take the form of a hundred chapters or aphorisms).He claims that John has
to be seen in this context:
This, I think, is worth noting: John’s The Fountain Head of Knowledge is
not really a proto-scholastic summary, as it is often taken to be; rather, it is
concerned with shaping and moulding the monastic vocation of its readers, or, more widely, with defining what it is to be a Christian, understood
less as a set of beliefs (despite the high doctrinal content) than as a way of
life. ( p. 37)
This is an attractive thesis, argued with extraordinary lucidity and an impressive grasp of the relevant primary and secondary literature. If one hesitates to
accept it, the reason lies in the tantalizing lack of hard-and-fast information
about John himself. Professor Louth rightly points out that the supposed links
with Mar Saba Monastery are late suppositions, and could be legendary. While it
seems certain that John knew Jerusalem and its Patriarchs,there is no proof that
he actually lived in the city; however, this would make his preaching role (his
main claim to fame apart from his liturgical work) more understandable, even
more so if he had some sort of teaching post in the Holy City. His polemical
works do suggest real contacts with a variety of other believers. Again the violence of his anti-Jewish remarks is less understandable if coming from a monk
cooped up in a remote monastery. Professor Louth draws an intriguing parallelism between John and Venerable Bede in Jarrow, both scholars, both monks,
both authors in a variety of literary genres. But perhaps one should be thinking
rather of Thomas Aquinas: someone who is equally devout and famous for his
liturgical hymns, but at the same time a teacher caught in the cut-and-thrust of
university debate, and required to teach future clerics what is the true faith.
Thomas recognized in his remote predecessor a pioneer for what he himself
would try to do in greater detail, and they were certainly kindred spirits.
Thus, while welcoming Professor Louth’s study as an invaluable guide along
the way, one has to point out that much road remains to be traveled, not least
while the bulk of John’s massive florilegium, a sort of Scriptural catena, or
commentary (the Sacra Parallela) still waits for an editor. The very dates in

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which he lived remain under dispute, and even more so the dates of his various
books. There is also the intriguing problem of his relation to his older, and
equally prolific, contemporary, Anastasius of Sinai, also a monk, but apparently
more preoccupied with the questions raised by devout lay Christians; similarly,
the later omission of all mention of John by that omnivorous reader, the Patriarch Photios, is puzzling. Again, what was his relation to the “Roman” Emperor
in Constantinople? It seems strange that a trusted minister of the Ummayad
caliph in Damascus should urge obedience to, and prayers for, the Byzantine
Emperor (though he is prepared to criticize those Emperors who wish to impose
iconoclasm [pp. 204–205, 282]). His whole involvement in the Constantinopolitan iconoclast controversy—where he was to play a major role, acknowledged
later by both the Seventh Ecumenical council and Theodore the Studite—raises
questions if he was living in a remote desert monastery in Palestine.
Despite all these and other questions, with this book the first step has been
taken, and, therefore—as the saying goes—half the road has been traveled.
JOSEPH A. MUNITIZ
Birmingham, England

Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Number Fifty-five, 2001. (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. 2002. Pp. vii, 408. $100.00.)
This issue comprises the acts of two colloquia held at Dumbarton Oaks in
1999, the first on “Byzantine Eschatology: Views on Death and the Last Things,
8th to 15th Centuries,” the second on “Byzantium in the Medieval World: Monetary Transactions and Exchange.” Four miscellaneous articles and a Fieldwork
report on the 1998 excavation season at Amorium round off the volume.
The eight articles from “Byzantine Eschatology” approach the theme of
death from a variety of perspectives: socio-historical (George Dennis), liturgicotheological (Elena Velkovska, Brian Daley), philosophical ( Joseph Munitiz,
Nicholas Constas, Alexander Alexakis), and narrative ( John Wortley, Alexander
Golitzin), with the (surprising) exception of the art-historical. In the absence of
comprehensive studies on this subject comparable to the monographs of E. F.
Paxton and E. Rebillard for the West, the authors admirably fill a gap in Byzantine scholarship by drawing directly from primary sources. George Dennis’ introduction is “largely anecdotal,”touching on the broader context of death such
as medicine, violence, and capital punishment through hagiographical and historical sources. The Byzantine emperors’ merciful attitude to criminals, despite
their preference for corporal punishments such as mutilations, is held up as an
example for modern (American) society. The “unexpected result” of his overview is “that the Byzantines never developed a cult of the dead.”Velkovska distinguishes between the earlier ensembles of prayers for the dead, modelled
according to the monastic matins,and a structured ritual extant in a tenth-century
Southern Italian manuscript, Grottaferrata . . X, of which she offers the first
ever edition. Though this article is finely balanced between hard liturgical fact

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and subtle analysis, it benefits from being set within the theological context
outlined by Daley, who traces an evolution from the fearful aspect of death and
judgment through to a gentler, more hopeful Christian approach to death, embodied in the popular devotion to the Virgin’s Dormition.
Both liturgical and theological evolution regarding death expose the continuous cross-fertilization between the Greek and Latin environments in the first
Christian centuries. On the other hand, Byzantine views on “predetermination”
(i.e.,predestination) and the “Middle State of Souls”(i.e.,Purgatory) were honed
only by the later confrontations with the Latins, as Munitiz and Constas show
respectively. Other influences of the varied cultural environment are picked up:
Wortley sees Egyptian beliefs in the fate of souls as a likely source for the
strange accounts of some of the popular tales about judgment; Alexakis reconstructs the continuum of Indo-Egyptian theories of reincarnation that, through
Hellenistic thinkers, fed into a number of heretical groups well into the Middle
Ages. The background of Jewish beliefs concerning the afterlife is ever-present,
from the references to the “bosom of Abraham” mentioned in the prayers and
articulated theologically in Constas’s learned diachronic survey, to the apocalyptic apocrypha studied in some detail by Golitzin, who traces the resurfacing
of such motifs in Middle-Byzantine monasticism.
If the stark focus of the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan creed on the Resurrection epitomizes what Byzantines should think of the afterlife, Gregory Nazianzen’s exhortation,“Philosophize about . . . resurrection, about judgment, about
reward . . . for in these subjects to hit the mark is not useless, and to miss it is
not dangerous,”quoted by Constas ( p. 120, n. 115), produced what he defines as
“an assortment of eschatologies strewn somewhat carelessly about.” Constas’s
own anthropological analysis shows how views of death shaped the activity of
the living, impacting not only on the moral conduct of the individual, but also
on the cultic practices of the ecclesial group, whose behavior reflected their
metaphysical stance on the issue of the soul’s fate. Thus these essays present
rich and original perspectives on Byzantine eschatology, with the only regret
that they might have been fruitfully crossed-referenced for the reader.
From the second colloquium, Lucia Travaini’s paper on “The Normans between Byzantium and the Islamic World”may be highlighted because of the numismatist’s evident competence at examining the complex evidence from
South Italy, concluding with the suggestion that a magical value was attributed
to some Byzantine coins, which alone may explain their rare presence in some
of the archaeological finds. The monetary and symbolic value placed on the exchange of gifts is described through a wealth of examples by Anthony Cutler,
who observes the perfect cultural consonance in the matter of Christian and
Muslim rulers alike.
Of special interest in the miscellany is a new study of the mosaics of the
Chapel of John VII (705–707) in Old St. Peter’s. Ann van Dijk argues afresh that
the sequence of scenes concerning the apostle Peter was, despite minor subse-

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quent restoration work, essentially original to the pope’s design of the chapel
decoration.
BARBARA CROSTINI LAPPIN
The University of Manchester

St Symeon the New Theologian and Orthodox Tradition. By Hilarion Alfeyev.
[Oxford Early Christian Studies.] (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2000.
Pp. 338. £57.)
Alfeyev’s monograph on the eleventh-century monk Symeon the New Theologian completes half a century of critical editions and studies devoted to this
controversial figure by scholars of different Christian denominations. Alfeyev
aims to show that Symeon’s life and thought are in perfect harmony with modern Orthodox beliefs, defined as the natural continuation of the Greek patristic
tradition. Whilst ostensibly integrating the visionary aspect of Symeon to his ascetic experience in the twofold division of the book, it is Symeon’s mystical experience which is emphasized, since it is precisely his mysticism that Alfeyev
considers Orthodox, describing his book as “a study of the mystical nature of
tradition and of the traditional nature of mysticism, and of Symeon as both a
highly personal and at the same time very traditional ecclesiastical figure”
( p. 4).
This is a book in which the a priori conclusion informs the handling of the
material; its thesis is never posited as a hypothesis, but merely shown forth as a
self-evident truth. Thus, despite the impressive apparatus, the scholarly value of
the work is seriously questionable: the handling of the evidence is biased, with
quotations having both significant and substantial silent omissions; the work of
previous scholars is inadequately acknowledged or discussed, though often
sharply criticized; and whatever is jarring in the argument is either left out, or,
at best, relegated to footnotes.
To give an example. The question of Symeon’s Messalianism is never addressed directly but mentioned only in scattered footnotes after a brief attack
on scholars who regard Symeon’s thought as close to that heresy (Mango and
Garsoïan at p. 3, nn. 10–13). Turner’s detailed article on this topic is not in the
bibliography, and this scholar’s nuanced views on Symeon’s intellectual development and complex relation to his spiritual father are lightly brushed aside
( p. 123). In mentioning the recently published works of the eighth-century
Nestorian monk, John of Dalyatha, Alfeyev limits himself to “a few parallels,
without providing a list of corresponding points,” declaring that, despite the
striking similarity between the visions of light of this Syriac monk to Symeon’s,
a close study of this author “falls beyond the scope of the present study”( p.230,
n. 124). It may be open to question whether John’s work was known to the
Byzantines, but it is clear that a full-blown comparison would have entailed the
conclusion that John’s heterodox mysticism and Symeon’s Orthodox visions
are remarkably alike. For Alfeyev it goes without saying that, since “Symeon has

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never been proclaimed a heretic,” the problem of heretical visionaries is “fortunately [ . . . ] not directly relevant to our main subject” ( p. 275, no. 8).
Alfeyev’s intent, therefore, is hagiographical and apologetic. Symeon’s stance
is defended by deploying a series of shifting standards, capable of accommodating anything from Symeon’s total disregard for the catechetical appropriateness of his address for his audience, to doctrinal pronouncements such as that,
in the Eucharist,“the reality of the sacrament depends not on the sacrament itself, but on the spiritual condition of the one who receives it” ( p. 90). The ecclesiastical enquiry into this statement, or the vehement critique of Symeon’s
audience at the form and content of his sermons, are axiomatically denigrated
before the mystic’s irreproachability.
Despite his Western education, Alfeyev rejects a historico-critical methodology.Scholarly argument is replaced by a naïve enthusiasm at the self-proclaimed
testimony offered by Symeon about his own visionary thought-world, nullifying
the work of those scholars (from Combefis to McGuckin) who have questioned
the reliability of the source material, painstakingly ordering its chronology and
discerning its genres. Kazhdan advocated that “Symeons Werk steht nicht im
luftleeren Raum, sondern ist nur aus einer bestimmten kirchlichen Situation
heraus recht verständlich”(1982).Alfeyev has pushed Symeon back into mid-air
by disparaging the wider historical context ( pp. 10–11), refusing to recognize
that any tradition is set within precise historico-geographical co-ordinates. Even
Christianity as a “mystical tradition” cannot stand aloof from its human context.
BARBARA CROSTINI
The University of Manchester

Crusade Charters, 1138–1270. Corliss Konwisser Slack with English translations by Hugh Bernard Feiss. [Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies,
Volume 197.] (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Arizona State University. 2001. Pp. xxx, 229. $28.00.)
Crusade Charters comprises a collection of thirty-one charters from northern France recording transactions mainly between Premonstratensian abbeys
and families from the social stratum which Slack designates the lower nobility.
Thirty charters are in Latin and one in French. The Latin and French texts are
provided, but the value of this study is enhanced greatly by the English translations on the facing page. In general, the translations, prepared by Hugh Bernard
Feiss, are accurate and read well. Most of the charters have been drawn from
printed sources which are not readily accessible; others have been taken from
unpublished manuscripts. Photographic reproductions of these manuscripts
are included.
Medieval charters are fascinating. They are a rich record of places and of
people, some of whom would otherwise pass unnoted. But charters are also

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austere documents, affording very little in the way of background description
concerning the transactions they record. And so, their interpretation, making
some sense of them, demands of the historian the exercise of controlled, imaginative judgment and a consistent critical approach. In this regard, Slack has
done well. For each charter, under the headings “Summary of the Charter” and
“Notes on the Charter,”she provides closely documented discussion,identifying
people, establishing their relationships with those mentioned in other charters,
and demonstrating their connectedness in terms of both feudal bond and, notably, their common involvement in the crusades.
Slack is interested in the problem of motive. What factors, she asks, moved
people to go on a crusade? Was devotion paramount? Were the families of
Coucy,Trazegnies, and Morialmé, all of whom had distinguished records for crusading by 1270, moved predominantly by piety to take the cross, or were there
other, more pragmatic considerations operative? These are not, of course, new
questions, and Slack acknowledges this. What, however, is new, indeed even
startling, is the crucially important role throughout the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries of the reformed Order of Prémontré in the crusading enterprise. If
Slack’s reading of these charters is valid, it is no exaggeration to claim that the
financial and religious patronage granted by Prémontré to the family of Coucy
and their vassals, most of whom at one time or another had violated the Order’s
rights and property, made possible many of the crusading contingents from
northern France and Flanders. Beneath the lofty religious language of crusade
ideology, these charters reveal a reformed Order with an impressive dedication
to crusading and at the same time with a sharp sense of its own advantage in securing the safety of its possessions both in the Holy Land and at home.
For their part, the lay nobility, whose crusading initiatives provide the raison
d’être of these charters, acted, according to Slack, out of “pious practicality”
( p. x). This was expressed variously, but most often the pattern that emerges is
one in which the crusader donates generously to the Order to make amends for
having attacked its property in the past and to be reconciled to the Church generally before leaving for the Holy Land. The evidence also shows that the Order
was not averse to lending money to a crusader-patron either to finance his expedition or to pay off debts incurred as a consequence of it. But, even here,
Slack posits that the Order was impelled not by altruism but by the practical advantage which it hoped to acquire by extending its circle of crusader patrons,
men who, not unreasonably, might be expected to protect its interests in the
Holy Land.
In sum, the evidence of these important charters indicates strongly that from
the time of the First Crusade until 1270, the network of crusading families of
Coucy, Trazegnies, and Morialmé and their vassals, and the reformed Order of
Prémontré espoused crusading from broadly similar motives.These were shaped
not so much by religious fervor for holy war as by the opportunity which the
crusades afforded them to forge mutually beneficial arrangements for long-term

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political and financial advantage. It is a critical interpretation which demands
serious attention.
PENNY J. COLE
University of Toronto

The Council of Bourges, 1225:A Documentary History.By Richard Kay.[Church,
Faith and Culture in the Medieval West.] (Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate
Publishing Company. 2002. Pp. xxviii, 599. $114.95.)
Except only for the Fourth Lateran Council, the Council of Bourges that met
in 1225 was the largest church assembly held in the West up to that time. Summoned by the cardinal-legate Romanus Bonaventura, it was attended by 112
archbishops and bishops, more than 500 abbots, many deans and archdeacons,
and over 100 representatives of cathedral chapters. In this important work, the
fruit of many years of scholarly labor, Richard Kay explains that the council deserves study, not only because of its size, but “as the earliest record of representative government in action; as an extended example of counsel and consent in
medieval assemblies; and as an episode in the Second Albigensian Crusade.”The
author provides a thorough treatment of all these themes.
The first task of the council was to adjudicate the competing claims of Raymond of Toulouse and Amaury of Montfort to the County of Toulouse. When
the case had gone against Raymond,the next order of business was to authorize
a tax on the Church intended to finance a new Albigensian crusade to be undertaken by King Louis VIII. This seems to have been carried through without
difficulty, and in January, 1226, Romanus granted to the king a tenth of clerical
incomes for five years. But it is not clear who exactly consented to the tax. This
contentious issue arose sixteen months later (after the king’s death) when the
cathedral chapters of four French provinces—Reims, Sens, Rouen, and Tours—
balked at paying future installments of the tax on the ground that they had not
consented to it. Romanus wrote that he had granted the tax “on behalf of their
proctors and of almost the entire council”; the chapters, however, maintained
that they had sent nuncios to the council to report back to them concerning its
proceedings but without any power to consent on their behalf. When the pope
decided the case against the chapters he did not address this particular issue,
though a few years earlier he had decreed that cathedral chapters did indeed
have a right to be represented at provincial councils.In the matter of the tax approved at Bourges he declared that Romanus was empowered to act by virtue
of his legatine authority, adding however that the tax had been granted “on the
advice of almost the entire council.”
At Bourges Romanus presented another demand or request from the pope.
Honorius urged that a prebend be set aside in each cathedral chapter, along
with a portion of the bishop’s income,in order to provide a permanent revenue

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for the upkeep of the papal curia. But the council did not consent to this. A similar papal letter was sent to England and others probably to Spain and the Empire. One of the disgruntled proctors at Bourges sent a relatio, which provides a
principal source for the proceedings of the council, to a counterpart in London,
presumably to encourage a similar response to the pope’s proposal there.In England the papal letter was considered at a mixed council of laity and clergy summoned by the king and the archbishop of Canterbury. A preliminary meeting,
held at London in January, 1226, reached no decision. At a second meeting, in
May, representatives of cathedral chapters and collegiate churches were present
as well as the prelates and lay lords. At this meeting the king rejected the pope’s
plan, on the advice of “everyone unanimously” according to one source.
The proceedings at Bourges and London raised issues that would be at the
heart of the developing theory and practice of representative government during the following century. Who had the right to consent to taxation? And who
had the right to be represented at the relevant deliberations? Did a right to consent imply a right to withhold consent or merely to assent to what a ruler decided after due deliberation? Did “counsel” always imply consent? How should
the powers of a representative acting on behalf of a corporate community be
defined if the community was to be bound by his actions?
Kay not only considers these broad themes but also discusses innumerable
details of the council’s proceedings and presents a perceptive character sketch
of the legate Romanus. His work provides the first adequate account of the
council and its background, and the narrative account is enriched with 300
pages of documents, newly edited or re-edited from the manuscript sources.
These pages in themselves represent a major scholarly contribution. The work
as a whole provides an admirable model for future work on medieval councils.
BRIAN TIERNEY
Cornell University

The Register of Walter Bronescombe, Bishop of Exeter, 1258–1280, Volume
Two. Edited and translated by O. F. Robinson. [The Canterbury and York Society, Volume LXXXVII.] (Rochester, New York: The Boydell Press. 1999.
Pp. viii, 138. $45.00.)
This is the second of a three-volume edition and translation of Walter
Bronescombe’s episcopal register. The first volume appeared in 1995, and the
third, which will include among other documents the Exeter Cathedral Statutes
of 1269 and 1278, is scheduled to appear soon. This second volume concludes
the register proper,its entries running from 1263,where Volume One leaves off,
to the day of the bishop’s death, July 22, 1280. As was often the case in earlier
episcopal registers, Bronescombe’s followed a chronological rather than a topical form. Thus, records for the management of ecclesiastical benefices—by and
large the better portion of most episcopal registers—appear in the midst of

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other matters that occupied the bishop and his chief assistants: copies of royal
letters, memoranda of various commissions, the business of ecclesiastical
courts, citations for anticipated ordinations and visitations, the concerns of religious houses, relations with the Exeter Cathedral Chapter, etc.The substance of
these entries is vital for understanding the episcopal administration and pastoral care of the diocese, vital as well for understanding the man whose actions
were the point of the record. In spite of the strong tendency toward the formulaic, something of Bronescombe’s manner emerges along with the more objective features of his administration. He was a man at ease with his authority,
whether engaged in the rule of his diocese or on business for the king or archbishop. A capable administrator, he was also a reform-minded prelate who had
little patience with beneficed clerics who lingered on their way to priest’s orders (#1200); showed similar contempt for pluralists (#1124); suffered through
long rows with mischievous abbots at Tavistock and Ford (#773, 1089); and was
not above a stern and pastoral rebuke to the Roman Curia for passing on to him
a pair of incompetent and illiterate brothers for ordination (#966).
The contents of this register were edited over a century ago by F.C.HingestonRandolf, but that version had its burden of flaws. O. F. Robinson has taken up the
task of editing,transcribing,and translating the register anew.This latter feature,
of course, makes the whole of the register far more accessible to students of
medieval Exeter and the thirteenth-century church, and Robinson is owed a
debt of thanks for this. But this may be outweighed in value by an editorial oddity that Robinson notes but does not explain: where Volume One was a facingpage text and translation of the first half of the register, this present volume is a
straightforward translation with occasional references to the original text. The
more important entries will appear in Latin in the final volume, removed from
the context of their English translations and leaving the whole project with a
somewhat cobbled look. Robinson’s translations are in the main commendable
for their faithfulness to the original text, but occasional errors in form threaten
to undermine confidence:“latters patent” (#1175), intrusive or missing words
( p. vi, #1188), Agnes de Crues (#1126) and Agnes de Cruyws (#1177) are the
same person, and one entry (#845) is rendered entirely in lower case without
benefit of explanation.
WILLIAM J. DOHAR
Santa Clara University

The Late Medieval Pope Prophecies: The Genus nequam Group. Edited by
Martha H. Fleming. [Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, Volume
204.] (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Arizona State University. 1999. Pp. xi, 207; 15 pls. $25.00.)
The Late Medieval Pope Prophecies focuses on nine manuscripts of the socalled Genus nequam group, the earliest of the post eventum fourteenthcentury Vaticinia de summis pontificibus that ostensibly prophesied the

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fortunes of the Church from the papacy of Nicholas III (1277–1280), through
the brief pontificate of the much-admired Celestine V (1294) and the longer
pontificate of the much-hated Boniface VIII (1294–1303), and into the rule of
Benedict XI (1303–1304). Here edited for the first time, these texts are identified by the first words,“Genus nequam,” of the first prophecy. They culminated
in the “prophetic future,” with the expectation of a final “angelic pope” to appear in the last days, reform the Church, and prepare it for the onslaught of Antichrist. Although in the past repeatedly associated with Joachim of Fiore—the
great twelfth-century exegete whose fame attracted numerous spurious prophecies and much continuing scholarly interest—these texts probably originated in
Italy, possibly in a Spiritual Franciscan milieu, in the late thirteenth century and
may have been circulating as a group by 1304.
Martha H.Fleming provides an excellent introduction surveying the complex
and contested issues of authorship and dating, clarifying the relationship of this
group of manuscripts with later and longer versions of the papal prophecies,
and setting forth her editing principles, in which she argues that “it is clear that
the variants are as interesting as any possible ‘established’text”( p.15).The rigor
and detail with which she describes the nine manuscripts is particularly laudable. Comprising a full quarter of the book, her study of the manuscripts is a
model of careful scholarly work. The volume also includes a helpful bibliography and index.
The editor shows that from the very beginning the prophecies were composed of both text and image, noting,“Contemporary witnesses identified the
prophecies with the images as often as with the texts” ( p. 9). Rightly arguing
that the “images serve more than a simple illustrative function” ( p. 10), Fleming
has designed her edition admirably. It juxtaposes a plate of each of the fifteen
prophecies next to its edition, so that the reader can see the manuscript layout
of prophetic text, image, and motto on the left of each opening and transcription of the Latin text with apparatus on the right.This layout supports Fleming’s
contention,“Nothing about the page organization suggests the primacy of one
component over the other, and everything points to a special kind of complementarity between text and image”( p.10).Longer explanatory notes follow the
complete edition.
An important contribution of this volume is Fleming’s study of the images,
which she describes picture by picture, culminating in one tradition with a sixteenth picture representing Antichrist as “an anti-type of the Lamb of God”
( p. 113). The analysis of these images is convincing and helpfully assisted by
twenty-one figures that reproduce variant pictures from the edited manuscripts
as well as relevant analogues from later manuscripts and printed books. The
MRTS series is to be praised for including this rich illustrative material, while
keeping the price of the edition very reasonable.
Through her study and edition of these fascinating texts, Martha Fleming provides an invaluable service to all scholars interested in the often heated

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polemics surrounding the papacy during the late Middle Ages and Reformation.
The edition will also be welcomed by medievalists interested in prophetic and
apocalyptic texts in general as well as by students of Italian politics, religious
controversy, illustrated manuscripts, and literary culture, such as Dante’s Commedia. This is an admirable work of interdisciplinary scholarship, which I
highly recommend.
RICHARD K. EMMERSON
Medieval Academy of America

St Birgitta of Sweden. By Bridget Morris.[Studies in Medieval Mysticism, Volume 1.] (Rochester, New York: The Boydell Press. 1999. Pp. xiv, 202.
$60.00.)
St Birgitta of Sweden is long overdue—not the work itself, which represents
the culmination of over two decades of research, but the bibliographic position
it fills. Bridget Morris’s volume is not only the first English-language biography
of this elusive fourteenth-century saint since the 1954 translation of Johannes
Jøgensen’s opus, but also the first biographical synthesis in any language to take
advantage of the last few decades’ outpouring of high-quality Birgittine scholarship.
In St Birgitta of Sweden, Morris has chosen to emphasize the historical and
political aspects of Birgitta’s career.The volume opens with a survey of late medieval Sweden and the political and cultural milieu into which the saint was
born. Morris then devotes several chapters to reconstructing Birgitta’s childhood, married life, and early prophetic career, demonstrating an impressive
command of both archival and edited sources. This approach makes for an engrossing narrative of Birgitta’s life, but leads to frustrating structural choices for
scholars of Catholic theology and spirituality, as the non-Scandinavian world
barely intrudes into the first half of the volume. We learn about Birgitta’s ongoing efforts to move the papacy back from Avignon to Rome only at the point in
the narrative at which Birgitta moves to Rome, and Morris devotes more attention to Birgitta’s visionary impact on artists’ depictions of the Nativity than to
the theological developments underlying these visions.
Indeed, Morris’s treatment of Birgitta’s visions may be the only weak spot in
an otherwise strong synthesis.The visions tend to be used and discussed mostly
in terms of their historical and political value, while their theological and literary content is mentioned briefly or presumed to be self-evident. For instance,
Morris devotes nearly four pages to a word-by-word translation of Birgitta’s last
major vision of the Crucifixion, but only four paragraphs to its connections
with “the new devotionalism and affective piety of the fourteenth century”
( p. 133). At times, Morris acknowledges the difficulty of using multiply edited,
reordered, and (often) translated texts as Birgitta’s own, noting that only the
Swedish meditations feature Birgitta writing “in her native tongue in texts that

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were not, it appears, subject to reworking by her confessors” ( p. 55). At other
times, however, Morris appears to treat highly stylized hagiographic and visionary texts as nearly transparent; for instance, she presents the famous “calling vision” from the Vita processus (on p. 65) as fact without even noting that this
account exists in an alternate (and significantly less obedience-conscious) form
in chapter 47 of the Reuelaciones extrauagantes.
On balance, though, St Birgitta of Sweden has been well worth waiting for.
This book offers not only a well-rounded biography of an important historical
figure, but also a well-chosen selection of images which Morris uses to discuss
Birgitta’s iconography, and a quick but useful overview of Birgitta’s other legacies: the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century debates over her canonization, and
the structure and history of the Ordo Sanctissimi Salvatoris which she founded.
Morris’s work should prove extremely helpful to scholars and advanced students in a variety of fields who want to learn more about Birgitta of Sweden.
WENDY LOVE ANDERSON
Saint Louis University

Piety and Pythagoras in Renaissance Florence:The Symbolum Nesianum. By
Christopher S. Celenza. [Studies in the History of Christian Thought, Volume C1.] (Leiden: Brill. 2001. Pp.xiii, 238. $85.00.)
This is a careful edition and translation of a text of intrinsic interest for those
intellectual historians committed to exploring the rich intrications of philosophical and religious moments in Renaissance inquiry. The text is the Symbolum Nesianum; its original version was the work of Giovanni Nesi, and
reflects his double allegiance to Ficino on the one hand, to Savonarola on the
other, in a fifteenth-century aggiornamento of the Pythagorean sayings, symbola, a tradition of texts defined as “a very loose configuration of apophthegmata which changes with every author who cites them or comments upon
them” ( p. 6). It is an initiative that assumes that the sayings can and should
“enter the eveyday life of monks” ( p. 3).
Celenza asserts that “the author’s notion of a latens energia,a “hidden energy,”
possessed by the symbols is perhaps the most powerful kind of expression of
what a true believer in the prisca theologia tradition had in mind: a set of linguistic units which could have life breathed into them at any time by the right
hermeneutical approach” ( p. 3). Celenza, in short, asks us to see this text as evidence for innovation, for he claims that “there are some cases where newly discovered texts actually help shape ideology and even social practices” ( p. 82).
Celenza’s approach is the reverse of reductive,in short.He contextualizes the
effort not only as a product of the rich fifteenth-century Florentine intellectual
and religious ambiance, but as illuminating general European speculative currents, a complicated interplay of philosophic, hermeneutic, and vatic, ritualistic
moments ( p. 8). He offers, I would argue, an essentially Garinian approach to

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Renaissance inquiry: first, in acknowledging the need for an inclusive definition
of philosophic problematic—the contests, issues of practice—thus a refusal of
a limitation to a narrow, perhaps anachronistic, consideration only of the logical, epistemological, metaphysical problems of post-Kantian philosophy; second, in rejecting a simple intertextuality, bookishness, for the integration of the
work in a general account of institutions and practices of the time. On the one
hand, Celenza follows Garin in pursuing, not an account of a possible “purist”
recovery of an originary Plato and Aristotle, but of the intrinsic interest and interconnections of late antique and specific Renaissance initiatives. A different
Classicism produces different investigative imperatives;there is a need for a syncretic approach to Classical syncretism;Celenza cites Walter Burkert’s program,
which insists on, not an opposition of rational justification and religious motives, but an integration. And, as well, his account reflects Garin’s appreciation
of a Diltheyan phenomenology, a concern with the texture of religious life, the
specific parameters of the experience of faith, obvious in Celenza’s insistence
on the interactivity of Ficinan and Savonarola commitment, on Ficino’s contribution to the “vatic sensibility” of Florence ( p. 26).
Finally, Celenza affirms Garin’s sense of the usefulness of the minor texts of
minor, as well as of major, figures in describing experience; here the peculiarity
of the genre is a strength:Symbolum Nesianum is presented as a text,not simply
edifying, but recreational in use; evidence of a continuum, a range of capacity
and practice in Florentine intellectual life. While Celenza makes no sweeping
claims for the text as a “literary masterpiece” or philosophical tour-de-force
( p. 83), his introduction represents a significant contribution to a perspicacious
reorientation of the history of Renaissance philosophy.
NANCY S. STRUEVER
Johns Hopkins University

Early Modern European
Religious Authority in the Spanish Renaissance. By Lu Ann Homza. [The Johns
Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 118th Series.] (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2000. Pp. xxv, 312.
$39.95.)
Lu Ann Homza’s Religious Authority in the Spanish Renaissance will
change the way historians have customarily interpreted Spanish religious culture in the first half of the sixteenth century. Not all readers will agree with her
conclusions, but they will be hard-pressed to think about the intellectual currents of this era in the same way after having read this important new work.
Homza effectively challenges traditional interpretations of scholasticism, humanism, and clerical authority in Renaissance Spain.
She frames each chapter as a revelation. According to her, things are never
quite what the prevailing scholarship would have us believe. Homza effectively

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argues, for example, that Juan de Vergara, often presented as the embodiment of
Spanish humanism, was a more complex figure who borrowed heavily from
scholastic methods and interpretation and did not divide his intellectual arsenal
into carefully delineated compartments. By challenging the notion that humanism and scholasticism were mutually exclusive, Homza tackles head on the long
historiographical shadow cast by Marcel Bataillon. Bataillon read Spain’s ultimate rejection of Erasmian humanism as a step backwards and characterized
much of the period after the 1530’s as repressive and intolerant. Homza offers
instead a less judgmental and rigid portrait of Spain’s religious culture. Spanish
intellectuals melded old traditions and new trends. Authors like Vergara may
lose their status as paragons in the process, but they become more engaging as
Homza traces their “energy and ingenuity” ( p. 210).
In a similar fashion, she reinterprets the question of clerical authority in
Spain. By looking at texts like confessors’ manuals, Homza posits a more subtle
image of Spanish clerics in this period. In her hands, they emerge as gentler,
pragmatic individuals whose goals were not always stifling dissent and asserting their supremacy over the laity. Rather, she suggests, they were quite sympathetic to the needs of their flock and also quite willing to admit their own faults
and shortcomings.
Although it is a critique that Homza acknowledges in her Epilogue, the only
potential shortcoming of the book is her primary focus on the first half of the
sixteenth century (though her texts range as far as 1570). Particularly since she
intends to overturn the received wisdom about the repression and hegemony
of the clergy, this is a limitation. The portrait of a clergy obsessed with establishing its authority over the laity owes much to post-Tridentine developments.
In her defense, however, Homza rightly argues that if the first half of the sixteenth century is more nuanced than we would have expected, then the second half might be as well. It remains for future scholars to assess the validity of
her assertion.
Some will be unsettled by Homza’s work. Her attacks on the scholarship that
has come before are unflinching.At the same time,however,her meticulous and
engaging scholarship balances and even necessitates her sharp critiques. She
ably confronts a range of sources with vexing methodological implications. Her
prose is clear and her arguments persuasive. Overall, her work is a welcome
breath of fresh air that will undoubtedly reopen old questions. Certainly, historians of Spain should read this work, but her book deserves a wider readership
as well. The challenges she poses to questions of periodization and categorization should be a model for future studies of the religious, cultural, and intellectual currents of sixteenth-century Europe.
ELIZABETH A. LEHFELDT
Cleveland State University

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Confessional Identity in East-Central Europe. Edited by Maria Crăciun, Ovidiu
Ghitta, and Graeme Murdock. [St Andrews Studies in Reformation History.]
(Burlington,Vermont: Ashgate. 2002. Pp. xviii, 207. $84.95.)
This carefully edited collection refines some of the papers presented at a
conference in Cluj, Romania, in 1999. Of the ten contributors, half were based
at Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj.An introductory study by the three co-editors,
“Religious Reform, Printed Books, and Confessional Identity” ( pp. 1–30), does
an excellent job of synthesizing the secondary literature and some findings of
the other chapters. Historians of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in
France and Germany have highlighted the importance of books, especially catechisms, in the creation and survival of religious communities of discourse. In
East Central Europe and especially Transylvania, community definition through
publication became a key strategy for Protestants, resurgent Catholics, and
newly established Uniate (Greek Catholic) churches.
Six chapters examine the role of catechisms in specific contexts. Thomas
Fudge concludes that the “Hussite” or Czech catechism of 1522 was an ambiguous document, parts of which Luther either welcomed or criticized. Krista
Zach surveys Protestant vernacular catechisms in the former Hungarian lands,
finding they had didactic, polemical, and political purposes and significantly affected the development of national languages, but could not secure their target
populations against Catholic resurgence. Carmen Florea demonstrates that
urban political dynamics as well as catechisms characterized the establishment
of the Unitarian community in sixteenth-century Cluj. While both Hungarian
and Romanian historians have minimized the impact of Reformed proselytism
among the Romanians, Maria Crăciun considers the influence of Calvinism on
the Romanians as reflected in visitation reports, a Hungarian catechism translated into Romanian, and the theological conditions imposed upon Romanian
church leaders. Graeme Murdock, considering the presentation of Eucharistic
doctrine in Hungarian Reformed catechisms, argues for these publications’ lasting influence in Reformed religious culture. Ovidiu Ghitta considers the first
catechisms published for the Romanian Greek Catholics of Hungary and Transylvania in the eighteenth century, contrasting their emphasis on the Catholic,
or on the Eastern, character of that church.
Other chapters look at social and political factors in the establishment of religious identity. Csilla Gábor studies Roman Catholic devotional literature among
Hungarians in Transylvania, suggesting that it assisted in the survival of this
community despite unfavorable political conditions until the arrival of the Habsburgs at the end of the seventeenth century. Joachim Bahlke examines the importance of the lay administrative body, the Status Catholicus, in this same
community during the seventeenth and especially the eighteenth century. The
contribution by the late Pompiliu Teodor sheds new light on the difficult relations of Romanian Greek Catholics and Orthodox during the eighteenth century by examining doctrinal and political evidence. Judith Kalik documents
divisions among the Catholic clergy in eighteenth-century Poland in their atti-

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tude toward the Jews, with the call for conversion rather than simple coexistence becoming stronger during this period.
This volume offers a coherent collection of studies on the announced topic,
albeit primarily for Transylvania rather than all of East Central Europe. The individual chapters by the three co-editors are the most substantial contributions,
but all the studies present analysis of contemporary confessional publications
that readers of this journal will find virtually inaccessible. Today’s researcher is
the beneficiary of the Communist Romanian confiscation of most ecclesiastical
libraries in Transylvania, which took them from their rightful owners but concentrated their holdings of early modern confessional literature in the Library
of the Romanian Academy in Cluj. The book concludes with a useful short bibliography of secondary literature and an index of names, places, and subjects. It
is a shame that the contemporary publications are not incorporated into the
bibliography and index, especially since some are discussed in more than one
chapter.
JAMES P. NIESSEN
Rutgers University

God’s Two Books: Copernican Cosmology and Biblical Interpretation in Early
Modern Science. By Kenneth J. Howell. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of
Notre Dame Press. 2002. Pp. viii, 319. $39.95.)
Both Copernicans and anti-Copernicans employed similar approaches in interpreting the Bible. According to this wonderfully nuanced study of exegetical
strategy, the view that scriptural interpretation was a tool primarily utilized by
those opposed to Copernican cosmology is far from the truth. Neither was the
scriptural debate solely a matter of literal vs. figurative hermeneutics where
those opposed to terrestrial motion argued for a sensus litteralis in biblical interpretation while those supporting the earth’s motion argued for interpretations based upon an accommodated speech (i.e., a biblical language suited to
human capacities). Howell is adept at describing the rich diversity of biblical interpretation bearing upon cosmological themes that existed long before the
Copernican debate,and is especially insightful when illustrating different meanings given to the notion of sensus litteralis. On the one hand, literal meaning
could be an explicit statement of physical or cosmological reality. However, the
sensus litteralis of scriptural language was also commonly understood contextually, conveying the historical, cultural, and physical situation which provided
the original setting for biblical terms. In this regard,Augustine was able to argue
against those who, basing themselves in scriptural authority (Isa. 40:22), denied
the spherical nature of the celestial region by insisting that a literal interpretation of the heaven’s sphericity was not contradicted by biblical language once
one understood the constrained physical position of the observer on earth. In
other words, there was only one correct interpretation, but the literal meaning
of Scripture was itself dependent upon context.

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Where some, like the German astronomer Christoph Rothmann, viewed biblical language in strict accommodationist terms, others, like Tycho Brahe, Kepler,
and Galileo, maintained perspectives similar to that of Augustine. For Tycho, the
Bible meant what it said when it referred to the heavens as hard, like steel ( Job
37:18).But this language,Tycho argued,referred not to the material constituents
of the heavens but to its constancy and perpetual nature.The Bible was to be understood literally and its words were to be taken seriously. However, given the
flexibility of a language situated within particular cultural circumstances,proper
understanding of that literal meaning depended upon an awareness of relative
conditions. Where parts of Scripture remained unclear, Augustine recommended
comparing one part of the Bible to another. Kepler also embraced this view, especially since he understood the Bible to be a collection of books written within
various ancient historical venues. If, Kepler reasoned, one could show that the
composition of Psalm 104, for instance, showed structural similarities to other
scriptural texts, the literal meaning of the Psalm might follow from the further
reading of those texts and indicate that the psalmist had some intention other
than commenting on the operation of the physical universe.
Kepler, of course, was a realist astronomer. The motions he described for the
planets were not mathematical fictions on paper solely serving purposes of prediction, and Howell makes it clear that biblical interpretation only really became relevant to the question of heliocentricism when astronomers began to
treat their systems as making claims to reality. Yet, in claims to astronomical
realism as in pronouncements of biblical literalism there were degrees of commitment, and Howell’s treatment of both helps to sort out the various kinds of
truth claims made in reference to the book of Scripture and the book of Nature.
Catholics and Protestants shared much in common when it came to using
Scripture to argue for and against terrestrial motion. In the Catholic environment, however, there was also the need to submit to institutional authority. The
person who stands out most in confronting institutionally mediated scriptural
interpretation in reference to the question of a moving earth is, of course,
Galileo. Howell offers us a picture of Galileo’s attempt to reconcile Copernicanism and Scripture that is based in large part on Augustine’s De Genesi ad Litteram and suggests that the preference for Augustine stemmed from a close
relationship between Galileo’s physics and his exegesis in which an interpretive relativity of the type represented by Augustine found a counterpart in
Galileo’s own perceptions of relativity in the physical world, especially the relativity of motion. Like Augustine, Galileo adopted the view that using the Bible
to answer cosmological questions risked losing sight of its primary purpose,
namely, instruction in faith and morals. On the other hand, the fact that biblical
texts never referred directly to a moving earth meant nothing more, when
viewed from a relativist position, than that their author had adopted the observational location of the audience, i.e., of those who would read the text.
This is a study in subtleties and relationships—the subtleties of scriptural interpretation and the tangled interconnections of astronomy, cosmology, theol-

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ogy, and Scripture. What we carry away is a deeper understanding of the theories and applications of biblical exegesis as they confront and are influenced by
the new cosmologies of the early modern era. The book will surely become a
standard text in discussions of science and religion and will be much referred
to in days to come.
BRUCE T. MORAN
University of Nevada, Reno

Culte des saints et anticléricalisme. Entre statistique et culture populaire. By
Louis Pérouas. [Mémoires et documents sur le Bas-Limousin, Vol. XXIV.]
(Ussel: Musée du Pays d’Ussel; Paris: Diffusion de Boccard. 2002. Pp. xxxiv,
504. Paperback.)
It is not often that a collection of an historian’s articles not only shows the
breadth of the author’s interests and the evolution of his or her historical methods and conclusions but also presents a fascinating picture of the development
of the author’s ideas about and attitudes toward church, state, and society. That
is exactly what this collection of thirty-one articles and one postscript does.
Daniel Roche’s preface is somewhat pretentious, but provides some important reflections on the historical career of Louis Pérouas and its relationship
both to the evolution of historical studies in France and to his life as a priest.
Roche ends with the recommendation that historians should contemplate the
combination of objectivity and sympathy found in the articles in this volume.
Louis Pérouas is best known outside France for his book Le Diocèse de La
Rochelle de 1648 à 1724: sociologie et pastorale, which I reviewed in this journal almost forty years ago. The thirty-one articles in the book under review
were selected by Father Pérouas from the 118 he wrote between 1955 and
2002. None of them are extracted from the twenty-nine books (some coauthored) he has written. Most of the selections concern aspects of life related
to religion in the area of central France known as the Limousin, especially the
city of Limoges (Haute-Vienne) and the départements of Creuse and Corrèze. A
few are related to the author’s earliest work in La Rochelle and Poitou, and a
number are devoted to the work of Grignion de Montfort (1673–1716), the missionary to western France who founded the Company of Mary (Montfortains),
the congregation of which Father Pérouas is a member. Though the author is a
specialist in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century religious history, the articles
in this book cover a much longer period—from the Middle Ages to the present.
The themes that run through the chronologically arranged articles are the
changing relationships between “official”and “popular”religion, the effects of the
French Revolution, dechristianization, the worker-priest movement, the origins
and development of anticlericalism and free masonry, and the state of Catholicism today in central France. The author’s approach is an original mixture of
quantitative and qualitative history, sociology, psychology, and theology. He is an

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“Annaliste” who has come closer to achieving the goals set by the founders of
that school of history than most of its practitioners.
There are several major conclusions to be found in the selections in this volume. One of the most important is that geography, tradition, and language have
profound effects on religious beliefs and practices.Another is that the efforts of
early modern clergy to eradicate what they saw as peasant superstition, combined with their failure to appreciate or to respond effectively to the ideas of
the bourgeoisie, created anticlericalism rather than indifference to religion in
nineteenth-century Limousin and, probably, all of France. A third is that Rome’s
banning of the worker-priest movement contributed significantly to the continuing decline of the practice of Catholicism in France in the twentieth century.
In a two-page postscript entitled “On the Threshold of Old Age,” Father
Pérouas tells how he evolved from a ten-year-old who wanted to be a missionary to a sociologist and historian of early modern Catholicism in western
France and then to a student of all forms of religion and non-religion in the Limousin, past and present. How in his words “mission became dialogue,” despite
the opposition of “some who understood my mission differently than I did.”
One paragraph hints at the resistance he faced within his congregation when
he presented a reinterpretation of the founder’s ideas in the years after Vatican
Council II. The last paragraph tells of his decision not to retire but to become a
chaplain in a geriatric hospital where he has accompanied “une foule de gens
jusqu’aux portes de l’au-delà.”
It is a great shame that only 500 copies of this book were printed.
MICHAEL HAYDEN
University of Saskatchewan (Emeritus)

La Contre-Réforme et les Constitutions de Port Royal. By F. Ellen Weaver. (Paris:
Les Éditions du Cerf. 2002. Pp. 242. €29 paperback.)
There is no question that F.Ellen Weaver’s study of Port Royal’s Constitutions
is a must-read book for scholars of Port Royal and Jansenism. But the work also
has value for those interested more generally in monastic reform in the CounterReformation period. One can divide the eight chapters of this book into two
basic sections. The first section compares and contrasts Port Royal’s Constitutions with those of other convents.The second section tracks the development
of Port Royal’s Constitutions as they change over time. For the specialist, the
first section provides a compelling answer to the question:To what extent does
Jansenism—a controversial reform movement that developed at the Port Royal
convent—represent a departure from more mainstream Catholic reform efforts
in seventeenth-century France? By comparing Port Royal’s Constitutions
with those of other contemporary Cistercian and Benedictine convents, Weaver
shows that Port Royal’s reform remained more faithful to the original Cistercian

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interpretation of the Benedictine Rule than that of many other convents. If Port
Royal appeared radical or “innovative” to its contemporaries, this was not because it adopted new practices and beliefs, but rather because it rejected
some of the institutional and spiritual customs (such as royal nomination of
abbesses and an Ignatian emphasis on spiritual exercises) that had become
commonplace in post-Tridentine France. Although Port Royal did adopt some
key elements of Counter-Reformation religiosity (most significantly a perpetual
adoration of the Eucharist), its reformers remained as faithful as possible to the
original Benedictine Rule. In short, Weaver argues that many of the practices
that critics condemned as “Jansenist” at Port Royal were genuinely Cistercian in
origin.
For those interested in monastic reform more generally, Weaver’s analysis of
the genesis and publication of various editions of Port Royal’s Constitutions between the years 1648 and 1721 has important methodological implications. By
showing how the nuns revised and published their Constitutions several times
in response to external politico-religious controversies, she reveals a more permeable boundary between the internal life of the convent and the outside
world than historians have previously assumed. Her method is particularly significant to the study of women because it shows how the nuns grappled with
these outside political struggles through the seemingly disengaged language of
personal piety and religious practice.
It should be noted that this book is a translated and updated version of
Weaver’s The Evolution of the Reform of Port Royal: From the Rule of Cîteaux
to Jansenism (Paris: Editions Beauchesne, 1978). Weaver’s most substantive update was to replace the sociological framework of her first study with a more
historical framework grounded in the reform decrees of Trent. Beyond this adjustment,other changes involved reorganizing chapters and the materials within
chapters, adding new quotes from primary sources to strengthen her claims,
and extending the length of many of her original quotes to add greater nuance
to her analysis. Although these changes certainly have produced a tighter, more
focused text, readers (especially those without the command of French) can
still reap the benefits of Weaver’s solid yet elegant analysis of Port Royal’s Constitutions from the original English text.
DANIELLA KOSTROUN
Stonehill College
Late Modern European
Johann Michael Sailer: Das postume Inquisitionsverfahren. By Hubert Wolf.
[Römische Inquisition und Indexkongregation, Bd. 2.] (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. 2002. Pp. 273. €29.80.)
From the eighteenth century until Vatican Council I, several German Catholic
theologians, including Sailer, attempted enthusiastically to engage the culture of
the Goethezeit in an attempt to contextualize the doctrines of the Church and

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to remain in the mainstream of German thought. Wolf’s scholarly and lucid
analysis of Sailer’s role in this reforming movement and the accusations lodged
against him is not meant to explicate Sailer’s theological contributions as much
as it is to plunge into church politics through the use of the records of the Congregation of the Index, which were opened in 1998.
Along with Johannes Kuhn (1860–1887), Sailer (1751–1831) was also a victim of the Vatican’s attempt to consolidate power during the second half of the
nineteenth century by attacking Catholic theology that did not adhere to NeoScholastic forms. Wolf provides a solid introduction (sixty-five pages) to outline
Sailer’s life and role in his theological environment as well as to delineate the
process of the Inquisition. His description of the machinations of the church officials involved and the ecclesial as well as political reasons for their concern
with Sailer’s works provides the needed background for understanding the
Latin document that forms the core of the case, which was developed by the
Neo-Scholastic theologian, Constantin von Schaezler. Philipp Schäfer has provided a concluding essay examining the theological assault in 1873 against
Sailer’s position.
Sailer’s works sought to infuse life into theology for a generation of Catholics,
and,despite the attacks of some critics,he was appointed Bishop of Regensburg
before he died. During his lifetime and thereafter he was reviled as a rationalist,
deist, Febronian, pseudo-mystic, a friend of Protestantism, and a new Erasmus.
His critics contended that he was propagating a Pelagian understanding of the
Church’s doctrine of grace, an erroneous Christology, and a completely unacceptable ecclesiology.During the post-Vatican I era he was accused of being the
Urvater of the Old Catholic movement in Germany.Those who defended Sailer
insisted that he had tried to attach Catholicism to the positive forces of the Enlightenment and attempted throughout his life to revitalize the pastoral mission
of the Church.
Ultimately, John Paul II vindicated this theologian and commended him in
1982 for his dedication to the renewal of Catholic theology. How could Sailer
be condemned and later commended? Wolf has carefully delineated the process
used by the Inquisition by focusing on Ignatius von Senestrey, Bishop of Regensburg during the reign of Pius IX, the theologians Constantin von Schaezler
and Johann Baptist Franzelin, and the Assessor of the Holy Office, Lorenzo Nina.
Sailer’s case was never brought to a conclusion, since Pius IX never made a
decision. Those who favored Sailer and were part of the Inquisition process,
buried the documents in the file of the Congregation and so short-circuited the
process. Wolf has revealed the bureaucratic channels of power and intrigue that
helped create the centralized pre-Vatican II Church. He shows how processes
can be accelerated, delayed, and aborted depending on the desires of the actors
involved.The Pope, it seems, did not enjoy monolithic control in the nineteenth
century. Wolf’s work also suggests that scholars will really have a task in discovering documents that the Vatican does not want found, and this study

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should be relevant for those who hope to bring to light the documents that can
help explain the activities of Pius XII.
DONALD J. DIETRICH
Boston College

Henri-Dominique Lacordaire. Correspondance: Répertoire, Tome 1: 1816–1839.
Edited and arranged by Guy Bedouelle and Christoph-Alois Martin. (Paris:
Éditions du Cerf. 2001. Pp. lxxvii, 1429. €72.–.)
Jean-Baptiste-Henri (later Dominique) Lacordaire (1802–1861) is known to
American and European Catholics (well, at least to priests and seminarians) for
one quote:
To live in the midst of the world with no desire for its pleasure;
to be a member of every family, yet belong to none; . .
To go daily from men to God to offer Him their homage and petition;
to return from God to men to bring them His pardon and hope, . .
Oh God, what a life, and it is thine,
O priest of Jesus Christ.
But the life of this one-time agnostic lawyer turned priest is emblematic of the
creative energies and diverse personalities that constructed nineteenth- and
twentieth-century French Catholicism. Much of the creativeness went into the
new relationship with the Pope’s authority,which was diminished by Napoleon
relative to the French government but augmented many times over relative to
the French church. The Concordat of 1801 had allowed a government voice in
church appointments, but it also required the total and absolute submission of
French bishops to the Pope. They were all obliged to tender their resignations,
so that the différend between the constitutional Catholicism of the Revolution
and the Rome-dedicated refractory church could be settled.
In the beginning was Félicité de Lamennais. This high-profile intellectual
priest formed around himself a quasi community of younger intellectuals including Lacordaire, by this time a priest for several years, and the Comte de
Montalembert, a politically and intellectually engaged young aristocrat. Lamennais wanted to shape a dynamic French Catholicism upon the absolute authority, religious and political, of the Pope; and the journal he founded to promote
his program was confidently entitled L’Avenir. Ironically, the Pope and his entourage thought they had more to fear from Lamennais than they did from his
opponents and so condemned a number of the propositions of Lamennais and
ordered the closing down of L’Avenir.Lacordaire was profoundly disappointed—
as were the other members of the Lamennais circle—but led the way in submission to Rome.
Henri Lacordaire’s own personal combination of submission to Rome and
maintenance of philosophical, or at least literary, originality has become a way-

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station along the historical road of modern French Catholicism. His ultramontanism was tempered to greater strength by the condemnation crisis and gave
him leverage in problems with French hierarchical authority, chiefly Archbishop Quelen of Paris; his oratorical gifts merited invitation (from this same
prelate) to give a high-profile series of sermons in Notre-Dame cathedral; his
emotion-fraught relationships were filled with high controversy and, some say,
sexual tension; and his combination of humility and self-importance in ecclesiastical renewal bought for him a unique place in French Catholic life in the middle third of the century (he had a major role in the re-establishment of the
French Dominicans shortly after a one-year novitiate).
Not that it is easy to “place”Lacordaire in French church history.He is known,
glibly perhaps, as a “romantic,”as much to dispel suspicions of homosexuality as
to situate him on the complex range of literary and artistic romanticisms;
known also for high sermonizing but not for spirituality; known as a political
liberal but not for a political theology; known for his biography of St. Dominic
and for bringing about a revival of the Dominicans in France but not for genuine accomplishments as a historian. Work has gone forward because Lacordaire can be discovered in his dealings with, exchanges with, a collection of
equally, if not more, influential figures in French religious and national life: first,
Lamennais, so disappointed by his rejection by Rome that he left the Church altogether, and Montalembert, who moved beyond political activism to history of
the Middle Ages and philosophical/theological controversy; but also Dom Prosper Guéranger, the leader of the French Benedictine revival, who imposed the
Roman liturgy on all local Gallic variants and engendered the revival of Gregorian chant,Frédéric Ozanam,the young lay Catholic who eschewed controversy
for charity, founding the modern St.Vincent de Paul Society, and, finally, Madame
Swetchine, another influential aristocrat, Russian and Orthodox and received
into the Roman Catholic communion. There were a host of other relationships,
and no one needs this edition of the correspondence to come to grips with the
sheer magnitude of the cultural and political history implicit in them.
A firm foundation for the study of Lacordaire in situ has already been laid out
by Louis Le Guillou and André Duval, editors of the Lacordaire-Montalembert
correspondence (Paris, 1989), and the late José Cabanis, a member of the
Académie Française (as was Lacordaire at the end of his life), who ventured a
challenging schema of the historical problematics in Lacordaire et quelques
autres: politique et religion (Paris, 1982). Now Guy Bedouelle of the Saulchoir
et Christoph-Alois Martin, in dependence upon and collaboration with André
Duval, have offered a hefty repertoire of the Lacordaire correspondence (this
volume 1 goes as far as 1839), preceded by an eminently useful introduction,
“Lacordaire d’après sa correspondance, 1816–1839.” One comes to grips here
not only with the magnitude of the correspondence but also with its meaning:
we have a first-rate opportunity to resolve questions on the nature and effectiveness of Lacordaire’s career. Editors also provide a “registre des sources,” a
“registre des correspondants de Lacordaire,” and four exhaustive indexes:“noms
de personnes,”“noms de lieux,”“oeuvres mentionnés,” and “sujets traités.”

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The editors claim that an attempt at a verbally complete correspondence
would be “démésuré” and so have decided to offer a “repertoire”: each letter is
presented in a combination of quote, paraphrase, and editorial summary/commentary—what the editors call a “formule de regestes” (the year-by-year layout
of letters is labelled an “analyse des lettres”). This certainly is an idiosyncratic
approach, and users of this volume should see for comparison the Correspondance générale de Félicité de Lamennais, edited by Louis Le Guillou (9 vols.;
Paris, 1971–1982), as well as the aforementioned Lacordaire-Montalembert correspondence. Scholars will also have to decide for themselves if the variety and
extensiveness of the coverage is sufficient for their own purposes. My fellow
historians, and literary scholars also, deprived of full and direct contact with the
letters, will perhaps be disappointed. But they will not be misguided if they remain aware that a repertoire, unlike a complete correspondence, is not simple
documentation but is, in fact, the beginning of an interpretation. This work is a
study of Henri Lacordaire.
JOSEPH F. BYRNES
Oklahoma State University

Father Mathew, Temperance and Irish Identity. By Paul A. Townend. (Dublin:
Irish Academic Press. Distributed in the United States by International Specialized Book Services, Portland, Oregon. 2002. Pp. viii, 327. $49.50.)
Theobald Mathew (1790–1856) is often portrayed as an anomaly. The most
celebrated temperance reformer of the mid-nineteenth century was a Roman
Catholic priest and the Capuchin provincial for Ireland. In the typical account,
the friar’s charisma explains the amazing, although brief, success of the prefamine temperance crusade. At least half of the Irish people, often stereotyped
as heavy drinkers, pledged lifetime total abstinence.
Paul A.Townend, who teaches at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington,
puts this story, familiar in outline, in an impressively rich context. The local society that became a national one, the Cork Total Abstinence Society (CTAS),
thrived even before it persuaded one of the best-liked priests in the city, Father
Mathew, to become its leader. Irish nationalism—a dream of national regeneration—inspired this remarkable mass mobilization.“Temperance was a means to
an end, not an end in itself” ( p. 261). For the newly abstaining Irish, nearly all of
them Roman Catholics, teetotalism promised a proud national identity, ending
sectarianism, poverty, and humiliation.
Mathew contributed mightily to Ireland’s temperance reformation of the late
1830’s and the early 1840’s, but he did not create it out of thin air. Moreover,
Mathew’s limitations as a leader—his inflexibility, lack of political sophistication, and financial ineptitude—fail to explain the collapse of the movement in
the mid-1840’s. The rapidity of success made its consolidation difficult. The
middle and especially the upper classes held aloof, depriving the abstainers of

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financial support and leadership. Without a requirement of literacy or of the
payment of dues, membership was “decidedly plebeian” ( p. 59). The Roman
Catholic hierarchy failed to endorse a moral revolution that it did not control
and which raised theological and pastoral problems. Some bishops disliked the
ecumenically minded Mathew; Protestants had founded the CTAS. Some bishops
distrusted friars in general as too independent.Although Mathew sought to keep
the movement out of partisan politics, the nationalist leader Daniel O’Connell
opportunistically co-opted the temperance movement to further his agitation
for repeal of the union between Ireland and Britain.
Mathew extended his temperance work to England and the United States, in
part in an unsuccessful effort to raise money for his work in Ireland.In the same
year as Townend’s book, the University of Massachusetts Press published John
F. Quinn’s Father Mathew’s Crusade: Temperance in Nineteenth-Century Ireland and Irish America. When Mathew died, he regarded himself as a failure.
“The breakdown of the movement after 1843 was manifested in widespread
pledge breaking, a rise in alcohol production, and . . . the collapse of the network of local behaviour, practices and sanctions that had been so important in
sustaining the cause in its early years” ( p. 7).
The revival of a temperance movement among Irish Roman Catholics at the
end of the nineteenth century followed a different strategy, a denominational
society that avoided emotional appeals to drinkers. In 1999 Diarmaid Ferriter
devoted a centennial book to the penitential Pioneer Total Abstinence Society
of the Sacred Heart, which in its mid-twentieth-century heyday claimed a halfmillion members.
The heart of Townend’s own book is cultural history, his inquiry into the
CTAS ideology, ritual, and practice of temperance. The pledge “embodied selfimprovement, historical destiny, religious fervour, as well as national and community identity in the very act of self-denial” ( p. 98). Converts took the pledge
in public at mass meetings. Enlisting women into the movement, Mathew encouraged tea parties, where men and women mixed freely and even danced.
Those who disagree with Townend’s interpretation must rely on his careful
research about what actually happened. For instance, he provides a detailed geographical analysis: south-central Ireland was the CTAS stronghold. He gives a
statistical face to anecdotal claims about the success of the reformers in drying
up Ireland. He explains Mathew’s financial difficulties: large expenses for advertising, temperance medals for which recipients often failed to pay, and, above
all, his generosity. Townend appears to have read everything: archives and government reports, contemporary pamphlets and books, and a large sampling of
newspapers. Superseding Colm Kerrigan’s Father Mathew and the Irish Temperance Movement, 1838–1849 (1992), Townend’s book will be the standard
authority on Father Mathew and the CTAS for this generation and beyond.
DAVID M. FAHEY
Miami University

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The Black International / L’Internationale noire, 1870–1878. The Holy See
and Militant Catholicism in Europe / Le Saint-Siège et le Catholicisme
militant en Europe. Edited by Emiel Lamberts. [KADOC—Studies 29.]
(Leuven: Leuven University Press. 2002. Pp. 515. 45€.)
This collection of essays is the product of an international colloquium held in
Rome and Leuven in the spring and fall of 2000. The project was under the direction of Emiel Lamberts, Professor of Contemporary History at the Catholic
University of Leuven and Director of the Center of Documentation and Research
KADOC, and focused on the little-known history of the Black International.
The Prussian Chancellor Bismarck in his Kulturkampf frequently referred to
the dealings of a secret Catholic organization, a reactionary “Black International” that sought to undermine the German state. Bismarck’s warnings were
regarded as mere propaganda. Catholics and even church officials considered
his references fanciful, so secret was the existence of this underground association. Although there is a vast volume of scholarship on the Socialist (“Red”)
International, very little was known about the Black International. The organization left almost no documentary evidence in public or ecclesiastical archives
and consequently remained a mystery to historians until recently. The Black International came into existence after the capture of Rome by Italian troops in
September, 1870. Its purpose was to mobilize European Catholics to defend the
temporal sovereignty of the papacy, which had been dispossessed by the Italian
state of territory over which it had exercised sovereignty for a thousand years,
and to help restore the social and moral authority of the Church.The loss of the
Papal States was ominous, a sign that the Vatican could lose its political independence.The temporal sovereignty of the Holy See,in the words of the seventeenthcentury French Bishop Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, had “ensured that the Pope
cannot be at the mercy of any one state.” During its early years the Black International was headquartered in Geneva, where it brought together major Catholic
leaders from nine European countries.
In the historical documents the Black International was generally referred to
as the “Geneva Committee.” Its leading figures were conservative Catholic aristocrats who were threatened by the growing power of the bourgeoisie and
their ideology of liberalism. Furthermore, by 1860 the Socialist International
was actively promoting working-class revolution. In Geneva, the Russian firebrand Mikhail Bakunin at a Congress of Anarchist Revolutionaries announced
the end of Christianity. France became a Republic in 1870 and revived the anticlerical policies of the French Revolution; by March of the following year Paris
was in the grip of revolution.In Germany Bismarck began his “Battle of Culture”
(Kulturkampf ) against the Catholic Church. In 1868 Queen Isabella of Spain
was expelled and the liberal government began suppressing convents and
monasteries. For the Catholic conservatives who formed the Geneva Committee,the Church was the principal bulwark against the imminent chaos posed by
such unsettling events. Their intention was to activate the Catholic masses to

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protect the Church, safeguard the traditional social and moral order, and restore
the power of Europe’s Christian monarchs. The Black International published a
newspaper under Vatican supervision called La Correspondance de Genève.
This journal served as the mouthpiece for the pope on matters deemed important to the Holy See,namely,the “Roman Question,”the dangers of liberalism,nationalism, and international socialism.
Information on the nature of the Geneva Committee initially surfaced in biographical studies on Gaspard Mermillod, bishop of Lausanne, Count Gustav von
Blome, Count Johann Anton Pergen, and René de La Tour du Pin. Concrete information was sketchy, however, and nothing pointed to the Committee’s direct
ties with the Vatican. Only recently did scholars discover archival material that
offered more information on the history of Black International. This was found
in the private papers of some of the association’s leading figures, namely, the
Ghent textile magnate Joseph de Hemptinne, the Dutch financier J. W. Cramer,
and the Austrian Count Pergen.
Dr. Lamberts has provided an excellent, informative introduction to the Black
International project and has contributed several chapters explicating the goals
and operational history of the organization as well as its influence on the subsequent history of European Catholicism. These essays are in both English and
French and deal with a variety of issues, including papal diplomacy, the Roman
Question, Vatican press policy, the politics of the Curia, Thomistic theology, and
the impact of the Black International in Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, France, Switzerland, and England. The contributors to this impressive volume are all well versed in Catholic social and political history and
show a mastery of the documents under review.The analyses are not overdrawn,
and each writer has been careful to ground his subject in the broader historical
themes concerning the development and influence of the Black International.
The newly discovered documents that inspired this book illuminate the close
working relationship between the Black International and the Holy See. Pope
Pius IX approved of the creation of the Geneva Committee and gave his imprimatur to the publication of its political journal, which was to orient the European
Catholic press on Vatican affairs. The Correspondance was deemed an effective
tool for mobilizing Catholic opinion to help liberate the “prisoner of the Vatican.”
Pius’s Secretary of State,Giacomo Antonelli,took responsibility for overseeing its
operation, designating a trusted correspondent to the Vatican who would transmit confidential information to the Geneva journal. A major figure in this operation was “Toni” Pergen, whom Blome called “the cadet,” a person who had the
confidence of Pio Nono. Much of his work was shrouded in secrecy. Perhaps
only Mermillod and Blome in Geneva knew that Pergen (sometimes referred to
in the documents as “Monsieur X”) was the connection between the Committee
and the papal secretary of state. Antonelli, however, was careful to keep the
Geneva group from involving themselves with the affairs of the Curia and the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The Correspondance gained considerable authority in the
Catholic world by virtue of its informative reporting on Roman affairs, yet with-

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out being seen as the voice of the Vatican. The advantage of such a covert operation allowed the papacy to articulate bold, even mischievous positions that
diplomatic and curial conventions would not have permitted.
The influence of the Black International varied considerably among the nine
countries discussed in this volume, its effectiveness conditioned by the personalities of the “Permanents” (intermediaries between the Geneva bureau and
the national Catholic movements) and particularistic religious and political
conditions. Such matters meant that the International had negligible impact in
England and the Netherlands. French, Austrian, and German aristocrats had
prominent positions in the Geneva Committee and therefore had considerable
influence in setting the editorial tone of the Correspondance. The Black International found its greatest success in Spain, where there was wide popular
support for the Vatican because of the secularization policies of liberal governments. Overall, the Permanents raised Catholic awareness of the social problem
and how it could be addressed through church social teaching, encouraged the
further development of Catholic organizations,and stimulated militant religious
activism.
The Vatican eventually came to the painful conclusion that Europe’s changed
political landscape would not tolerate the agenda of reactionary artistocrats
who had inspired the Black International with the goal of restoring an integralist social and political order. The extremist positions of La Correspondance de
Genève were beginning to compromise the political imperatives of the Holy
See.Several conservative aristocrats behind the journal,for instance,had spoken
of secretly stockpiling weapons and cash for an approaching armageddon with
the international forces of liberalism and socialism.The journal claimed that the
Church related to the modern state as an occupied country to its invader. If
the powers refused to restore the pope’s temporal power, his place was not in
his palace but in the catacombs of the Christian martyrs. The Polish Cardinal
Wladimir Czacki,intermédiaire and innominato between Rome and the Geneva
bureau, for a time was an unabashed supporter of theocracy. Religion and state
needed to be joined, he claimed, because only the Church could offer “une direction morale pour la conscience des États comme pour celle des individus.”
Of course, Pio Nono had been responsible for setting the tone of intrasigence
that marked the pages of La Correspondance de Genève. His famous proclamation Non Possumus, for example, was an absolute refusal to negotiate with the
new Italian state. Pius fulminated against the Italian government and its
monarch. King Victor Emmanuel II, he charged, was “the new Sennacherib”; the
Italian parliamentarians were wolves,liars,and satellites of Satan in human flesh,
virtually monsters of hell. Pio Nono encouraged his bishops and parish priests
to follow his lead. This had the effect of deepening the divisions between the
various regions in Italy, which needed to be reconciled to the new regime if the
country were to be governed effectively. The intransigent rhetoric increasingly
compromised sensitive Catholic domestic interests throughout Europe.

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The radical and ultramontane agenda of the Geneva Committee and the inflammatory language of the pope raised the ire of eminent bishops like Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler of Germany and England’s Henry Manning. The
Kulturkampf made greater caution a necessity in Germany.This,in conjunction
with an eventual “armed peace” between the Holy See and the Italian government,along with the failure to restore a Christian monarchy in France,made Antonelli realize that the Vatican would have to take over the direction of the
Geneva bureau lest the Church lose the grassroots organizations that were the
core support of Catholic mobilization. After 1873 the Black International came
under the direct control of the Vatican and its radical, aristocratic-inspired
agenda moderated.As Vincent Viaene,one of the contributors to this volume,has
pointed out, papal diplomacy at this juncture “crossed the Rubicon into the
modern world, shedding much of its old mental habits.” Henceforth, the issue
was not whether to use Catholic opinion to wage war on the new international
order, as Count Blome, J. W. Cramer, and others in the Black International had
hoped, but to give the pope a pivotal position within the system so he might
use it to promote more effectively policies considered important to the Holy
See. In the process of having failed to resolve the Roman Question, the Vatican
was obliged to integrate its diplomacy more closely with Catholic opinion and
therefore redefine papal sovereignty in a manner that would better assure its
role as a social and moral force in a world that had become increasingly secular
and sensitive to issues of nationalism.
It is now generally agreed that a major part of the pope’s authority as a modern churchman was directly related to the collapse of his authority as a politician. The political events of the 1870’s brought the conflict between the pope
as spiritual leader and national leader into extreme tension. With the accession
of Leo XIII the Vatican had come to realize that the absolutist government of
the Papal State was an anachronism in a world energized by the impulses of
democratic and nationalist sentiments. William Gladstone, the former Prime
Minister of Britain, was one of the few statesmen at the time who appreciated
that the pope’s fall from temporal authority offered new possibilities for advancing Catholic interests. The papacy would no longer be an ecclesiastical
monarchy,but it could function as a religious and spiritual institution capable of
exerting far more influence by its counsels than by its commands.The “prisoner
of the Vatican” might henceforth employ his time and talents unfettered by political distractions and entanglements. In the final analysis, it was Pio Nono who
had the last word. At the close of his life he made a remarkable prophecy to a
group of pilgrims:“So, they want to make a gardener of me, do they? And leave
me only the Vatican and a garden? Instead of the Pope’s legitimate possessions?
So be it! But in the end, you know, the Pope will be in possession, when the
King of Italy will not even have a throne to sit upon.”
The political objective of the Black International to restore the Christian
monarchies was a failure. Yet, the aristocratic conservatives’ efforts to mobilize
Catholic opinion, the encouragement they gave to religious militancy, their pre-

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scient understanding of the press for promoting papal interests, and the priority they gave to addressing the social question created the framework from
which the Holy See would engage the new age of mass politics. Many of the
aristocrats who left the Black International in disappointment gathered together in the International Union of Fribourg, which became a think tank on
social issues and ultimately contributed to the progressive social ideas that
emerged in Rerum Novarum and its successor Quadragesimo Anno, as well as
the reactionary ideology of the Action Française. In the final analysis, these
seemingly anachronistic conservatives left a large footprint on the landscape of
twentieth-century Catholic political history.
JAY P. CORRIN
Boston University

Friedrich von Hügel, Cuthbert Hamilton Turner et les Bollandistes. Correspondance. Présentation, édition et commentaire par Bernard Joassart.
[Tabularium hagiographicum, vol. 2.] (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes.
2002. Pp. 157. 40€.)
An adequate appreciation of this book requires the reader to have some
sense of the Société des Bollandistes and its extraordinary history. As the late
Benedictine historian Dom David Knowles noted forty years ago, the Bollandists were “the first great enterprise of co-operative scholarship in the modern
world; and theirs is the only enterprise of the seventeenth century which still
continues in active function.” Père Charles De Smedt (1831–1911), the group’s
president at the beginning of the twentieth century, modestly defined the Société in 1907 as “an association of ecclesiastical scholars engaged in editing the
Acta Sanctorum . . . a great hagiographical collection begun during the first
years of the seventeenth century, and continued to our own day.”
The idea which eventually led to the creation of this group enterprise came
from Heribert Rosweyde (1569–1629), a Flemish Jesuit professor of philosophy
in the order’s college at Douai,who used his spare hours to explore the libraries
of neighboring monasteries. His special interest in hagiography led him to the
discovery that ancient texts of the manuscripts of saints’ lives were quite different from the elaborate effusions of their later, more literary editors. Rosweyde persuaded his superiors to allow him to collect and publish the texts in
their original forms. He created a plan and publicly announced his intentions,
but died with not a single page ready for the printer. The Belgian Jesuit provincial asked John van Bolland, S.J. (1596–1665), to examine Rosweyde’s papers
and suggest what to do with them. Bolland realized the value of the collection,
persuaded his superior to make a commitment of manpower and space, completely reworked Rosweyde’s original plan, and the greatest hagiographical project ever imagined was underway. With the publication of the first volumes of
the texts, replete with introductory notes, the scholarly world of Europe was

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both intrigued and supportive,and even leading Protestant scholars in those antagonistic times sent to these Jesuits manuscripts and scholarly communications. Bolland was soon joined by the intellectually outstanding young Jesuit
Godfrey Henschen (1601–1681), whose erudition and methodological improvements were typical of what was to come from the group. Daniel von Papenbroeck (1628–1714),another brilliant scholar,joined Bolland and Henschen
in 1659 and in 1660 began with Henschen a two-and-one-half-year tour of major
European seats of ecclesiastical manuscripts to copy them for their work. Not
one eighteenth-century Bollandist name matches the abilities of the aforementioned three, though the work went forward satisfactorily, and then in 1773
the Jesuit order was suppressed by the pope. The Bollandists and their library
and work were sheltered by the Benedictine abbey of Caudenberg in Brussels
and were supported by a stipend from the government. However, when the
sympathetic Maria Theresa was succeeded by her son Joseph II, the abbey was
suppressed and the Bollandists’ library was ordered to be sold. The Premonstratensian abbey at Tongerloo arranged to take the Bollandist library and printing equipment, and to shelter the Bollandists themselves; but in 1794 the
French revolutionary Republic invaded Belgium, dispersing the Premonstratensians and suppressing the Bollandists. Although the Jesuits were restored to the
Church in 1814, the Bollandists were not reconstituted until 1837.
Any group of scholars using the best critical historical methods of the day to
interpret the past is bound to run into opposition from vested interests, when
some of the latter’s truths are demonstrated to be myths or even fabrications.
Already in the seventeenth century, when Daniel von Papenbroeck suggested
that the Carmelite rule did not date back to the prophet Elias—a belief universally held by those religious—, he was attacked by dozens of scurrilous pamphlets and accused of heresy by the Spanish Inquisition. Writing in 1907 of the
Bollandists’ work since the suppression, Père Charles De Smedt noted that
some critics thought the group was too timid in certain conclusions drawn
from their evidences. “Another class of censors reproach the Bollandists for
quite the reverse,” he wrote,“accusing them of not showing sufficient respect
towards what they call tradition, and of being too often hypercritical.”He wrote
this in the year in which the pope published Pascendi dominici gregis, the
peak of the so-called modernist crisis, which was itself an example of the very
problem which the Bollandists had faced for centuries.
In this book under review a contemporary Bollandist shows the reader how
the Bollandists suffered from, but also weathered, the modernist period and its
aftermath, and he does so through his introduction and notes as well as the
edited correspondence. In his introduction Père Joassart shows that Père De
Smedt recruited and trained one of the finest groups of Bollandists ever, and
through his own Principes de la critique historique taught those young Jesuits
how the requirements of critical historical writing could and should be applied
to ecclesiastical history too. Perhaps the most outstanding of the young men
was Hippolyte Delehaye (1859–1941), whose specialty became Byzantine hagiography, and whose Les légendes hagiographiques (1905) was saved from

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the Index only by the intervention of the Belgian government.Nevertheless,the
result was that the Bollandists were once again suspect in Rome. Joassart believes that Delehaye found greater stimulation from the general intellectual ferment of his day than did his confreres, and this led him to correspond with
other scholars engaged in areas of religious studies other than his own. Besides
already having published a major study of Delehaye, Joassart has also published
parts of Delehaye’s correspondence with other scholars, and this book includes
two more: Baron Friedrich von Hügel and Professor Cuthbert Hamilton Turner.
Baron von Hügel, a biblical critic and philosopher of religion, was, of course,
a leading figure in the Catholic modernist controversy; whereas Professor
Turner was a high-church Anglican and Oxford biblical scholar who had been a
founding member of The Journal of Theological Studies. This exchange of letters between Père Delehaye and these two men contextualizes the problems of
the day and makes them personal. All three men were dedicated scholars for
whom scholarship was both their vocation and the working framework of their
lives; and these letters demonstrate at what great cost such work is achieved.
They also demonstrate the compassionate humanity of all three men. In this
correspondence the reader glimpses the support which the men gave to one
another in both their trials and triumphs, as they exchange their publications
and work to make them known in their respective countries. With von Hügel
Delehaye chafes under the repressive and censorious atmosphere of Pius X’s
Rome, and longs for a papacy which understands and promotes serious scholarship in ecclesiastical studies. Through the letters between Delehaye and
Turner the reader sees some of the devastation caused by World War I. Turner’s
brother was wounded outside of Ypres, and Delehaye was imprisoned by the
Germans and condemned to ten years of forced labor because he had collaborated on La Libre Belgique, a publication of the Belgian resistance to the German occupation. This collection includes fifty-one written exchanges between
Delehaye and Turner, and thirty between Delehaye and von Hügel. There are
also seven earlier letters between von Hügel and the Bollandists De Smedt and
Van Ortroy.
LAWRENCE BARMANN
Saint Louis, Missouri

Pedro Segura: Un cardenal de fronteras. By Francisco Gil Delgado. (Madrid:
Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos. 2001. Pp. xxvii, 786. €33.56.)
In the political and ecclesiastical history of Spain during the first half of the
twentieth century, few figures were more controversial than Pedro Segura y
Sáenz (1880–1957), bishop of Coria (1920–1927), archbishop of Burgos
(1927–1928), archbishop of Toledo and primate of Spain (1928–1931), and
archbishop of Seville (1937–1955). His ingrained hostility toward the democratic reforms of the Second Republic and his monarchist sympathies led to his
expulsion from the country within weeks of the Republic’s proclamation

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(1931). The Vatican, anxious to safeguard the Church’s position as best it could
in the new political order, forced his resignation from the primatial see a few
months later. After six years of Roman exile, Segura returned as archbishop of
Seville. Although deeply conservative in his political views, his resentment at
the limitations imposed on the Church by what he perceived as an emerging totalitarian regime led to a series of pastoral letters and confrontations with the
regime’s quasi-fascist party, the Falange, between 1938 and 1940 that made him
persona non grata with Franco.
During the late 1940’s and early 1950’s,the cardinal issued a series of pastoral
letters criticizing what he saw as the authorities’ laxity before the growth, minuscule though it was, of Protestant churches in his diocese. For a regime intent
on negotiating a treaty with the United States,these repeated attacks proved embarrassing and used up whatever credit the cardinal had before the regime. His
ecclesiastical credit proved no greater. His rigid and dictatorial administration
of the diocese alienated him from his clergy and to some extent from his fellow
bishops. In 1954 the Vatican, supported by the regime, carried out a series of
maneuvers that culminated in the appointment of a coadjutor archbishop with
full administrative powers. Segura, using his legal skills as a canonist, resisted to
the point that the archdiocese had two functioning archbishops for several
weeks, although in the end he had no choice but to accept the fait accompli.
Francisco Gil Delgado, canon of Seville cathedral and ecclesiastical historian,
has written a book that is difficult to classify. It is part biography, part commentary on Spain’s twentieth-century history, part personal memoir. The approach
is strictly chronological with all of these elements mixing together uncomfortably in each chapter.The author has used Segura’s personal archive,although he
found that many files had been emptied by persons unknown. He has also consulted other church archives and interviewed individuals who knew the cardinal over the course of his career. Regrettably, the book’s scholarly apparatus is
thin, perhaps understandable in a work clearly intended for general readers.
The book provides fascinating details about Segura’s career. But it provides
little new information about the controversy surrounding Segura in 1931. The
author sees Segura primarily as a victim of an unfair campaign launched by the
republican government, although the cardinal was among the last of the Spanish bishops to urge the faithful to accept the new regime. Moreover, with characteristic indiscretion he did so while praising King Alfonso XIII, to whom he
owed his appointment as archbishop of Toledo.Segura’s political ideas,inspired
by a deep hostility toward modern liberal values and a determination to defend
the Church’s interests, were common enough among the clergy of the time. But
in circumstances that demanded caution, the cardinal’s imprudence made him
a symbol of clerical intransigence for republican opinion. Curiously, he was not
overtly political beyond his almost romantic sympathy for the monarchy. He
was not an admirer, for example, of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship of the
1920’s in spite of its concessions to the Church, while his monarchist sympathies diminished considerably after 1931 until the last years of his life when he

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supported the pretender to the throne, the Count of Barcelona, whose program
of democratic reform seemed in flagrant contradiction to his long-held views.
The relationship of Segura with the regime after he became archbishop of
Seville receives extensive treatment. The author argues that the cardinal’s relations with Franco were far better, at least until 1952, than historians have assumed and that his clashes with the Seville Falange during the late 1930’s over
the painting of fascist symbols on church walls did not affect his standing with
the authorities. In fact, Segura, implacable in his hostility toward the imposition
of a totalitarian state, wounded the regime where it hurt. In spite of official disapproval, he published Pius XI’s Mit brennender Sorge in his diocesan bulletin,
attacked the regime’s suppression of Catholic student associations, and
protested against rigid government censorship of church publications. The research of Antonio Marquina Barrio shows clearly that the cabinet discussed removing the cardinal. But Franco dared not proceed, fearing that an unpleasant
comparison would be made between such an action and Segura’s expulsion by
the Republic.
For those interested in the history of the Spanish Church, the book provides
a rare view of its internal operations from an insider. Segura’s relations with the
parish and cathedral clergy were difficult, perhaps not surprising in a prelate
who had spent only one year of a long career in parish work. Segura ruled his
clergy with an iron hand and was not averse to taking reprisals against priests
who dared to question his administration. Although sympathetic to Segura in
some respects, the author is critical of what he sees as nothing less than an example of episcopal despotism. In the end, the picture of Segura that emerges is
that of an idiosyncratic and authoritarian loner absolutely convinced of the correctness of his opinions. To his credit, this allowed him to question the totalitarian tendencies of the Franco regime in its early days. But it also moved him
to the anti-Protestant diatribes that contributed to his removal from office.
WILLIAM J. CALLAHAN
University of Toronto (Emeritus)

True Catholic Womanhood:Gender Ideology in Franco’s Spain.By Aurora G.Morcillo. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. 2000. Pp. ix, 214. $36.00.)
The Franco regime shared with the Roman Catholic Church a series of assumptions about gender roles and their allegedly ‘natural’ basis in sexual biology. In this way of thinking, women were destined by their reproductive
capacity to a life centred on the home and the care of children. Work outside
the home was at best an unfortunate necessity, made more tolerable if it could
be interpreted—for instance in teaching or nursing—as an extension of the
woman’s domestic role as nurturer and healer. By contrast, the external world
of work was regarded as a male sphere. It followed that boys and girls should be

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educated separately and differently. Predetermined gender roles defined what
was appropriate and possible in education, in work, and in social relations.
To this conservative ideology of female domesticity, the Franco regime added
the element of duties to the state. Like many other authoritarian systems, it held
that women served the state and the nation, as well as God and society, by rearing children and inculcating in them suitable values and attitudes. But, paradoxically, this wider responsibility required training courses in practical skills, and
patriotism, which actually removed women from the domestic environment.Aurora Morcillo is particularly interested in this ‘nationalizing’ of women in
Franco’s Spain, especially through the Womens’ Section of the Falange, to which
the regime entrusted the education in citizenship of Spanish women. Many previous scholars have explored the paradox of Womens’ Section members instructing other women, quite professionally, in how to give absolute priority to
being a wife and mother, in the home. Like them, Aurora Morcillo notes the genuine enhancement of skills and widening of experience,that this training—however conservative—often provided.She then adds a further strand to her analysis
of women’s education in the Franco regime, by pointing out the new demands
and the new opportunities introduced by the modernizing of the economy in
the 1960’s. Women were to be wives and mothers, patriotic citizens, and also
contributors to the emerging capitalist economy in a period of rapid growth.
Professor Morcillo traces carefully the strains and ambiguities of the conflicting demands of a conservative gender ideology, the ‘nationalizing’ of women,
and the involvement of women as producers and consumers in an expanding
market economy. She chooses to do this by studying the Womens’ Section, and
university-educated women, where these strains were apparent. Of course, they
were also apparent, and always had been, further down the social scale, among
women workers. But this is a useful analysis, reinforced by some interview material. She is able to show that the efforts by church and state to define what
women could be and could do were only partly successful. As she points out,
“The language and nature of true Catholic womanhood was not fixed”( p. 164).
There were too many other influences and experiences for the identity of Spanish Catholic women to be effectively controlled.
FRANCES LANNON
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford

Bishop von Galen: German Catholicism and National Socialism. By Beth A.
Griech-Polelle.(New Haven: Yale University Press.2002.Pp.xi,259.$35.00.)
Bishop of Münster from October, 1933, until his death in March, 1946, five
weeks after receiving a cardinal’s hat from Pope Pius XII,von Galen is celebrated
as “the Lion of Münster” for his three dramatic sermons against the suppression
of religious houses and the dispersal of their inhabitants, and the killing of the
mentally ill, preached in 1941 at the height of Hitler’s military victories.

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Beth A. Griech-Polelle believes that von Galen is over-rated.“I do not dispute,”
she writes,“that von Galen was a symbol of what was possible in the way of resistance under the Third Reich.” She charges, however, that he protested only
when church interests were at stake, that he never encouraged others to resist
the regime, and that he did nothing to help Jews.
Many of the primary sources for Galen’s career were lost in wartime bombing. The secondary literature is in German. Griech-Polelle deserves credit for
having read this material, for archival research in Germany, and for having written the first scholarly study of von Galen in English. Unfortunately, her understanding of the evidence is faulty, and her interpretation of it often false.
She appears to lack familiarity with things Catholic. How else to explain the
book’s title:“Bishop” rather than “Cardinal”? (She mistakenly awards this title to
the papal Nuncio in Berlin, Cesare Orsenigo, a bent reed from whom Pius XII
withheld the customary red hat.) She mistranslates Paul’s words on the Church
as the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:26) in order to criticize a sermon von Galen
preached on this text in 1938. The public reception of von Galen in Münster’s
Cathedral Square on March 16, 1946, following his return from Rome, was not
“his last Mass.”It was not a Mass at all, simply his last public appearance.And it is
untrue that Galen’s “canonization process was officially closed in 1987.” The
process of beatification (the necessary prelude to canonization) continues.
Von Galen’s protest against the killing of the mentally ill had nothing to do
with church interests. Moreover, it directly contradicts the charge that “von
Galen lost sight of the larger, more humane questions involved in the brutality
of the Nazi regime.” His protest against the suppression of religious houses was
concerned not with the buildings but with people. What moved the deeply
emotional von Galen was the sudden expulsion from their homes of people he
revered for their decades of selfless service: nuns, religious priests and brothers—including Jesuits, “my teachers [in Innsbruck], tutors and friends, [to
whom] I remain bound in love and gratitude until my last breath.”
It is true that von Galen encouraged passive but not active resistance. He expressed this in a metaphor which runs like a golden thread through the second
of his three sermons.“We are the anvil, not the hammer! . . . The object which
is forged on the anvil receives its shape not alone from the hammer but also
from the anvil. . . . Become hard! Remain firm! If it is sufficiently tough and firm
and hard, the anvil usually lasts longer than the hammer.”
Only a person utterly unfamiliar with life under a totalitarian regime of ruthless terror could criticize a leader for failing to encourage rebellion in such circumstances. In Nazi Germany active resistance, however modest, meant
immediate arrest, usually death. The Catholic Church honors martyrdom. It
does not encourage it.
A newly published book by Sebastian Haffner, a young anti-Nazi jurist who
emigrated to England for political reasons in 1938, shows vividly how limited
were the possibilities for resistance to Hitler as early as 1933. Published in Eng-

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lish in 2002 under the title Defying Hitler, the book was written in 1939 and
discovered only after Haffner’s death in 1999. Anyone unconvinced of the effectiveness of Nazi terror by Haffner’s testimony should read that of Count Helmut von Moltke, hanged in Berlin in January, 1945, for organizing the “Kreisau
Circle,” which discussed building a better Germany after Hitler’s defeat. In a
wartime letter to a friend in England von Moltke described the virtual impossibility of resistance in wartime Germany: inability to communicate by telephone, post, or messenger; the danger of speaking openly even to trusted
friends (who might be arrested and tortured); the exhaustion of people whose
energies were fully occupied with the ordinary tasks of day-to-day survival;
nineteen guillotines executing an estimated fifty people daily, the relatives
cowed into silence for fear of suffering the same fate. (Cf. Beate Rhum von
Oppen [ed.], Letters to Freya 1939–1945 [New York: Knopf, 1990], pp.
281–290.)
Griech-Polelle believes that the German bishops underestimated their collective ability to resist. She cites a comment by Konrad Adenauer in 1946.“I believe that if all the bishops had together made public statements from the
pulpits on a particular day,they could have prevented a great deal.”From March,
1933, however, Adenauer refused all contact with opponents of the regime. His
biographer writes:“Adenauer respected the courage of those who opposed the
Nazis, but not their prudence. His ice-cold realism was confirmed by the history
of the opposition from 1938 to 1944”(Hans-Peter Schwartz, Adenauer. Der Aufstieg: 1876–1952 [Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1986], p. 408). If the bishops could not count on a staunch anti-Nazi Catholic like Adenauer, where was
their support to come from?
Like Pius XII, von Galen confronted the agonizing dilemma of knowing that
the price of any protest he might launch would be paid by others. The Nazis
preferred to go after the “little people,” rather than their leaders.“The fact that
he was never interrogated or arrested . . . after delivering the sermons,” GriechPolelle writes,“suggests that [von Galen] could have risked more.” That is hindsight. In his first sermon von Galen mentioned the possibility of his arrest. He
also reckoned with the possibility of martyrdom. Griech-Polelle herself reports
that people were executed simply for distributing copies of von Galen’s sermons. How many more might have died had he “risked more”?
Griech-Polelle garbles the chronology of the 1933 Concordat negotiations
and errs in saying that the treaty made Rome “the first legal partner to Hitler’s
regime.” That honor belongs to the Soviet Union, which concluded a trade
agreement with Hitler two months before the Concordat.
The claim that Pius XI’s 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, in the drafting of which von Galen had a hand,“contained no outright condemnation of
anti-Semitism”is seriously misleading. It contained an outspoken condemnation
of Nazi racial doctrines; and no one was in any doubt about their target—least
of all the Nazis, who unleashed a furious persecution of those who had printed
and distributed the document. Almost half the copies were circulated in von

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Galen’s own diocese. Griech-Polelle herself concedes that von Galen “protested
the racism of the Nazis” as early as January, 1934.
It is true that none of the German bishops mounted the defense of Jews
which we today, with knowledge of the Holocaust, would wish.Von Galen, with
his episcopal cousin Konrad von Preysing in Berlin, tried to move the bishops
to say more, but without success. For the Nazis, on the other hand, whose propaganda constantly portrayed the bishops, as well as Pacelli in Rome, as traitorous supporters of the “international Jewish conspiracy,” the bishops said far too
much.
If von Galen “refused [in 1942] to believe the unconfirmed reports of mass
murder,” he was in good company. Even after the deportation from Holland of
over 15,000 Jews, the Jewish Council in Amsterdam refused to believe eyewitness accounts of mass murder by people who had been in Auschwitz, and dismissed BBC reports of such killings as “anti-German propaganda” (cf. Louis de
Jong,“Die Niederlande und Auschwitz,” in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte,
17 [ January, 1969], 1–16).
The book’s treatment of Pius XII is especially faulty. Griech-Polelle accepts
uncritically the black legend of the Pope’s “silence”in the face of the Holocaust.
She gives a totally false account of a papal letter to Bishop von Preysing of
Berlin on September 30, 1941. Griech-Polelle translates:“We emphasize that, because the Church in Germany is dependent upon your public behavior . . . in
public declarations you are duty-bound to exercise restraint.” She continues:
“He continued his admonishment by claiming that although bishops such as
von Galen who championed the things of God and the Holy Church would always have his support, he nevertheless ‘require[d] you and your colleagues not
to protest.’” This completely falsifies the Pope’s words.
The Pope said that von Galen’s recently delivered three sermons had given
him “more consolation and satisfaction than we have felt for a long time.” Such
forceful protests by the bishops in Germany were especially important, he continued,“since the very difficult and often conflicted general political situation
requires the head of the whole Church [i.e., the Pope, not the German bishops!] to exercise reserve in his public statements” (cf. Burkhart Schneider [ed.],
Die Briefe Pius XII. an die deutschen Bischöfe 1939–1944 [Mainz: MatthiasGrünewald, 1966], p. 155; emphasis supplied).
Far from requiring the German bishops “not to protest,” Pius XII explained in
a letter to von Preysing of April 30, 1943, that he must leave it to bishops with
knowledge of the local situation to decide whether protests would do more
harm than good (cf. Schneider, op. cit., p. 240). Griech-Polelle’s suggestion that
von Galen’s red hat may have been given him in part for “adopting the pope’s
priorities and curbing his own behavior after the 1941 denunciations” is pure
phantasy. The honor, unprecedented in Münster as in Berlin (whose bishop received the hat in the same consistory with von Galen), was Pius XII’s accolade

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for two bishops whom he deeply admired for their courage in Germany’s darkest hour.
Coming less than a year after the war’s conclusion, the creation of three German cardinals in February, 1946, was also the Pope’s reminder of “another Germany”which,despite the crimes committed by criminals who had declared war
on their country’s historic Christian values, still deserved an honorable place in
the company of nations. Both Pius XII and von Galen rejected the notion of collective guilt. In Catholic teaching guilt is always personal. It was this truth
which enabled the Second Vatican Council to declare that “neither all Jews indiscriminately at that time [of Jesus’ death], nor Jews today, can be charged with
the crimes committed during [Christ’s] passion” (Nostrae aetate, par. 4).
One is reluctant to criticize so severely the work of a young scholar just embarked on her career. To have one’s first book published by a prestigious university press is no small achievement. Would the same publisher, or any other
major house, have accepted her manuscript had it been favorable to von Galen?
One may be permitted a doubt.
Like the Pope who honored him, von Galen was a man of his times, limited in
a hundred ways by his upbringing and experience of life in a world already on
its deathbed when Hitler became Germany’s Chancellor on January 30, 1933.
An aristocrat imbued with the traditions of nineteenth-century nationalism, von
Galen shared the widespread horror of German conservatives at the political
disorder and social licentiousness of the Weimar republic. Like most of his fellow bishops, von Galen found it difficult to believe (as von Preysing told friends
after Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933) that their country was “in the hands of
criminals and fools” (cited from Walter Adolph, Kardinal Preysing und zwei
Diktaturen [Berlin:Morus-Verlag,1971],p.16).Even when the evidence for von
Preysing’s words became undeniable, von Galen still tried to show that he was
a patriotic German. Griech-Polelle herself gives many examples.
The remarkable thing is not that von Galen’s resistance was “selective” (as
Griech-Polelle says), but that a man who continued as bishop to mourn the disappearance of the patriarchal world of his youth could mount the resistance
that he did. The spectacle of von Galen’s towering six foot seven inch figure
thundering from the pulpit on July 13, 1941,“Wir fordern Gerechtigkeit (We
demand justice)”—knowing that he could be carried off that same night to a
concentration camp and death—will always command respect.
Perhaps the best judgment on von Galen may be the one said to have been
pronounced on Pius XII by his longtime German secretary, Father Robert
Leiber, S.J.:“Grande si, santo no.”
JOHN JAY HUGHES
Archdiocese of St. Louis

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Pius XII and the Holocaust: Understanding the Controversy. By José M.
Sánchez. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.
2002. Pp. ix, 197. $39.95 cloth; $19.95 paperback.)
The first criticism of the silence of Pope Pius XII when confronted by the
atrocities of the Holocaust was contained in the 1963 German stage production
of Rolf Hochhuth’s play, The Deputy. Since that date, critics and defenders of
Pius XII have debated the explanation of his behavior, and this debate has recently been given new life by the 1999 publication of Hitler’s Pope by the
British author, John Cornwell. The present study by José M. Sánchez is an examination of the historical writing on Pius XII and the Holocaust, and, as such,
it deconstructs and evaluates the arguments of the pope’s critics and defenders.
From a review of the literature on the silence of Pius XII,Sanchez assesses the
value of the available sources, and outlines what we know about what the pope
knew of the Holocaust and was likely to have believed. Sanchez also attempts
to provide clarification by contextualizing the public wartime statements of the
pope. His main conclusion is that Pius XII could never adequately resolve the
dilemma between being the Vicar of Christ on earth and being the institutional
head of the Roman Catholic Church. For Pius, moral and institutional priorities
were hopelessly intertwined and never really clarified in his own mind. This
lack of clarity, contends Sánchez, is what has given rise to the debate, since the
inconsistencies of the papal utterances can be used to support many explanations for his behavior.
In the body of the book,Sánchez evaluates the explanations which have been
advanced for Pius’ silence. Based on the available evidence, Sánchez dismisses
as the least likely reasons for the silence the arguments that Pius XII was an antiSemite, that he was primarily concerned about preserving the security of the
Vatican City State, that he had a personal fear of being incarcerated by Hitler,
and that he was fearful lest Rome should be destroyed. While deeming it to be
a more significant argument, Sánchez also dismisses the likelihood that the
pope feared Bolshevism more than Nazism and that Pius was hoping for a German victory on the eastern front.
The reasons that Sánchez puts forward as significant explanations for the
pope’s silence include a concern to preserve the German Concordat of 1933
and the protection it offered to the German Catholic community; the pope’s reluctance to create a crisis of conscience for German Catholics by forcing them
to choose between Hitler and their church; the traditional caution of Vatican
diplomacy and the papal desire to act as a mediator to help end the war. While
these reasons are all important, even more significant, claims Sánchez, was the
documented desire of Pius XII to do no harm to the victims of Nazi persecution
through his belief that any public protest would only have made matters worse.
The book is a balanced and judicious study of the evidence and the arguments in the debate over the silence of Pius XII. Sánchez is scrupulously fair in
his presentation, being concerned that too many writers on the subject start

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from a preconceived position and do not allow their arguments to be guided by
the evidence. Nevertheless, this book really does not add much to our knowledge of this issue, based as it is on familiar secondary sources and the published
Vatican documents.
Sánchez exemplifies a dispassionate approach to this historical problem, although he unfairly implies that the recent study by Michael Phayer, The
Catholic Church and the Holocaust, imposes unwarranted criticism on Pius
XII. Sánchez’ book is marred by a couple of minor errors, such as the assertion
that the Secret Archives of the Vatican works under a seventy-five-year rule for
the opening of its collections ( p. 28), when the experience of the past twentyfive years is that the archives are opened, rather, at the discretion of the reigning pope. Sánchez also claims that the Vatican representative in wartime
Croatia, Abbot Marcone, had the title of “apostolic minister” ( p. 160), when the
correct title was “apostolic delegate.”
Nevertheless, this book is a useful source for understanding the issues in the
debate over Pius XII.
PETER C. KENT
University of New Brunswick
A Moral Reckoning:The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its
Unfulfilled Duty of Repair. By Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf. 2002. Pp. 352. $25.00.)
A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and
its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair is yet another attack on the Catholic Church, focusing on World War II and the Holocaust. This book, however, is noteworthy
both for the breathtaking scope of its claims and the air of righteous indignation that infuses it. Not content to argue that Pope Pius XII did less to save the
Jews than he should have, the author goes much farther—to attack Pius as an
anti-Semite and the Church as an institution thoroughly permeated by antiSemitism. In fact, he argues that “the main responsibility for producing this alltime leading Western hatred lies with Christianity. More specifically, with the
Catholic Church.”
Goldhagen claims that the Catholic Church provided the Nazis with a “motive for murder” and should be held to a moral reckoning for its sinful behavior.
He argues that the authors of the New Testament inserted anti-Semitic passages
into the text decades after the crucifixion in order to serve their own political
needs and that these passages should be expunged. As such, Goldhagen’s book
is not simply an attack on the papacy or the Catholic Church, but on Christianity itself, especially the New Testament, which Goldhagen says is “fictitious”
and “not a reliable rendition of facts and events, but legend.”
Goldhagen’s focus is on those passages of the New Testament that long have
been recognized as containing language that can be misunderstood. For in-

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stance, he cites John, chapter 8. Here Jesus is instructing people on the need to
follow him. Jesus tells them to reject Satan and follow him to the Father.“If you
remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free.” He continues:
You belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your father’s
desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth,
because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character,
because he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you
do not believe me.
Goldhagen argues that these words are anti-Semitic because Jesus is calling
“Jews” the “children of the devil.”
The Gospel does say that Jesus was talking to a group of Jews, but that—in
context—is like saying he was talking to any group of people who were not his
followers. In John, chapter 8, he was trying to convince a group of those people
to follow him. He was not talking to “all Jews,” and his words, as recorded in
scripture, were not anti-Semitic!
Goldhagen is also outraged by Matthew 27:24–25, where Jesus is handed
over to the Roman authorities, ultimately to face crucifixion. Pontius Pilate offered to free one of the “criminals,” and the crowd called for Barabbas. As
Matthew reports:
So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying,“I am
innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.”
And all the people answered,“His blood be on us and on our children!” Goldhagen argues that Matthew here falsely attributes blame for the crucifixion to
all Jews for all times, that this instilled a hatred of Jews into the European psyche, and that Hitler merely had to exploit this pre-existing attitude to his own
perverted ends.
The remedy that Goldhagen proposes includes having Christians agree that
Christ is not the only way to salvation and having them (with help from nonChristians) re-write the Gospels to purge offensive,anti-Semitic passages.He goes
on to demand that the Catholic Church make reparations to Jews. He says that
money reparations are deserved; political reparations are useful; but above all he
stresses the need for the Church to admit its moral failings.He asks for apologies,
the erection of suitable monuments, an end to the Church’s diplomatic relations
with other nations, support for Israel, and repudiation of any claim that Christianity has supplanted Judaism. Instead, the Church must embrace religious pluralism, acknowledging that salvation is not limited to the Catholic Church or to
Christianity. (Along the way, he also tells us that white southerners should make
restitution to African-Americans for slavery and segregation.)

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Let us first be clear that the Catholic Church does not read Matthew the way
that Goldhagen suggests.At the Second Vatican Council, the Church made clear
that guilt for Jesus’ death is not attributable to all the Jews of that time or to any
Jews of the current times. The Catholic Church has always understood that
Jesus was born into a Jewish family. His mother was Jewish. His early followers
were Jewish, and the people who first heard him preach were Jewish. As Pope
Pius XI said in 1938:
Mark well that in the Catholic Mass, Abraham is our Patriarch and forefather.
Anti-Semitism is incompatible with the lofty thought which that fact expresses. It is a movement with which we Christians can have nothing to do.
No,no,I say to you it is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti-Semitism.
It is inadmissible. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny
of Abraham. Spiritually, we are all Semites.
Goldhagen actually tries to twist this proclamation to show that Piux XI was an
anti-Semite,but he fails.In January,1939,the National Jewish Monthly reported
that “the only bright spot in Italy has been the Vatican, where fine humanitarian
statements by the Pope have been issuing regularly.”
Certainly no one would suggest that Christians and Jews have gotten along
well at all times throughout history. Prior to 1870, when Popes had real temporal power, Jews were sometimes treated with religious and political contempt.
Many Catholic officials of this period were fearful that Jews would lead Christians away from Christ, or worse. They found reason for their fear in Old Testament passages such as Joshua 6:21 ( Jews “observed the ban by putting to the
sword all living creatures in the city: men and women, young and old, as well as
oxen, sheep and asses.”), Deuteronomy 20:17 (“You [ Jews] must doom them
all . . . ”), and Deuteronomy 7:1–5 (“When the LORD, your God, brings you
[ Jews] into the land which you are to enter . . . and you defeat them, you shall
doom them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy. . . .”). In
1564, Pope Pius IV announced that the Talmud could be distributed only on the
condition that the portions offensive to Christians (such as the section depicting Jesus boiling in a pot of human excrement) were erased. Earlier Popes had,
at times, banned it altogether.
These matters are not reflective of happy periods in the history of ChristianJewish relations, but almost all papal critics acknowledge that throughout even
the worst periods, Popes regularly condemned violence directed against Jews
and offered protection when they could.This Catholic “anti-Judaism”was a matter of religion,not race.In fact,the more common charges arising out of this history related to efforts directed toward encouraging Jews to convert—to
become Catholics.
By contrast, Nazi racial anti-Semitism did not encourage Jews to “join the
party.” This “scientific” position drew support from biological arguments and
the absence of religion. Nazis showed films equating Jews, handicapped persons,and other “undesirables”with vermin that needed to be exterminated.This

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was in direct contradiction to everything that the Catholic Church had always
taught about the fundamental dignity of all human life.
In point of fact, Goldhagen selected a particularly difficult target for his rage.
Catholics have an authority, a history of scholarship, and a Magisterium. The
Holy See’s Pontifical Biblical Commission has devoted significant attention to
this issue. In a document entitled: The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible, the commission discussed the charges that the
New Testament is anti-Semitic. As explained in the introduction:
the reproofs addressed to Jews in the New Testament are neither more frequent nor more virulent than the accusations against Israel in the Law and
the Prophets, at the heart of the Old Testament itself. They belong to the
prophetic language of the Old Testament and are,therefore,to be interpreted
in the same way as the prophetic messages: they warn against contemporary
aberrations, but they are essentially of a temporary nature and always open
to new possibilities of salvation.
This document, which is 105 pages long, goes on to discuss the long and generally close relationship between Catholics and Jews.“[T]he main conclusion to
be drawn is that the Jewish people and their Sacred Scriptures occupy a very
important place in the Christian Bible. . . . Without the Old Testament, the New
Testament would be an incomprehensible book, a plant deprived of its roots
and destined to dry up and wither.” Quoting Pope John Paul II, the commission
explains:“The Jewish religion is not ‘extrinsic’ to us, but in a certain manner, it
is ‘intrinsic’ to our religion. We have therefore a relationship with it which we
do not have with any other religion.”
Goldhagen demands apologies from the Catholic Church, but he scoffs at the
many times that John Paul II has reached out to his Jewish “elder brothers” over
the past quarter of a century. The Holy Father has called upon Jews and Christians to “work together to build a future in which there will be no more antiJewish feeling among Christians, or any anti-Christian feeling among Jews. We
have many things in common. We can do much for the sake of peace, for a more
human and more fraternal world.” Goldhagen, unfortunately, is doing precisely
the opposite of what the Pope called upon people to do.
Rather than truthfully pursing historical fact, Goldhagen culled the worst accusations from authors like Gary Wills, Susan Zuccotti, John Cornwell, and others without giving any consideration to the serious flaws that have been noted
in their books. He took many of his larger themes from Constantine’s Sword by
James Carroll, an ex-priest, whom Goldhagen calls “a devout Catholic.” Carroll
did not sound that way in his memoirs, when he scoffed at his excommunication from the Catholic Church. More troubling, however, is the way Goldhagen
selectively used secondary sources to manufacture arguments.
Goldhagen relies heavily and uncritically on Susan Zuccotti’s book, Under
His Very Windows, for his analysis of that period of the war when the Germans

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occupied Rome and northern Italy (1943–44). One of Zuccotti’s chief sources,
in turn,is the notorious Robert Katz—who was successfully sued by relatives of
Pope Pius XII and publicly condemned by Italy’s highest Court for defaming the
wartime Pope.
Goldhagen also blindly accepts John Cornwell’s mistranslation of a letter
written in 1919 by Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, when he was papal
nuncio in Munich. That year, Bolshevik revolutionaries temporarily took power
in Bavaria and began operating what might best be described as a rogue government. Pacelli sent his assistant, Monsignor Lorenzo Schioppa, to meet with
the Bolshevik leader, Eugen Levine, to determine whether representatives in Munich would be accorded diplomatic status. Levine responded by saying that he
would recognize the extra-territoriality of the foreign legations “if, and as long as
the representatives of these Powers . . . do nothing against the [Bolshevik government].” He made it clear that he “had no need” of Vatican representatives.
Pacelli wrote a six-page letter back to Rome reporting on this meeting. The
key passage, as translated by Cornwell (and accepted uncritically by Goldhagen), described the scene at the palace as follows:
. . . in the midst of all this, a gang of young women, of dubious appearance,
Jews like all the rest of them, hanging around in all the offices with lecherous
demeanor and suggestive smiles. The boss of this female rabble was Levien’s
[sic] mistress, a young Russian woman, a Jew and a divorcée, who was in
charge. And it was to her that the nunciature was obliged to pay homage in
order to proceed.
This Levien [sic] is a young man, of about thirty or thirty-five, also Russian
and a Jew. Pale, dirty, with drugged eyes, hoarse voice, vulgar, repulsive, with
a face that is both intelligent and sly.
Goldhagen suggests that these 106 words,based on Schioppa’s report,prove that
Pacelli was an anti-Semite.In truth,however,this translation is grossly misleading.
The phrase “Jews like all the rest of them” is actually a distorted, inaccurate
translation of the Italian phrase i primi. The literal translation would be “the
first ones” or “the ones just mentioned.” Similarly, the Italian word schiera
should be translated as “group”instead of “gang.”Additionally, the Italian gruppo
femminile should be translated as “female group,” not “female rabble.” The Italian occhi scialbi should be translated as “pale eyes” not “drugged eyes.”
When the entire letter is read with an accurate translation, it loses its antiSemitic tone which was introduced only by the bogus translation upon which
Goldhagen relied. Moreover, that is not the only translation problem with A
Moral Reckoning. Jody Bottum, writing in The Weekly Standard, says: “there
isn’t a Latin phrase in the book that doesn’t have an odd translation.”
A German court ordered Goldhagen’s book to be pulled from the shelves due
to a caption he wrote for a photo that shows a Catholic prelate surrounded by

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Nazis. The caption said:“Cardinal Michael Faulhaber marches between rows of
SA men at a Nazi rally in Munich.”In fact, the photo shows the papal nuncio, Cesare Orsenigo,not the Bavarian bishop Faulhaber.The city is Berlin,not Munich,
and it is not a Nazi rally but a May Day parade. Faulhaber was a staunch foe of
the Nazis, and his diocese reports that he never attended a Nazi rally. Orsenigo
was nuncio and ex-officio dean of the diplomatic corps,and so he was expected
to attend this parade which celebrated workers, not Nazis.
Another of Goldhagen’s blatant errors relates to the Franciscan friar Miroslav
Filipovic-Majstorovic, also known as “Brother Satan.” Goldhagen ends his misleading discussion of Croatia by writing: “Forty thousand . . . perished under
the unusually cruel reign of ‘Brother Satan,’ . . . Piux XII neither reproached nor
punished him. . . . during or after the war.”
Actually,“Brother Satan” was tried, defrocked, and expelled from the Franciscan order before the war ended. In fact, his expulsion occurred in April, 1943,
before he ran the extermination camp. For Pius XII to have punished him
“after the war” would have been difficult indeed, since he was executed by the
Communists in 1945.
Goldhagen argues that the Vatican “endorsed” Italy’s anti-Semitic laws. Actually, Mussolini’s “Aryan Manifesto” was issued on July 14, 1938. On July 28, 1938,
Pius XI made a public speech in which he said:“The entire human race is but a
single and universal race of men. There is no room for special races. We may
therefore ask ourselves why Italy should have felt a disgraceful need to imitate
Germany.”This was reprinted in full on the front page of the Vatican newspaper
on July 30, under a four-column headline. Other articles condemning antiSemitism (and I may have missed some) appeared on July 17, July 21, July 23,
July 30, August 13, August 22–23, October 11–18, October 20, October 23, October 24, October 26, October 27, November 3, November 14–15, November
16, November 17, November 19, November 20, November 21, November 23,
November 24, November 26, December 25, and January 19, 1939.
One of the most amazing parts of A Moral Reckoning is where Goldhagen attempts to construe the United States bishops’ 1942 statement as a slap at Pius
XII. At their annual meeting in November, 1942, the bishops released a statement on the plight of the Jews in Europe. It said, in part:
We feel a deep sense of revulsion against the cruel indignities heaped upon
Jews in conquered countries and upon defenseless peoples not of our
faith. . . . Deeply moved by the arrest and maltreatment of the Jews, we cannot stifle the cry of conscience. In the name of humanity and Christian principles, our voice is raised.
Goldhagen tries to turn this statement into a slap at the Pope and an “all but explicit rebuke of the Vatican.”Actually, the American bishops repeatedly invoked
Pius XII’s name and teachings with favor (“We recall the words of Pope Pius
XII”;“We urge the serious study of peace plans of Pope Pius XII”;“In response

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to the many appeals of our Holy Father”). Moreover, in a letter written at this
very time, Pius expressed thanks for the “constant and understanding collaboration” of the American bishops and archbishops. They replied with a letter
pledging “anew to the Holy Father our best efforts in the fulfillment of his mission of apostolic charity to war victims.” They also offered a prayer for the
Pope’s charitable collaborators. It is impossible for an honest evaluator to conclude that the bishops were trying to insult the Holy Father.
There are many other errors, omissions, and apparent falsifications in the
book. They relate to the 1933 concordat, the so-called “Hidden Encyclical,” the
attitude of many Catholic bishops, and more. It seems, however, unnecessary to
detail each of these matters again. (I did so in the June–July, 2002, issue of First
Things.) Readers should by now realize that they cannot reply upon A Moral
Reckoning. Those who are interested in learning more about Catholic teaching
regarding relations with Jews are advised to start with Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council’s renewal of the Church’s condemnation of anti-Semitism.
That is a far better place to find the truth than is Goldhagen’s book, which in
the end is nothing more than a sloppily written polemic rant.
RONALD J. RYCHLAK
University of Mississippi

Le Cardinal Liénart: Évêque de Lille, 1928–1968. By Catherine Masson. (Paris:
Éditions du Cerf. 2001. Pp. 769. 250 FF.)
Once again an historian of Catholic France has written a biography of a significant church figure in the grand style of a magnum opus. In this instance the
choice fell upon one of the two most significant transitional cardinals of the
twentieth-century French church, Achille Liénart. The other acknowledged
leader, of course, is Emmanuel Suhard, the cardinal archbishop of Paris whose
brief tenure at his see (1940–1949) witnessed an explosion of Catholic creativity—clandestine chaplains, missionary parishes, a pluralistic press, a revived
specialized Catholic Action, the Mission de France seminary, and the workerpriest movement. Suhard’s noted career emerges in yet another magnum opus,
that of Father Jean Vinatier, who himself was active in these vital French
Catholic renovations. Indeed, Vinatier had written an earlier book on Cardinal
Liénart, Le Cardinal Liénart et la Mission de France, but as the title indicates it
focuses on the bishop of Lille’s specific relationship with the troubled Mission
de France and its seminary. Hence the vast biography of Cardinal Liénart by his
niece Catherine Masson proves to be a most welcome addition to our knowledge of the twentieth-century French Catholic church as well as providing us
with the definitive biography of this great prelate.
Although one might sustain a degree of skepticism with respect to a biography written by a beloved family member, Catherine Masson presents a most
convincing and balanced account. To be sure, she writes from a Christian perspective and does not hide her admiration for the cardinal, but this exhaustive

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work is no hagiography.Cardinal Liénart’s contradictions and blinders appear in
this biography. They are explained, but they are not explained away. That she
displays her own analysis is to be expected, and even where one might challenge her conclusions she makes a convincing case. In his attitude toward the
Communists Liénart carried his suspicions, perhaps, without sufficient nuances. At the same time, as Masson points out, he was no simplistic foe of the
local Marxists and their organizations. He remained in dialogue with them and
sustained the loyalty of every one of his worker-priests even when they were
disappointed in him. His embarrassing silence with respect to treatment of the
Jews during the German Occupation receives sufficient attention, but the full
depths of anti-Judaism within the Church await more analysis which likely will
cast more shame on the cardinal. His behavior, in spite of political limitations,
appeared tawdry in light of such figures as Cardinals Saliège and Gerlier.
Nonetheless, the heroic figure who strides across major changes in France
and within its church emerges as most convincing in Dr. Masson’s work. Her
portrayal of a pious, conservative figure compelled by his faith to be a pastor in
a changing world rings true.His courage in the trenches,the loyalty he inspired,
his commitment to working-class justice and specialized Catholic Action, his relationship with clerical and lay leaders, his capacity for dialogue and his openness to Vatican Council II combine to make him a compelling figure. Catherine
Masson has achieved her goal admirably in her presentation of a French
Catholic leader of faith and integrity who straddled a radically changing church
with creativity and vision in his four-decade episcopate.
OSCAR COLE-ARNAL
Waterloo Lutheran Seminary
Waterloo, Ontario
American
Spain in the Southwest:A Narrative History of Colonial New Mexico, Arizona,
Texas, and California. By John L. Kessell. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2002. Pp. xvii, 462. $45.00.)
Herbert Eugene Bolton, before and during his tenure in the history department at the University of California from 1911 until his death in 1953, initiated
the serious study of the areas in the United States colonized by Spain. In 1921
the publication of his book, The Spanish Borderlands: A Chronicle of Old
Florida and the Southwest, provided Spanish colonial North America with the
name it has been associated with ever since.For much of the first three-quarters
of the twentieth century, Bolton and his students dominated the field of Spanish Borderlands studies, producing an outpouring of hundreds of scholarly articles and books on three hundred years of Spanish activities from California to
Florida. For the most part, the Boltonians stressed the heroic achievements of
individual Spaniards and the positive contributions of Hispanic institutions and
culture.The exploits of intrepid Spanish explorers and priests were particularly

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character sketches of the various personalities—including some common Hispanics—who dotted the landscape of the Spanish Southwest. At times, though,
the narrative is very confusing.For example,the author uses three chapters to tell
the story of the simultaneous reconquest of New Mexico and the settlement of
Texas between 1690 and 1731.By focusing on the leading actors,as well as by cutting back and forth between regions,Kessell has made the tale very hard to follow,
particularly for readers who do not have any prior knowledge of the events.
All in all, this book is fairly disappointing. John Kessell seemed to be the perfect author for a much-needed narrative history of the Spanish Southwest, and
the University of Oklahoma Press has supported the project by providing an
abundance of excellent illustrations and maps. Nonetheless, the work falls short
of providing an adequate overview of the events that took place between Texas
and California during the period of Spanish colonization.
F. TODD SMITH
University of North Texas

Jonathan Edwards and the Bible. By Robert E. Brown. (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press. 2002. Pp. xxi, 292. $35.00.)
Jonathan Edwards’s star has been rising among scholars. Recognized widely
as America’s greatest theologian, he is also cited as America’s premier philosopher before the turn of the twentieth century. His Religious Affections (1746)
is arguably the most discriminating treatise on spiritual discernment in Christian thought; Perry Miller called it the greatest work of religious psychology
ever penned on American soil. Readers of this journal may be interested to
know that a recent monograph by Anri Morimoto argues that Edwards’s soteriology has more in common with Thomas Aquinas than with Martin Luther
( Jonathan Edwards and the Catholic Vision of Salvation, Penn State University Press). Not to mention his influence on such diverse fields as aesthetics, literary theory, history of religions, and of course homiletics.
Amazingly, among the scores of books and hundreds of articles that have appeared in the last century, next to nothing has been done on Edwards’s use of
the Bible—despite the fact that the Bible was as central to Edwards’s vision and
literary production as it was to Augustine’s or Luther’s. Robert Brown’s book
now helps fill this strange lacuna. But contrary to what the title suggests, this is
not about the impact of the Bible on Edwards’s thought or spiritual life; nor is it
concerned with his use of Scripture in his sermons or even theology. Instead it
focuses on Edwards’s encounter with nascent biblical criticism, and the result
of that encounter for Edwards’s understanding of both Scripture and the history of salvation.
Brown explains that the deists sought to discredit the Bible by using early historical criticism to insist that true knowledge is a priori and infallible, as in
mathematics. Edwards’s response was twofold. First, he charged that the deist

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definition of rationality was too narrow, excluding the experiential and the spiritual. He claimed that Scripture conveys to the mind not only information but
also its beauty, which can be seen only by the spiritually enlightened. Second,
he argued that the full truth of Christian faith is known only through historical
accounts in the biblical drama of salvation. This understanding then becomes
the key to discerning God’s activity outside the Bible—hence an eighteenthcentury version of what we have lately called narrative theology.
If Edwards combated deist use of early biblical criticism, he also was influenced by it. Brown traces a shift in Edwards’s method from early typological
treatment of difficult texts to later attempts to demonstrate historical authenticity. Brown shows how Edwards over time came to concede that the Bible’s
history is neither comprehensive nor pristine. Brown also shows, intriguingly,
that America’s foremost theologian of hell uses what could be called a liberal
hermeneutic (language about judgment and hell is not to be interpreted literally) to support traditional understandings of those subjects. Therefore, Brown
concludes, convincingly, that Perry Miller and Peter Gay inaccurately cast Edwards as isolated from and insensitive to the best historical thinking of his time.
This was a period in which hard lines cannot be drawn between “pre-critical”
and “critical” historical methods: Edwards may have been on the conservative
end of the historiographical spectrum, but he used the same methods and
shared most historiographical presuppositions with those on the other end.
Brown makes other new claims: Edwards and Locke were closer than we
have thought, since the former came to accept the latter’s understanding of historical religious knowledge as approximate and probabilistic; Edwards was a
full participant in the early modern science of religion, believing both in the inspiration of some pagan philosophers and in the historically conditioned nature of biblical history.
This is first-rate intellectual history,demonstrating not only how America’s foremost theologian engaged fully with radical Bible critics but also the sophisticated
manner in which some early modern theologians used new critical methods
when interpreting the Bible. My only criticism is a question: why do publishers
use endnotes in a monograph whose abstract prose means that it will be read primarily by scholars,who are endlessly irritated by constant flipping back and forth?
GERALD R. MCDERMOTT
Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research
Collegeville, Minnesota

The Great Catastrophe of My Life: Divorce in the Old Dominion. By Thomas E.
Buckley, S.J. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2002. Pp. xiii,
346. $59.95 clothbound; $19.95 paperback.)
This book is packed with narrative,analyses,and divorce case studies.The author, a professor of American religious history at the Jesuit School of Theology

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at Berkeley, spent years combing manuscript and legal files relating to the issue
of divorce and to actual divorces in Virginia between the end of the American
Revolution and 1851, when a new constitution shifted the burden of granting
divorces from the legislature to the courts.
Part one of the study consists of three chapters dealing respectively with the
political/legal culture surrounding divorce in Virginia, the religious ethos, and
the agency of families and communities who sometimes ignored Richmond,
leading the author to conclude that “localism dominated life in the Old South.”
Readers of this journal may well be interested in chapter two regarding religion, but Buckley says little about Catholic antecedents and influence. Rather,
the emphasis is on Anglicanism and the impact of evangelical sects.
Part two, also three chapters, explores causality, meaning the grounds that
men and women put forth as reasons for divorce. The first of these chapters
confronts race and sex, in other words, the comingling of white women and
black men, and of white men and black women. Buckley presents an insightful
discussion, one particularly germane to twenty-first-century America, where
racial issues are still prevalent. The author rightly raises the question of how
black men got the time away from work and a master’s watchful eye to engage
in illicit activities with married white women. Buckley concludes that such
unions “suggest an openness in interracial sexual relations and a degree of
white acceptance of sex across the color line that challenges historical generalizations and traditional stereotypes of both free blacks and the slaveholding
society of the early nineteenth-century South” ( p. 151). It also seems likely that
some of these white women and black men took delight in flouting the white
male system that held them in varying degrees of bondage.
Part three, made up of only one chapter, is the heartbreaker. Here, Buckley reveals the pain, despair, and stigma that descended on divorced people. One of
these was Sally McDowell Thomas, who called her divorce “the great catastrophe of my life,” which gives the book its title. In an eloquent epilogue, Buckley
explains that even though some women rose above their divorces, most “generally encountered an unsympathetic culture” ( p. 267).
This is a fine book,thoroughly researched and deftly written,yet its conclusion
is debatable.Buckley sees Virginia as an oppressive atmosphere because the legislature granted only one-third of the petitions submitted. Comparing Virginia
with other southern states, however, indicates that Virginia moved early and
promptly. For instance, South Carolina prohibited divorce until 1949. It is also
true that between 1803 and 1853 the all-male Virginia legislature, which one
might assume was inaccessible and unsympathetic to female petitioners,
granted sixty-nine divorces, or 51%, to women and sixty-six, or 49%, to men.
Thus, it could also be argued that in its own era, Virginia was a “divorce” leader
in the South.
GLENDA RILEY
Ball State University

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The Irish in the South, 1815–1877. By David T. Gleeson. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2001. Pp. xiii, 278. $45.00 hardcover, $19.95
paperback.)
Hoping to recover the story of “the forgotten people of the Old South,”David
Gleeson helps reintroduce ethnicity into the way we look at the region’s white
population, too often thought homogeneous. The Irish are a good case with
which to complicate that picture, even though their percentage of the South’s
population was never very large. Concentrated in cities like their Northern
cousins, they faced a more complicated assimilation, having to become American and Southern at the same time. They largely succeeded, though to call this
an example of “integration” is perhaps an unfortunate choice of words in this
context. Through detailed research in an impressive array of archival sources,
however, Gleeson has done more than any previous historian to track down
Irish immigrants and what became of them. His discussion is orderly, framed by
such obvious subjects as occupational patterns, family and community life, religion, and Irish participation in the war and its aftermath. The writing is clear
enough, with only occasional bits of left-over dissertationese. He does not engage the “whiteness” studies of the recent literature (though they appear in
footnotes), and his treatment of slavery, that elephant in the room of the antebellum South, is curiously confined to a single chapter, as if that were just one
more topic among many. Still, as a work of compensatory history, this book
makes a contribution to the scholarly discussion.
Any book on the Irish in the South, however, faces two conceptual questions:
who are the Irish, and what is the South? Gleeson never answers either one directly, but he has working definitions. As to the first, he adopts Kerby Miller’s
“exiles” model, and he considers emigrants from Ulster as well as the other
provinces. Their inclusion assists in the ongoing deconstruction of that hoary
category beloved of textbooks, the “Scots Irish,” but Ulster immigrants largely
disappear from this story after about 1825. At times, his discussion seems to devolve into a matter of “Look, there’s another person with an Irish surname,”
thereby giving the book the feel of a catalogue. His treatment of community organizations and churches (Protestant as well as Catholic) sharpens this picture
a bit and adds the stuff of real life.The definition of the South—the states which
became the Confederacy—is perhaps understandable but less than wholly satisfying. There is not much interest in the fuzzy edges: Georgia merits eighteen
index entries, for example, and Alabama nine; Maryland and Missouri get four
each. Moreover, most of the discussion focuses on just four cities: Mobile,
Natchez, New Orleans, and Richmond, though there is also a little Memphis
thrown in for good measure. This is driven by the availability of usable data, no
doubt, but even a reviewer from Boston knows that Richmond and New Orleans are very different places indeed, and neither one is the South. Further
work by Gleeson and others will have to fill in the gaps of this picture and build
on the foundation that is here.
JAMES M. O’TOOLE
Boston College

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Edward Sorin. By Marvin R. O’Connell. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of
Notre Dame Press. 2001. Pp. x, 737. $49.95.)
This biography of the founder of the University of Notre Dame is exhaustive
and definitive. Yet just as O’Connell finds the “author’s apparently obsessive
concern for detail” in a footnoted biography of Basile Moreau, the founder (in
1837) of the French Congregation of Holy Cross,“the book’s greatest merit,” so
something similar could be said about this life. O’Connell paints a vivid and
lively portrait not only of Sorin but of the University of Notre Dame, of which
Sorin was the soul for fifty years. In addition, an overriding theme is the dispute
between Moreau and Sorin, who was Moreau’s student and eventually his successor, over the direction of the community of Holy Cross. In this struggle, the
passions of both men are made clear as well as their blindness.Founders usually
have strong personalities; evident in the clash of these men.
In 1841 Sorin led a band of brothers on a two-month journey to Vincennes,
Indiana, to serve the Catholics in that diocese. O’Connell depicts the successive
disputes which Sorin had with the local bishops, usually over the bishops’ desires to control the educational work of the brothers, the rightful task of Father
Sorin. After an initial settlement at Black Oak Ridge, west of Washington, Indiana, Sorin accepted in late 1842 an offer of land in South Bend, Indian land purchased by Father Stephen Badin and donated for some religious usage, and
named his mission there Notre-Dame-du-Lac. Soon the associated community of
sisters, the Marianites, joined the Holy Cross men at Notre Dame.
The subsequent story is one of growth, of the “University” of Notre Dame as
well as the American Holy Cross communities,through countless struggles,fires,
and deaths. In all this, O’Connell portrays Sorin as somewhat manipulative in his
correspondence, sometimes exaggerating points or even fabricating matters in
order to get his way, something the author labels, at one point, as “if not a devious
game, then one of serpentine subtlety” ( p. 151). Sorin, in this process, became
less and less able to keep obedience to his superior, Father Moreau, one he still
respected enough to want his hand at death as a relic at Notre Dame ( p. 428).
His own judgment,based on his growing experience,became,however,more his
guide than his superior was. Still, O’Connell cites Sorin’s courage and determination as foundations for the success of his ventures ( p. 183). The author summarizes: “the paramount truth remains that Notre Dame survived because
Edward Sorin—domineering, charming, supple, courageous, sometimes duplicitous and always devoted to God’s cause as he saw it—refused to fail” ( p. 400).
O’Connell highlights, as the quality of this courage, Sorin’s ability “to seize
upon an idea and then adjust it to suit his needs” ( p. 247). Sorin was a missionary seeking to keep the Catholic faith alive in a Protestant land and he saw all
that he did to be for that purpose. If he developed higher education in northern
Indiana,and reformed the curriculum in 1849,it was to further that mission,not
“learning for learning’s sake” ( p. 246). Even his failed St. Joseph Company, sent
to prospect for gold in California in 1850, sought to serve his goal. He also expanded the mission of the community to other parts of the United States in

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order to create a greater allegiance to Holy Cross; this was to be the beginning
of the trans-Atlantic struggle for control of this international congregation.
Sorin became briefly (1851–1853) the Provincial of the Congregation in the
United States, refused in 1852 to become a bishop and head up the congregation’s new mission to Bengal, and in 1853 began to push for independence of
the American segment of the congregation.
One of Sorin’s closest collaborators was Eliza Maria Gillespie (1824–1887),
who joined the Marianites as Sister Angela in 1853. Her family was critical in
purchasing the property in 1855 which eventually would become St. Mary’s
College in South Bend. Moreau’s congregation received Vatican recognition in
1857 but only as a community of priests and brothers. The sisters’ community
was to remain independent though under his guidance.Moreau’s disappointment
was one which Sorin would adopt later when he was Superior General. Sister
Angela became Mother Angela in that same year. This community made a significant contribution to the care of the wounded in the Civil War.
Sorin began the publication of the weekly, Ave Maria, in 1865 under the able
direction of Mother Angela, to make church teaching accessible to American
Catholics. This bold venture and its success “stands as a tribute to Edward
Sorin’s audacity and to his managerial skills” ( p. 509).
More changes came to the Congregation of Holy Cross as Sorin again became
Provincial of North America in 1864; he appointed Patrick Dillon as second
president of Notre Dame in 1865 and then William Corby as third in 1866; the
Vatican pushed Moreau to resign in 1866, and Sorin was elected as Superior
General in 1868, rancorous years for the Congregation of Holy Cross.
The initial struggle to create Notre Dame and the battles with Moreau were
now basically over. Instead there followed a consolidation, a training of a
younger generation, and a long period of being the patriarch of the community
( p.595),expanding Holy Cross’s presence in America and trying to hold ground
in Europe. This was all capped by Sorin’s extravaganza for his Golden Jubilee as
a priest in 1888, gathering together many of the progressive ecclesiastical leaders of his day, including Cardinal Gibbons.
Clearly,Sorin was not a theoretician,but rather a very pragmatic man ( p.719).
His good relations with the Americanists of the United States Hierarchy should be
seen in that light rather than in some strongly ideological framework as seems
to be O’Connell’s interpretation ( pp. 313, 517, 704). He sees that nineteenthcentury French liberalism left the “seeds of doubt” regarding the union of
church and state, for example, which would flower later on ( p. 16). However,
based on this long biography, it seems rather clearer that pragmatism guided
him, not ideology.
In 1889 the sisters were finally and completed severed from the men of Holy
Cross at the decree of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, something which Sorin did not want. His last years were marked by illness, and death
came on October 31, 1893.

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O’Connell is one of the finest story-tellers of our day, with a craftsman’s handling of the language. This work is a fine tribute to Sorin, to the university
which he founded, and to the many fine men and women associated with Holy
Cross over the years.
EARL BOYEA
Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit

Shameless:The Visionary Life of Mary Gove Nichols. By Jean L. Silver-Isenstadt.
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2002. Pp. xii, 342. $24.95.)
In 1857 Mary Gove Nichols (1810–1884), along with her husband Thomas,
were received into the Catholic Church in Cincinnati. Their decision linked
them to other prominent American converts of the era. Some, like Isaac Hecker
and Orestes Brownson, were religious and social radicals until just before conversion; others, including Cornelia Peacock Connelly and Levi Silliman Ives,
took a shorter step from Episcopalianism when they accepted Rome’s authority. Mary and Thomas belonged to the more wayward group. Living in an experimental community at the time of their baptisms, the Nicholses were well
known for their beliefs in free love and spiritualism, as well as their enthusiasm
for tamer reforms of health, diet, and dress. Nor was this Mary’s first conversion.
As a teenager, she left her father’s skepticism and mother’s Universalism for
Quakerism, setting the stage for her later divorce from her first husband, also a
Quaker. No wonder Archbishop John Purcell now wrote doubtfully to a fellow
bishop about “my receiving into the Church the Mother Abbess of the free
Lovers” ( p. 217). His decision to honor Mary’s profession of faith was not pathbreaking in 1857; Hecker, Brownson, and others from their Transcendentalist
circle had been Catholics for a decade or more. Yet even if Catholicism’s absorption of radicals was becoming habitual, questions remain. What led these
restless people to Catholicism, and how did their reception affect the sprouting
but still fragile American Church?
Shameless is an engrossing biography of Mary Gove Nichols that may be appreciated without wrestling with her conversion. Mary was in her late forties
when she became a Catholic, and the change does not seem to have been lifetransforming. The unifying thread was her dedication to the water cure, which
remained her professional focus until her death. Married converts occasionally
dissolved their families to enter religious orders or more often devoted themselves to Catholic education or charities;Mary did none of these.Silver-Isenstadt’s
depiction of Mary’s conversion as one episode in a tumultuous life seems, in
this light, a wise choice. Yet the author appears puzzled by her subject’s
Catholicism, making it difficult to let the subject so easily go.“The first response
of twenty-first-century feminists to the Nicholses’ conversion may be one of disappointment. We do not often associate the Catholic Church with progressive
gender politics” ( p. 214). The “Mary” of Silver-Isenstadt’s study had been a liberator, offering women self-possession through health, sexual, and marriage re-

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forms. Silver-Isenstadt is too good a historian to mistake Mary’s conversion for
simple recanting; she concludes that “in many ways” the couple’s Catholicism,
promising a harmony transcending nature, “consolidated rather than contradicted their past” ( p. 223). Yet she casts Mary so much as a forerunner of feminism that she slights Romantic elements in antebellum reform. Adopting
Catholicism was one logical outcome of these.
Mary’s advocacy of free sexual expression aimed to reconcile body and spirit.
Communitarianism sought social organicism, and spiritualism was to put the
living in communion with the dead. Natural rights were not ends in themselves
for Romantic radicals; rather, rebellion was a means of escape from advancing
capitalism and a stepping stone to reintegration outside its bounds. It is not at
all surprising that some of them identified the Catholic Church—unitary and
universal in its self-conception and exotic in Protestant America—as a healing
site to be entered rather than constructed. Tensions that followed between Romantic longings and a deeply historical institution might have been foreseen.
Detailed and well written, Shameless is an excellent addition to the literature
on antebellum reformers who became Catholics. If Silver-Isenstadt’s analysis of
Mary’s conversion seems tentative,perhaps this reflects Gove Nichols’s own lingering uncertainty about how Catholicism answered her questions. Living a
vagabond life in an unsettled era, she may well have found resolution and peace
elusive goals.
ANNE C. ROSE
Penn State University

Claiming the City: Politics, Faith, and the Power of Place in St. Paul. By Mary
Lethert Wingerd. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. 2001. Pp. xv,
326. $29.95.)
Mary Lethert Wingerd’s Claiming the City: Politics, Faith, and the Power of
Place in St.Paul originated as a history doctoral dissertation at Duke University.
This readable volume in the Cushwa Center Studies of Catholicism in TwentiethCentury America focuses on the perception that St. Paul and Minneapolis created thoroughly distinctive versions of civic life, each reflecting social and
economic localism. The author dismisses a standard explanation for the difference, namely, that the conservatism of Irish Catholics shaped the state’s capital city.
To find a satisfying answer, Wingerd plunges into economic, political, and social life of St. Paul, especially between the 1880’s and 1930’s. Local pundits typically describe St. Paul as the home of Irish Catholic Democrats as Minneapolis
is for Scandinavian Protestant Republicans, but Wingerd finds that the Twin
Cities shared a population mix similar in ethnic composition and religious affiliation. Each city boasted a sizable minority of working-class Catholics. Those in
Minneapolis, however, remained removed from their city’s sources of power,

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while some of St. Paul’s Irish Catholics managed to improve their social and
economic status thanks to the smaller twin’s culture of accommodation,crafted
from numerous alliances involving the city’s business leaders, Democratic
politicians, labor interests, and the Catholic Church. Labor-management relations and politics in St. Paul normally remained more harmonious than those
across the Mississippi River. The culture of “live and let live” had its darker side:
for decades St. Paul officials tolerated vice and the presence of gangsters, or
what Wingerd calls its “economy of sin.” With railroad baron James J. Hill and
Archbishop John Ireland fading from the scene, World War I would create
stresses and strains as St. Paul dealt with such volatile issues as nativism, the loyalty crusade, the Nonpartisan League, and a streetcar strike and riot.Thus, the issues of the war era severely challenged St. Paul’s leadership and civic culture of
accommodation.
Claiming the City should appeal to social historians and serious readers interested in the history of the Twin Cities. The book captures the complicated
workings of social, economic, and political forces in shaping a city where certain Irish Catholics could realize their dreams. Wingerd’s magical use of language sketches vivid portraits of well-known leaders such as Hill and Ireland,
but also of lesser lights, for example, Ireland’s successor Austin Dowling, public
safety commissioner John McGee, and Mayor Willliam Mahoney.
Historians of American Catholicism can appreciate the volume’s path-breaking
attempt to integrate ethnic Catholics, including women, into the mainstream of
urban history. In St. Paul, ethnic Catholics clearly permeated the class and economic boundaries by the turn of the century. The book’s dazzling thesis is
largely convincing, although some readers may feel less enthusiastic about the
limited analysis of the religious beliefs and practices of working-class Catholics.
Its focus on “faith” relates to ethno-religious identity rather than to the religious
beliefs of St. Paul’s ethnic Catholics, Protestants, and Jews.
The volume is less authoritative in its command of religious history. John A.
Ryan makes an appearance as John P. Ryan. Certain interpretations, particularly
involving Catholic leaders or projects, are advanced with perhaps more inference than hard evidence. Some of these problematic interpretations would include the allegedly cool relationship between Archbishop John Ireland and
Mary Mehegan Hill, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s feelings of marginalization, and James J.
Hill’s requirement that the St. Paul Seminary remain in the hands of the archdiocese ( pp. 286–287, n.99) without reference to John Ireland’s well established wariness of religious-order priests.
Lavishly illustrated with well chosen photographs and gracefully written,
Claiming the City excels at providing a lively and original interpretation of St.
Paul’s social history.
ANNE KLEJMENT
University of St.Thomas
St. Paul, Minnesota

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emphasized by these historians. Influenced by Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis, Bolton characterized the Franciscan mission as the most representative—read “civilizing”—frontier institution in the Spanish Borderlands. In 1963
one of Bolton’s students, John Francis Bannon, a Jesuit, published The Spanish
Borderlands Frontier, 1513–1821, which summed up the work of the Bolton
school, paying particular attention to the priests who strove to spread the
gospel to the heathen Indians.
Beginning in the 1960’s, however, a new group of Borderlands scholars
emerged, now emphasizing the fact that the society of northern New Spain had
been essentially mestizo or Mexican. Therefore, they paid more attention to the
common Hispanic settlers than the heroic Spaniards. They also stressed the
viewpoint of the region’s Native Americans, emphasizing the disastrous effect
the Franciscan missions had upon the Indians’population and culture.This new
group of historians also used the term “frontier” in a different way. Rather than
seeing the frontier as a line between civilization and savagery as the Boltonians
had, they understood the frontier as a zone of interaction between two different cultures. In 1992 David J. Weber published The Spanish Frontier in North
America, a product of the new Borderlands studies, which paid as much attention to the natives of the region as to the Spanish invaders with whom the Indians were forced to contend. One of Weber’s major themes was that the
Indians and Spaniards who met on North American frontiers failed to understand one another, for they came from different worlds. Weber’s monumental
study has influenced virtually all scholarly work on the Spanish Borderlands
that has appeared in the past decade.
That is, until the publication of John L. Kessell’s, Spain in the Southwest.
Kessell, professor emeritus at the University of New Mexico, is the author of numerous books on the Southwestern Borderlands—most notably, Kiva, Cross,
and Crown: The Pecos Indians and New Mexico, 1540–1840 (1979)—as well
as being the editor of the Vargas Project, a multivolume collection of the papers
of Diego de Vargas, who reconquered New Mexico following the Pueblo Revolt
of 1680. In the preface, Kessell confronts Weber’s thesis by stating that,“even
though Europeans and Native Americans were from worlds far apart geographically . . . I think they understood each other very well”( p. xi). Despite this pronouncement,Kessell’s work,which narrates the history of the Borderlands sans
Florida or Spanish Louisiana, focuses almost exclusively upon the Spaniards and
their exploits, neglecting to explain the Indians’ strategies or responses to the
invaders in any serious way.
Actually, Spain in the Southwest does not refute The Spanish Frontier in
North America as much as it ignores it. It seems as if Kessell began work on this
project before the publication of Weber’s book and he decided not to pay any attention to it. Although unstated, it appears that the author has tried to write an
old-fashioned historical narrative, almost wholly free of analysis, in which colorful
figures and exciting events dominate the landscape.Basing his work on secondary
and published primary sources, Kessell has succeeded in providing excellent

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Acts of Faith: The Catholic Church in Texas, 1900–1950. By James Talmadge
Moore. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press. 2002. Pp. viii, 263.
$39.95.)
In 1998 Father James Talmadge Moore retired as professor of history from
North Harris College in Houston, Texas, and resumed full-time duties as pastor
of Our Lady of Walsingham Catholic Church in that city. He had served as pastor of that parish since his reception into the Catholic priesthood in 1984.
Meanwhile, having earned his Ph.D. degree in history from Texas A&M University, also in 1984, Father Moore began to emerge as a noted Catholic historian,
becoming especially well known in Texas.As part of this, with his Acts of Faith:
The Catholic Church in Texas, 1900–1950, he has contributed his second volume to the Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A&M
University (No. 91). His first book in that collection, Through Fire and Flood:
The Catholic Church in Frontier Texas, 1836–1900, to which this present
tome is a sequel, appeared in 1992. Father Moore, in addition to these works, is
author of an earlier study, Indian and Jesuit: A Seventeenth Century Encounter, as well as several articles on Catholicism and history.
A former president of the Texas Catholic Historical Society (1998–2000) and
named a fellow of that group in 2001,Father Moore is also distinguished in serving as a consulting editor for Catholic Southwest:A Journal of History and Culture.Thus,he is highly qualified to investigate the complex story of the Catholic
Church’s maturation in the Lone Star State beyond the nineteenth century, focusing on the years 1900 to 1950. With his Acts of Faith: The Catholic Church
in Texas, 1900–1950, Father Moore has accomplished this mission admirably.
From the impact of the deadly hurricane that slammed ashore at Galveston
Island on September 8, 1900—arguably the United States’ most devastating natural disaster—through World War I; the 1920’s and the Great Depression of the
1930’s; the Second World War; the expansion of Communism into China and
other lands; the foundation then being laid for the coming of the Korean War in
1950; as well as the development of noticeable domestic changes in the United
States itself; the Catholic Church in Texas experienced tremendous growth
both in size and breadth of presence. As in other regions of America, such included a multicultural population explosion; an accompanying expansion of
diocesan polity, including the erection of new dioceses as well as an archdiocese (San Antonio);the building of educational,charitable,and other types of institutions; and a deep commitment to the Church’s social and doctrinal
teachings throughout society.
But, Catholicism in Texas, as in other areas of the country, also encountered
anti-immigrant radical nativism, directed especially against Hispanic Catholics.
The Ku Klux Klan, re-established in Georgia in 1915 and quickly spreading its
propaganda, for a time acted as that movement’s most vehement representative. All of these and more, including profiles of key personages and groups
such as male and female religious communities, Father Moore treats in his narrative with a highly readable writing style based on thorough research.

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He has divided his Acts of Faith into fifteen carefully planned chapters, two
appendices, and substantial notes, featuring in his resource material a thorough
study of the San Antonio Catholic archdiocesan newspaper, The Southern Messenger, and an index. In so doing, Father Moore has written a book that needs
to be studied by anyone and everyone interested not only in the history of
Catholicism in Texas, but also in religion generally throughout the United
States. Moore’s study should be available in all college, university, and public libraries, as it will stand as the classic work on this subject for some time to
come.
PATRICK FOLEY
Catholic Southwest:A Journal of History and Culture

Catholics and Jews in Twentieth-Century America. By Egal Feldman. (Urbana
and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 2001. Pp. xv, 323. $34.95.)
Egal Feldman is professor of history emeritus at the University of Wisconsin.
He has previously written on the Jewish-Protestant relations in Dual Destinies:
The Jewish Encounter with Protestant America (University of Illinois Press,
1990). Here, he takes up the American Jewish-Catholic relationship and its remarkable development over the course of the twentieth century.In doing so,he
has given a precious gift to both communities since, so far as I know, this is the
first extended treatment of the subject.
As Feldman notes, Catholics and Jews saw themselves for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries essentially as immigrant communities in Protestant America, divided by religious beliefs and a bitter history in Europe, but
freed from that history to relate to each other in a new way, a way without
precedent in two millennia. He sets the stage for the dramatic encounter by
sketching the ancient Christian “teaching of contempt” (the phrase is that of
French historian Jules Isaac) against Jews and Judaism, and how the two communities confronted and coped with their emergence from medievalism to
modernism in America in the first third of the century. Feldman notes that just
as Jews faced anti-Semitism from the larger society on these shores, so did
Catholics face strong social and political anti-Catholicism,with deep roots in nativist xenophobia and bigotry.Indeed,as Cardinal William H.Keeler wrote in his
own, short survey of “Catholic-Jewish Relations in the Twentieth Century,”“Perhaps no other American religious group has been the object, over so many
years, of attacks from so many organizations that have seen as their chief mission the denunciation of Catholicism. These range from the Native Americans
of the 1840’s through the Know-nothing Party and the American Protective Association to Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of
Church and State, not to mention the Ku Klux Klan and other groups whose hatred encompassed Jews and Blacks as well as Catholics. Catholics have been pilloried, not only with crude ethnic stereotypes (‘drunken Irish,’‘greasy Italians,’

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‘dumb Polacks,’‘lazy Spics,’ etc.) but consistently, and as a whole, for their religious beliefs.”1
Feldman thus passes too quickly over what Keeler called Catholic “similarities with Jewish experience” in this country. It is important to note that
Catholics and Jews in urban America were both excluded from the “better”
jobs, schools, neighborhoods, and professions, each meeting and overcoming
the challenge, often separately, but sometimes in common, as in the American
labor movement which was, over the decades, largely a Catholic-Jewish enterprise in its leadership as well as rank and file. This commonality of experience,
I believe, is crucial to understanding the American Catholic community’s generally positive attitude toward the Jewish community and its needs, including
the Zionist cause, exceptions such as Father Charles Coughlin notwithstanding.
Studies2 have shown that the major Catholic journals, such as Commonweal
and America, not only clearly condemned Coughlin’s anti-Semitism but expressed strong outrage at Nazi persecution of Jews throughout the 1930’s and
1940’s, while American labor’s support for the State of Israel had political consequences in the U.S. Congress. Feldman does note the way in which certain issues, such as the Spanish Civil War, which pitted Fascism against Communism,
split the two communities, with the sometimes bitter feelings reflected in the
pages of local Catholic papers such as the Brooklyn Tablet. Here, he might have
analyzed the Jewish press as well. Likewise, the appeal of Father Coughlin is
seen by Feldman, I think in general accurately, as reflecting a more widespread
anti-Semitism within the Catholic community than many of us would want to
admit. But that remnant of European anti-Semitism among American Catholics,
it needs to be stressed, never manifested itself politically as it did in Europe. It
remained pretty much in the parlors and rectories. Coughlin’s political forays
never gained widespread Catholic support.
Similarly, while Feldman is in general correct about the tendency of Catholics
“to equate the evils of Soviet Communism with those of Nazism” ( p. 53), he is
dead wrong to conclude on the same page that this equation by the American
bishops “betrayed a callousness toward the plight of Europe’s Jews.” While citing a single statement of the bishops to this effect in 1941, Feldman ignores the
fact that the bishops used the whole of their sole annual national radio broadcast in 1938 to condemn Kristallnacht in no uncertain terms, and devoted a
considerable portion of their one major statement during the war to condemn
Nazi brutality toward Jews in Europe in general and the attempt to “exterminate” the Jews of Poland.
1
Cardinal William H. Keeler, “Catholic-Jewish Relations in the Twentieth Century,” in
Aron Hirt-Manheimer (ed.), The Jewish Condition: Essays on Contemporary Judaism
Honoring Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler (New York: Union of American Hebrew Press,
1995), pp. 16–40 at 19.
2
E.g., see John Patrick McGinty, The Genesis of Nostra Aetate’s Statement on the Jewish People:A Study of the Development of a Positive Attitude Toward the Jewish People
in the Catholic Church in the USA (Rome: Gregorian University, 2000).

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Again, Feldman’s treatment of Vatican policy on the same page may be said to
betray his own lack of in-depth study into the complex issues he oversimplifies.
Wrongly brushing aside Pius XI’s 1937 encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge, for
not specifying “Jews” when it condemned Nazi racial ideology and practice (as
if “race” had any other content in late 1930’s Europe!), he villifies Pius XI for issuing, later that same year, an encyclical which equally strongly condemned Soviet Communism, as if opposing Communism somehow, by some strange logic,
meant supporting Nazism! Feldman here seems unaware of the actual facts of
Vatican diplomacy before and during the war. There was, as Feldman indicates
(again on p. 53) opposition by some American bishops at one point to Roosevelt’s Lend Lease policy of supporting the Soviet Union’s fight against Germany in the period before the war.This opposition disappeared,however,when
the Vatican’s representative in Washington, Archbishop Amleto Cicognani,
made some discreet comments.A distinction was then made by the bishops between supporting Communism and supporting the Russian people, clearing
the way for Roosevelt’s policy.This type of quiet but close working relationship
between the Holy See and the American government continued throughout the
war, even though the Vatican’s official policy was one of neutrality. Feldman’s
thesis, that Vatican antipathy toward Communism influenced the American
bishops to oppose American involvement in World War II is, to put it charitably,
entirely specious.
The chapter on the “postwar ambivalence” of Catholics to Jewish causes has
it right, I believe, about the ambivalence, but leans too far on the negative side
of the ledger. Such a bleak picture cannot explain the consistently positive
votes on Israel-related issues by Catholics in congress, for example. And Feldman is absolutely wrong to allege without any supporting evidence (save for
citing on p. 91 another scholar whose article making the allegation itself contains no evidence) that either Pius XII or American Catholics “hoped for a German victory” in World War II. There is much evidence to the contrary, including
Pius’ support for a plot to assassinate Hitler and the Vatican’s passing along of
clandestine information to the Allies during the war. Likewise, any lingering
support Nazi Germany might have had in the Catholic community, even the
German Catholic community, in the country evaporated with Pearl Harbor. My
parents’generation fought in and supported the war wholeheartedly.There was
no ambivalence whatsoever about that!
Feldman goes on to narrate, I think on the whole quite well, the era of dialogue brought about by the Second Vatican Council. As one rather deeply involved in many of the events he describes, I would commend him for his
balance and general sure-footedness while narrating extremely complex and
sensitive issues and incidents in recent history, a number of which I lived
through as an “insider”in the dialogue.He does make the occasional mistake,for
example in misreading Henry Siegman’s 1978 article on the “asymmetry” of the
Catholic-Jewish relationship as a total rejection of the dialogue on page 150.
And, like many Jewish commentators, he overplays the significance of Rose-

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mary Reuther’s 1974 Faith and Fratricide,3 while underplaying the much more
important contributions to American Catholic understanding of Jews and Judaism by pioneers who stuck with the dialogue such as Edward Flannery, Eva
Fleischner, John Oesterreicher, and George Higgins, whose work continues to
inform and challenge those of us in the dialogue who have followed their footsteps.
Despite some flaws such as these, however, I can highly recommend this
book and express my personal and professional gratitude to have so much of
the story told so well.
EUGENE J. FISHER
Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Father Hartke: His Life and Legacy to the American Theater. By Mary Jo Santo
Pietro. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. 2002.
Pp. xix, 383. $39.95.)
By way of disclosure, this reviewer notes that his own life was shaped by
Gilbert V. Hartke, O.P., whose recommendation for a temporary job led to a lifelong academic career. An Aristotelian scheme well suits an analysis of Hartke’s
story.
PLOT ~ Prologue: The protagonist, an aging priest, consents to a series of
taped interviews in the months before his death. There follow flashbacks of his
remarkable life.
Argument: A handsome Chicago boy appears in movies, becomes a priest,
and combines his religious vocation with his theatrical interests. His career is
recounted in Father Hartke: His Life and Legacy to the American Theater.
Action: Gilbert Hartke establishes the renowned Department of Speech and
Drama at the Catholic University of America, sending nine shows from Washington to Broadway in a record dozen years. Audiences admiring our optimistic
protagonist may be astonished by backstage scenes of his struggle to build a
new theatre building. His program is celebrated nationwide as a jewel in the
University’s crown, but treated sometimes by the administration as an aggravating thorn. Particularly arresting is the vignette of Hartke, humiliated but ever
3
Reuther dropped out of active engagement in the dialogue, of course, a few years later
and, with her husband, she published the anti-Zionist and anti-Israel, The Wrath of Jonah:
The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1989), in which the underlying thesis appears to be that the Palestinians
are the “real” Jews of the Middle East, with Israel playing the role of the Roman occupiers.
This is a clever polemical and propagandistic twist, but at the cost of an embarrassing
irony for Reuther, whose earlier work had shown the moral and doctrinal dangers inherent in the Patristic supersessionist theology which replaced the Jewish People with
Christianity itself as the “real” Israel.

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dramatic, dropping to his knees and begging his antagonist, the University Rector, not to deny him his new playhouse. Ultimately, and happily, our man prevails.
Epilogue:A hero, fondly remembered, leaves behind an inspiring legacy and a
legion of friends and protégés.
DIALOGUE ~ Dr.Mary Jo Santo Pietro,Father Hartke’s amanuensis and author
of the book, stays wisely in the wings, letting her subject take center stage,
which he commands with grandeur. She adds copious context and quotes from
colleagues and friends, elucidation and occasional contradiction, but she never
steals the spotlight from her leading man. It is Hartke’s vibrant recollections,
gracefully elicited, carefully recorded, and expertly arranged, which are the
heart of this dramatic saga.
CHARACTER ~ He emerges as a dedicated priest, a visionary deal-maker, an
indefatigable educational administrator—and an inspirational counselor to
countless supporting players. He is also revealed as a hero flawed by hubris, but
not fatally so. He was understandably vain: with his football player’s build, leonine head and flowing hair, his every appearance was galvanizing. With gravitas, unfailing wit, and a basso profundo voice, he was a commanding orator.
Father Hartke thrived on people, and people thrived on him—most especially
the numerous students whose careers he launched, but also screen stars, politicians, and presidents, to whom he gave encouragement, sound advice, and religious counsel.
A notorious name-dropper, he was the master of networking before that term
was popularized, and he used his manifold influential connections not only to
his own advantage, but to that of his pet projects, his favorite students and his
friends. He was a showman and public relations practitioner par excellence, as
his own words reveal in this busy memoir. Ultimately, he was the consummate
self-conscious playwright, producer, and performer of his own dazzling life, in
whose aura many people basked, reveled, and benefited.
SPECTACLE ~ Father Hartke was a saintly vision on pleasant afternoons, pacing serenely in white Dominican robes through the courtyard colonnade outside his office, reading his breviary. He might then field a barrage of telephone
calls, conduct several meetings, and appear that evening nattily attired in black
suit and Roman collar, at a glittering White House soiree—and after midnight
return to his silent monastery, where he bathed in a common bathroom down
the hall from his modest cell.Such contradictory but plausible scenes depict his
varied roles.
RHYTHM ~ Dr. Santo Pietro captures the dizzying tempo of this man in
perpetual motion. He says Mass, directs plays, piles groups of students into his
limousine for downtown outings, gives speeches, raises money, establishes summer theaters,leads tours of students to foreign countries,heads committees and
national theatre organizations, mingles with the great and small of Washing-

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ton—all the while fostering the careers of many theatre directors, producers,
and performers.
THEME ~ Santo Pietro has captured a life lived vigorously—and self-examined
at its finale with deserved satisfaction. Her book is a testament to the virtues
of trust in God, self-reliance, robust confidence and infectious camaraderie. It
documents achievement,and the joy of seeing others achieve.Hartke shared his
robust self-confidence and, in gestures large and small, improved the lives of
those he met. He led a life to admire and a legacy to remember. This book does
both.
DONN B. MURPHY
The National Theatre
Georgetown University (Emeritus)
Latin American
Bernardino de Sahagún: First Anthropologist. By Miguel León-Portilla. Translated by Mauricio J. Mixco. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2002.
Pp. xii, 324. $29.95.)
The Franciscan priest Bernardino de Sahagún was born in Spain in 1499 and
in 1529 emigrated to Mexico, where he spent sixty-one years preaching, teaching, and studying the language and culture of the Nahuas (Aztecs and related
peoples).Of his extensive writings enough survive to establish his pre-eminence
in documenting Nahua civilization and in adapting Christian teachings into
Nahuatl. Particularly indispensable for anyone studying contact-period Mexico
is the Florentine Codex (held by the Medicean-Laurentian Library in Florence),
a twelve-book compendium detailing religious belief and practice, moral philosophy, daily life, natural history, and the Spanish conquest. Five hundred years
after the friar’s birth,Miguel León-Portilla,today’s pre-eminent authority on Nahua
literature and culture, published, in Mexico, the best biography of Sahagún to
date. It has now been translated into English.
León-Portilla organized his chapters chronologically, tracing events in the
friar’s life and career along with the doctrinal and ethnographic works produced at each stage. Though occasionally repetitive, this is a thorough, easy-toconsult, sympathetic, and engaging portrait of a complex man whose thinking
entwined medieval theology, Renaissance humanism, and a profound emotional
and intellectual engagement with a cultural otherness that challenged, even
though it did not wholly transform, his received wisdom.
By subtitling his book “First Anthropologist,” León-Portilla asserts the innovative nature of the friar’s ethnographic project, which was based on interviews,
questionnaires, and extensive involvement of Nahua consultants, research assistants,artists,and scribes. While acknowledging that Sahagún remained above all
else a Franciscan missionary, never ceased to view native religion as idolatrous,
and hoped that his work would enable others to root out surviving idolatries,

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León-Portilla argues that his methodology is “a precursor of modern ethnographic field technique”( p.3) and notes the friar’s respect for traditional Nahua
government, social organization, medicine, and education. Given that none of
Sahagún’s ethnographic work was published until the nineteenth century, to
call him a “pioneer” or “father” of anthropology (as has been done) is an overstatement: no one followed his path into uncharted territory; he sired no intellectual offspring. But to call him an “anthropologist” is valid.
In the introduction to the English edition León-Portilla mentions, and rejects,
Walden Browne’s argument (in Sahagún and the Transition to Modernity,University of Oklahoma Press,2000) that Sahagún remained too bound up with medieval ways of thinking and organizing knowledge for his work to be
considered a precursor of “modern” anthropology. But to quibble over whether
Sahagún’s project represents “medieval” Scholasticism or “modern” ethnography neglects the work’s most interesting aspect: the content, though elicited
and organized by Sahagún, was written and edited by Nahuas in Nahuatl (the
friar later added a Spanish version, part translation, part summary, part commentary). León-Portilla makes this clear, and discusses the different kinds of
discourse (traditional oratory and poetry, answers to questionnaires, and spontaneous commentary) contributed by the Nahua participants. However, in focusing so closely on the friar himself, he never fully addresses the Nahua side of
the work, nor does he tell us quite all that he could about the Nahua research
assistants. In its dialogical and multi-vocal nature, its incorporation of the
“other” into the text, Sahagún’s ethnography is arguably as “postmodern” as it is
“modern”or “medieval.”It is, really, unclassifiable, a unique treatise in which colonized Native Americans used the format of a medieval encyclopedia to inscribe a nostalgic and nativistic reconstruction of their own civilization.A labor
of love on both sides, it is a testament to a Franciscan humanist and his Nahua
students who, nearly bridging an unbridgeable cultural gap, dreamed together
of a society that could incorporate the best of both their worlds.
LOUISE M. BURKHART
State University of New York at Albany

Monjas y beatas: La escritura femenina en la espiritualidad barroca Novohispana, siglos XVII y XVIII. Edited by Asunción Lavrin and Rosalva
Loreto L. (Puebla: Universidad de las Américas—Puebla and Archivo General de la Nación. 2002. Pp. 275. Paperback.)
Over the past twenty years, a fascinating field has developed in the areas of
women’s history, religion, church history, and literary studies. A renewed interest in early modern women,both in Spain and its former colonies,has produced
a number of groundbreaking works.A particular interest in the life and writings
of pious women (spiritual autobiographies, letters, chronicles, and devotional,

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visionary, and confessional writings) who have traditionally been placed outside the literary and religious canons has enriched the study of Spanish and
colonial societies.
Asunción Lavrín and Rosalva Loreto L.’s compilation functions as both an anthology of spiritual writings by colonial Mexican women,and a study of the social
and religious context that produced a surprising number of autobiographical
and biographical works by devout women. Each of the five chapters consists of
an introduction to the writer or enunciator of the text and her social, historical,
and institutional background, followed by a modernized transcription of selected passages. The introductory essays are composed by well-known scholars
in the field including Kathleen Myers, Antonio Rubial, Ellen Gunnarsdottir, and
the editors. Although all the texts borrow heavily from several genres of devotional and autobiographical writing, the editors present the texts as forming
three basic types.Those of Francisca de la Natividad and Madre María de San José
are both autobiographies written by professed nuns (although Sor Francisca’s
text begins as a biography of one of her Carmelite sisters). These life stories also
function as important chronicles of life inside Mexican convents of the colonial
period. The second group includes spiritual diaries where the devout penitent’s
trials and divine rewards are recorded on an ongoing basis.The first,by Sor María
de Jesús Felipa,not only includes the conscientious self-examination required by
professed nuns, but also describes spiritual exercises and divine visions and locutions. The second example features the visions and divine conversations experienced by the beata,or pious lay woman, Josefa de San Luis Beltrán.These are
recorded by a young Spanish cleric whom the visionary has chosen as her secretary. Josefa’s precarious relationship with religious authority is highlighted by
the fact that this text has survived as part of her case file in the archives of colonial Mexico’s Inquisition. The final chapter is a collection of letters by Francisca
de los Angeles,a lay woman who gained considerable recognition for exemplary
piety and service, and for founding a refuge for pious lay women. The letters are
addressed to various confessors and describe autobiographical details, spiritual
exercises, and visionary experiences.
Although many anthologies are designed as introductory overviews of a
given topic, this book is better suited to scholars of Mexican colonial history, especially in the areas of women, literature, and church history. With the exception of the works of Madre María de San José, these texts are available in
modern edition for the first time through this anthology.During the colonial period, women’s spiritual writings became an important genre in the Church’s efforts to publicize its successes in its ongoing mission of incorporating the New
World into the Christian fold. With this in mind the editors took care to include
both cloistered and uncloistered women, some who benefited from ecclesiastical approval and others who did not, as well as women from several urban and
rural settings. The work also reaches beyond the Baroque (the period most associated with women’s spiritual and mystical writing) into the eighteenth century to establish a greater sense of continuity for this popular form of women’s

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expression and to challenge the notion of a clear border separating the Habsburg empire’s Baroque spirituality and the more ‘enlightened’ Bourbon rule.
KATIE MACLEAN
Kalamazoo College

Os Salesianos e a Educação na Bahia e em Sergipe—Brasil, 1897–1970. By
Antenor de Andrade Silva. [Istituto Storico Salesiano—Roma, Studi 14.]
(Rome: LAS [Libreria Ateneo Salesiano]. 2000. Pp. 431. Lire 40.000.)
This study of the Salesian education in the Brazilian states of Bahia and
Sergipe is an institutional history covering seventy-three years, from 1897,
when the Archbishop of Salvador, Bahia, invited the Salesians to establish a
school there, until 1970, the year that the Salesian school admitted young
women. The author, Antenor de Andrade Silva, is an alumnus and former director of the school, currently serving in the Salesian hierarchy in Rome. The work
is divided into two sections. The first, “Préhistoria,” contains a chapter discussing the history of the Salesian project in Europe and Latin America and a
second outlining nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Brazilian social history. Section Two,“Fundação,” deals more specifically with the work of the Salesians in Bahia, from the founding of the first Salesian school, to its successes and
problems, to its students and faculty.
The text’s principal strengths lie in the author’s familiarity with the Bahian
program and his extensive primary research in Salesian archives in Brazil and in
Rome. He clearly had access to all of the Salesian archives containing material
related to the Bahian program and made extensive use of them in the text and
in his reproduction of numerous primary documents related to the Salesian
presence in northeastern Brazil in the twentieth century. Moreover, significant
portions of the study are essentially summaries of the documents uncovered by
the author in his search for materials on the Salesians, while the appendices
contain reproductions of various documents. The photographs, particularly
those of the students and apprentices of the first half of the twentieth century,
add significantly to the study and evoke the era discussed as few institutional
documents could. Such material, along with the statistics provided about the
students served over the years, is probably not in print anywhere else.
Beyond those points, however, the text is problematic.As a volume produced
in honor of the centennial of the Salesians’ arrival in Bahia by a member of the
order, it lacks the scholarly apparatus that would make it useful to university
faculty.It engages no scholarly debates,and its author demonstrates only limited
familiarity with the literature on Brazilian history or religious history. It has, essentially, no argument.
That said, the volume is not completely without value or merit. It is the only
published volume on the history of the Salesians in Bahia, and as such would be
of use to anyone interested either in Salesian education in Latin America or to

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educational projects for working-class students in Brazil. Its pages suggest numerous topics for future study, and offer the initial tools for anyone wishing to
write dissertations on the topic. It suggests, in particular, that the study of Salesian education in Bahia would offer an interesting comparison with the workingclass education projects developed by industrialists in the state of São Paulo,
Brazil, in the same period, so expertly studied by Barbara Weinstein in For Social Peace in Brazil.
MARY ANN MAHONY
Columbia College, South Carolina

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BRIEF NOTICES

Cook, Mary Jean Straw. Loretto—The Sisters and Their Santa Fe Chapel, Revised Edition. (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press. 2002. Pp. xviii, 118.
$22.50 paperbound.)
The chapel of Our Lady of Light, more commonly known as “the Loretto
Chapel” or the “chapel of the miraculous staircase,” was dedicated on April 25,
1878. The chapel known for its miraculous staircase has been of interest to
Mary Jean Straw Cook for many years, and her research led to the original publication of the book Loretto, the Sisters and their Santa Fe Chapel in 1984.The
author’s interest and love for the chapel is evident in this lovely and interestingly written account of the chapel’s construction and its history.The book also
relates the story of the Sisters of Loretto beginning with their establishment as
one of the first orders of nuns to be founded in the United States. This revised
edition gives additional information about the sisters and their chapel and includes the identity of the person who,the author believes,built the chapel staircase. Her case for the identity of the builder, one François-Jean Rochas, also
known as “Frenchy,” is well detailed and very convincing. For most native Santa
Fecinos and New Mexicans the construction of the staircase will always be attributed to St. Joseph.The story relates that the Sisters had their chapel built but
somehow the builder failed to build a staircase to the choir loft. The sisters
prayed a novena to St. Joseph and at its conclusion a carpenter appeared to
build the staircase.The fact that the staircase is an architectural wonder for that
time period (1881) and the story that the carpenter left once the staircase was
built without ever being paid has led to Santa Fe’s most beloved “mystery”story.
A chronology of events relating to the Sisters,the chapel of Our Lady of Light,
and the staircase is now at the beginning of the book which makes it more readily available for quick reference. The photographs throughout the text and the
drawings at the end (Appendix A,B,C) clearly illustrate the beauty of the chapel
and the staircase. This edition provides enough new material to warrant its
value to New Mexico church history.
MARINA OCHOA
Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe

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Marchione, Margherita. Pio XII: Attraverso le Immagini. (Vatican City: Libreria
Editrice Vaticana. 2002. Pp. 214. €14,00.)
This life of Pope Pius XII through pictures is dedicated to Pope John Paul II.
Following a preface by Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore, there are brown
and white images along with those in color covering the whole life of Eugenio
Pacelli (1876–1958). Three appendices focus on a chronology of his life, his
wartime initiatives, including his help to Jewish victims, and his papal writings.
A large section of the book ( pp. 131–213) is devoted to iconography, that is,
special pictures and drawings from various sources. While its size qualifies the
book for the coffee table, it brings home to the reader the truth of the old Chinese proverb that a picture is worth a thousand words. This is one of a halfdozen books published in the last six years by Sister Margherita Marchione in
defense of the historical record of Pope Pius XII. It is also available from Paulist
Press in English ($24.95), Shepherd of Souls: A Pictorial Life of Pope Pius XII.
VINCENT A. LAPOMARDA, S.J.
College of the Holy Cross

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PERIODICAL LITERATURE

GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS

Kirchengeschichte als “Heilsgeschichte”? Zum Geschichtsbild Hubert Jedins.
Wolfram Hoyer, O.P. Angelicum, 79 (3, 2002), 647–709.
In honore Salvatoris. Vom Sinn und Unsinn der Patrozinienkunde (à suivre).
Arnold Angenendt. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 97 (Apr.–June, 2002),
431–456.
“Holy Wars” in History: A Preamble to the Crusades. Lucio Gutiérrez, O.P. Philippiniana Sacra, XXXVII (May–Aug., 2002), 225–247.
“Chi dice la gente che io sia?” San Francesco nella bibliografia neogreca.
Panaghiotis A. Yfantis. Collectanea Franciscana, 72 (3–4, 2002), 561–598.
Le Concile Vatican II. Perspectives de recherche. Giuseppe Alberigo. Revue
d’histoire ecclésiastique, 97 (2, 2002), 562–573.
Gli osservatori non cattolici al Vaticano II:fonti e documentazione.Mauro Velati.
Cristianesimo nella storia, XXIII (May, 2002), 459–485.
Giovanni XXIII e i Redentoristi. Giuseppe Orlando, C.SS.R. Spicilegium Historicum Congregationis SSmi Redemptoris, L (2, 2002), 425–468.
Religion in the Public Square: A Reconsideration of David Hume and Religious
Establishment. Will R. Jordan. Review of Politics, 64 (Fall, 2002), 687–713.
Manoscritti del monastero di Grottaferrara nel Typikon dell’Egumeno Biagio II.
Stefano Parenti. Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 95 (2, 2002), 641–672.
Catálogo del Archivo del Monasterio de la Purísima Concepción de Valladolid.
José Miguel López Cuétara. Archivo Ibero-Americano, LXII (Sept.–Dec.,
2002), 619–642.

ANCIENT

Race and Universalism in Early Christianity. Denise Kimber Buell. Journal of
Early Christian Studies, 10 (Winter, 2002), 429–468

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371

The Christianization of Space along the Via Appia: Changing Landscape in the
Suburbs of Rome. Lucrezia Spera. American Journal of Archaeology, 107
( Jan., 2003), 23–43.
Die alten Viten des heiligen Mamas von Kaisareia.Mit einer Edition der Vita BHG
1019. Albrecht Berger. Analecta Bollandiana, 120 (Dec., 2002), 241–310.
Plagiarism and Lay Patronage of Ascetic Scholarship: Jerome,Ambrose, and Rufinus. Richard A. Layton. Journal of Early Christian Studies, 10 (Winter,
2002), 489–522.
La communio laica del Libellus precum. Juan José Ayán Calvo. Revista Española de Teología, LXII (Apr.–Dec., 2002), 439–458.
Agostino d’Ippona fra tardoantichità e medioevo: a proposito degli indirizzi storiografici. Roberto A. M. Bertacchini. Augustinianum, XLII (Dec., 2002),
347–382.
Gélase de Césarée, un compilateur du cinquième siècle. Peter Van Nuffelen.
Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 95 (2, 2002), 621–639.
Las relaciones eclesiásticas de Hispania con África en época vándala (A.
429–533). Josep Vilella. Augustinianum, XLII (Dec., 2002), 445–468.
Los acontecimientos que condujeron a la celebración del Concilio de Éfeso
(431). Cándido Pozo. Revista Española de Teología, LXII (Apr.–Dec.,
2002), 503–516.
The Synagogue in the Copper Market of Constantinople: A Note on the Christian Attitudes toward Jews in the Fifth Century. Alexander Panayotov. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 68 (2, 2002), 319–334.
The Figure of the Deacon Peter in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great. John
Moorhead. Augustinianum, XLII (Dec., 2002), 469–479.
John Cassian and the Development of Early Irish Christianity: A Study of the
State of the Literature. Garry J. Crites. American Benedictine Review, 53
(Dec., 2002), 377–399.

MEDIEVAL

La cristianización de Britania en dos epístolas de Gregorio Magno. Clelia
Martínez Maza. Athenaeum, 90 (2, 2002), 507–519.
Spreading the Gospel in the Middle Ages. Bernard Hamilton. History Today, 53
( Jan., 2003), 38–45.
Rome, Anglo-Saxon England and the Formation of the Frankish Liturgy. Yitzhak
Hen. Revue Bénédictine, 112 (3–4, 2002), 301–322.
New Voices in the Tradition: Medieval Hagiography Revisited. Marie Anne
Mayeski. Theological Studies, 63 (Dec., 2002), 690–710.

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The Liber de apparitione S. Michaelis in Monte Gargano and the Hagiography
of Dispossession. Nicholas Everett. Analecta Bollandiana, 120 (Dec.,
2002), 364–391.
Medieval Notions of Publication: The “Unpublished” Opus Caroli Regis contra
synodum and the Council of Frankfort (794). Paul Meyvaert. Journal of
Medieval Latin, 12 (2002), 78–89.
A Northumbrian Phase in the Formation of the Hieronymian Martyrology. The
Evidence of the Martyrology of Tallaght. Pádraig Ó Riain. Analecta Bollandiana, 120 (Dec., 2002), 311–363.
“By Lions, Bishops Are Meant; by Wolves, Priests”: History, Exegesis, and the Carolingian Church in Haimo of Auxerre’s Commentary on Ezechiel. John J.
Contreni. Francia, 29 (1, 2002), 29–56.
L’idéologie de guerre sainte dans le haut Moyen Âge hispanique. Patrick Henriet. Francia, 29 (1, 2002), 171–220.
Un exemple d’utilisation de l’histoire: Les empereurs ottoniens (962–1002)
dans la polémique des Investitures. Jacques Van Wijnendaele. Revue Belge
de Philologie et d’Histoire, 79 (4, 2001), 1095–1132.
Hagiographie und Welthaltigkeit.Überlegungen zur Vielfalt des hagiographischen
Genus im Frühmittelalter. Friedrich Prinz. Hagiographica, IX (2002), 1–17.
El año mil cien en la Iglesia Española. Julio Gorricho Moreno. Scriptorium Victoriense, XLIX ( Jan.–June, 2002), 5–32.
Die vita Johannes des Sinaiten von Daniel von Raithu: Ein Beitrag zur byzantinischen Hagiographie. Andreas Müller. Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 95 (2,
2002), 585–601.
Christianity and Royalty: The Touch of the Holy. Branislav Cvetkovid. Byzantion, LXXII (2, 2002), 347–364.
Le Pape Léon IX et “l’archevêque de Carthage” ( JL 4304 et 4305). Charles Munier. Revue des Sciences Religieuses, 76 (Oct., 2002), 447–466.
Le rôle du royaume de Bourgogne dans la réforme grégorienne. Bruno Galland.
Francia, 29 (1, 2002), 85–106.
Ricerche sull’“Historia Iherosolimitana” di Roberto di Reims. Luigi Russo. Studi
Medievali, XLIII (Dec., 2002), 651–691.
Une lecture nouvelle des sources relatives aux origines pré-cisterciennes et cisterciennes de l’abbaye des Dunes (1107–1138) (suite et fin). Michel
Dubuisson, Jean-Baptiste Lefèvre, O.S.B., Jean François Nieus. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 97 (2, 2002), 457–494.
“Ecclesiae sacramenta”.The Spiritual Meaning of Old Testament History and the
Foundation of the Church in Hugh of Fleury’s “Historia ecclesiastica”. Elizabeth Mégier. Studi Medievali, XLIII (Dec., 2002), 625–649.

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Die sogenannten Annales Ottenburani. Martina Giese. Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 58 (1, 2002), 69–121.
Le saint comme martyr et psychagogue: quelques remarques sur l’image ambiguë de Robert d’Arbrissel dans les sources littéraires latines. Alexander
Cizek. Hagiographica, IX (2002), 45–72.
Ist das Wormser Konkordat überhaupt nicht geschlossen worden? Ein Beitrag
zur hochmittelalterlichen Vertragstechnik. Beate Schilling. Deutsches
Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 58 (1, 2002), 123–191.
Der Präbendenbesitz von St-Victor vor Paris im 12. und frühen 13. Jahrhundert.
Mit Urkundenanhang. Stefan Petersen. Francia, 29 (1, 2002), 107–139.
In houses of nuns, in houses of canons: a liturgical dimension to double monasteries. Janet Sorrentino. Journal of Medieval History, 28 (Dec., 2002), 361–372.
The Roots of Æelred’s Spirituality: Cosmology and Anthropology. John R. Sommerfeldt. Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 38 (1, 2002), 19–26.
Le saint et moi. Le “narrateur”: une donnée structurelle dans l’hagiographie
bernardine. Wim Verbaal. Hagiographica, IX (2002), 19–44.
The Roman Curia and the Merger of Savigny with Cîteaux: The Import of the
Papal Documents.Francis R.Swietek and Terrence M.Deneen.Revue Bénédictine, 112 (3–4, 2002), 323–355.
The Blood of Christ in the Later Middle Ages. Caroline Walker Bynum. Church
History, 71 (Dec., 2002), 685–714.
Der Weg nach Anagni—Versuch einer Rekonstruktion. Ulrich Schludi. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 110
(3–4, 2002), 281–328.
Note sulla tradizione sinodale dell’episcopio vercellese (fine XII–XIII sec.). Antonio Olivieri. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, XXXVIII (2, 2002),
303–331.
Some additional letters of Pope Innocent III concerning the cathedral chapter
of Vic. Paul Freedman and Josep Maria Masnou. Römische Historische Mitteilungen, 44 (2002), 103–119.
El Concilio Lateranense y las Iglesias Orientales. Antonio Garcia Garcia. Revista
Española de Teología, LXII (Apr.–Dec., 2002), 231–252.
Dalla “religione civica” alla “pietà illuminata”: la Cintola della Vergine di Prato.
Mario Rosa. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, XXXVIII (2, 2002),
235–269.
Schriften des Franziskus an Klara von Assisi. Eine Spurensuche zwischen “plura
scripta” und dem Schweigen der Quellen. Niklaus Kuster, OFMCap. Wissenschaft und Weisheit, 65 (2, 2002), 163–179.

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I predicatori dei tempi ultimi. La rielaborazione di un tema escatologico nel
costruirsi dell’identità profetica dell’ordine domenicano. Marco Rainini.
Cristianesimo nella storia, XXIII (May, 2002), 307–343.
The Evolution of Dominican Structures of Government. III: The Early Development of the Second Distinction of the Constitutions. Simon Tugwell, O. P.
Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, LXIX (2001), 5–182.
Das Judenmassaker von Fulda 1235 in der Geschichtsschreibung um Kaiser
Friedrich II. Andrea Sommerlechner. Römische Historische Mitteilungen,
44 (2002), 121–150.
El convento de San Francisco de Sahagún y su iglesia de La Peregrina. Javier
Pérez Gil, Juan José Sánchez Badiola, José R. Sola Alonso. Archivo IberoAmericano, LXII (Sept.–Dec., 2002), 643–711.
Orders in Stone: Social Reality and Artistic Approach. The Case of the Strasbourg South Portal. Bernd Nicolai. Gesta, XLI (1, 2002), 111–128.
Mendikanten und Königtum. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Bettelordensprovinzen auf der Iberischen Halbinsel bis zum 14. Jahrhundert. Dieter Berg.
Wissenschaft und Weisheit, 65 (2, 2002), 215–241.
Aufbrunch in ein neues Millennium—Die Bedeutung der Freiheit für die theologische Geschichtsvorstellung bei dem Franziskaner Petrus Johannis Olivi
(1248–1298). Johannes Baptist Freyer, OFM. Wissenschaft und Weisheit, 65
(2, 2002), 197–214.
Fra Salimbene e la domus-religio. Salvare l’Europa cristiana nella cultura del
tardo Duecento. Giorgio Cracco. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa,
XXXVIII (2, 2002), 203–233.
On the creation of the Old French Bible. Clive R. Sneddon. Nottingham Medieval Studies, XLVI (2002), 25–44.
I procuratori dell’Ordine Teutonico tra il XIII e XIV secolo. Studi sopra un inedito rotolo pergamenaceo del Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz di Berlino. Barbara Bombi. Römische Historische Mitteilungen,
44 (2002), 193–297.
‘Like man and wife’: clerics’ concubines in the diocese of Barcelona. M. A. Kelleher. Journal of Medieval History, 28 (Dec., 2002), 349–360.
Margherita da Faenza tra storia e agiografia. Adele Simonetti. Hagiographica, IX
(2002), 161–206.
Santa Brigida negli anni di preparazione al periodo romano della sua vita. Birger
Berg. Studi Romani, L ( Jan.–June, 2002), 80–86.
The Politics of Body Parts: Contested Topographies in Late-Medieval Avignon.
Joëlle Rollo-Koster. Speculum, 78 ( Jan., 2003), 66–98.
Henry of Langenstein and Juan de Segovia on the Census. J. D. Mann. Cristianesimo nella storia, XXIII (May, 2002), 429–441.

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Indulgences at Norwich cathedral priory in the later middle ages: popular piety
in the balance sheet. R. N. Swanson. Historical Research, LXXVI (Feb.,
2002), 18–29.
Per un’edizione delle “Vitae sanctorum” di Rodrigo del Cerrato. Massimiliano
Bassetti. Hagiographica, IX (2002), 73–159.
Sub Utraque Specie:The Arguments of John Hus and Jakoubek of Stríbro in Defence of Giving Communion to the Laity under Both Kinds. Hieromonk Patapios. Journal of Theological Studies, 53 (Oct., 2002), 503–522.
Der (Anti)intellektualismus der böhmischen franziskanischen Observanz im
ausgehenden Mittelalter. Petr Hlavácek. Wissenschaft und Weisheit, 65 (2,
2002), 242–266.
Seeing is Believing: The Power of Visual Culture in the Religious World of As
Çe
Zär’a Ya’eqob of Ethiopia (1434–1468). Steven Kaplan.Journal of Religion
in Africa, 32 (4, 2002), 403–421.
Sur les sièges des chanoines. Les stalles du chapitre collégial de Sallanches:
miroir de la société, de l’économie et de la culture canoniales à la fin du
moyen âge. Michel Fol. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 97 (2, 2002),
495–536.
Machtpolitik und Theologie. Die Päpste und die Frage der conversos in Spanien.
Christopher Laferl.Römische Historische Mitteilungen,44 (2002),321–338.
Don Francisco Álvarez de Toledo. La estela de un humanista, educador y mecenas en el Renacimiento. José Garcia Oro. Revista Española de Teología,
LXII (Apr.–Dec., 2002), 459–482.

SIXTEENTH CENTURY

La Reforma de la Vida Religiosa en España y Portugal durante el Renacimiento.
José García Oro and Ma José Portela Silva. Archivo Ibero-Americano, LXII
(Sept.–Dec., 2002), 455–618.
La réforme de l’abbaye de Saint-Trond et les réseaux monastiques au début du
xvie siècle. Autour d’un recueil de textes réformateurs: Bruxelles, Bibliothèque royale, 20929–20930. Xavier Hermand. Revue Bénédictine, 112
(3–4, 2002), 356–378.
Alonso de Orozco:Asceta y místico del siglo de oro español (1500–1591).Teófilo
Aparicio López. Estudio Agustiniano, XXXVII (Sept.–Dec., 2002), 523–548.
Notas para la cronología de la vida de san Alonso de Orozco. M. González Velasco, O.S.A. La Ciudad de Dios, CCXV (May–Aug., 2002), 353–424.
La teoria della schiavitù naturale nel dibattito sul Nuovo Mondo (1510–1573):
“Veri domini” o “servi a natura”? Giuseppe Tosi. Divus Thomas, 33
(Sept.–Dec., 2002), 5–258.

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Racconti d’armeni del Cinquecento. Carlo Longo, O.P. Archivum Fratrum
Praedicatorum, LXIX (2001), 345–372.
Benedictus Chelidonius, O.S.B. (C.1460–1521), A Forgotten Monastic Humanist
of the Renaissance. Franz Posset. American Benedictine Review, 53 (Dec.,
2002), 426–452.
La identidad capuchina en los Anales de Zacarías Boverio (1524–1556) (II).Policarpo Felipe Alonso. Naturaleza y Gracia, XLIX (May–Aug., 2002),
199–264.
“Reformation ‘versus’Protestantismus”? Theologiegeschichtliche Fallstudien.Martin Ohst. Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 99 (Dec., 2002), 441–479.
Historical and Systematic Theology in the Mirror of Church History: The
Lessons of “Ordination” in Sixteenth-Century Saxony. James M. Kittelson.
Church History, 71 (Dec., 2002), 743–773.
‘Pray to the Lord of the Harvest’: Jesuit missions to Scotland in the sixteenth
century. Thomas M. McCoog, S.J. Innes Review, 53 (Autumn, 2002),
127–188.
“Le Rivelazioni” of Lucia Brocadelli da Narni. Ann Matter, Armando Maggi, and
Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner. Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, LXIX
(2001), 311–344.
Mastering the Methods of Manipulation: Who Really Won the Marian Propaganda Wars? Glen Bowman. Journal of Church and State, 44 (Autumn,
2002), 805–820.
Don Gómez Tello Girón, Gobernador de la Archidiócesis de Toledo. Cuentas de
su mandato (1560–1567). J. Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras. Scriptorium Victoriense, XLIX ( Jan.–June, 2002), 33–145.
“The same cause and like quarell”: Eusebius, John Foxe, and the Evolution of Ecclesiastical History. Gretchen E. Minton. Church History, 71 (Dec., 2002),
715–742.
De cara a un cónclave. D. Juan de Zúñiga informa a Felipe II (1569). José Ignacio
Tellechea Idígoras. Revista Española de Teología, LXII (Apr.–Dec., 2002),
529–548.
In the Cross-Currents of the Reformation: Crypto-Jewish Martyrs of the Inquisition 1570–1670. Miriam Bodian. Past and Present, No. 176 (Aug., 2002),
66–104.
Be kind to the Antichrist: Millenarianism and religious tolerance in the Edict of
Pskov. Michael Ostling. Studies in Religion, 30 (3–4, 2001), 261–276.
Saint-Making at the End of the Sixteenth Century: How and Why Jacek of
Poland (d. 1257) Became St. Hyacinth in 1594. Ronald C. Finucane. Hagiographica, IX (2002), 207–258.

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377

La cuestión de la misa y comunión frecuente y cotidiana a finales del siglo XVI.
Una apología inédita de fray Pedro Cañedo, OFM. Isaac Vázquez Janeiro.
Salmanticensis, XLIX (May–Aug., 2002), 289–307.
La diócesis de Salamanca en 1600. La relación del Obispo Junco de Posada. J. I.
Tellechea Idígoras. Salmanticensis, XLIX (May–Aug., 2002), 309–325.
The Montmorencys and the Abbey of Sainte Trinité, Caen: Politics, Profit and Reform.Joan Davies.Journal of Ecclesiastical History,53 (Oct.,2002),665–685.

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

Il ruolo della Reverenda Fabbrica di San Pietro nei cantieri romani tra Rinascimento e Barroco. Maria Grazia D’Amelio. Römische Historische Mitteilungen, 44 (2002), 393–424.
Scripture, Style and Persuasion in Seventeenth-Century English Theories of
Preaching. Mary Morrissey. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 53 (Oct.,
2002), 686–706.
Galileo as a ‘bad theologian’: a formative myth about Galileo’s trial. Maurice A.
Finocchiaro. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 33A (Dec.,
2002), 753–791.
Le rôle de l’État dans la Réforme catholique: une inspection du diocèse de
Poitiers lors des Grands Jours de 1634. Daniel Hickey. Revue Historique,
CCCVII, No. 624 (Oct.–Dec., 2002), 939–961.
Juan Caramuel Lobkowicz (1606–1682) e la riconquista delle coscienze in
Boemia. Alessandro Catalano. Römische Historische Mitteilungen, 44
(2002), 339–392.
Convento primitivo de San Francisco en la Villa de la Fuente. (1646–1664).
Teodoro-Agustín López López. Archivo Ibero-Americano, LXII (Sept.–Dec.,
2002), 713–722.
Britain’s First Citizen: Sir Alexander Irvine of Drum, accused Papist, and the Aberdeen Presbytery. Robert H. Landrum. Innes Review, 53 (Autumn, 2002),
189–200.
Les documents grecs du XVIIe siècle: pièces authentiques et pièces fausses.
1. L’ex-patriarche oecuménique Athanase Patélare à Moscou en 1653. Vera
G. Tchentsova. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 68 (2, 2002), 335–374.
Surin, une mystique communicative. De l’example de Thérèse à l’exhortation
pour tous. Patrick Goujon. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa,
XXXVIII (2, 2002), 333–344.
Los franciscanos conventuales intentan restaurar la Orden en España: Madrid
1664–1667. Gonzalo Fernández-Gallardo Jiménez, O.F.M.Conv. Archivo
Ibero-Americano, LXII (Sept.–Dec., 2002), 723–736.

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Guilt by Association: The Atheist Cabal and the Rise of the Public Sphere in Augustan England. Roger D. Lund. Albion, 34 (Fall, 2002), 391–421.
Per un catalogo delle opere di Giovanni Maria Borzino, O.P. (1619–1696): i codici delle biblioteche genovesi. Sara Badano. Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, LXIX (2001), 373–452.
Tradition et modernité. La réforme des études en Sorbonne (1673–1715).
Jacques M. Gres Gayer. Revue d’Histoire de l’Église de France, 88
( July–Dec., 2002), 341–389.
La guerre des Cévennes: un conflit trilateral? Chrystel Bernat. Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire du Protestantisme Français, 148 ( July–Sept., 2002),
61–506.
Conditional Britons: The Scots Covenanting Tradition and the EighteenthCentury British State. Colin Kidd. English Historical Review, CXVII (Nov.,
2002), 1147–1176.
Filippo Juvarras S. Filippo Neri-Kapelle in S. Girolamo della Carità in Rom und
ihr Auftraggeber Tommaso Antamoro. Georg Schelbert. Römische Historische Mitteilungen, 44 (2002), 425–476.
Voltaire and the Polish Enlightenment: Religious Responses. Wanda Dzwigala.
Slavonic and East European Review, 81 ( Jan., 2003), 70–87.

NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES

Church and Society in Aberdeen and Glasgow, c. 1800–c. 2000. Peter Hillis. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 53 (Oct., 2002), 707–734.
Gabriel Gruber, S.J. (1740–1805): Nel bicentenario della sua elezione a Generale
della Compagnia di Gesù. Marek Inglot, S.J. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXI ( July–Dec., 2002), 353–368.
Das weltweite Apostolatsnetz der Gründung Vinzenz Pallottis. Hubert Socha,
SAC. Trierer Theologische Zeitschrift, 111 (4, 2002), 321–334.
Outward and Visible Signs of Conversion in Nineteenth-Century KwaZulu-Natal.
Norman Etherington. Journal of Religion in Africa, 32 (4, 2002), 422–439.
Newman and Dean Church. Edward J. Enright, O.S.A. Downside Review, 120
(Oct., 2002), 271–292.
Was Newman an Ecumenist? John T. Ford, C.S.C. Josephinum Journal of Theology, 9 (Summer/Fall, 2002), 196–210.
“Badische Missionen” in der Schweiz und im Elsass. Die Tätigkeit der Redemptoristen und Jesuiten für badische Katholiken 1840–1848 und deren
Auswirkungen. Claudius Heitz. Spicilegium Historicum Congregationis
SSmi Redemptoris, L (2, 2002), 469–543.

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379

Klara Fey (†1894) und die “Schwestern vom armen Kinde Jesus”. Hubertus Lutterbach. Trierer Theologische Zeitschrift, 111 (4, 2002), 274–296.
“Caverns of death”. Charles Dickens e le catacombe. Massimiliano Ghilardi.
Studi Romani, L ( Jan.–June, 2002), 3–22.
John Henry Newman und die Idee der Universität. Arnd Morkel. Trierer Theologische Zeitschrift, 111 (4, 2002), 253–273.
To Tara via Holyhead: The Emergence of Irish Catholic Ethnicity in NineteenthCentury Christchurch, New Zealand. Lyndon Fraser. Journal of Social History, 36 (Winter, 2002), 431–458.
Quelques réactions face aux tentatives de suppression du subside accordé par
l’État belge aux Bollandistes, dans les années 1860. Bernard Joassart.
Analecta Bollandiana, 120 (Dec., 2002), 392–403.
The ‘Burial Question’: Controversy and Conflict, c. 1860–1890. Catrin Stevens.
Welsh History Review, 21 (Dec., 2002), 328–356.
I cappuccini in Sicilia in seguito alla soppressione degli ordini religiosi (1866).
Salvatore Vacca. Laurentianum, 43 (1–3, 2002), 121–253.
Huxley and scientific agnosticism: the strange history of a failed rhetorical strategy. Bernard Lightman. British Journal for the History of Science, 35
(Sept., 2002), 271–289.
La jeunesse d’Eugène Réveillaud: ou la formation d’un parlementaire républicain et protestant sous la Troisième République. Antoine Loison. Bulletin
de la Société de l’histoire du Protestantisme Français, 148 ( July–Sept.,
2002), 509–526.
Cartes de visite from the Other World: Spiritism and the Discourse of Laïcisme
in the Early Third Republic. John Warne Monroe. French Historical Studies, 26 (Winter, 2003), 119–153.
The Conseil d’État and the Religious Communities, 1879–1906. Elwyn Elms.
French History, 16 ( June, 2002), 174–202.
The Politics of Catholic Education in Zambia, 1891–1964. Brendan Carmody.
Journal of Church and State, 44 (Autumn, 2002), 775–804.
Posizione ambigua di Duchesne di fronte alla critica biblica dei modernisti.
Frederic Raurell. Laurentianum, 43 (1–3, 2002), 255–305.
Die Martyrer des 20. Jahrhunderts. Helmut Moll. Internationale Katholische
Zeitschrift Communio, 31 (Sept.–Oct., 2002), 429–446.
Frank Duff’s Search for the Neglected and Rejected. Finola Kennedy. Studies, 91
(Winter, 2002), 381–389.
The Imagined Crusade: The Church of England and the Mythology of Nationalism and Christianity during the Great War. Shannon Ty Bontrager. Church
History, 71 (Dec., 2002), 774–798.

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Kriegserfahrung als Forschungsproblem. Der Erste Weltkrieg in der religiösen
Erfahrung von Katholiken. Andreas Holzem and Christoph Holzapfel. Theologische Quartalschrift, 182 (4, 2002), 279–297.
Sante Sede e Russia sovietica alla Conferenza di Genova. Giuseppe M. Croce.
Cristianesimo nella storia, XXIII (May, 2002), 345–365.
Mons. Cirillo Zohrabian in Grecia (1923–1938).“Autobiografia” inedita. Filippo
Santi Cucinotta. Laurentianum, 43 (1–3, 2002), 3–119.
The Redemptorists and the China Mission.Samuel J.Boland,C.SS.R.Spicilegium
Historicum Congregationis SSmi Redemptoris, L (2, 2002), 601–628.
The transatlantic Catholic conservativism of Colm Brogan. Bernard Aspinwall.
Innes Review, 53 (Autumn, 2002), 201–225.
Life and Writings of Br. M. Rafael Barón (VII). Rafael Arnáiz Barón. Cistercian
Studies Quarterly, 38 (1, 2002), 35–83.
Kriegserfahrung und Kriegstheologie 1939–1945. Wilhelm Damberg. Theologische Quartalschrift, 182 (4, 2002), 321–341.
Un pionnier de l’unité des missions protestantes d’Afrique francophone, Jean
Keller (1900–1993). Franck G. Keller. Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire du
Protestantisme Français, 148 ( July–Sept., 2002), 529–563.
Chiesa cattolica e Cina comunista (1949–1954). Elisa Giunipero. Nuova Rivista
Storica, LXXXVI (May–Aug., 2002), 329–352.
From the Pursuit of Converts to the Relief of Refugees: The Maryknoll Sisters in
Twentieth-Century Hong Kong. Cindy Yik-yi-Chu. The Historian, 65 (Winter, 2002), 353–376.
Un prete dal ‘cuore di padre’: Don Carlo Gnocchi (1902–1956). Ezio Bolis. La
Rivista del Clero Italiano, LXXXIII (Oct., 2002), 679–691.

AMERICAN AND CANADIAN

Searching for Land and God: The Pietist Migration to North Carolina in the Late
Colonial Period. S. Scott Rohrer. North Carolina Historical Review, LXXIX
(Oct., 2002), 409–439.
“No Irish Need Apply”: A Myth of Victimization. Richard Jensen. Journal of Social History, 36 (Winter, 2002), 405–429.
“The Eye of God”: Religious Beliefs and Punishment in Early Nineteenth-Century
Prison Reform. Muriel Schmid. Theology Today, 59 ( Jan., 2003), 546–558.
Skepticism and American Faith: Infidels, Converts, and Religious Doubt in the
Early Nineteenth Century. Christopher Grasso. Journal of the Early Republic 22 (Fall, 2002), 465–508.

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The Louisiana Colonization Society and the Protestant Missionary, 1830–1860.
Timothy F. Reilly. Louisiana History, XLIII (Fall, 2002), 433–477.
Toward Humanitarian Ends? Protestants and Slave Reform in South Carolina,
1830–1865. Kimberly R. Kellison. South Carolina Historical Magazine,
103 ( July, 2002), 210–225.
Anti-Catholicism in America, Part II: The Philadelphia Riots (1844). Kenneth J.
Zanca. Delta Epsilon Sigma Journal, XLVIII (Winter, 2003), 4–14.
“To Stand Out in Heresy”: Lucretia Mott, Liberty, and the Hysterical Woman.
Nancy Isenberg. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography,
CXXVII ( Jan., 2003), 7–34.
Accounts of Conditions at Bishop Hill, 1847–1850. Mark L. Johnson. Journal of
Illinois History, 5 (Autumn, 2002), 213–236.
Ministering Hope to Chicago. Suellen Hoy. Chicago History, XXXI (Fall, 2002),
4–23.
Contesting Secession: Parson Brownlow and the Rhetoric of Proslavery Unionism, 1860–1861. Robert Tracy McKenzie. Civil War History, 48 (Dec.,
2002), 294–312.
The Problems of the Past in the Modern University: Catholics and Classicists,
1860–1900. Kathleen A. Mahoney and Caroline Winterer. History of Education Quarterly, 42 (Winter, 2002), 517–543.
Zwischen Milieukohäsion und nationaler Integration. Zur Funktion katholischer Militärseelsorge im Amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg 1861–1865. Michael
Hochgeschwender. Theologische Quartalschrift, 182 (4, 2002), 342–364.
Admission Records of the St. Joseph Orphan Society, Louisville, 1888–1925 ( part
four). Mary Margaret Bell. Kentucky Ancestors, 37 (Spring, 2002), 154–160.
“On the Shore Beyond the Sea”: Black Missionaries from Arkansas in Africa during the 1890s. Kenneth C. Barnes. Arkansas Historical Quarterly, LXI
(Winter, 2002), 329–356.
Conservative Social Christianity, the Law, and Personal Morality: Wilbur F. Crafts
in Washington.Gaines M.Foster.Church History,71 (Dec.,2002),799–819.
University Cultural Wars: Rival Protestant Pieties in Early Twentieth-Century
Princeton. P. C. Kemeny. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 53 (Oct., 2002),
735–764.
Red Illini: Dorothy Day, Samson Raphaelson, and Rayna Simons at the University
of Illinois, 1914–1916. Robert D. Sampson. Journal of Illinois History, 5
(Autumn, 2002), 170–196.
Sentenced to Death—Destined for Life: Catholic Religious and Japanese Occupation. James T. Carroll. American Catholic Studies, 113 (Fall–Winter,
2002), 57–74.

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PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Without Comment or Controversy:The G.I. Bill and Catholic Colleges. Elizabeth
A. Edmondson. Church History, 71 (Dec., 2002), 820–847.
Famille, mariage et procréation. Le combat de deux cardinaux canadiens. Gilles
Routhier. Cristianesimo nella storia, XXIII (May, 2002), 367–428.

LATIN AMERICAN

Las Casas vor Karl V. oder Prophetie und Politik in der Konquistadorenzeit. Mariano Delgado. Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 84 (2, 2002), 313–346.
Lo modélico y lo antimodélico en la vida cotidiana del Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario (1653–1810). Mónica Martini. Boletín de Historia y
Antigüedades, LXXXIX (Oct.–Dec., 2002), 827–856.
Francisco José de Jaca: una vide en favor de la liberación de los esclavos negros.
Miguel Anxo Pena González, OFMCap. Collectanea Franciscana, 72 (3–4,
2002), 599–671.
Controverses sur l’Apologie de Las Casas lue par l’Abbé Grégoire. Jean-Daniel
Piquet. Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses, 82 ( July–Sept.,
2002), 283–306.
Des congréganistes français au service de la “République noire”. Les Frères de
Ploërmel en Haïti (1864–1909). Philippe Delisle. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 97 (2, 2002), 537–560.
Viajes Misioneros ¿Cómo Ilegaron los Redentoristas al Perú? Álvaro Córdoba
Chaves, C.SS.R. Spicilegium Historicum Congregationis SSmi Redemptoris, L (2, 2002), 545–600.

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

Ankarloo, Bengt, Stuart Clark, and William Monter. Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Period of the Witch Trials. (Philadephia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2002. Pp. xiv, 193. Paperback.)
Beaton, Richard. Isaiah’s Christ in Matthew’s Gospel. (New York: Cambridge
University Press. 2003. Pp. xv, 242. $60.00 hardback.)
Boulding, Maria, O.S.B. (Trans.). The Confessions of St. Augustine. [The Works
of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century,Part I.: Books,Volume
I.] (Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press. 2002. Pp. 307. $9.95 paperback.)
Brading, D. A. Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2003.
Pp. xvii, 462. $22.00 paperback.) Originally published in 2001 and reviewed by Stafford Poole, C.M., ante, LXXXVII (October, 2001), 773–777.
Brown, Peter. The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D.
200–1000. Second Edition. [The Making of Europe.] (Malden,Mass.: Blackwell Publishing. 2003. Pp. x, 625. $29.95 paperback.) Originally published
in 1996 and reviewed by R. A. Markus ante, LXXXIII (October, 1997),
745–746.
Ciholas, Paul. The Omphalos and the Cross: Pagans and Christians in Search
of a Divine Center. (Macon,Ga.: Mercer University Press. 2003. Pp. viii,513.
$35.00 paperback.)
Crane, Elaine Forman. Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell. (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press. 2002. Pp. xv, 236.)
Cronin, Mike. A History of Ireland. [Palgrave Essential Histories.] (New York: Palgrave. 2003. Pp. xviii, 273. $18.95 paperback.) First published in 2001.
Curran, Charles E. (Ed.). Change in Official Catholic Moral Teachings. [Readings in Moral Theology No. 13.] (New York and Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press.
2003. Pp. x, 336. $27.95 paperback.)
Dawson, Christopher. The Making of Europe: An Introduction to the History
of European Unity. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press. Pp. xxxix, 283. $26.95.) First published in 1932 by Sheed and Ward,
London, and The Macmillan Company, New York, and reviewed by Leo L.
McVay ante, XX (October, 1934), 322–323.

383

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OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

Dinter, Paul E. The Other Side of the Altar: One Man’s Life in the Catholic
Priesthood. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2003. Pp. xiii, 240.
$23.00.)
Doran, Susan, and Christopher Durston. Princes, Pastors and People: The
Church and Religion in England, 1500–1700. Second Edition. (London
and New York: Routledge. 2002. Pp. ix, 221. $25.95 paperback.)
Du Prey, Pierre de la Ruffinière. Hawksmoor’s London Churches: Architecture
and Theology. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2002. Pp. xix,
179. $25.00 paperback.) Originally published in 2000 and reviewed by
John Newman ante, LXXXVII ( January, 2001), 108–110.
Dunn, Marilyn. The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the
Early Middle Ages. (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing. 2003. Pp. vii, 280.
$29.95 paperback.) Originally published in 2000 and reviewed by Tim Vivian ante, LXXXVII (October, 2001), 714–715.
Gilbert, Martin. The Routledge Atlas of American History. 4th Edition. (London
and New York: Routledge. 2003. Pp. ix, 149. $19.95 paperback.) First published in 1968 as The Dent Atlas of American History.
Graham, Helen. The Spanish Republic at War 1936–1939. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2003. Pp. xiv, 472. $70.00 hardback; $26.00 paperback.)
Kelly, Matthew. Rediscovering Catholicism: Journeying Toward Our Spiritual
North Star. (Cincinnati: Beacon Publishing. 2002. Pp. xix, 321. $22.95.)
Longenecker, Richard N. (Ed.). Community Formation in the Early Church
and in the Church Today. (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.
2002. Pp. xix, 251. $19.95 paperback.) Among the essays published here
are “Christian Ministry in Three Cities of the Western Empire (160–258
C.E.),” by Alan L. Hayes, and “Ministerial Forms and Functions in the
Church Communities of the Greek Fathers,” by Frances Young.
Madges,William, and Michael J. Daley (Eds.). Vatican II: Forty Personal Stories.
(Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Publications. 2003. Pp. viii, 231. $19.95 paperback.)
Mariani, Paul. God and the Imagination: On Poets, Poetry, and the Ineffable.
(Athens: The University of Georgia Press. 2002. Pp. xvii, 280. $45.00 hardcover; $19.95 paperback.)
Markey,John J.,O.P. Creating Communion: The Theology of the Constitutions of
the Church. (Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press. 2003. Pp. 192. Paperback.)
Matovina, Timothy, and Gary Riebe-Estrella, SVD (Eds.). Horizons of the Sacred:
Mexican Traditions in U.S. Catholicism. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press. 2002. Pp. xi, 189. $45.00 clothbound; $19.95 paperback.) Contents:
Timothy Matovina and Gary Riebe-Estrella, Introduction (pp. 1–16); Timo-

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

385

thy Matovina,“Companion in Exile: Guadalupan Devotion at San Fernando
Cathedral, San Antonio, Texas, 1900–1940” (pp. 17–40); Karen Mary Davalos,“‘The Real Way of Praying’: The Via Crucis, Mexicano Sacred Space, and
the Architecture of Domination” (pp. 41–68); Lara Medina and Gilbert R.
Cadena,“Días de los Muertos: Public Ritual, Community Renewal, and Popular Religion in Los Angeles” (pp. 69–94);Luis D. León,“‘Soy una Curandera
y Soy una Católica’: The Poetics of a Mexican Healing Tradition” (pp.
95–118); Roberto S. Goizueta, “The Symbolic World of Mexican American
Religion” (pp. 119–138); Orlando O. Espin, “Mexican Religious Practices,
Popular Catholicism, and the Development of Doctrine” (pp. 139–170).
Newman, John Henry. The Church of the Fathers. Introduction and Notes
by Francis McGrath, F.M.S. [The Works of Cardinal John Henry Newman:
Birmingham Oratory Millennium Edition, Volume V.] (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press. 2003. Pp. lxxix, 679. $40.00.) Originally
published in 1840.
Newman, John Henry. Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations. Introduction and Notes by James Tolhurst. [The Works of Cardinal John Henry
Newman: Birmingham Oratory Millennium Edition, Volume VI.] (Notre
Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. 2002. Pp. lix, 431. $30.00.)
First published in 1849.
Pelling, Nick. Anglo-Irish Relations, 1798–1922. (London and New York: Routledge. 2003. Pp. ix, 129. $11.95 paperback.)
Pope John Paul II: Reaching Out Across Borders. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.:
Prentice Hall. 2003. Pp. vii, 184. $29.95.) This copiously illustrated, largeformat book contains the following essays by Reuters specialists: “From
Wooden Clogs to the Shoes of the Fisherman,” by Philip Pullella; “A Religious Revolutionary,” by Sean Maguire;“On the Road with Pope John Paul,”
by Pullella;“Children of the Same God: Pope John Paul and the Jewish People,” by Alan Elsner; and “A Paradoxical Papacy,” by Tom Heneghan.
Stein, Edith. Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt at an Ascent to the Meaning of Being. Trans. Kurt F. Reinhardt. [The Collected Works of Edith Stein:
Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Discalced Carmelite, 1891–1942, Volume Nine.] (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications. 2002. Pp. xxxii, 625. $19.95
paperback.) The original of this work was published by the Archivum Carmelitanum Edith Stein under the title Endliches und ewiges Sein: Versuch
eines Aufstiegs zum Sinn des Seins.
Stein, Edith. The Science of the Cross. Trans. Josephine Koeppel, O.C.D. [The
Collected Works of Edith Stein: Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Discalced Carmelite, 1891–1942,Volume Six.] (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications. 2002. Pp. xxxvii, 358. $14.95 paperback.) The original of this work
was published by the Archivum Carmelitanum Edith Stein under the title
Kreuzeswissenschaft, Studie über Johannes a Cruce.

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OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

Tackett, Timothy. When the King Took Flight. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 2003. Pp. xv, 270. $24.95.)
Turner,James. Language, Religion, Knowledge: Past and Present.(Notre Dame,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. 2003. Pp. ix,216. $35.00 clothbound;
$17.00 paperback.)
Ward, Pete. Liquid Church. (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc. 2002.
Pp. ix, 112. $14.95 paperback.)