The Catholic Historical
Review
VOL. XCI

JANUARY, 2005

No. 1

POWER MADE VISIBLE: POPE SIXTUS IV AS URBIS
RESTAURATOR IN QUATTROCENTO ROME
BY

JILL E. BLONDIN*

A single medal, commemorating the completion of the bridge, the
Ponte Sisto, captures the duality of Pope Sixtus IV’s (Francesco della
Rovere, 1471–1484) official role as spiritual leader and his chosen role
as urban renovator. The medal features a profile portrait of Sixtus surrounded by the words “SIXTVS IIII PONT MAX SACRICVLTOR,” while
on the back a three-line inscription above a small image of the Ponte
Sisto (fig. 1) proclaims “CVRA / RERVM / PVBLICARVM.” The obverse
depicts Sixtus as the high priest of Christendom,while the reverse shows
the pontiff as the caretaker of urban projects.This article explores what
the medal makes visible: within his extensive patronage of art, Sixtus
commissioned public works that advertised his refurbishment of Rome
while communicating the message of his secular and sacred authority
to observers throughout the Eternal City. The Capitoline Museum, Aqua
Vergine, Ponte Sisto, the Vatican Library, and newly paved streets not
only built upon and recalled ancient power and history, but they also
publicly proclaimed the success of Sixtus’ papacy. By extending his vision to all of Rome (see map, fig. 2) and not just particular areas of the
city,as his papal predecessors had,the pope exhibited a new supremacy.1
In restoring the grandeur of ancient Rome, Sixtus claimed both temporal and spiritual importance.
*Dr. Blondin is an assistant professor of art history in the University of Texas at Tyler.
She wishes to thank Dr. Jeryldene Wood, Dr. Starleen K. Meyer, Dr. Paul Streufert, and
Thanh Tran.
1
See Dale Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance:The Patron’s Oeuvre (New Haven and London, 2000), pp. 3–5; Charles Rosenberg, The Este Monuments

1

2

POWER MADE VISIBLE: POPE SIXTUS IV AS URBIS RESTAURATOR IN QUATTROCENTO ROME

Fig. 1
Lysippus the Younger, Ponte Sisto Medal of Pope Sixtus IV, 1473, bronze. Biblioteca
Apostolica Vaticana

Fifteen hundred years before Sixtus became pope, the emperor Augustus restored temples, built a new forum in the Campus Martius,
founded Latin and Greek libraries in a wing of his imperial residence on
the Palatine Hill,and paved several major roads.By fashioning himself as
Urbis Restaurator, Sixtus aligned himself more with this tradition than
with the example of his papal predecessors.2 Sixtus commissioned projects similar to those completed by Augustus: he built churches, established the Latin and Greek libraries in the Vatican Palace, paved major
streets and piazzas, constructed the Ponte Sisto, and reconstructed the
Aqua Vergine. Contemporary eulogists drew parallels between Sixtus
and the illustrious emperor, sometimes praising the pope as being the
reincarnation of Augustus himself.3 The humanist Ludovico Lazzarelli
extolled the pope’s achievements in relation to ancient leaders,“For you
repair churches once deformed in ugly ruins. You stretch out new
bridges, and even pave streets, that Agrippa took up, which Augustus
had from this time encouraged! You [Sixtus] repair the waters of the

and Urban Development in Renaissance Ferrara (Cambridge, 1997), p. 86; Allan Ceen,
The Quartiere de’ Banchi: Urban Planning in Rome in the First Half of the Cinquecento (New York, 1986), p. 36.
2
Egmont Lee, Sixtus IV and Men of Letters (Rome, 1978), pp. 123–124, denies such a
connection. Also see Mandell Creighton, A History of the Papacy from the Great Schism
to the Sack of Rome,Vol. 4 (London, 1901), p. 69, and Leopold Ettlinger,“Pollaiuolo’s Tomb
of Pope Sixtus IV,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, 16 (1953), 266–267.
3
Lee, op. cit., pp. 123–124; Isabelle Frank,“Melozzo da Forlì and the Rome of Pope Sixtus IV, 1471–1484” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1991), pp. 57–58; Elisabeth
Schröter,“Der Vatikan als Hügel Apollons unter der Musen:Kunst und Panegyrik von Nikolaus V. bis Julius II.,” Römische Quartalschrift, 75 (1980), 218–219.

BY JILL E. BLONDIN

3

Fig. 2
Map of Rome during the reign of Pope Sixtus IV, drawn by Thanh Tran

Fountain Vergine.”4 The urbanism of Sixtus recalled the classical city,
wrote Raffaelo Maffei, since the pontiff “made Rome from a city of brick
into stone just as Augustus of old had turned the stone city into marble.”5 The poet Aurelio Brandolini echoed this sentiment, and congratulated Sixtus for surpassing the ancient Rome rulers:
But Sixtus dared this and he alone ordered old Rome to rise up again; no, actually he
himself founded a new Rome!
This man returned beauty to the city and he removed the old ruins and he laid out in
all directions a road of baked brick.
4
Ludovico Lazzarelli, Fasti Christianae religionis, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV),
Cod. Vat. Lat. 2853, fol. 255r, writes,“Turpibus enim reparas iam deformata ruinis Templa, /
novos Pontes sternis et ecce vias. / Quas Agrippa tulit, quas dehinc Augustus adrexit! / Virginei reparas tu quoque fontis aquas.”On Lazzarelli,see Lee,op.cit.,p.113,and P.Oskar Kristeller,“Marsilio Ficino e Lodovico Lazzarelli: contributo alla diffusione delle idee ermetiche
nel Rinascimento,” in Studies in Renaissance Thought (Rome, 1956), pp. 221–247.
5
This quote is found in Loren Partridge, The Art of Renaissance Rome 1400–1600
(New York, 1996), p. 21. Also see Raffaello Maffei, Commentarium urbanorum XXXVIII
(Paris, 1526), fol. 316r.

4

POWER MADE VISIBLE: POPE SIXTUS IV AS URBIS RESTAURATOR IN QUATTROCENTO ROME

He built a famous work of a bridge and he restored churches, many to be sure, but he
built still more new ones.
He collected books of the ancients, he collected books of recent writers.
He himself brought back the Aqua Vergine to the Campus Martius.
And what those and others did in 1500 years, this man himself accomplished in ten
years.
Father Romulus, yield! All ancients, yield!6

Just two days into his reign, Sixtus began his civic renovation program
when he attempted to protect the public property of Rome by proclaiming that no type of column or marble statuary could be moved for other
uses.7 Early in his papacy,the pontiff repaired several ancient temples that
long ago had been turned into churches, cleaned the Cloaca Maxima in
the Foro Boario, issued new conservation laws, and commissioned the
restoration of the statue of Marcus Aurelius (161–180 A.D.), thought to be
of Constantine, in front of the Lateran.8 Despite these efforts at conserva6
Aurelio Brandolini,“De urbe Roma a Sixto iterum condita,” epigram XVIII, BAV, Cod.
Urb. Lat. 739, fol. 82r–v; BAV, Cod.Vat. Lat. 5008, fol. 63r:
Ausus at est Sixtus veteremque resurgere solus
Iussit Romam, immo condidit ipse novam;
Reddidit hic urbi formam veteresque ruinas
Substulit : et passim coctile fecit iter.
Nobile pontis opus struxit delubra refecit.
Multa quidem : fecit sed nova plura tamen.
Congessit veterum, congessit scripta recentum,
Campo virgineas ipse reduxit aquas.
Quodque alii atque alii lustris fecere trecentis
Condidit hic lustris omne duobus opus.
Romule, cede pater, veteres concedite cuncti
7
August 11, 1471, in Archivio Segreto Vaticano (ASV ), Div. Cam., 1471–1478, fol. 5, cited
in Starleen Kay Meyer,“The Papal Series in the Sistine Chapel” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 1998), pp. 198, 257, and in Eugene Müntz, Les arts à les cours
des papes pendant le XVe et le XVIe siècle, III (Paris, 1882), 168–169, note 3. The brief
reads,“by the road to the port of Ostiaa, no type of marble, whether statues and images, or
columns, or any type whatsoever, may be taken away ( per viam portus Ostiae nullum
genus marmoris, tam in signis et ymaginibus, quam in columnis aut quacumque alia forma
per quoscumque extrahatur).” Also see Lucina Vattuone, “Esaltazione e distruzione di
Roma antica nella città di Sisto IV,” in Sisto IV: Le arti a Roma nel Primo Rinascimento,
ed. Fabio Benzi (Rome, 2000), p. 175.
8
Sixtus issued Cum provida sanctorum patrum decreta, April 7, 1474, to protect ancient objects and church property. The new bull was designed to safeguard churches and
their property, not to care for antique items. The statue of Marcus Aurelius, refurbished
from 1473–4, was originally placed on four columns in front of S. Giovanni in Laterano.
See Müntz, op. cit., III, 176–177; Paul Borchardt,“The Sculpture in Front of the Lateran as

BY JILL E. BLONDIN

5

tion, Sixtus did not shirk from using some antique structures as marble
quarries and demolish others when they interfered with his renewal
plans.9 The pope ordered the ruined Stadium of Domitian torn down
when he had the market moved from the Capitoline Hill to the Piazza
Navona.Sixtus’destruction of ancient monuments angered some contemporaries, who criticized the pope for turning a blind eye on the city’s heritage.The humanist Fausto Andrelini accused the pope of pillaging Rome:
What madness persuaded you alone to convert Caesar’s Amphitheater more worthless
than the country of Illyria, Sixtus?
It is obvious that your hands damaged the great Amphitheater so that the foundations
of the small bridge could stand.10

Nevertheless, the pope established the Capitoline Museum, the first
public collection of antiquities in Europe. Sixtus ordered that ancient
bronze sculpture, including the Spinario, the She-Wolf, the Palla Sansonis, the Camillus, or Gypsy, and, slightly later, the Hercules, be moved
to the façade of the Palazzo dei Conservatori from the piazza of the Lateran, where the statues had been displayed on single marble columns.11
Only four months after the della Rovere pope assumed power, on December 14, 1471, the museum opened.
Sixtus’ donation and placement of the ancient statues had considerable political implications.Not only was the Capitoline Museum intended

Described by Benjamin of Tudela and Magister Gregorius,” Journal of Roman Studies, 26
(1936), 68–70; Christof Thoenes,“Sic Romae: Statuenstiftung, und Marc Aurel,” in Ars naturam adiuvans: Festschrift für Matthias Winner zum 11 März 1996, eds. Victoria V.
Flemming and Sebastian Schutze (Mainz, 1996), pp. 86–99; Tilmann Buddensieg,“Die Statuenstiftung Sixtus’ IV. im Jahre 1471,” Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, 20
(1983), 66–67.
9
Vattuone, op. cit., pp. 174–187, maintains that Sixtus actually destroyed few monuments for civic development, and never deliberately destroyed ancient ruins as an end in
itself. She justifies her hypothesis by asserting that no one at the time really felt the need
to preserve antiquities. Humanists such as Andrelini felt otherwise.
10
Fausto Andrelini’s entire poem,“In Sixtum IIII Pont. Max.,” is published in Müntz, op.
cit., III, 177. The original poem is located in BAV, Cod.Vat. Lat. 3351, fol. 76r: Quis tibi Caesareum suasit furor amphitheatrum vilior illirico vertere, Sixte, solo? Scilicet, ut parvi starent fundamina pontis ampla tuae tulerunt amphitheatra manus?
11
Müntz, op. cit., III, 168ff.; Rodolfo Lanciani, Storia degli Scavi a Roma (Rome,
1902–1912), I, 94–95; Meyer, op.cit., pp. 138–139; William S. Heckscher, Sixtus IIII, Aeneas
Insignes Romano Populo Restituendas Censuit (The Hague, 1955); Buddensieg, op. cit.,
pp. 33–74; Claudio Parisi Presicce, “I grandi bronzi de Sisto IV dal Laterano in Campidoglio,”in Sisto IV: Le arti a Roma nel Primo Rinascimento,ed.Fabio Benzi,pp.189–200.

6

POWER MADE VISIBLE: POPE SIXTUS IV AS URBIS RESTAURATOR IN QUATTROCENTO ROME

to please the citizens; it was a deliberate and symbolic attempt by Sixtus to return Rome to its former magnificence.12 The first inscription
composed during Sixtus’ pontificate underlines this point by proclaiming,“the outstanding bronze statues are proof of the historic excellence
and capability of the Roman people who created them.”13 The establishment of the museum helped in producing an atmosphere in which
it became desirable to model public ceremonies, entries, and festivals
on antique examples.14 Members of the Roman Academy, a circle of humanists devoted to studying and celebrating Rome’s classical past, had
been considered dangerous and even imprisoned during the reign of
the previous pope, Paul II (1464–1471).15 From the beginning of his papacy, however, Sixtus’ donation of ancient sculpture to the Capitoline
Museum and his reopening of the Roman Academy demonstrated a politically shrewd acceptance of the humanists. Sixtus himself had no personal interest in pagan antiquity, but he used Roman history and
ancient objects for political advantage. Without a second thought, he
dispersed antique items collected by Paul II, including gems, cameos,
and classical busts. When Lorenzo de’ Medici visited Rome, Sixtus gave
the Florentine leader two busts from the papal collection as gifts:
In September 1471, I was elected ambassador to Rome for the coronation of
Pope Sixtus IV, where I was treated with great honor. This pope gave me two

12
Charles Stinger,“The Campidoglio as the Locus of Renovatio Imperii in Renaissance
Rome,” in Art and Politics in Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy, 1250–1500, ed.
Charles Rosenberg (London, 1990), pp. 135–156; Thoenes, op. cit., pp. 87–89.
13
The full text of the inscription reads: SIXTUS IIII PONT(IFEX ) MAX(IMUS) // OB IMMENSAM BENIGNITA // TEM AENEAS INSIGNES STA/TVAS PRISCAE EXCELLENTIAE //
VIRTUTISQUE MONUMEN/TUM ROMANO POPULO // UNDE EXORTE FUERE RESTI/
TUENDAS CONDONANDAS/QUE CENSUIT // LATINO DE URSINIS CARDINA/LI CAMERARIO ADMINSTRA/NTE ET IOHANNE ALPERINO // PHIL(IPPO) PALOSCIO NICOLAO
PI/NCIARONIO URBIS CONSER/VATORIBUS PROCURA(N)TIBUS // AN(N)O SALUTIS
NOSTRE MCCCC/LXXI XVIII K(A)L(ENDAS) IANUAR(II). See Paola Guerrini,“L’epigrafia
sistina come momento della ‘Restauratio Urbis,’” in Un Pontificato ed una città: Sisto IV
(1471–1484), edd. Massimo Miglio et al. (Rome, 1986), p. 457.
14
See André Chastel,“Rome in the Renaissance, 1480–1540,” in The Sistine Chapel:The
Art, the History, the Restoration (New York, 1986), p. 8.
15
The Roman Academy was suppressed in 1468 and revived in 1478. The group included Bartolomeo Sacchi, also known as Platina, who became Sixtus’ biographer and librarian. On the Roman Academy see Richard J. Palermino, “The Roman Academy, the
Catacombs, and the Conspiracy of 1468,” Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, XVIII (1980),
117–155; Ludwig Pastor,The History of the Popes, From the Close of the Middle Ages,Vol.
IV, trans. F. I. Antrobus (London, 1949), pp. 439–442; Presicce, op. cit., pp. 194–195; Lee,
op. cit., pp. 194–204; and Nicholas Clark, Melozzo da Forlì, Pictor Papalis (London,
1990), p. 22.

BY JILL E. BLONDIN

7

ancient busts of the images of Augustus and Agrippa, which I have brought
back from there. I also brought back our intaglio chalcedony cup, and many
other cameos and medals which were for sale, among them the cup.16

Sixtus co-opted the Capitoline Hill’s function as a civic center by inscribing his name on a multitude of symbols, including commemorative
inscriptions and antique statues, all over the hill. He appropriated the
renowned emblem of the foundation of Rome, the She-Wolf, and had it
placed over the entrance of the Palazzo dei Conservatori.17 The marble
statue of Charles d’Anjou, included in the pope’s donation of sculpture,
evoked the power that he sought.18 The pope’s papal crest and the
words, “XYSTVS QVARTVS PONT MAX VRBIS RESTAVRATOR” appear
prominently over the east portal of the Palazzo Senatorio, the seat of
secular government. The inscription conveys Sixtus’ temporal and spiritual authority and also marks the new wing of the Palazzo Senatorio
that he had built. Such intense interest in the Capitoline Hill was unprecedented in the history of the papacy.Although Nicholas V (1447–1455)
restored the Palazzo Senatorio and built the Palazzo dei Conservatori
and Paul II had glorified his own family, the Barbo, with building projects and monuments at S. Maria in Aracoeli and at nearby S. Marco, no
pope had so boldly placed his name in a zone traditionally associated
with Imperial Rome. The holy oak that had sprung from Romulus’ staff
on the Capitoline Hill to mark the caput mundi in ancient times was replaced with the oak of the della Rovere.19
Until Sixtus’ pontificate, Roman civic improvements and expenses
had been entrusted largely to the municipal authorities. Through numerous papal bulls and proclamations, Sixtus extended papal authority
to the previously secular realm of civic management.20 He chose a rela16
The passage is printed and translated by Meyer, op. cit., p. 137:“Di Settembre, 1471, fui
eletto Imbasciatore a Roma per l’incoronazione di Papa Sisto IV. Dove fui molto onorato,
e di quindi portai le due teste di marmor antiche dell’immagine di Augusto, e di Agrippa,
le quali mi donò ditto Papa, e più portai la scodella nostra di Calcidonio intagliata con
molti altri cammei, e medaglie, che si comprarono allora fra le alter il Calcidonio.”Also see
William Roscoe, The Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici (London, 1862), p. 427, and Lee, op. cit., p.
149 and note 108.
17
Massimo Miglio,“Il Leone e la Lupa,” Studi Romani, 30 (1982), 177–186.
18
Paola Guerrini,“Un’epigrafe sistina per il re Carlo d’Angiò,”in Sisto IV: Le arti a Roma
nel Primo Rinascimento, ed. Fabio Benzi, pp. 143–150.
19
Randolph Starn and Loren Partridge, A Renaissance Likeness: Art and Culture in
Raphael’s Julius II (Berkeley, California, 1980), p. 56. I thank Dr. Laura Flusche for bringing this point to my attention.
20
See Fabio Benzi, Sixtus IV Renovator Urbis Architettura a Roma 1471–1484
(Rome, 1990), pp. 22–27; Marcello Fagiolo and Maria Luisa Madonna, Roma 1300–1875:
La Città degli Anni Santi Atlante (Milan, 1985), pp. 107–110; Manuel Vaquero Piñeiro,

8

POWER MADE VISIBLE: POPE SIXTUS IV AS URBIS RESTAURATOR IN QUATTROCENTO ROME

tive, Leonardo della Rovere, as prefect of Rome in 1472, and employed
another relative, Giorgio della Rovere, to help with urban planning. To
stimulate civic development, Sixtus also created new appointments. In
1473 the pope appointed a special commissioner, Girolamo Giganti, to
oversee the repair of public streets and squares.
It was the Maestri di strada,responsible for the upkeep of the streets
of Rome, who became the principal force behind Sixtus’ civic development. The magistrates first served as papal appointees under Nicholas
V, but their role was minor until the reign of Sixtus. He gave the Maestri
di strada a salary and placed them under the direct authority of the Cardinal Chamberlain, Guillaume d’Estouteville. The Maestri were charged
with implementing the pope’s orders, which focused on aiding the circulation and safety of visitors.Their duties were to clean, to pave, and to
widen the thoroughfares, to clear all balconies, stairways, and galleries
obstructing the streets, and to impose fines for the unauthorized dumping of trash.21 The Maestri set guidelines that controlled the conception
and construction of squares, market places, palaces, and private homes.
With another bull, Ampliatio Jurisdictionis, Sixtus even gave himself
and the magistrates the authority to expropriate private property for urban planning and to buy any edifice needed for the improvement of
public space. So important were the Maestri to the pope’s civic programs that the names of the two magistrates, Battista Arcioni and Ludovico Margani, were included at the end of an inscription celebrating
the completion of Sixtus’Via Mercatoria et Florea.
The Maestri were also responsible for the proper functioning of the
ancient Aqua Vergine, the only surviving Roman aqueduct of the ancient eleven. Unfortunately, the Aqua Vergine had become the sole
source for water in Rome by the fifteenth century. To make matters
worse, the aqueduct was almost completely obstructed at the begin“Una città da cambiare: intorno alla legislazione edilizia di Sisto IV,” in Sisto IV: Le arti a
Roma nel Primo Rinascimento, ed. Fabio Benzi, pp. 426–433. Etsi universis of 1475 and
Etsi de cunctarum civitatum of 1480 encouraged urban renewal and the maintenance of
privately owned buildings and homes. Etsi de cunctarum is printed in Müntz, op. cit., III,
182–187.
21
See Richard J. Ingersoll,“The Ritual Use of Public Space in Renaissance Rome” (Ph.D.
dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1985), pp. 76–77. The Maestri di strada
were selected from citizens who were eligible to hold office. One to three people served
at a time. Francesco Porcari and Battista Staglia became the first new Maestri di strada
under Sixtus. For a list of the Maestri di strada, see Emilio Re,“Maestri di strada,”Archivio
della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria, 43 (1920), 80–81, 97.Also see Ceen, op. cit., pp.
30, 93. The poet Brandolini celebrates these changes in the introduction to De laudibus
Sixti IIII, BAV, Cod. Urb. Lat. 739, fol. 62r–v; BAV, Cod.Vat. Lat. 5008, fol. 47r.

BY JILL E. BLONDIN

9

ning of Sixtus’ reign. In 1472 the pope had the structure repaired and
extended so that it could serve a greater number of people.To advertise
these improvements, an elaborate inscription reminding the observer
of Sixtus’ achievement was placed at the terminus of the aqueduct, the
Trevi Fountain.22
All of these steps gave Sixtus control over the development of the
city, but substantial sums of money were needed to complete his projects. With no personal wealth to finance his renovation projects, the
pontiff tried to raise money by doubling the number of non-spiritual
posts available for sale, putting the Datary in charge of fixing prices and
collecting the money,reopening the College of Abbreviators,and taxing
wine.23 The Datary held all of the money collected for the personal use
of the pope, but Sixtus still turned to other sources for revenue. He appropriated funds from the budget of the University of Rome, called the
gabella studii, despite Pope Eugenius IV’s measures to protect it from
arbitrary papal expenditure. Infessura, one of Sixtus’ most negative and
outspoken contemporary critics and a professor at the University of
Rome, reports that the della Rovere pope confiscated the stipends of all
professors in order to fund his building projects.24 Although Infessura
exaggerated, Sixtus did take from the gabella studii to finance his civic
improvements.Between September of 1472 and December of 1474,the
gabella studii contributed at least 2,652 florins toward the repair of the
Aqua Vergine and the Trevi fountain. Another 2,663 florins appropriated for the Ponte Sisto constituted the majority of its cost.25
22
See John Pinto, The Trevi Fountain (New Haven, 1986), pp. 5–31. Improvements had
been made during the pontificate of Nicholas V. On Sixtus’ improvements, see Müntz, op.
cit., III, 174–176; Pastor, op. cit., pp. 274–275. The inscriptions and decorations were executed by Antonio Lori of Florence and Giacomo of Ferrara. The only surviving commemorative of Sixtus’ work on the Aqua Vergine is located at Via del Nazareno, 2 near the Trevi
Fountain. The inscription, dominated by the della Rovere coat of arms, reads “SIXTUS
PAPA IIII.”
23
Five months after becoming pope, with loans already totaling 107,000 florins, Sixtus
continued to spend money on a massive scale, ultimately financing two crusades and a
war with Florence. Sixtus reorganized papal finances and attempted some changes, including the development of long-term credit institutions. On papal finances during the
reign of Sixtus, see Clemens Bauer,“Studi per la storia delle finanze papali durante il pontificato di Sisto,” Archivio della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria, 50 (1927), 319–400,
and Peter Partner,“Papal Financial Policy in the Renaissance and Counter-Reformation,”
Past & Present, No. 88 (August, 1980), 21.
24
Stefano Infessura, Diario della Città di Roma di Stefano Infessura scribasenato, ed.
O. Tommassini (Rome, 1890), p. 158.
25
Arnold Esch,“Il giubileo di Sisto IV (1475),”in La Storia dei Giubilei: 1450–1575,Vol.
II, edd. Marcello Fagiolo and Maria Luisa Madonna (Rome, 1998), pp. 111–112.

10

POWER MADE VISIBLE: POPE SIXTUS IV AS URBIS RESTAURATOR IN QUATTROCENTO ROME

The Improvement of the Streets in Rome

The success of Sixtus’ new Christian Rome depended on the quality
of infrastructure, particularly the streets, as the pope underlines in a
1473 brief:
Amongst countless other cares we must also attend to the purifying and
beautification of our City, for if any other city should be clean and fair, certainly this one, which is the head of the world, should be so, since, by reason
of the chair of St. Peter, it ranks first among all others. Considering, then, that
through the tolerance or negligence of those whose duty it is to keep the
streets and squares of the said city in good order, they are in many places foul
and unsightly, we, trusting confidently in your more often proven industry
and prudence and by the tenor of the present letters, command you for the
future to pay special attention to this matter.26

The pope did not exaggerate the poor condition of the Roman roads.
The streets remained unpaved, despite traces of ancient paving. Existing roads were narrow and obstructed by porticoes, and the complete
absence of thoroughfares made it difficult to visit some sites. Improvement to the streets would enable the Church to accommodate and to
profit from the constant influx of pilgrims and travelers, as well as the
crowds expected for the 1475 Jubilee. Development of the roads also
maximized the number of visitors who saw Sixtus’ own art and architectural projects, which visually dominated the Roman cityscape in the late
fifteenth century.27 Specifically Sixtus used new and enhanced routes to

26
Translated by Pastor, op. cit., pp. 276–277. The original brief, ASV, Divers. Cam.,
1471–1478, fols. 210v–211r, is transcribed and printed by Müntz, op.cit., III, 179–180:“Nam
si quam mundam ornatamque esse decet, eam profecto decet quae caput est orbis, et
propter beati Petri cathedram inter omnes alias obtinet principatum. Considerantes igitur
quod sive per indulgentiam, sive negligentiam eorum quibus reparandarum publicarum
viarum et platearum dicate urbis cura demandari solet pluribus in locis viae plateaeque
ipsae sordide et incomposite [sic] reperiantur: de tua saepius spectata industria atque
prudentia confisi,praesentium tibi tenore committimus ac mandamus ut deinceps viarum
ipsarum reparandarum praecipuam curam sumas, officialesque publicos ad id deputatos
vel deputandos ad reparationem necessariam procurandum excites et admoneas.” On the
streets improved by Sixtus, see P. Tomei,“Le Strade di Roma e l’opera di Sisto IV,” L’Urbe, II
(1937), 2–12.
27
The Hospital of Santo Spirito, built by Sixtus, dominated the approach to the Vatican.
It even rivaled the dimensions of Old St. Peter’s. See Eunice Howe, Pope Sixtus IV and the
Hospital of Santo Spirito (New York, 1978), pp. 57–58. Also see Lisa Passaglia Bauman,
“Power and Image: Della Rovere Patronage in Late Quattrocento Rome” (Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1990), p. 144.

BY JILL E. BLONDIN

11

showcase his improvements in the Vatican-Borgo, the area of the Tiber,
the Capitoline Hill, and the Campo dei Fiori (see map, fig. 2).
Facilitating travel around the Vatican-Borgo was a top priority for Sixtus. He commissioned two streets that ran from the Castel Sant’Angelo
to the square in front of St. Peter’s. The Via Sacra, part of the Via Papale,
connected the Vatican Palace with the Castel Sant’Angelo, and provided
access to the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican Library.28 Borgo Santo Spirito was built specifically for visiting the Hospital of Santo Spirito, one
of Sixtus’ most ambitious projects that featured an extensive biographical fresco cycle of the pope. Several other streets, including the Via a
Cruce Montis Marii, that led to St. Peter’s from outside the city walls, received the pontiff’s attention in preparation for the 1475 Jubilee.29
For the 1475 Jubilee, Sixtus paved and widened the Via Papale, the
principal processional route in Rome. The route begins with the Via
Sacra at the Vatican, crosses the Ponte Sant’Angelo, runs past the Piazza
Navona, and terminates at the Lateran. Sixtus focused on improving the
area between the Vatican and the Piazza Navona, the site of the new
market. By traveling the entire route, moreover, a visitor would walk
near to prominent Sistine churches as well as the Lateran.30
In 1473 Sixtus created the Via Sistina to facilitate pedestrian traffic
and to provide a more direct route for himself from St.Peter’s to S.Maria
del Popolo,a church so beloved by the pope that he had the edifice completely rebuilt.31 The street runs northwest parallel to the Tiber toward
S. Maria del Popolo and made travel between the two areas quicker. Before the Via Sistina, pilgrims entering the city at the Porta del Popolo
had to travel south along the Via del Corso to the Capitoline Hill in order to visit the Vatican-Borgo.The road benefited Sixtus,who frequently
visited S. Maria del Popolo to pray and to celebrate political victories.
28
See Ceen, op. cit., pp. 32, 167, 269; and Pio Pagliucchi, I Castellani del Castel S.Angelo
(Rome, 1973), pp. 11ff.
29
The full name of the street, taken from its commissioning document, is Via a Cruce
Montis Marii ad ipsam Urbem. On this thoroughfare, see Ceen, op. cit., p. 222.
30
These churches include S. Maria della Pace and SS. Quirico e Giulitta.
31
This was mentioned in Sixtus’ brief of December 14, 1473, and later in a papal bull;
see Jacopo Gherardi da Volterra, Il diario romano di Jacopo Gherardi, ed. E. Carusi,
Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, Vol. XXIII, part III (Città di Castello, 1904), p. 115. Also see
Bauman, op. cit., pp. 142–145. Brandolini’s epigram XXII, “De via quae ducit ad aedem
beate Marie de Populo,”celebrates the new street leading to S. Maria del Popolo; BAV, Cod.
Urb. Lat. 739, fol. 84v; BAV, Cod.Vat. Lat. 5008, fol. 63r–v.

12

POWER MADE VISIBLE: POPE SIXTUS IV AS URBIS RESTAURATOR IN QUATTROCENTO ROME

The new street became a visual symbol of Sixtus’ sacred and secular
authority, since he made a civic improvement specifically to link two
holy sites sacred to him. A 1475 epigram inscribed on an ancient wall
near the Castel Sant’Angelo extols the pope’s role in perfecting
Rome.32
With the development of the Via Mercatoria et Florea in 1483, which
ran from the Ponte Sant’Angelo through the Campo dei Fiori to the
Capitoline Hill, Sixtus improved accessibility to traditional commercial
centers in Rome and extended the importance of the street as a processional route.33 The widening and paving of the Via Mercatoria et Florea benefited the hotels around the Campo dei Fiori. The road could
also be used by the pope to return to the Vatican from the Lateran. Sixtus himself used the street to return home after visiting another church
he restored, S. Susanna.Visitors who walked along this street would see
Sistine monuments such as the Capitoline Museum, as well as a plaque,
prominently displayed near the Campo dei Fiori, that emphasizes improvements made by the pope and the Maestri:
Campo Marzio, until just recently, you were putrid and dirty with smelly filth,
and full of foulness. Under the rule of Sixtus you exchanged the ugliness for
beauty. All things are marvelous in bright places. Just praises are owed to Sixtus, the bringer of health. Oh, how much Rome owes to its highest leader! Via
Florea. Maestri di strada. Battista Arcioni and Ludovico Margani. In the year of
salvation 1483.34

Contemporary poets praised Sixtus’civic improvements and remarked
on individual works within the pope’s oeuvre. They also called attention to the pontiff’s success in recapturing the glory of ancient Rome.
Adamo de Montaldo lauded the Ponte Sisto and the Via Papale:

32
Fagiolo and Madonna, op. cit., p. 105. The inscription reads: SIXTI IV. PONT. MAX.
IVSSV OPT AC PIIS // QUAM BENE SIXTINA HAC QUE PRAETER FLUMENIS VNDAS // ACTORIS MERVIT NOMEN HAVERE SVI // HAEC MARIAE QVAE TEMPLA DEDIT VIA
TRAMITE RECTO // FECIT VT PETRI SEDIBVS ESSET ITER // SIXTE TUUM MVNVS IAM
NUNC SIXTINA VOCARI ROMA POTES MINVS EST CONDERE QUAM COLERE.
33
Ceen, op. cit., pp. 35–36, 225; Esch, op. cit., pp. 116–120.
34
The inscription is now located on the wall of a house on the southeast corner of the
Campo dei Fiori on the Via dei Balestrari: QVAE MODO PVTRIS ERAS ET OLENTI SORDIDA COENO // PLENAQUE DEFORMI MARTIA TERRA SITV // EXVIS HANC TVRPEM
XYSTO SVB PRINCIPE FORMAM. // OMNIA SVNT NITIDIS CONSPICIENDA LOCIS. //
DIGNA SALVTIFERO DEBENTVR PREMIA XYSTO. // O QUANTVM EST SVMMO DEBITA
ROMA DVCI. // VIA FLOREA. // BAPTISTA ARCHIONIVS ET // LVDOVICVS MARGANIVS/
/ CVRATORES VIAR // ANNO SALVTIS // MCCCCLXXXIII.

BY JILL E. BLONDIN

13

You restored a Rome fallen from magnificence. You remade the Tiberian
bridge, broken by the flood of waves of the river after much time: they even
call the bridge “Sixtus” taken from your name. You straightened out the common road,which was long ago rather filthy,from the bridge of Sant’Angelo all
the way to the Palatine intersection.35

Pacifico Massimi amplified Sixtus’ achievements through literary hyperbole,“Through you Rome has now been returned to itself, the Tiber is
covered with bridges, the extensive streets are restored. You built marble towers, golden palaces, you restored ancient churches, and established new ones.”36 So important were the roads improved under Sixtus
that Albertini mentioned them before celebrating Julius II’s new and restored churches in his Opusculum:
Sixtus IV, the highest and greatest pontiff, began to restore the city. First,
namely, he destroyed the dark porticoes and also extended the streets and
squares of the city and covered them with brick, and brought back many
completely destroyed churches into their original form. To be sure, his successors attempted to copy the man himself. Finally your sanctity conquered
even Sixtus himself and others in the space of brief time: indeed the structures themselves demonstrate the truth of the matter plainly, so that the city
is able deservedly to be called new.
Nevertheless, it differs much from that first ancient time. For the ruins themselves teach how great Rome once was.37

Brandolini wrote poems praising Sixtus’ individual achievements, including the Ponte Sisto, the Via Sistina, the Via Mercatoria et Florea, and

35
Montaldo, De laudibus Syxti, BAV, Cod. Vat. Lat. 3568, fol. 3v:“Tu Romanam urbem a
magnitudine delapsam restauravisti. Tu pontem tyberium, ab undarum diluvio fluminis
multo tempore prerumptum et refecisti: et pontem Sixtum a tuo nomine dictm vocant.Tu
viam communem a divi ponte angeli adusque palatinum compitum directam pridem sordidiorem.”
36
Pacifico Massimi, Carmina Pacifici Maximi Poetae Ascvlani (Parma: Galeatium Rosatum, 1691), p. 60, writes,“Per te nunc Roma est sibi reddita, pontibus urgens Tybrim, sunt
latae strata refecta viae. Marmoreas turres, aurata Palatia ponis, Antiqua instauras Templa,
locasque nova.”
37
Ceen, op. cit., p. 31; Francisco Albertini, Opusulum de Mirabilibus Novae Urbis
Romae, ed. August Schmarsow (Heilbronn, 1886), p. 1, writes,“Syxtvs Quartvs summus et
maximus Pontifex cepit Vrbem instaurare. Primus enim obscuras porticus destruxit, ac
vias et plateas urbis dilatavit et lateritio opere stravit, ecclesiasque multas dirutas a fundamentis in pristinam formam redegit. Successores vero ipsum imitari conati sunt. Postremo
sanctitas tua et Syxtum ipsum ceterosque brevi temporis spatio superavit: opera enim
ipsa dilucide veritatem rei demonstant, ut nova urbs merito appelari possit. Multum
tamen differt ab illa prima antiquitate. Nam quanta Roma fuit ipsa ruina docet.”

14

POWER MADE VISIBLE: POPE SIXTUS IV AS URBIS RESTAURATOR IN QUATTROCENTO ROME

the Via Papale. In this poem, he focuses on the measures taken to improve the Via Papale:
This street, hardly passable for the common people because of its squalor
and filth, was nevertheless called “Pontifical.”
Sixtus was distressed that there was a name so noble for a vile place and said,
“it certainly will not be thus.”
He ordered that it be cleaned and paved and with the houses moved back he
again made the way worthy of the name “Pontifical.”38

The 1475 Jubliee motivated Sixtus to change decaying Rome, which
had been described as a “cadaver” and “a great stable for sheep,” into a
beautiful city capable of accommodating crowds of visitors.39 The Holy
Year would allow Sixtus to present an improved Christian Rome to a
large number of people. In addition to designing and paving streets, repairing walls and gates, improving squares and existing bridges, and refurbishing the Aqua Vergine, the pope erected the Ponte Sisto over the
Tiber to ease pedestrial traffic and to display his authority publicly.
The Construction of the Ponte Sisto

The Ponte Sisto (fig. 3) was the most ambitious and visible commission of Sixtus’ papacy. Constructed upon the three piers of the ancient
Ponte Valentinianus, the Ponte Sisto was the first bridge built over the
Tiber since antiquity. On April 29, 1473, Sixtus initiated construction by
placing a stone inscribed with the words, “XISTVS QVARTVS PONT.
MAX FECIT FIERI SVB ANNO DOMINI 1473” and several gold medals
bearing his portrait into the foundation of the bridge.40 Work on the
38
Brandolini,“De via quam papalem vocant,” epigram XXIV, BAV, Cod. Urb. Lat. 739, fol.
85v; BAV, Cod.Vat. Lat. 5008, fol. 65r:
Sordibus et coeno immundae vix pervia plebi
Haec via dicta tamen Pontificalis erat.
Indoluit Sixtus vili tam nobile nomen
Esse loco et ceter non ita, dixit, erit.
Mundari sternique iubet : domibusque reductis
Pontificis dignum nomine fecit iter.
39
Brandolini,“De urbe a Sixto instaurata et classe in Turcas missa,” epigram XVII, BAV,
Cod. Urb. Lat. 739, fol. 81v; BAV, Cod. Vat. Lat. 5008, fol. 62r;“De urbe Roma a Sixto iterum
condita,” epigram XVIII, BAV, Cod. Urb. Lat. 739, fol. 82v; BAV, Cod. Vat. Lat. 5008, fol. 62v.
40
Infessura, op. cit., p. 158, writes,“Papa Sisto quarto con i cardinali, e molti vescovi, si
conferi a palazzo in Trastevere, et a Ponte Rotto acanto lo fiume, dove egli aveva destinato
raconciar detto ponte,descese nel fiume,e mise ne i fondamenti del detto Ponte una pietra
quadra, ove stava scritto: Xistus quartus pontifex maximus fecit fieri sub anno domini
1473. Dietro a quella pietra mise lo Papa certe medaglie d’oro con la sua testa, e dopo fece

BY JILL E. BLONDIN

15

Fig. 3
Ponte Sisto, Rome, 1473–1475

Ponte Sisto was then pushed ahead so rapidly that the pope had to compensate some fishermen for destroying their pier and the monks at
nearby S. Salvatore de Unda for damaging the church and its gardens.41
With the Ponte Sisto, Sixtus presented himself as a magnanimous
builder. The bridge was badly needed in order to improve pedestrian
traffic for the 1475 Jubilee, and also provided access to the remote areas
across the Tiber from central Rome, including the Vatican and Trastevere. Until the completion of the Ponte Sisto, only two other bridges
connected these regions with the city center.42 When Sixtus ordered
the construction of the bridge, he wanted to avoid the tragedy that occurred on the Ponte Sant’Angelo during the previous Jubilee. Paolo
dello Mastro described the event in his diary:“On December 18, 1450, a
edificare quello Ponte. . . .” The brief initiating the building of the bridge was issued on
March 15, 1473. See Luisa Cardilli,“Ponte Sisto restaurato, considerazioni in margine,” Sisto
IV: Le arti a Roma nel Primo Rinascimento, ed. Fabio Benzi, pp. 434–443.
41
On the details of the compensation for the fishermen and monks, see Gaetano Miarelli Mariani et al., Ponte Sisto: Ricerche e Proposte (Rome, 1977), pp. 9–12, 27–32,
73–78; Benzi, op. cit., pp. 174–175; Fagiolo and Madonna, op. cit., pp. 106–107; Lee, op. cit.,
p. 136. Müntz, op. cit., III, 200–205; Esch, op. cit., p. 110.
42
These two bridges were the Ponte Sant’Angelo and the two bridges at the Isola Tiberina.

16

POWER MADE VISIBLE: POPE SIXTUS IV AS URBIS RESTAURATOR IN QUATTROCENTO ROME

large crowd panicked while crossing the bridge, apparently provoked
by a bucking mule, and more than one hundred pilgrims were crushed;
two hundred more fell into the Tiber and drowned.”43 Thus the Ponte
Sisto offered a southern route to the Vatican from Trastevere while alleviating the congestion on the Ponte Sant’Angelo. At the same time, the
Ponte Sisto put Sixtus’ name on the first bridge built over the Tiber
since antiquity. One of the two commemorative tablets affixed to the
entrance of the Ponte Sisto declares:
For the use of the Roman people and the crowds of pilgrims coming for the
Jubilee. For they rightly called this bridge “broken,” [but] with great care and
expense [Sixtus] reconstructed it from the foundations and he wished it to
be called by his own name Sixtus.44

The growth of the areas around the Ponte Sisto also demonstrates the effectiveness of its location. Sixtus’ construction encouraged civic development, particularly in Trastevere, where many of the pope’s friends
lived.After the bridge was completed,the districts surrounding the Tiber
became the sites of lavish homes,including the magnificent Palazzo della
Cancelleria, the Villa Farnesina, and the Palazzo Farnese.45
As an emblem of Sistine civic and spiritual power,the Ponte Sisto was
not only exalted in inscriptions and poetry,but it appeared in Sixtus’autobiographical fresco series at the Hospital of Santo Spirito and in medals.
To pilgrims, Roman residents, or members of the Curia, the unique appearance of the bridge was easy to recognize.“Portraits” of the Ponte
Sisto portray it with extreme fidelity and celebrate its symbolic importance.46 Many depictions of the bridge, including the detailed Construction of the Ponte Sisto (fig.4) at the Hospital of Santo Spirito, accurately
capture the four rounded arches, the three large plaques featuring Six-

43
Paolo dello Mastro, Diario e memoria delle cose accadute in Roma (1422–1482),
ed. Fr. Isoldi (Rome, 1910–1912). Also see Pastor, op. cit., pp. 96ff.
44
The text of the plaque reads: XYSTVS IIII. PONT. MAX. / AD UTILITATEM P. ROM.
PEREGRINAEQUE MULTI / TUDINIS AD IUBILEUM VENTURAE PONTEM / HUNC QUEM
MERITO RUPTUM VOCABANT A FUN / DAMENTIS MAGNA CURA ET IMPENSA RESTI /
TVIT XYSTUMQUE SUO DE NOMINE APPELLARI VOLUIT. See Ceen, op. cit., p. 222; Ingersoll, op. cit., p. 81; Mariani, op. cit., p. 76.
45
Sigismondo dei Conti, Le storie de’ suoi tempi dal 1475 al 1510, I (Rome, 1883), 204.
46
See Giancarlo Altieri,“Il Giubileo di Sisto IV attraverso alcune testimonianze numismatiche dirette e indirette,”in Sisto IV: Le arti a Roma nel Primo Rinascimento, ed. Fabio
Benzi, pp. 151–154, and Giancarlo Altieri, Medaglie Papali del Medagliere della Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vicenza, 1995), pp. 98–99, #2; Roberto Weiss, The Medals of
Pope Sixtus IV (Rome, 1961), pp. 18–19; George Francis Hill, A Corpus of Italian Medals
of the Renaissance Before Cellini, I (London, 1930), 208, #806.

BY JILL E. BLONDIN

17

Fig. 4
Construction of the Ponte Sisto, 1478–1480, fresco. Hospital of Santo Spirito, Rome

tus’ coat of arms, the large central oculus, the distinctive brickwork, and
the piers.
Richly decorated manuscripts featuring “portraits” of the Ponte Sisto
reminded Sixtus of his success as Urbis Restaurator. These tiny reproductions were viewed not by a public audience, but by the pope himself. Sixtus saw at least two of these manuscripts often, since the books
were dedicated to him, and were found in his private study after his
death.47 Around 1474 an anonymous artist decorated a presentation
47
Meyer, op. cit., pp. 467–468. On the texts left in Sixtus’ private study after his death,
see Paola Scarcia Piacentini,“Ricerche sugli antichi inventari della Biblioteca Vaticana: i

18

POWER MADE VISIBLE: POPE SIXTUS IV AS URBIS RESTAURATOR IN QUATTROCENTO ROME

Fig. 5
Presentation page from Theodore Gaza’s De historia animalium, fifteenth century.
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Cod. Vat. lat. 2094, fol. 8r, detail of the reverse of the Ponte
Sisto Medal

copy of Theodorus Gaza’s translation and commentary of Aristotle’s De
historia animalium that included replicas of the obverse and reverse
of the Ponte Sisto medal (fig. 5).48 The artist’s rendering is so convincing that the two sides perfectly imitate the actual medal.Centered at the
top of the page and surrounded by Della Rovere acorns, the bridge, juxtaposed with the words “CVRA RERVM PVBLICARVM,” commemorates
the construction of the Ponte Sisto and the pope’s success in promoting his benevolence.A miniature reproduction of the bridge, along with
Sixtus’ portrait, his papal crest, and swags of tiny acorns adorn the frontispiece to Andreas Trebizond’s preface to his father’s commentary on
Ptolemy’s Almagest (fig. 6).49 The artist duplicates every detail in this
“portrait” of the bridge, including the ramps leading to the bridge, the
oculus, and the distinctive brickwork. Tiny piers even convincingly excodici di lavoro di Sisto IV,” in Un Pontificato ed una città, ed. Massimo Miglio, pp.
115ff.
48
BAV, Cod. Vat. Lat. 2094, fol. 8r. The text was translated from Greek into Latin by
Theodorus Gaza, and is dedicated to Nicholas V in the original preface.
49
Andreas Trebizond, Almagestum and Commentarium in Almagestum by George
Trebizond, BAV, Cod.Vat. Lat. 2058, fol. 1r. See Weiss, op.cit., pp. 20–21; John Monfasani, Collectanea Trapezuntiana: Texts, Documents, and Bibliographies of George of Trebizond
(Binghamton, New York, 1984); Monfasani, George of Trebizond: A Biography and a
Study of His Rhetoric and Logic (Leiden, 1976); Lee, op. cit., pp. 71–74.

BY JILL E. BLONDIN

19

Fig. 6
Presentation page from Andrea Trebizond’s preface to Ptolemy’s Almagest, fifteenth
century. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Cod.Vat. lat. 2058, fol. 1r

20

POWER MADE VISIBLE: POPE SIXTUS IV AS URBIS RESTAURATOR IN QUATTROCENTO ROME

tend into the viewer’s space and make the miniature bridge seem real.
Also on the page is a fictive inscription attached to an oak tree that
reads, “SIXTVS P.P. IIII,” which is similar to the sort of plaques seen
throughout Rome. The frontispiece, replete with symbols of Sistine accomplishments and crowned by a miniature version of Sixtus’ most ambitious project, no doubt reminded the pope of his civic and religious
supremacy.

Sixtus’ “Foundation” of the Vatican Library

Like all of Sixtus’ public works, the Vatican Library joined the sacred
and profane in a single commission.Pope Nicholas V actually established
the library and built the rooms on the ground floor of the Vatican Palace
that comprised the institution.After his death,the library was neglected
until Sixtus, who was widely acclaimed as a scholar and theologian, became pope. With his charter of June, 1475, Ad decorem militantis ecclesiae, Sixtus officially “founded” the library, the first of its kind to be
fully accessible to the public, appointed a head librarian, Platina, and
outlined plans for the institution.50
Sixtus enlarged the public library, or Bibliotheca Communis, to four
rooms by renovating a suite of storerooms next to the Cortile del Papagallo. The largest room, the Sala Latina, contained Latin texts, while the
smaller Sala Graeca kept the books in Greek.51 The Biblioteca Segreta held
the rare and most valuable manuscripts, and the Biblioteca Pontificia
stored the papal archives and registers. The pope also worked on expanding the holdings of the Vatican Library. From 1475 to 1484, the collection grew by a thousand volumes and ultimately contained more

50
The text of the bull is published by J. Ruysschaert,“Sixte IV, Fondateur de la Bibliothèque Vaticane, 15 Juin 1475,” Archivum historiae pontificiae, 7 (1969), 523–524; J. Bignami-Odier with José Ruysschaert,La Bibliothèque Vaticane de Sixte IV à Pie XI (Vatican
City, 1973), pp. 20–22; Clark, op. cit., pp. 21–22. Leonard Boyle, “The Future of Old Libraries: The Vatican Library,” Liber, 8 (1986), 42ff., does not consider Ad decorem as the
bull founding the Vatican Library. Sixtus had made the Vatican Library a priority from the
beginning of his reign. He ordered stone to be quarried for the library on December 17,
1471. See Frank, op. cit., pp. 52ff., and John Willis Clark,“On the Vatican Library of Sixtus
IV,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 10 (1904), 11–61.
51
It was traditional to house the Greek and Latin texts in separate rooms. John Willis
Clark, The Care of Books (Cambridge, 1901), pp. 204–205; Clark,“On the Vatican Library,”
p. 23.

BY JILL E. BLONDIN

21

than three times as many books as the libraries of such princely rulers
as Federigo da Montefeltro and the Medici.52 So successful was Sixtus’ library that Ariosto honored it in a poem:
Of the antique books that you also may propose to me,
Sixtus collected most of them, for public use,
from all over the world.53

The Vatican Library conveyed the pope’s authority by recalling the
grandeur of ancient Rome and its libraries. The fictive books and open
cupboards that decorated the cabinets were taken from designs of ancient libraries. Although this kind of intarsia decoration became popular in Renaissance libraries, the unusual cabinets at the Vatican were the
first of their type.54 Melozzo da Forlì’s Pope Sixtus IV, His Nephews, and
Platina (cover illustration), the focus of the Sala Latina, evoked ancient
Rome with its depiction of Sixtus surrounded by his nephews and
Platina in a classical architectural setting. Melozzo’s painting takes place
in a classical basilica that shows Sixtus as an imperial ruler and certainly
calls to mind the lost portrait of Augustus that dominated the Palatine
Library.55 However, the garments worn by Sixtus, the camauro and
mozzetta, make it clear that the pope, as a religious leader, is using imperial language to showcase the superiority of his Christian Rome.
Brandolini, in one of two poems that he devoted to the Vatican Library,
explains why Sixtus’ new library surpasses the ancients:
Whatever Latium has, whatever the very learned Greece has, Whatever the Solimi
have, and whatever the anointed Arab has,
The glory of divine Sixtus has topped them all.
And I ask who of the ancients had such an abundance of books?

52
Müntz and Paul Fabre, La Bibliothèque du Vatican au XVe siècle d’après des documents inédits (Paris, 1879), p. 48. The library grew from 2,527 volumes in 1475 to more
than 3,500 in 1484.
53
Excerpt from Ariosto’s 1517–1525 Satire (VII): “Di libri antichi anco mi puoi proporre, il numer grande, che per publico uso, Sisto da tutto il mondo se raccore.” See Pastor, op. cit., II, 656; Lee, op. cit., p. 118.
54
Maria Giulia Aurigemma, “Tarsie vaticane quattrocentesche: con una nota su dieci
anni di studi sulla Roma del Quattrocento,” Arte documenti (1990), 68–75. The intarsia
cupboards, all that remains of the original interior, had been installed on the anteroom
walls of the Sistine Chapel.
55
Frank, op. cit., pp. 43–43, 112–113.

22

POWER MADE VISIBLE: POPE SIXTUS IV AS URBIS RESTAURATOR IN QUATTROCENTO ROME

To each there was his own library, I confess, but each had (only) one;
Sixtus, father, you win: you alone have four.56

The juxtaposition of the sacred with the secular is even more obvious in the wall frescoes above Melozzo’s Pope Sixtus IV, His Nephews,
and Platina. Domenico and Davide Ghirlandaio painted twelve sages
of ancient and Christian learning in eight lunettes. The figures include
six philosophers of Greek antiquity, the four great doctors of the Latin
Church, and two contemporary Christian figures, St. Thomas Aquinas
and St. Bonaventure. Each figure, identified by name, stands behind a fictive balcony and holds a scroll that contains an excerpt of his writing.57
Obviously the presence of these men calls to mind Sixtus’own erudition
and fame as a scholar, serves as learned exemplars for visitors to the library, and suggests the importance of ancient learning in the service of
Christianity. At the same time, the depiction of these Greek and Christian figures together advertises Sixtus’ tolerance toward the humanists
of Rome and the benevolence of his rule.58
Sistine symbols and inscriptions also remind the viewer of Sixtus’
role as “founder.” The Sala Latina displays the coat of arms of Sixtus on
the ceiling, in the stained glass windows, below Melozzo’s fresco, and
above the sumptuous marble entrance. Fictive swags of acorns frame
the lunettes and run along the vaults of the ceiling. The words “SIXTVS
PAPA IIII” over the entrance door announce Sixtus’ responsibility for
the project, and an inscription above the offices of the librarian proclaim, “SIXTVS IIII PONT MAX // BIBLIOTECARIO ET CVSTODIBVS

56
Brandolini,“De bibliotheca a Sixto condita,” epigram XII, BAV, Cod. Urb. Lat. 739, fols.
78v and 79r; BAV, Cod.Vat. Lat. 5008, fol. 60r and 60v:
Quicquid habet Latium, doctissima Graecia quicquid,
Quicquid habent Solimi, quicquid et unctus Arabs,
Omnia divini cumulavit gloria Sixti,
Et rogo cui veterum copia tanta fuit.
Bibliotheca fuit, fateor, sua cuique, sed una.
Sixte pater vincis : quatuor unus habes.
57
Albertini, in his Opusculum, described the lavish decoration in 1510:“the illustrious
library was built by Sixtus IV in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, with a portrait of him
and the most beautiful pictures decorated with these poetic inscriptions.” See Frank, op.
cit., p. 90.
58
Guido Cornini,“‘Dominico Thomasii florentino pro pictura bibliothecae quam inchoavit’: il contributo di Domenico e Davide Ghirlandaio nella Biblioteca di Sisto IV,”Sisto
IV: Le arti a Roma nel Primo Rinascimento, ed. Fabio Benzi, p. 225.

BY JILL E. BLONDIN

23

LOCVM ADDIXIT.”Two crests of the library’s actual founder, Nicholas V,
remain on the keystones of two vaults in the Sala Graeca. Although the
coats of arms have been heavily embellished with the oak and acorns,
this is the only instance where Sixtus acknowledges his indebtedness
to his predecessor.59 In a sermon of 1508, Battista Casali exalted books
and writings over works of art as the vehicles that perpetuated Pope
Sixtus’ personal fame.60 Thus, with his foundation of the Vatican Library,
Sixtus was able to link books with art and the sacred with the secular
to create another lasting emblem of himself as Urbis Restaurator.
Based on Sixtus’ conspicuous use of inscriptions—approximately 115
are extant—it is clear that civic refurbishment constituted what he
thought to be his most important achievement.61 Located throughout
Rome, these inscriptions emphasize the pope’s munificence, spiritual
leadership, and the diversity of his undertakings.An entrance plaque on
the Ponte Sisto exclaims:
You who cross over [the Tiber river] by means of the gift of Sixtus IV ask God
to save and preserve for us for a long time the best supreme pontiff. And
blessings to you, whoever you are, when you will have prayed for these
things.62

Sixtus even had his urban accomplishments inscribed over the main
portal of a Roman church that he had restored, SS. Quirico e Giulitta:
“The oak [i.e., della Rovere] sees restored those things, together with
the Julita Mother, which were long-ruined churches; at the appointed
time under the prince Sixtus there is no aging to churches.This man re59
See Toby Yuen, “The ‘Biblioteca Graeca’: Castagno, Alberti, and Ancient Sources,”
Burlington Magazine, 112 (1970), 725–736; Clark, “On the Vatican Library,” p. 33; Giovanni Morello,“Tra due giubilei: la fondazione della Biblioteca Vaticana,” in La Storia dei
Giubilei: 1450–1575, II, 93–99.
60
See John W. O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine,
and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450–1521 (“Duke Monographs in Medieval and Renaissance Studies,”3 [Durham, North Carolina, 1979]), p. 272. In
this sermon, given during Julius II’s pontificate, Casali explains the importance of the Vatican Library and Sixtus’ contribution. Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition,
1350–1450 (Oxford, 1971), p. 90.
61
At least 115 inscriptions commemorate Sixtus’ building activities throughout Rome.
See Fagiolo and Madonna, op. cit., p. 104.
62
MC XXV QUI TRANSIS XYSTI QUARTI BENEFICIO / DEUM ROGA UT PONTIFICEM
OPTIMUM MAXI / MVM DIV NOBIS SALVET AC SOSPIT ET BENE / VALE QUISQVIS ES
UBI HAEC PRECATUS FUERIS.

24

POWER MADE VISIBLE: POPE SIXTUS IV AS URBIS RESTAURATOR IN QUATTROCENTO ROME

makes bridges, walls, churches, streets.”63 Perhaps the most telling advertisement, though, is Melozzo’s Pope Sixtus IV, His Nephews, and
Platina. Platina kneels before Sixtus and points to the epigram below
the painting:
Rome owes to you, Sixtus, temples, a home for foundlings, streets, market
squares, walls, bridges, the repairs done to the Aqua Vergine of the public
square, the decision to give the sailors a harbor, their ancient privilege, and
the walls around the Monte Vaticano. But it owes even more to you; for the library that was hidden in dirt, can now be seen in a prominent place.64

Rather than depicting Sixtus with a book or a pen to memorialize his
patronage of the library, Platina honors the pope with this inscription
commemorating his building activities.65
Besides inscriptions, Sixtus used other means to advertise his role as a
cultural patron and Urbis Restaurator.At least two different papal medals
emblazoned with the words,“SIXTVS IIII PONT MAX VRBIS RESTAVRATOR”were struck.Ten of the paintings in Sixtus’biographical fresco cycle
at the Hospital of Santo Spirito were devoted to his civic projects.66 One
of the frescoes toward the end of the series,Sixtus IV Presents His Works
to God (fig. 7), features public works, such as churches, the hospital, and
a bridge.Although the bridge likely represents the Ponte Sisto, it may also
allude to all of Sixtus’ civic improvements, just as the two churches next
to it portray the pope’s ecclesiastical patronage in general.67
Sixtus drew on antique symbols, sculptures, and buildings to create a
glorious, new Christian Rome fashioned to represent him squarely in
charge of the civic and spiritual dimensions of the city.68 Exploiting the
archetypes of ancient Rome, the pope’s urban improvements, albeit
63
The entire inscription reads:“INSTAVRATA VIDET QVIRICVS CVM MATRE IVLITA //
QVE FVERANT LONGA DIRVTA TEMPLA DIE // PRINCIPE SVB SIXTO DELVBRIS NVLLA
VETVSTAS // HIC REFICIT PONTES MENIA TEMPLA VIAS.”
64
The translation is by Howe, op. cit., p. 372. The original inscriptions reads,“TEMPLA,
DOMVM EXPOSITIS, VICOS, FORA, MOENIA, PONTES, // VIRGINEAM TRIVII, QVOD
REPARARIS AQUAM, // PRISCA LICET NAVTIS STATVAS DARE COMMODA PORTVS // ET
VATICANVM CINGERE, SIXTE, IVGVM, // PLVS TAMEN VRBS DEBET, NAM QVAE SQVALORE LATEBAT, // CERNITVR IN CELEBRI BIBLIOTECA LOCO.”
65
Matthais Winner,“Papa Sisto IV quale exemplum virutis magnificentiae nell’affresco
di Melozzo da Forlì,” in Arte, Committenza ed Economia a Roma e nelle Corti del Rinascimento (1420–1530), eds. Arnold Esch and Christoph Luitpold Frommel (Turin,
1995), p. 9.
66
On the Hospital of Santo Spirito, see Howe, op. cit.
67
Benzi, op. cit., p. 206.
68
Frank, op. cit., pp. 31–33, 61.

BY JILL E. BLONDIN

25

Fig. 7
Sixtus IV Presents His Works to God, 1478–1480, fresco. Hospital of Santo Spirito,
Rome

worldly, were not motivated by a love for all things ancient. Instead Sixtus used antiquity to harness the powers of history for himself and to
display the success of his reign.Sixtus’urban renovation,which extended
to all areas of Rome, bound together the pope’s temporal and spiritual
authority like two sides of a medal.

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN
ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741
BY

SEAN T. PERRONE*

In early modern Europe, princes regularly convened representative
institutions to obtain financial contributions.Some of these institutions,
such as the Iberian Cortes, the English Parliament, or the French Estates
General, were constitutional (i.e., they were sovereign representative
bodies having their origin in the fundamental laws of the kingdom),while
others,such as assemblies of the clergy or the Assembly of Notables,were
extra-constitutional (i.e., they were not sovereign bodies and did not
“represent” the kingdom but rather an estate or privileged group). In either case, rulers negotiated with representatives to determine the size
of specific contributions and the period of payment. In turn, rulers generally made some concessions to these representatives.Once all the give
and take was finished, princes dissolved the representative bodies and
generally did not convene them again until the contribution just granted
expired or a new contribution was necessary. Although these negotiations were often contentious, we should not automatically assume that
kings and representative institutions were natural adversaries.1 More
importantly, the fact that several years often passed between assemblies
should not lead scholars to equate the infrequency of meetings to the
demise of representative politics.Otherwise,scholarship will be limited
by entrenched views about the decline of representative institutions in
early modern Europe and the victory of the centralizing state.2 Such
views suggest too narrow a sense of representation—one that many early
modern Europeans would disagree with—and make the state into the
*Dr.Perrone is an associate professor of history in Saint Anselm College,Manchester,New
Hampshire. He wishes to thank the Program for Cultural Cooperation between the Spanish
Ministry of Culture and United States Universities for funding the research on which this article is based.He also expresses his gratitude to Drs.Robert C.Figueira,A. Y.Lui,A.Malcom,P.
Pajakowski, and the referee for their comments on earlier versions of this article.
1
Michael A. R. Graves, The Parliaments of Early Modern Europe (London, 2001), p. 77.
2
John Rogister,“Some New Directions in the Historiography of State Assemblies and
Parliaments in Early and Late Modern Europe,” Parliaments, Estates and Representation,
16 (1996), 6.

26

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

27

political actor and not just one political actor among many (e.g., representative institutions,standing committees of representative bodies,cities,
nobles, and clergy).3 To avoid these pitfalls, it might be best to examine
how politics proceeded with and without formal meetings of representative institutions to understand the political developments in this period better.The state-building model,for example,does not explain why
representatives themselves often opposed convening and how local institutions negotiated with the crown in lieu of an assembly.The Castilian
kings clearly preferred negotiating directly with local institutions instead of national bodies, and, after 1666, most Castilians apparently preferred this method of negotiation as well.4 This shift from national to local
institutions changed the form of constitutional and extra-constitutional
interrelations in Castile, but it did not obviate the need for interlocutors
between the crown and the people (whether nobles, corporate bodies,
or cities).5
This paper focuses on how politics proceeded without formal meetings of representative institutions. Many representative bodies, such as
the Iberian Cortes and the Bavarian parliament,established standing committees or permanent representatives at court.6 So even though they were
not always in session, these representative institutions did not lack “representation”or the ability to safeguard their interests. Unfortunately, historians have often overlooked these permanent representatives and their
role in the political process.To help fill in the gap in the historiography,
I will examine the permanent representative or Procurator General of the
Castilian Assembly of the Clergy.The office of Procurator General offers
historians a new angle to examine the intertwining of politics, finance,
and religion in early modern Castile. In particular, I will look at the creation of the position, the election of its holders, the duties of the Procu3
Antonio Álvarez-Ossorio Alvariño, “Corte y provincia en la monarquía católica: La
corte de Madrid y el estado de Milán, 1660–1700,” in Elena Brambilla and Giovanni Muto
(eds.), La Lombardia spagnola: nuovi indirizzi di ricerca (Milan, 1997), pp. 300–301.
4
On the end of the Castilian Cortes, see Charles Jago,“Habsburg Absolutism and the
Cortes of Castile,” American Historical Review, 86 (1981), 307–326, and I. A. A. Thompson, “The End of the Cortes of Castile,” Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 4
(1984), 125–133. On Castilian notions of representation, see José I. Fortea Pérez,“Las ciudades, las Cortes y el problema de la representación política en la Castilla moderna,” in
José I. Fortea Pérez (ed.), Imágenes de la diversidad: el mundo urbano en la Corona de
Castilla (s.XVI–XVII) (Santander, 1997), pp. 421–445.
5
José Manuel de Bernardo Ares,“The Aristocratic Assemblies under the Spanish Monarchy (1680–1700),” Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 21 (2001), 138.
6
For a recent survey of representative institutions in early modern Europe, see Graves,
op. cit., especially pp. 203–206 on the strengths and weaknesses of various permanent
committees.

28

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741

rator General in Madrid, and his ability to represent the ecclesiastical
estate.
By the early sixteenth century, the Castilian Assembly of the Clergy
had become an important political institution in Castile. It met almost
as often as the Cortes ( parliament), and it provided the crown with just
over 6% of royal income (670,000 ducados out of a total annual income
of 10,750,000 ducados in 1621).7 The Assembly, therefore, was an institution that the crown depended on. The Assembly dates back to the
Great Schism (1378–1415). Henry II (1369–1379) convened the bishops
and cathedral chapters to sanction his political decision to break with
Rome and to recognize the Avignon pope. During the fifteenth century,
the Assembly started to negotiate the payment of décimas (tenths) to the
crown for the war against the Muslims (1462) and to address ecclesiastical jurisdiction, reforms, and discipline (1478). By the beginning of the
sixteenth century, the basic characteristics and functions of the Assembly were fixed.The only major change was that after 1505,for unknown
reasons, the prelates stopped attending the Assembly. The Assembly
was now composed only of representatives from the cathedral chapters.8
The chapters represented all the clergy of their dioceses in the negotiations for ecclesiastical contributions, and the Assembly’s decisions on
ecclesiastical contributions applied to the entire ecclesiastical estate
(bishops, regular and secular clergy, military orders, and nuns). Noncathedral clergy (regular and secular) often contested this prerogative,
and some orders, such as the Dominicans and military orders, won exemption from payment or the right to collect their own contribution.
Within the Assembly itself, the chapter of Toledo claimed pre-eminence
based on the primacy of the see of Toledo, and its claim was generally
recognized by the other chapters. Consequently, the chapter of Toledo
convoked the Assembly (after a majority of the chapters had agreed to
meet), guarded its seal, and a representative of Toledo presided over the
Assembly’s deliberations.Toledo’s pre-eminence created perennial fears
among some other chapters that the chapter of Toledo might try to ag-

7
These calculations are adapted from Helen Rawlings,Church, Religion and Society in
Early Modern Spain (London, 2002), pp. 135–137.
8
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thirty-seven chapters belonged to the
Castilian Assembly of the Clergy, viz., Almería, Astorga, Ávila, Badajoz, Burgos, Cádiz, Calahorra, Canaries, Cartagena, Ciudad Rodrigo, Córdoba, Coria, Cuenca, Granada, Guadix,
Jaén, León, Lugo, Málaga, Mondoñedo, Orense, Osma, Oviedo, Orihuela, Palencia, Pamplona, Plasencia, Salamanca, Santiago, Santo Domingo de la Calzada, Segovia, Seville,
Sigüenza, Toledo, Tuy,Valladolid, and Zamora.

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

29

gregate too much authority within the ecclesiastical estate for itself. It
clearly did overreach from time to time, but the other chapters seemed
to keep it in check.9 Needless to say,the makeup of the Assembly and its
internal hierarchy often created as much friction within the Assembly
and between it and the rest of the clergy as between the Assembly and
the monarch. As will be seen, these frictions played a role in the creation of the Procurator General and later the decline of the office.10
Clashes involving the Assembly were not confined to Castile. The negotiations for ecclesiastical subsidies started in Rome, where royal ambassadors petitioned the popes to grant subsidios, excusados, and
décimas. Without papal consent, the crown could not legally collect
any of these taxes. Papal consent was not always forthcoming, and the
Castilian clergy regularly tried to dissuade the popes from reaching an
agreement with the king. In 1555, for example, the clergy supposedly
offered Paul IV (1555–1559) 20,000 ducados to revoke the subsidy.11
On most occasions,nevertheless,the papacy made concessions,and the

9
For more on the Assembly, see Sean T. Perrone,“The Castilian Assembly of the Clergy
in the Sixteenth Century,” Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 18 (1998), 53–70;
Lucía Carpintero Aguado,“La congregación del clero de Castilla en el siglo XVII” (Ph.D.
thesis, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 1993), especially pp. 219, 244–246, 403, regarding fears of Toledo.
10
In the crown of Aragon, each kingdom had its own Assembly of the Clergy. Even less
is known of these assemblies than of the Castilian Assembly. The most notable difference
is that cathedral chapters did not monopolize the proceedings in the eastern kingdoms;
prelates and other clergy also participated in the meetings. As in Castile, the main task of
these bodies was to negotiate agreements for the payment of ecclesiastical contributions.
The diocesan clergy were then responsible for apportioning and collecting their diocese’s share. At present, there is no indication that these assemblies sent proctors to
court, but the possibility should not be ruled out. It is worth noting, however, that there
was some interaction between the chapters from the eastern kingdoms and the Castilian
Assembly of the Clergy or individual chapters. In 1648, for example, the chapter of Tarazona asked the Castilian Assembly for its assistance in preventing the collegial church in
Calatayud from being granted cathedral status. Later, the chapter of Valencia sought information from the cathedral chapters on what steps they had taken to reach a favorable
agreement for payment of the décima of 1677. These exchanges might help us to place
the Castilian Assembly’s actions into a wider Spanish context. See Luis J. Navarro Miralles,
“Subsidio de galeras y excusado: una aportación al estudio de la contribución fiscal eclesiástica (1567–1796),” Pedralbes, 1 (1981), 21–49; Assientos de la congregacion que celebraron las santas iglesias metropolitanas y catedrales de los reynos de la corona de
Castilla y Leon . . . 1648, Biblioteca Nacional-Madrid (BN), 3/13076, fols. 21rv; Chapter of
Valencia to chapter of Ávila, February 21, 1679, Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN), Clero,
leg. 381. (All documents from AHN lack folio numbers unless otherwise indicated.)
11
Archivo General de Simancas, Estado, leg. 882, fol. 77.

30

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741

negotiations for ecclesiastical contributions moved from Rome to Castile,
where the Assembly or its Procurator General ironed out the details for
payment with the king and often managed to whittle down the sum
agreed upon by the monarch and the pope. The subsidio was essentially a tax on clerical income, and it was fixed at 420,000 ducados annually for five years after 1562. The subsidio replaced the tenths,
quarters, and halves of ecclesiastical rents that popes had previously
conceded to the Spanish monarchs. This money was earmarked for the
upkeep of the Mediterranean galleys.The excusado was first granted in
1567 and was a tithe from the richest benefice in each diocese to finance the wars in the Low Countries and against the Turks. It was eventually set at a fixed sum of 250,000 ducados annually for five years after
1586. The décima (tenth), which had disappeared with the creation of
the subsidio in 1562,if not sooner,was reintroduced in 1632 for various
exigencies, and the amount varied from concession to concession.12
The Assembly’s role in negotiating the final details for these concessions gave it and later its Procurator General significant leverage with
the crown and the papacy.
Once an agreement was reached with the crown, the Assembly apportioned the subsidio, the excusado, and the décima among thirtyseven dioceses. The cathedral chapters then apportioned and collected
their dioceses’ share of the contributions. This process, however, was
never straightforward. The regular clergy often challenged the right of
each chapter to collect the contribution, and many clergy, the Jesuits,
for example, claimed exemption from the contributions and sought
royal and papal approval of their claims.13 For the Assembly, each exemption increased the financial burden on the rest of the clergy.The actual number of exemptions is hard to calculate, because they varied
over time and from diocese to diocese. The Archpresbytery of Fuenterrabía in the diocese of Calahorra y La Calzada, for example, was temporarily exempted from paying the subsidio and excusado from roughly
12
The Assembly, however, collected only 18% of the total ecclesiastical contributions to
the royal fisc, which derived a third of its income (3,680,000 ducados) from ecclesiastical sources (royal tithe, Tres Gracias, ecclesiastical pensions) in 1621. The Assembly then
had control over only a small percentage of what the crown collected from the Church,
but this did not diminish the importance of these negotiations to the crown or the
Church. Calculations adapted from Rawlings, op. cit., pp. 135–137. For a more detailed discussion of the subsidio and excusado see Ángel Iturrioz Magaña, Estudio del subsidio y
excusado (1561–1808): Contribuciones económicas de la dioceses de Calahorra y La
Calzada a la real hacienda (Logroño, 1987), chaps. 1 and 2.
13
See Carpintero, op. cit., pp. 122–149.

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

31

1648 to 1668 due to the ravages of war,14 while the Franciscans won
exemption from paying the subsidy in the archdiocese of Toledo in
1697.15 Claims, such as the Franciscans’, were especially worrisome to
the chapters and the Assembly. They consequently sought to end these
claims by petitioning the kings and popes and by bringing legal challenges in secular and ecclesiastical courts. The apportionment and collection of the contributions not only created problems between the
chapters and other clergy but also between the chapters and the crown.
The crown did not always abide by the terms it had reached with the
clergy for the payment of the contributions.Since the sixteenth century,
for example, the agreements had stipulated that cathedral canons were
in charge of collecting the contributions on the local level.Yet,the crown
repeatedly tried to appoint its own officials.16 Thus, even more petitions
and legal challenges were necessary to prevent the crown from retracting its agreements with the clergy. To better protect its interests between sessions,the Assembly regularly discussed establishing permanent
representatives at both the royal and papal courts. Yet, for most of the
sixteenth century, it simply deputized canons to handle specific cases.17
By appointing a procurator or proctor, the Assembly followed precedents dating back to at least the twelfth century. It was then that individuals or corporations (e.g.,cities,chapters,universities,religious orders,
and guilds) in Western Europe revived the Roman practice of appointing proctors to handle various types of commercial,legal,and diplomatic
affairs. By the sixteenth century, proctors were common across Europe.
Individuals and corporations regularly appointed agents to handle affairs away from home that they could not attend to personally.18 The idea
of a representative institution appointing a representative might seem
novel at first glance, but the Assembly did have its own seal,19 which
conferred upon it a corporate identity, and, as Gaines Post has pointed
Iturrioz, op. cit., pp. 106–107.
Chapter of Toledo to chapter of Ávila, July 16, 1697, AHN, Clero, leg. 381.
16
Iturrioz, op. cit., pp. 146–148.
17
Carpintero, op. cit., p. 50.
18
For some recent studies on agents in France and the Spanish Monarchy see Timothy
Watson,“Friends at Court: The Correspondence of the Lyon City Council, c. 1525–1575,”
French History, 13 (1999), 280–302; Antonio Álvarez-Ossorio Alvariño, “Corte, reinos y
ciudades en la monarquía de Carlos II: Las legaciones provinciales,” Pedralbes, 18 (1998),
221–250; and Marion Reder Gadow,“Málaga en Madrid: el Regidor malacitano Don José
Pizarro del Pozo y Eslava, Diputado en la Corte,” in Pablo Fernández Albaladejo (ed.),
Monarquia, imperio y pueblos en la España moderna (Alicante, 1997), pp. 307–320.
19
Archivo Catedralicio de Toledo (ACT), Actas Capitulares (AC), lib. 4, fol. 290.
14

15

32

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741

out, corporations could appoint procurators to represent them.20 There
was nothing innovative then in the Assembly’s decision to use procurators. It simply adhered to longstanding practice. Nor was the Assembly
the only representative institution to appoint a procurator or agent in
early modern Spain: the Junta General of the Kingdom of Galicia employed a procurator general at court on at least one occasion in 1552,21
and the Estates of Valencia regularly sent embassies to court.22 Thus, the
Procurator General of the Castilian Assembly of the Clergy was only
one of many permanent or temporary agents at court.23
The clergy finally moved from using temporary proctors to permanent proctors in the last decade of the sixteenth century.24 At the As20
Gaines Post, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought: Public Law and the State,
1100–1322 (Princeton, 1964), pp. 44, 54. Even if the Assembly did not have a seal, it probably still could have appointed a procurator. There were precedents in fourteenthcentury France of “unincorporated” rural communities electing procurators to defend
their interests. See Fredric Cheyette,“Procurations by Large-scale Communities in Fourteenth-century France,” Speculum, 37 (1962), 18–31.
21
Colección de documentos históricos (La Coruña, 1931), II, 212. For more on the
Junta General see Manuel Maria de Artaza,“Regional Political Representation in the Spanish Monarchy during the Ancien Régime: the Junta General of the Kingdom of Galicia,”
Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 18 (1998), 15–26.
22
In fact, the cost of embassies was the second largest expenditure of the Valencian
Diputació at 780,782 lliures or 743,602 ducados for the period 1599–1626 (conversion
rate based on 20 sous = 1 lliura, and roughly 21 sous = 1 Castilian ducat).The cost of embassies was preceded by interest on debt and followed by defense. Given the amount
spent on embassies and the frequency of sending them, the Valencians clearly considered
this a worthwhile pursuit. See James Casey, The Kingdom of Valencia in the Seventeenth
Century (Cambridge, 1979), pp. x, 233.
23
Since various agents had the title procurator, we need to be careful not to read too
much into the title itself. Donald E. Queller, who has examined the origins and development of procurators in the Middle Ages, has found that the exact legal nature and function of the office varied over time and place: there were procurator ad litem, procurator
ad impetrandum, procurator litis, and so on. All of these procurators had slightly different competencies and powers to negotiate, but the exact distinctions between these
procurators are not always clear from the documents. In fact, the distinctions were often
unclear even to contemporaries.For our more general purpose,nevertheless,we can safely
follow Queller and define a procurator as an “‘attorney’—understood in its broadest significance, and not as coterminous with ‘lawyer.’” However, we should not try to insert the
Procurator General of the Assembly of the Clergy into the Castilian legal framework
where an attorney had a specific role and function.This might result in too narrow an understanding of the Procurator General and his functions. See Donald E. Queller, The Office
of Ambassador in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1967), chap. 2; Richard L. Kagan, Lawsuits
and Litigants in Castile, 1500–1700 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1981), pp. 52, 57, 60.
24
More still needs to be learned about individual Procurators General for a proper
prosopographical analysis. The documents indicate that most were lawyers or had a legal
background in either canon or civil law (see note 34 below for sources). Some proctors

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

33

sembly of 1592, the representatives realized that they could not adequately address a number of pressing issues, ranging from exemptions
to the newly introduced millones tax,25 during the Assembly. They also
acknowledged that the king had not and likely would not live up to his
came from local elites, while others had ties to court. Juan Astorga de Castillo’s father was
a regidor of Zamora, while Alejandro Ortiz de Valdés’ father was a “furrier” in the royal
chapel of the king and his uncle ( Juan de Valdés) was a fiscal in the royal treasury. Unfortunately, the other Procurators General identified in the Appendix remain simply names
for now. Even though the proctors were all canons, it is hard to draw a composite picture
of them, because there was no typical chapter or canon. Popes, prelates, kings, and chapters could all fill vacant offices under certain conditions. In most cases, few canonries fell
vacant, because it was possible to pass the office from person to person by resignation.
This, however, could be expensive. In the mid-sixteenth century, a papal bull of resignation for a canonry in Burgos cost 250 ducados. It also meant that the canonry often
passed to relatives or descendants, and many of these were mediocre men without university degrees.Only the canonries of magistral (theology),doctoral (canon law),and lectoral (lecturer on moral themes) were filled by open competition, and these posts usually
served as steppingstones to higher office. Most canons were members of the local elites
(commercial and political),and they remained in their hometowns and were not destined
for great things. They often served in the cathedral chapters with relatives and gained
their position through the system of resignations. This was especially true in smaller,
poorer chapters. The situation was somewhat different in wealthier chapters. The kings
often used vacant canonries to reward loyal servants: for example, Saavedra Fajardo was
named canon of Santiago in 1617. Many nobles also tried to obtain canonries for their offspring and, like the local elites, often used the system of resignations to keep the post in
the family.So there was a great variety of people within the cathedral chapters.The Procurators General likely came from the more educated and upwardly mobile groups within
the chapters. It is important to learn more about the proctors and their familial ties, because, as Neithard Bulst has pointed out, the negotiations of representative institutions
often had as much to do with the individuals involved in the negotiations as with the institutional framework in which the negotiations took place. See AHN, Inquisición, leg.
1483, exp. 4; AHN, Jesuitas, leg. 562, no. 30; Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, Las clases privilegiadas en el Antiguo Régimen (Madrid, 1985 edn.), pp. 239–246; Constance Jones Mathers,“The Life of Canons in Sixteenth-Century Castile,” in John Monfasani and Ronald G.
Musto (eds.), Renaissance Society and Culture: Essays in Honor of Eugene F. Rice, Jr.
(New York, 1991), pp. 161–176; Neithard Bulst,“Rulers, Representative Institutions and
their Members as Power Elites: Rivals or Partners?,” in Wolfgang Reinhard (ed.), Power
Elites and State Building (Oxford, 1996), p. 46.
25
In 1589 the Cortes of Castile voted the servicio de los millones or simply the millones to raise eight million ducados in a period of six years. The millones was an excise
tax on the consumption of meat, wine, oil, and other items. It was to be paid by everyone,
including the clergy. Papal authorization was necessary for the inclusion of the clergy, and
this did not arrive until 1591. With each renewal of the millones by the Cortes, the pope
had to issue new bulls or briefs authorizing collection from the ecclesiastical estate.Often
times, there was a time gap between parliamentary renewal and papal authorization,
which opened the door to conflicts between the clergy and the officials responsible for
collecting the tax. See Sean T. Perrone,“Clerical Opposition in Habsburg Castile,” European History Quarterly, 31 (2001), 331–336.

34

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741

agreements with the clergy once the Assembly dissolved. A majority
(twenty-three chapters) consequently agreed to appoint permanent representatives in Madrid and in Rome to address the general concerns of
the clergy for the next two years. Individual chapters, however, would
still send their own representatives to Madrid to deal with provincial
concerns. The representatives of several chapters (Ciudad Rodrigo,
Cartagena, Jaén, Sigüenza, Málaga, and Tuy) opposed the measure creating permanent Procurators General and refused to contribute to their
salaries, arguing that their churches saw no need or use for the proctors. Despite this opposition, the Assembly proceeded to elect the first
permanent Procurators General to Madrid and to Rome. The recalcitrant chapters eventually fell in line and paid their share of the salaries
too.26 Following the advice of the cathedral chapter of Toledo, the Assembly elected two of its own members for the posts because they were
most familiar with the affairs at hand.27 Although there were two Procurators General, this paper focuses solely on the permanent representative in Madrid and his role in the domestic political process.
Initially, the Assembly elected the Procurator General for a two-year
term. This term was later extended to five years, and finally it was established that the term of office would last until the next assembly.28
Apparently,there were no term limits either;at least one Procurator General was re-elected and many others served for nearly twenty years (see
Appendix). The Assembly elected the Procurator General by majority
vote.29 If a Procurator died in office or stepped down while the Assembly was not in session, the chapter of Toledo was authorized to name a
replacement for the remainder of the term.30 It seems, however, that
26
In 1602 the chapter of Cartagena tried to avoid paying the Procurator General’s salary
but was forced to pay by the majority of the other dioceses, see Representacion juridica
por las Santas Iglesias y Estado Eclesiastico de Castilla y Leon y su Procurador General, en virtud de la de Toledo, con los deanes y cabildos de las cathedrales de Sevilla,
Cuenca, Astorga, Palencia, Plasencia, Cartagena, y Canarias, sobre la paga de los maravedis adeudados por parte de estas Santas Iglesias, y suplidos por la de Toledo para
los gastos communes del Estato Eclesiastico (no date), BN, Raros (R) 23910, p. 25.
27
ACT, Obra y Fábrica (O.F.) n° 1350, fols. 25, 27, 99v–103v.
28
ACT, O.F. n° 1350, fol. 114; Representacion juridica, BN R23910, pp. 33–34.
29
Once he was elected, the new Procurator General swore an oath to carry out the duties of his office faithfully and received his powers. See Assientos de la congregacion que
celebaron las santas iglesias de la corona de Castilla y Leon . . . 1637, BN 3/14341, fols.
260v–261v; Assientos de la congregacion . . . 1648, BN 3/13076, fols. 303v–304, 318v.
30
ACT, O.F. n° 1350, fol. 114v; Instruccion de los negocios que han de hazer los procuradores generales del Estado Eclesiastico de la Corona de Castilla y Leon desta Corte,
y de la de Roma, . . . de 1639, BN R23746, fol. 18.

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

35

Toledo rarely used this right.31 Instead, the chapter of Toledo consulted
the other chapters regardless of the nature of the vacancy.32 Already facing challenges to its primacy from some chapters in the sixteenth century,Toledo undoubtedly realized that consultations would help to allay
fears that it was acting arbitrarily, especially after the Assembly ceased
to convene in 1666.33 From the late seventeenth century on, letters regularly crisscrossed Castile as the chapters tried to win support for their
candidates.34 Toledo then selected the new Procurator General from
this pool of candidates.35 What further impact the letter campaigns had
on the selection is hard to say because the actual vote was secret, and
the chapter minutes that I have seen noted only that the letters were
consulted.36 Yet, Toledo likely did select the candidate with the most
support when replacing the Procurator General in the absence of an assembly. This, however, was not always the best way to select a proctor.
In 1697 a canon from Córdoba declined the office because he was sev31
Toledo, of course, did not always consult the other chapters. For this reason, in the
middle of the seventeenth century, many chapters worried that if there was no assembly,
Toledo would name the Procurators General without their input. Similar concerns were
aired in the early eighteenth century as well. In 1714, for example, Toledo named a new
Procurator General for Rome, and the chapter of Calahorra quickly protested. See Chapter of Calahorra to chapter of Ávila, August 29, 1714, AHN, Clero, leg. 378.
32
See ACT, O.F. n° 338, fols. 26, 33; Representacion juridica, BN R23910, suggests that
between 1666 and 1714 Toledo alone named the Procurators General. Correspondence
in AHN suggests, however, that the other chapters had the opportunity to nominate
canons for the posts.
33
The convergence of internal and external factors led to the cessation of the Assembly
after 1666. Internally, many chapters were willing to forgo an Assembly by the 1660’s
rather than bear the extraordinary costs of meeting. In fact, in the first half of the seventeenth century, the number of chapters absenting themselves from the Assembly to save
money had increased dramatically. Externally, the weak monarchy of Charles II apparently
preferred to renew agreements at current levels rather than demand larger contributions,
which would necessitate an Assembly to reapportion the contribution, and face a recalcitrant clergy. See Perrone,“Castilian Assembly,” pp. 68–69.
34
See chapter of Santo Domingo de la Calzada to chapter of Ávila, December 9, 1696,
chapter of Calahorra to chapter of Ávila, October 13, 1684, and November 16, 1697, chapter of Granada to chapter of Ávila, September 30, 1704, AHN, Clero, leg. 378; chapter of
Ciudad Rodrigo to chapter of Ávila, July 14, 1717, chapter of Osma to chapter of Ávila, October 14, 1728, AHN, Clero, leg. 379; chapter of Segovia to chapter of Ávila, August 13,
1689, and October 27, 1696,AHN, Clero, leg. 380; chapter of Valladolid to chapter of Ávila,
September 28, 1684, chapter of Zamora to chapter of Ávila, September 28, 1684, AHN,
Clero, leg. 381.
35
ACT, O.F. n° 338, fol. 26: AC, lib. 41, fol. 153v. I am thankful to Daniel A. Crews for locating this document and subsequent documents from the Actas Capitulares for me.
36
ACT, AC, lib. 41, fols. 143rv and lib. 46, fol. 61v.

36

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741

enty years old.37 If Toledo considered it necessary to remove a Procurator
General from office, the chapter had to consult with the other chapters
and provide them with justification for removing the representative. If
a majority of the chapters agreed with Toledo, the Procurator General
could be removed from office.38 These consultations, however, gave the
Procurator General an opportunity to defend himself. Alejandro Ortiz
de Valdés, who had been Procurator General since 1665, for example,
resisted efforts to replace him, writing the various cathedral chapters in
1681 that despite his age, he was still up to the job. Enough of the chapters apparently agreed with him, because Ortiz de Valdés died in office
in 1684 at the age of 86.39 Other Procurators General, however, gracefully retired, acknowledging that age and poor health made it difficult
for them to carry out their duties.40
Many canons aspired to the post of Procurator General, but the salary
clearly was not the reason.41 Already in 1592, the chapter of Toledo recommended that the salary be fixed at 500 ducados a year so that the
candidates would not seek the office for financial gain and that the
salary would not be a burden on the churches.42 We might recall that
some chapters opposed the creation of the Procurator General because
of the extra costs. In addition to the salary, a 1597 papal brief of Clement VIII (1592–1605) allowed the representatives to continue receiving income from their benefices even though they were absent from
their dioceses.43 This brief undoubtedly made some canons more willACT, O.F. n° 338, fol. 33.
Representacion juridica, BN R23910, pp. 34–35; Instruccion . . . de 1639, BN
R23746, fol. 18.
39
ACT, O.F. n° 338, fol. 30; Circular letter from Alexandro Ortiz de Valdés, November 1,
1681, AHN, Clero, leg. 378; Chapter of Segovia to chapter of Ávila, September 2, 1684,
AHN, Clero, leg. 380; and Circular letter from Toledo, October 28, 1681, AHN, Clero, leg.
381. In its circular letter, Toledo indicated that several other chapters had expressed concern about Ortiz de Valdés’ age as well.
40
ACT, O.F. n° 338, fol. 26v.
41
In France the situation was the exact opposite. By the eighteenth century, the agentgeneral was “one of the choicest offices of the first estate.” In fact, the salary compared
with that of poorer bishoprics without the financial outlay. See Louis S. Greenbaum, Talleyrand, Statesman-Priest:The Agent-General of the Clergy and the Church of France at
the End of the Old Regime (Washington, D.C., 1970), p. 68.
42
ACT, O.F. n° 1350, fol. 102rv. Nevertheless, for some canons, 500 ducados would be a
substantial addition to their benefice. At the end of the sixteenth century, the average
salary of a canon in Mondoñedo was 133 ducados, in Almería 207, and in Salamanca 800.
See Manuel Teruel Gregorio de Tejada, Vocabulario básico de la historia de la Iglesia
(Barcelona, 1993), p. 36.
43
ACT, Sig. X.9.C.1.1.
37
38

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

37

ing to accept the post,44 especially since for most of the seventeenth
century,the salary was fixed at 240,000 maravedis a year (approximately
640 ducados).45 The salary, however, could fluctuate. Juan Astorga de
Castillo, for example, received four ducados per diem as did Gabriel Alvarez Alfonso from May, 1664, until his retirement in December, 1665.46
For most of the period under review, however, Toledo succeeded in
keeping the proctor’s salary fairly low. Yet, low wages made life at court
difficult for many Procurators General, who frequently petitioned the
chapters for monetary aid or simply a raise.47
Although the post itself did not offer much financial gain, for some it
was a steppingstone to higher administrative office. For example, Juan
Astorga de Castillo was appointed to the Council of the Crusade48 while

44
There was always some confusion, however, about the right of the Procurators General to continue receiving income from their benefices. In 1684, for example, the newly
elected proctor wrote Toledo expressing concern that the position might jeopardize his
right to earn income from his canonical benefice. Toledo reminded him and his chapter
that Clement VIII’s brief permitted the Procurator General to receive income from his
benefice even though he was absent. In 1712 the chapter of Salamanca made a similar inquiry. See ACT, AC, lib. 41, fol. 152; Chapter of Salamanca to chapter of Ávila, January 20,
1712, AHN, Clero, leg. 381.
45
The Procurator General’s salary was comparable to what the cities paid similar officials in Madrid. The city of Toledo, for example, maintained a chief solicitor (comisario
general en corte) in Madrid, and the range of the solicitor’s salary was almost identical to
that paid to the Procurator General. In 1607, for example,Toledo’s chief solicitor received
an annual salary of 400,000 maravedis plus expenses, while his successor in 1622 received only 200,000 maravedis. The Procurator General’s salary, however, paled in comparison to what Valencia paid its embassies to court. Between 1599 and 1626, Valencia
paid its embassies on average 26,557 ducados per year or forty-one times what the Procurator General received (calculations based on figures in note 22 above). Certainly, this
money was for more than just salaries, but the amount also suggests that agents at court
could be a huge drain on the resources of a region or corporate body. Philip II, in fact,
“often refused to meet with ambassadors from his various territories, alleging that they
were a waste of money.” See Kagan, op. cit., p. 54; Casey, op. cit., pp. x, 233; Luis R.
Corteguera, For the Common Good: Popular Politics in Barcelona, 1580–1640 (Ithaca,
2002), p. 68 (quote).
46
ACT, O.F. n° 338, fol. 26rv; Cuenta de los Maravedis . . . , BN Varios Especiales (V.E.) 241, fols. 2v, 14.
47
Jerónimo Martínez de Alarcón to chapter of Ávila, July 30, 1689, AHN, Clero, leg. 378;
Chapter of Toledo to chapter of Ávila, March 6, 1674, July 21, 1689, and February 1, 1704,
AHN, Clero, leg, 381. In October, 1689, the chapters decided to grant the Procurator General 600 ducados in aid. See ACT, O.F. n° 338, fol. 32. Earlier in 1650, the Assembly gave the
retiring proctor 800 ducados to defray the debt he had accrued in the previous ten years
of service. See Assientos de la congregacion . . . 1648, BN 3/13076, fol. 295v.
48
The Council of the Crusade and its head, the Comisario General de la Cruzada, are relatively unknown to modern historians. The office of Comisario General de la Cruzada

38

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741

he was a Procurator General in 1661, and he later became bishop of
Zamora in 1671;Miguel Francisco Guerra stepped down after ten months
in 1697 to accept the post of Grand Chancellor of Milan; Miguel Pérez
de Lara was Procurator General from 1697 until he was appointed
bishop of Coria in 1705.49 Whether Astorga, Guerra, or Pérez de Lara
would have advanced without having first served as Procurator General
is hard to say. In the case of Guerra,50 the answer is probably yes, because he was Procurator General for only ten months, but Astorga held
the position for approximately eleven years before moving to the Council of the Crusade, and Pérez de Lara for seven years before becoming
bishop.

dates back to at least 1482, while the Council was formed sometime between 1509 and
1534, but went without Ordinances until 1544. The central administration of the Council
consisted of roughly twenty people, both lay and clerical. These individuals included
lawyers, accountants, secretaries, and doormen. The Comisario General and his Council
had both spiritual and temporal prerogatives. For example, the Comisario General could
deprive clergy of their benefices for failing to pray the canonical hours properly,confiscate
money gained through usury or price-gouging, authorize marriages within four grades of
consanguinity, and try cases of bigamy, among other powers. The Comisario General and
his Council also administered the Tres Gracias (cruzada,subsidio,and excusado) and had
jurisdiction over lawsuits relating to those concessions.They were even involved in outfitting galleys maintained by ecclesiastical contributions. These prerogatives frequently led
to conflicts between the Council of the Crusade and other councils with either overlapping jurisdiction or different objectives. The creation of the Council of the Treasury in
1523, for instance, led to numerous conflicts between it and the Council of the Crusade to
control the disbursement of ecclesiastical contributions. The Council also became intertwined with factional politics at court,and factional politics clearly explain the rise and fall
of several Comisarios Generales.Factional politics undoubtedly played some role in the negotiations between the Council and the Assembly or its Procurator General, but at present
there is not enough information to draw any conclusions. The Council of the Crusade was
finally abolished by the Bourbon monarchy in 1750.Two tribunals governed by treasury officials replaced it. The office of Comisario General continued to exist, but the Comisario’s
role in the negotiations for ecclesiastical contributions was greatly diminished in the second half of the eighteenth century. See Alonso Pérez de Lara, Compendio de las Tres Gracias de la Santa Cruzada, Subsidio y Excusado (Madrid, 1610); Dolores Cruz Arroyo,“El
Consejo de la Cruzada: Siglos XVI–XVII” (tesina, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 1988);
José Martínez Millán and C. Javier de Carlos Morales,“Los origenes del Consejo de Cruzada
(siglo XVI),” Hispania, 51 (1991), 901–932; Carpintero, op. cit., pp. 419–423; Henar Pizarro
Llorente,“Facciones cortesanas en el Consejo de Cruzada durante el reinado de Felipe II
(1562–1585),” Miscelánea Comillas, 56 (1998), 159–177.
49
ACT,O.F.n° 338,fols.26,33,36;Antonio López Ferreiro,Historia de la Santa A.M.Iglesia de Santiago de Compostela (Santiago, 1907), IX, 273–274.
50
The chapter of Segovia had unsuccessfully nominated Guerra for Procurator General
in Rome in 1689. For several years prior to 1697, then, Guerra was already a rising star. See
Chapter of Segovia to chapter of Ávila, August 13, 1689, AHN, Clero, leg. 380.

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

39

Others used the post to enrich themselves through mercedes (royal
favors). Alejandro Ortiz de Valdés, for instance, requested a royal pension of 1000 ducados for his brother and financial aid for his two sisters
in 1673 after successfully negotiating the renewal of the subsidio and
excusado.The king initially wavered at such a large gift, recommending
only a merced of 500 ducados, but the documents suggest that a substantial award was eventually made to Ortiz and his family. Another interesting aspect of Ortiz’s request is a direct reference to the royal favors
bestowed on Astorga for his co-operative role in the subsidio and excusado negotiations of 1658.51 So clearly there was some connection
between the post of Procurator General and advancement or reward at
court.52
Even though the position might have offered some representatives
the opportunity for advancement or lining their pockets, their first duty
was to protect the interests of the clergy. If they had put self-interest before ecclesiastical interests, they probably would not have lasted for
long in the position; as noted earlier, the Procurator General could be
removed from office. To make sure that the Procurator General knew
his duties, the Assembly provided him with a set of instructions. At subsequent meetings, the Assembly usually reviewed and revised the instructions, depending on how successful the Procurator General had
been or in light of new challenges.53 Over time, these instructions became more detailed and explicit;there were thirty-two clauses in the Instruction of 1592 and fifty-two clauses in those of 1620 and 1639.54 A
few basic categories emerge in the instructions: ecclesiastical contributions, agreements with the crown, taxation, ecclesiastical governance,
and the bureaucratic nature of the office.

51
Consulta, December 23, 1673, AHN, Consejo, leg. 7418, and Consulta, June 6, 1682,
AHN, Consejo, leg. 7423. In his petition, Ortiz also emphasized the long and loyal service
of his father and grandfather to the Spanish kings. For some useful genealogical information on the Ortiz family see AHN, Jesuitas, leg. 562, no. 30.
52
We should remember that the line between patronage and bribery was not so clear
in early modern Europe, and people legitimately expected to profit, financially or socially,
from holding office. See H. G. Koenigsberger, Estates and Revolutions: Essays in Early
Modern European History (Ithaca, 1971), chap. 6.
53
The Procurators General reported to the Assembly at the end of their terms, giving
brief updates on what they had accomplished regarding each clause in their instructions.
See Juan Alonso de Córdoba’s report in BN, MS 10435,Andrés Ibáñez de Heredia’s reports
in Assientos de la congregacion . . . 1637, BN 3/14341, fols. 19v–21v, 40–41v, 43v, 45rv,
46v–53, 141rv, 143v–144v, and Assientos de la congregacion . . . 1648, BN 3/13076, fols. 20,
21v–23, 26, 27, 28v, 32, 35v, 45rv, 50.
54
ACT,O.F.n° 1350,fols.104v–116v;BN V.E.177-113;Instruccion . . . de 1639,BN R23746.

40

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741

The content of the instructions suggests that the Procurator General
spent most of his time litigating cases before the nuncio and the various
tribunals in Madrid. The most important cases that he dealt with concerned ecclesiastical contributions.The Procurator General took a leading role in any case involving Jesuits,cardinals,and other clergy claiming
exemption from the contributions.55 He pursued the cases in the courts
of law as well as in the courts of public opinion. He prepared reports
demonstrating how these exemptions hurt the ecclesiastical estate, and
he sent them to royal and papal officials. He even petitioned representatives of the Cortes in the 1590’s, hoping that they might take up the
matter of exemptions, especially those relating to the Jesuits.56 Although these lawsuits and petitioning campaigns often dragged on for
years without any resolution, the Assembly occasionally revised the instructions. For example, by 1637 several chapters had reached an agreement with the Jesuits in their dioceses concerning the Jesuits’ rents and
ecclesiastical contributions. The instruction was consequently changed:
the Procurator General would no longer automatically pursue cases
pertaining to ecclesiastical contributions against the Jesuits, but he
could still provide legal assistance to individual chapters that had not
signed the agreement with the Jesuits at the chapters’ expense.57 He
also defended the chapters’ rights to collect the subsidio and excusado; he pursued litigation to include more clergy in the payment of
the common costs of the Assembly and the costs of collecting the contributions; and when necessary, he obtained provisions from the Council of the Crusade ordering the military orders and the cathedral
chapters to pay their share of the common costs.58
In addition, the Procurator General had to make sure that royal officials enforced the agreements between the clergy and the crown. One
perennial problem was the requisition of ecclesiastical grain by either
the military or municipalities. The Assembly regularly reached agreements with the crown prohibiting the sequestration of grain by the military. Still, army suppliers continued to take grain and other supplies
55
Rome was the origin of most exemptions. In their concessions, the popes often exempted certain orders, clergy, or types of ecclesiastical revenues from being included in
the subsidio or excusado.These papal exemptions could change from concession to concession, creating some confusion that regularly led to legal action. For a fuller discussion
of exemptions, see Carpintero, op. cit., pp. 122–149.
56
BN, MS 10435, fol. 1rv.
57
Assientos de la congregacion . . . 1637, BN 3/14341, fols. 21v, 141; Instruccion . . . de
1639, BN R23746, fol. 2v; see also Carpintero, op. cit., pp. 126–127.
58
Instruccion . . . de 1639, BN R23746, fols. 2, 3, 7–9v, 18v.

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

41

from the church in clear violation of the royal agreement with the
clergy. The Procurator General, consequently, was to make sure that the
Council of War59 received the royal decrees prohibiting the sequestration of grain and that the Council actually instructed its suppliers not to
sequester ecclesiastical grain. He was also to keep watch on where the
Council of War planned to requisition supplies and immediately inform
churches in those areas to be on guard against any illegal seizures.60
The Assembly and crown had also formulated procedures for municipalities to follow when sequestering ecclesiastical grain in time of
famine. Namely, the municipalities could not act without first obtaining
a provision from the royal council, and the council had to notify the
prelate of the diocese in question before issuing said provision. The Assembly enjoined the Procurator General to make sure this process was
followed.61 To carry out his duty effectively, the Procurator General
needed to hear from the dioceses where violations occurred. The chapters, of course, were not shy about notifying him. In 1675, for example,
the corregidor of Salamanca seized the clergy’s grain without the proper
justifications (i.e., public hunger and need). The chapter of Salamanca
informed the other chapters of this outrage, asking them to write the
Procurator General for help in seeking redress at court. The chapter of
Ávila urged the Procurator General to take the case in his hand, pointing out that the corregidor’s action violated the agreement reached
with the king and thus impacted all the clergy. The Procurator General
apparently took the case in hand and was successful. Later, in 1684, the
chapter of Segovia wanted the Procurator General to assist it in pursuing litigation against the city council of Segovia for setting an artificially
low price for grain even though there was no scarcity. The chapter undoubtedly feared that such price-fixing would adversely affect ecclesiastical revenues from grain sales and tithes. The chapter of Segovia
59
The Council of War was formally established in 1586. Prior to this date, the Council
had no ordinances and was only the Council of State meeting under a different name.
After 1586 the Council of War had ordinances and its own ministers, but it was still subordinate to the Council of State, and there was still a fair amount of overlapping jurisdiction between it and other councils. The main tasks of the Council were to plan military
strategy and field an army, leading the Council to be deeply involved in issues of recruitment, finance, and provisioning. The Council was also the court of final appeals for cases
regarding the military fueros. See Pablo Fernández Albaladejo, Fragmentos de Monarquía (Madrid, 1992), pp. 132–135.
60
ACT,O.F.n° 1350,fols.107v–108v;Assientos de la congregacion . . . 1637,BN 3/14341,
fol. 45.
61
Instruccion . . . de 1639, BN R23746, fols. 4rv.

42

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741

hoped that the Procurator General would pursue its case just as he had
successfully pursued Salamanca’s case in 1675.62 Unfortunately, the outcome of Segovia’s litigation is unknown.
The Procurator General also protested the inclusion of the clergy in
the millones and other taxes which violated ecclesiastical immunity.63
The clergy did not quietly accept their inclusion in the millones in 1591
or later years even after the popes had authorized it, and many clergy opposed this tax by fulminating censures, evading payment, and even attacking those responsible for its collection. This opposition, however,
was primarily the acts of individual clerics or local clergy. Scholars have
found few examples of the clergy making a unified stand against the
millones on a national level.64 The Procurator General’s instructions to
pursue legal action at court consequently might provide a new angle to
examine a more co-ordinated ecclesiastical reaction to the millones. In
addition to the millones, the Procurator General was regularly ordered
to pursue other cases of taxation.In 1634,for example,the Assembly ordered the Procurator General to litigate against the inclusion of the
clergy in the sisas (excise tax) of Madrid. That litigation resulted in the
nuncio ruling that the clergy were exempt from the sisa and that the
municipality should reimburse them. Unfortunately for the clergy, this
ruling was understood by the municipality of Madrid to pertain only to
secular clergy who were residents of Madrid. Believing that the nuncio’s ruling pertained to all the clergy, the Assembly of 1639 sought an
additional decree ordering the town to restore the goods of the monasteries in Madrid and non-resident clergy as well.The Procurator General
was charged with following up on the Assembly’s efforts.65 Unfortunately, the documentation is incomplete here, and the outcome is currently unknown. What seems clear, however, is that the results of the
proctor’s efforts to defend ecclesiastical immunity from taxation were

62
Chapter of Salamanca to chapter of Ávila, July 6, 1675, AHN, Clero, leg. 379; Chapter
of Segovia to chapter of Ávila, June 2, 1684, AHN, Clero, leg. 380.
63
ACT,O.F.n° 1350,fol.109;Assientos de la congregacion . . . 1637,BN 3/14341,fol.120;
Instruccion . . . de 1639, BN R23746, fol. 14v.
64
See Carpintero, op. cit., pp. 313–314, 354, Francisco Marcos Burgos Esteban,“El poder
de la fe y la autoridad de la palabra.Iglesia y fiscalidad en la época del conde duque de Olivares” in Enrique Martínez Ruiz and Vicente Suárez Grimón (eds.), Iglesia y Sociedad en
el Antiguo Régimen (Las Palmas,1994),pp.429–438,and Beatriz Cárceles de Gea,“La contribución eclesiástica en el servicio de millones (1621–1700),” ibid., pp. 439–449.
65
Instruccion . . . de 1639, BN R23746, fols. 14v–15. For more on conflicts between the
clergy and municipalities over local taxes see Domínguez, op. cit., pp. 368–369.

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

43

mixed: there were occasional successes, such as that before the nuncio’s tribunal in 1634, but such legal success was easily thwarted by the
failure of local officials to implement the ruling. Ecclesiastical exemption from taxation was more than just a “legal fiction,” but it was a privilege that was hard to enforce and that was constantly being whittled
away. Still, the clergy continually defended their exemption, and the
Procurator General was repeatedly charged with carrying it out.66
Aside from fiscal matters, the Procurator General addressed issues regarding clerical practice, discipline, and jurisdiction. The Procurator
General, for example, co-ordinated the Castilian effort to obtain a papal
dispensation for the clergy to eat eggs and dairy products during Lent
in the 1590’s.67 He worked to break the Hieronymites’ monopoly to publish and to sell breviaries, so that prayer books would be affordable and
sold in every diocese.68 He monitored the religious orders in Spain,making sure that the founding of new houses adhered to rules established
by Urban VIII (1623–1644).69 The Procurator General fought to protect
the chapters’ right to declare a see vacant and to administer the diocese
on the death of the bishop without royal interference.70 He also assisted
the chapters and the Assembly in lawsuits before the nuncio in Madrid.71
He even participated in a dispute regarding patron saints.72 Such activities might shed further light on the living conditions of the clergy, con66
He also opposed royal policies, such as plans to lower interest rates on mortgages,
that would hurt the clergy economically. See José Antonio Álvarez Vázquez,“El memorial
del estamento eclesiástico en 1691 sobre la baja de la tasa de interés en fueros y censos,”
Hispania, 38 (1978), 405–435.
67
BN MS 10435, fols. 7v–8; ACT, O.F. n° 1350, fol. 111v.
68
For a recent study on the Hieronymites’ monopoly and the Assembly’s opposition to
it,see Timothy J.Schmitz,“The Spanish Hieronymites and the Reformed Texts of the Council of Trent” (unpublished paper).
69
The chapters undoubtedly feared that new foundations were siphoning off wealth
that would otherwise go to established religious institutions, and consequently new foundations were undermining the economic viability of all institutions in a time of economic
crisis. The Cortes was also concerned about the growing number of religious communities and petitioned the crown on at least two occasions (1607 and 1633) to prohibit the
establishment of new religious foundations. On the Cortes, see Rawlings, op. cit., pp.
129–130.
70
Instruccion . . . de 1639,BN R23746,fols.7,11rv,15v;Assientos de la congregacion . . .
1648, BN 3/13076, fols. 259v, 260, 266rv.
71
In 1691 the chapter of Orense sought the Procurator General’s aid in a lawsuit involving the chapter and its bishop before the nuncio. See Chapter of Orense to chapter of
Ávila, January 26, 1691, AHN, Clero, leg. 379.
72
Circular letter from Toledo, September 8, 1702, AHN, Clero, leg. 381.

44

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741

flicts within the ecclesiastical estate, as well as other social and cultural
issues.
Finally, the instructions provided some general guidelines for the
Procurator General. He was to report his activities to Toledo regularly,
and he had to make an annual trip there.73 To guarantee an accurate report, he was to keep a record book of his daily activities, including notes
on his correspondence, petitions made, and other pertinent information.
He was to maintain a separate book of accounts.74 In 1639 the Assembly
chided the Procurator General for the lack of clarity in his accounts,and
his failure to distinguish properly the cost incurred in assisting particular chapters from the common costs of the entire ecclesiastical estate.75
He was responsible for maintaining contact with the Procurator General in Rome and sending him money for his salary and other expenses.
After 1648 the Procurator General had to keep archives of all the documents relating to his activities as permanent representative. At the end
of his term, he was to provide his successor and the chapter of Toledo
with a catalogue of the archives. In 1650, for example, the Assembly retained the outgoing Procurator General, Andrés Ibáñez de Heredia, until the end of April so that he could put his papers in order and properly
hand them over to the incoming Procurator General, Juan Astorga de
Castillo.76 The Procurator General also attended the Assembly as a nonvoting member at the end of his term.77 If the chapters requested his assistance, he was to take a hand in their legal affairs (at their expense)
and assist their representatives in Madrid. This, however, led to some
confusion, as mentioned, with the Procurator General’s accounts.
The Procurator General was not the Assembly’s only agent in Madrid.
The financial records indicate that the Assembly had other agents and

73
In 1637 the Procurator General reported that he was not able to make the yearly trip
to Toledo. The Assembly decided, however, that the yearly trip to Toledo was important
and ordered the Procurator General to spend the second Sunday of Easter there. In addition to his regular salary, the Procurator General would be paid six ducados a day while
occupied in going to, staying in, and returning from Toledo. This measure basically solved
the problem as the account books suggest that the Procurators General did make the
yearly visit. Assientos de la congregacion . . . 1637, BN 3/14341, fols. 52, 143v, and ACT,
O.F. n° 338, fol. 27v.
74
Unfortunately, if these account books and record books have survived, they still have
not been located.
75
Instruccion . . . de 1639, BN R23746, fols. 17rv.
76
Assientos de la congregacion . . . 1648, BN 3/13076, fols. 21v, 29v, 61v, 89, 322v.
77
Ibid., fol. 8v.

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

45

lawyers in Madrid,78 and the instruction of 1639 clearly stated that the
Procurator General was to be assisted by an advocate. It is unclear, however, whether every attorney or advocate hired by the Assembly was an
assistant to the Procurator General or under his direction.The Assembly
of 1637, for example, paid its attorney in the nuncio’s tribunal 9,000
maravedis for eighteen months’ service, while an advocate received
5,000 maravedis for five months’ work. Another advocate was paid
10,000 maravedis a year for four years, plus a further 9,520 maravedis
for the preparation of and publication of legal documents.79 Given the
size of their salaries and monthly nature of their service, most of these
lawyers were certainly not permanent employees of the ecclesiastical
estate.They were likely hired for particular lawsuits or retained for pending actions.80 It appears, then, that the Procurator General in Madrid was
not the head of a large administrative bureaucracy. 81 The general reluc78
There were three different types of lawyers in early modern Castile: the advocate
(abogado), the attorney (procurador), and the solicitor (solicitador). The advocate and
attorney concern us here. The advocate was the legal expert. He devised the legal arguments and pleaded the case in court. Most advocates were licenciados in law and some
even obtained the title of doctor. The attorney was the procedural expert. He developed
the strategy for the case—preparing documents, rounding up witnesses, and consulting
the advocate. Attorneys usually did not have university titles in law. They purchased their
position from the government (municipal and royal), and these positions were often
passed down from father to son. See Kagan, op. cit., pp. 52, 57–58, 60–61, 67.
79
The accounts also provide the names of these lawyers, which might help scholars to
track down more information regarding the Procurator General and his actions in Madrid.
Some of these lawyers include the attorneys Antonio de Santillana (1630’s) and Pedro
Muñoz (1638–1650), and the advocates Antonio de Castro (1635), Gabriel de la Barreda
(1635–1640), and Luis de la Palma (1640–1649). Cuenta de los maravedis que la santa
iglesia de Toledo ha gastado y pagado por el estado ecclesiastico . . . , BN R23746, fols.
4, 7, and Instruccion . . . de 1639, BN R23746, fol. 18; see also Cuenta de los maravedis
que la santa iglesia de Toledo ha gastado y pagado por el estado ecclesiastico . . . , BN
3/13076, fols. 4rv, 16v; BN V.E. 24/1.
80
A point of comparison can be made with the fees the city of Toledo paid to retain attorneys at the royal chancillerías (high courts) of Valladolid and Granada. In 1622, the
city of Toledo paid 16,000 maravedis to its attorney in Valladolid and 11,000 maravedis
to its attorney in Granada. The Assembly then appears to have paid less for its attorneys
and advocates than the city of Toledo. Whether this was on account of a lighter workload
or the Assembly’s retaining less qualified lawyers cannot be ascertained at present. For
the fees paid by Toledo, see Kagan, op. cit., p. 59.
81
In France the agents-general of the clergy had a professional staff divided into three
agencies: Secretariat, Council of the Clergy (lawyers), and the Receivership-General. The
more elaborate permanent bureaucracy of the French Assembly of the Clergy resulted in
part from the lack of a French equivalent of the Council of the Crusade.The French clergy
managed the collection of subsidies at all levels, not just the local level. See Greenbaum,
op. cit., chap. 7.

46

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741

tance of the chapters to finance the office possibly limited the scope of
its operation and prevented the development of a larger permanent bureau in Madrid. Still, the Procurator General provided continuity from
assembly to assembly, and he allowed the Assembly of the Clergy to
maintain a voice in the political process: royal officials could not simply
disregard the clergy after the contribution was granted.
In sum, the instructions indicate many diverse issues of both national
and local concern that the Procurator General handled. By knowing
something about the various tasks of the Procurator General, scholars
will be able to piece together the diffuse documentation in many repositories more easily and be able to make sounder conclusions about the
goals and aspirations of the ecclesiastical estate. It will also be easier to
trace the changing priorities of the clergy and set the actions of individual proctors within the historical context of the office and its duties.
For example, the long conflict with the Jesuits over exemptions clearly
came to an end in 1639 when the Procurator General’s mandate to pursue such cases in the name of the ecclesiastical estate was rescinded.
Yet,over sixty years later,in 1701,Toledo wanted the ecclesiastical estate
again to authorize the Procurator General to pursue a lawsuit regarding
the tithes of the Jesuit College in Arévalo in its name.82 The instructions
also indicate the Procurator General’s continual interaction with the
cathedral chapters and with other ecclesiastical agents in Madrid and
Rome.They provide a bare outline of an informational network. Further
investigation of this network should shed light on the interrelationships
between individual clerics and the larger ecclesiastical estate in Castile
as well as beyond it in Rome and the other Hispanic kingdoms. More
importantly, the instructions might help us to find new sources or lead
us to reconsider old sources regarding the clerical response to the Tridentine reforms, the millones, and other issues.
In addition to the instructions, the correspondence between the chapters must be examined to understand completely the Procurator General’s mandate. The chapters could give the Procurator General new
instructions or revise his instructions in the middle of his term.This ability was especially important after 1666 when the Assembly ceased to
meet regularly. The issuing of new instructions generally occurred after
consultations among the chapters, and the procedures become clear
from correspondence of 1733. In that year, the chapter of Calahorra

Chapter of Toledo to chapter of Ávila, April 8, 1701, AHN, Clero, leg. 381.

82

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

47

sought to enlist the support of the ecclesiastical estate in a residency
conflict with its bishop. Toledo asked the other chapters for their opinion and apparently set a date for them to respond by, because in July,
1733, Toledo informed Calahorra that it had received only eighteen responses, which was not a majority, and Lugo’s letter had not arrived in
time. Of those responses that counted, eleven chapters favored pursuing the case, three chapters were undecided and would accept the decision of the majority, three other undecided chapters left the decision
up to the majority if it included Toledo, and one chapter was opposed.
Even though a majority of the respondents favored pursuing the case,
the Procurator General could not litigate in the name of the entire ecclesiastical estate unless a majority of the chapters responded favorably.
Toledo apparently was unhappy with the outcome, because it decided
that another round of voting was necessary. Toledo’s circular letter, and
presumably further letters from Calahorra, changed the minds of several chapters or at least prompted them into action, because on December 2, 1733, Toledo reported that a majority had now responded
favorably to Calahorra’s request: the Procurator General would litigate
the case on behalf of the entire ecclesiastical estate.83
The above example indicates that not all chapters enthusiastically
supported changing the Procurator General’s instructions or adding to
them.The failure of some chapters to respond to Toledo’s letter of 1733
was surely not simply the result of poor postal communication. It undoubtedly reflects the disillusionment of some chapters with the position, which, as will be seen below, was under serious attack at this time.
Nevertheless, the documents make it clear that a majority of the chapters had to approve any changes to the Procurator General’s instructions: a minority of chapters could never take over the office for their
own ends when the Assembly was not in session. In his capacity as representative of the ecclesiastical estate,then,the Procurator General could
work only to advance the collective interests of the clergy and not the
particular interests of one chapter or a few. He clearly never became a
tool of Toledo as some chapters feared he would. More important, the
83
Chapter of Toledo to chapter of Calahorra, July 23, 1733 [copy]; Toledo’s report on
the response of other chapters, July 23, 1733; chapter of Ávila to chapter of Toledo, July
23, 1733; Chapter of Toledo to chapter of Calahorra, December 2, 1733 [copy]; Circular
letter from Toledo, December 2, 1733, AHN, Clero, leg. 381. Calahorra’s lawsuit with its
bishop over residency was still unresolved in December, 1735, when the chapter appointed an agent to negotiate on behalf of it and twenty-one other churches. See Chapter
of Calahorra to chapter of Ávila, December 2, 1735, AHN, Clero, leg. 378.

48

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741

procedures for issuing new instructions make it clear that the Procurator General was closely governed. The chapters continually discussed
his actions or potential actions even when the Assembly was not in session.84 The corporate identity that the chapters established through the
meeting of the Assembly, then, did not disappear with the Assembly’s
dismissal.
In fact, the office of Procurator General probably helped maintain for
a time the corporate identity of the ecclesiastical estate.It gave the chapters a unified means to address the crown, and in the mid-seventeenth
century, the position offered the chapters an opportunity to renew
agreements for subsidios,excusados,and décimas without assembling.85
This idea, however, was initially controversial among the clergy. In September, 1647, after a majority of the chapters opposed convening an Assembly, the chapter of Toledo proposed that the chapters authorize the
Procurator General to negotiate an agreement with royal officials. This
proposal split the chapters: some favored it; others opposed it, and a
few called for an Assembly as normal. Toledo, however, continued to
press the chapters to authorize the proctor,because it would save money
(the cost involved in a meeting), and, more importantly, there was no
consensus among the chapters to meet. Without a majority of chapters
consenting to a meeting,the chapter of Toledo felt it could not convoke
the Assembly. The crown favored Toledo’s proposal but was skeptical
that an agreement for the subsidio and excusado could be reached unless all the chapters conferred full powers to the Procurator General to
negotiate for them. So when the Procurator General himself along with
several chapters petitioned the king to license the Assembly, the crown
sided with them. The Assembly finally convened to renew the subsidio
and excusado in July, 1648. One reason the Procurator General and his
faction petitioned the crown was their fear that in the absence of an Assembly,Toledo would gain too much influence over the affairs of the ecclesiastical estate.86 By 1658, however, most of the chapters readily
authorized the Procurator General to renew the agreement for the sub84
For the chapter of Zamora’s efforts to have the Procurator General take action in its
case against the Marquis of Castrillo in the name of the entire ecclesiastical estate, see
Jerónimo Martínez de Alarcón to chapter of Ávila,April 2, 1692,AHN, Clero, leg. 377; chapter of Zamora to chapter of Ávila, March 6, April 2, and August 7, 1692, circular letter from
Toledo, July 22, 1692, AHN Clero, leg. 381.
85
Other permanent committees also allowed representative institutions to renew
agreements without meeting, see Graves, op. cit., p. 129.
86
BN, V.E. 186-16; Assientos de la congregacion . . . 1648, BN 3/13076, fol. 12v; Carpintero, op. cit., pp. 244–247.

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

49

sidio and excusado with the crown; the number of chapters absenting
themselves from the Assembly had increased in the seventeenth century, and many chapters now agreed that it was more cost-effective simply to have the Procurator General renew the agreements.87 However,
prior to authorizing the Procurator General to negotiate a renewal on
behalf of the ecclesiastical estate,the chapters had to reach a consensus
through consultation not to assemble. In 1679, for example, a majority
of the chapters decided not to assemble to renew the excusado, because they would not alter the size of the concession, its apportionment, or the period of payments.88 A small number of chapters,
however, constantly called for an Assembly.89 It was never a foregone
conclusion, then, that the Procurator General would renew the agreements for ecclesiastical contributions. The prospect of the chapters
convening an Assembly always existed.
The absence of the Assembly, however, did not bring negotiations to
an end or prevent the clergy from putting pressure on the crown. In
1673, for example, the Council of the Crusade proposed that, instead of
assembling,the chapters authorize the Procurator General to renew the
concession. The chapter of Toledo supported the Council’s proposal,
but it also turned the authorization of the Procurator General into a bargaining device. It threatened not to grant its powers to the Procurator
General or to forward letters of authorization it had received from other
chapters to the Procurator General90 unless the Council of the Crusade
dismissed litigation against the chapter of Toledo over the distribution
of the subsidio and excusado in the archdiocese. The Council was outraged that Toledo had the temerity to use an issue relating to all the
clergy to advance its own interests. The ministers advised the king that
Toledo deserved to be rebuked for its impertinence, but for now the
king should simply ask the cardinal of Toledo to nudge his chapter into
sending its authorization and the letters of authorization it possessed
87
BN V.E. 27-7; On the naming of the Procurator General to negotiate on behalf of the
clergy see also Lucía Carpintero Aguado,“La congregación del clero de Castilla: un organismo mediatizado por la fiscalidad,” in P. Fernández Albaladejo et al. (eds.), Política, religión e inquisición en la España moderna: Homenaje a Joaquín Pérez Villanueva
(Madrid, 1997), pp. 157–158.
88
BN,V.E. 26–41.
89
See Chapter of Valladolid to chapter of Ávila, December 7, 1701, March 31, 1706, and
April 14, 1731, AHN, Clero, leg. 381.
90
Many chapters sent their letters of authorization to Toledo, which then remitted
them to the Procurator General.This practice allowed Toledo to put more pressure on the
crown. See BN,V.E. 27-7.

50

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741

from the other chapters to the Procurator General. Other chapters also
threatened not to send powers after granting them. The ministers again
advised the king to use kind words with the chapters and ask them to
send their powers as soon as possible.The Council itself would work to
expedite the legal cases against Toledo.Although the chapter of Toledo’s
effort was not completely successful, the Council’s response indicates
its unwillingness to confront the chapter directly on this matter. These
impasses with the chapters allowed the Procurator General to negotiate a slight discount of the subsidio.91 Clearly, then, the chapters were
still able to posture and put some pressure on the crown. These were
minor problems compared to an actual assembly, however, and in the
second half of the seventeenth century, the crown clearly preferred to
deal with the Procurator General than to negotiate with the Assembly.92
Yet, the Procurator General did not just sign an agreement. There
were still negotiations over reductions and other issues. As seen above,
the Procurator General negotiated a slight discount in the subsidy in
1673, while in 1679 he tried to convince the king that the clergy could
not afford to pay the full excusado and needed relief.93 The negotiations
for the décima were more contentious.In 1674,after learning about royal
efforts in Rome to secure a new décima,the Procurator General prodded
the Castilian bishops to inform the pope of the dismal economic state
in Castile and the inability of the clergy to provide another contribution
to the crown. In addition to the economic problems, he suggested two
further reasons that the pope should not concede a new décima. First,
Spain was not currently at war with the infidel; the décima was ostensibly for such wars. Second, if the pope conceded a décima to the Spanish king,the French king would also ask for a décima.If the pope refused
him, Louis XIV would justly complain, and this would unnecessarily
open a political imbroglio for the pope.The Procurator General himself
asked the cardinal of Toledo and the nuncio to send similar messages to
Rome.94 The “anti-décima campaign” of 1674 was a success; the pope
made no concession. The Procurators General in Madrid and Rome

91
April 23, 1673, AHN, Consejo, leg. 7418. Interestingly, the Comisario General de la
Cruzada at the time was a canon of Toledo and a past president of the Assembly of the
Clergy. See Carpintero, “La congregación . . . la fiscalidad,” pp. 158–159, and “La congregación,” pp. 262–263.
92
April 14, 1673, AHN, Consejo, leg. 7418.
93
BN,V.E. 26–41.
94
Alexandro Ortiz de Valdés to chapter of Ávila, April 21, 1674, AHN, Clero. leg. 378.

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

51

could record one more diplomatic victory over the royal agents in
Rome.95
The Procurator General’s efforts in Rome were not always successful.96 In 1677 the pope finally conceded a new décima for 800,000
ducados to be paid in two years. The Procurator General then carried
out protracted negotiations in Spain with royal officials, and over a year
passed from the papal concession of a décima to the signing of the
agreement between the king and the clergy. The final agreement, however, was different from the papal concession. The Procurator General
negotiated an agreement for the payment of 490,000 ducados in four
years.97 Ortiz de Valdés’ scathing petition probably convinced some
royal ministers to negotiate better terms with the clergy. He started by
describing the economic plight of the clergy and the spiritual consequences of their predicament. He quickly explained the loss of income
from tithes and rents due to population decline and economic downturns and pointed out how royal policies regarding interest rates and
monetary devaluation had made worthless almost all mortgages (censos) held by the ecclesiastical estate. Yet, despite this loss of revenue, individual clerics were given no tax relief and still paid over a third of
their rents to the crown. To survive, Ortiz de Valdés stated, many clergy
were forced to forsake their religious obligations and work in the fields,
and those clerics unable to earn enough to pay their share of the ecclesiastical contributions were often excommunicated by the ecclesiasti95
In 1658, for example, the Procurator General in Rome had persuaded the pope not to
grant the crown a new ecclesiastical contribution. See Avisos de Don Jerónimo de Barrionuevo (1654–1658) (“Biblioteca de Autores Españoles,” CCXXII [Madrid, 1969]), p.
186. One cautionary note about ecclesiastical successes in Rome: just as the king needed
papal permission to tax the clergy, the pope needed royal permission to receive money
from Spain. The clergy’s complaints probably provided the pope with a good bargaining
device in his negotiations with the crown. That is, the pope might have used the clergy’s
complaints to delay temporarily granting a new concession and thereby put pressure on
the crown to allow more money to flow to Rome. On Spanish-Roman negotiations see
Domínguez Ortiz, op. cit., p. 363.
96
According to the chapter of Toledo, the failure of the clergy to prevent the pope from
granting a décima in 1677 was not because the royal ambassador outmaneuvered them
but rather because they did not have a proctor in Rome at the time. The Assembly’s proctor had foolishly returned to Spain before his replacement arrived. So there was no one to
inform the pope of the true circumstances of the clergy, which undoubtedly would have
swayed the pope against granting the concession. See BN,V.E. 186–31.
97
Lucía Carpintero Aguado,“Las décimas eclesiásticas en el siglo XVII: un subsidio extraordinario,” in Pablo Fernández Albaladejo (ed.), Monarquía, imperio y pueblos en la
España moderna (Alicante, 1997), p. 755.

52

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741

cal collectors. The demands for ecclesiastical contributions then were
creating a topsy-turvy situation within Castile: the clergy whose job it
was to pray for the king and care for the souls of his subjects were now
engaged in earning a living. The financial demands of the king also
drained church treasuries with the result that many churches were in
disrepair, and there was not enough money for religious worship and
ritual. Ortiz de Valdés stressed that very often even the tabernacle went
without light. Although some of his remarks were probably hyperbole
and standard complaints,Ortiz de Valdés’figures leave no doubt that the
ecclesiastical estate was making an enormous contribution to the royal
coffers (5,016,830 ducados out of total ecclesiastical revenues of
10,400,000 ducados) in the late seventeenth century. The real force of
the petition, however, came at the end. Ortiz de Valdés made an historical comparison to the glorious reign of Charles V and the present dismal state of Spain. He connected the success of Charles V’s reign to the
emperor’s supposed willingness to decline a décima, and he suggested
that the inclusion of the clergy in the millones in 1591 led to Spanish
reverses and loss of territory. Thus, according to Ortiz de Valdés, the violation of ecclesiastical exemption from taxation explained the seventeenth-century decline of Spain.98 Although Ortiz de Valdés’ use of
history is questionable, especially regarding Charles V’s relations with
the clergy over ecclesiastical contributions, his argument might have
resonated with the king and some of his ministers, especially given
royal recourse to theologians to assuage the royal conscience over the
morality of collecting the millones from the clergy.99 The negotiations
between the Procurator General and the crown were not simply pro
forma. The Procurator General did successfully negotiate discounts for
the clergy and smaller contributions.
The ecclesiastical estate did not always prevail over the crown, however.The chapters’ demand for a royal promise to reduce the size of the
subsidio and excusado prior to negotiations complicated the situation
in 1683, because the crown was inflexible, saying it needed the money
for the war with France and the amount was not excessive. Finally, in
December, 1683, the crown threatened to collect the contributions itself. Fearing to lose control over the collection process, Toledo, instead

BN,V.E. 25–83.
On clerical opposition to Charles V’s demands for ecclesiastical contributions see
Perrone,“Clerical opposition,” pp. 325–331; on royal consultations with theologians regarding the millones see Burgos Esteban, op. cit., p. 432.
98
99

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

53

of the Procurator General, quickly negotiated an agreement with the
crown, which was signed in January, 1684. This agreement contained a
discount for the clergy, but, more ominously, it included a clause permitting two commissioners from Toledo to negotiate all future financial
agreements for the ecclesiastical estate, and these agreements would
bind all the chapters, even those who authorized the Procurator General to represent them in the negotiations.100 This basically brought an
end to the proctors’role in negotiations for ecclesiastical contributions.
The Procurator General was not completely excluded, however. In
1693, for instance, the representatives from Toledo renewed the agreement but then left the Procurator General in charge of tying up the
loose ends, such as making sure that the king issued the promised decrees.101 Later Procurators General were responsible for printing and
distributing to the chapters copies of the agreements, royal decrees,
and other pertinent documents.102
The use of commissioners from Toledo certainly exacerbated tensions within the ecclesiastical estate, and in the long run probably undercut support for the unified representation of the ecclesiastical estate.
There was no immediate breakdown, however, of ecclesiastical unity.
After 1684, for example, a majority of the chapters readily delegated
their authority to the chapter of Toledo to negotiate the renewals,103
while the rest continued to authorize the Procurator General to negotiate on their behalf or sent their own representatives to court.104 These
latter chapters probably still feared that Toledo might gain too much authority over the ecclesiastical estate. In 1717 the dissenting chapters fi-

100
See Carpintero,“La congregación . . . la fiscalidad,” pp. 161–166; Iturrioz, op. cit., pp.
130–133.
101
Circular letter from Toledo, April 28, 1693, AHN, Clero, leg. 381.
102
See Adrián de Coniqui to chapter of Ávila, September 27, 1719, AHN, Clero, leg. 378;
Circular letter from Toledo, September 24, 1698, AHN, Clero, leg. 381.
103
Commissioners from Toledo had been proposed and used on previous occasions.For
example, in 1682 commissioners from Toledo negotiated a one-year reduction in the subsidio and excusado, while in 1683 some chapters, such as Granada, favored authorizing
Toledo to handle the negotiations long before December. So, bypassing the Procurator
General was not unheard of, and since renewing the subsidies was not central to his mandate, the use of commissioners from Toledo did not necessarily undermine the Procurator General. See chapter of Ávila to Alexandro Ortiz de Valdés, December 12, 1682, and
chapter of Granada to chapter of Ávila, May 25, 1683, AHN, Clero, leg. 378.
104
In 1707, for example, the chapters of Santiago and Cuenca delegated their powers to
the Procurator General, and several other chapters sent their own representatives. Yet, in
the end, the commissioners from Toledo reached an agreement with the crown for re-

54

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741

nally obtained from the crown the right to negotiate their own separate
agreements with the king for the payment of ecclesiastical contributions.105 This privilege permitting multiple accords between the crown
and clergy hastened the complete breakdown of ecclesiastical unity.
At roughly the same time, the dissension within the ecclesiastical estate had begun to undermine the position of the Procurator General.
First, in 1714, the diocese of Cuenca tried to separate itself from the
common representation of the Procurator General and proposed to
other chapters that the office be suppressed.Almost immediately,a huge
letter-writing campaign was underway among the chapters to shore up
support for the Procurator General or to fall behind Cuenca.106 Most
chapters favored keeping the Procurator General and the current system of collective representation, and they opted for a new election in
1714 to re-establish the Procurator General’s position as the representative of the entire ecclesiastical estate. Even though Cuenca’s effort to
separate itself failed, it clearly demonstrated some of the growing disunity among the chapters. Second, since the late seventeenth century
there were repeated calls for reconvening an assembly.107 Yet, the advocates for reconvening an assembly did not gain enough votes until
1717, and even when the delegates met, not all the chapters sent representatives.108 Several chapters negotiated their own separate agreements with the crown (as mentioned above) and henceforth sought to

newing the contribution. See Escritura de Concordia, otorgado por los senores diputados de la Santa Iglesia de Toledo . . . , BN R24030, fols. 2–3.
105
Carpintero,“La congregación . . . la fiscalidad,” p. 166.
106
Chapter of Santo Domingo de la Calzada to chapter of Ávila, March 23, 1715, chapter
of Córdoba to chapter of Ávila,April 9, 1715, chapter of Guadix to chapter of Ávila, March
31, 1715, AHN, Clero, leg. 378; chapter of Salamanca to chapter of Ávila, June 12, 1715,
chapter of Santiago to chapter of Ávila, March 23, 1715, chapter of Ciudad Rodrigo to
chapter of Ávila, March 20, 1715, chapter of Seville to chapter of Ávila,April 2, 1715, chapter of Orense to chapter of Ávila, March 30, 1715, chapter of Osma to chapter of Ávila,
March 28, 1715, AHN, Clero, leg. 379; chapter of Segovia to chapter of Ávila, June 4, 1716,
AHN, Clero, leg. 380; chapter of Toledo to chapter of Ávila, January 30, 1715, chapter of Palencia to chapter of Ávila, March 27, 1715, and July 24, 1716, chapter of Valladolid to chapter of Ávila, March 30 and June 1, 1715, chapter of Zamora to chapter of Ávila, March 21
and May 23, 1715, AHN, Clero, leg. 381.
107
Some chapters, most notably Valladolid, felt that the apportionment no longer corresponded to the economic reality of the dioceses. See chapter of Valladolid to chapter of
Ávila, December 7, 1701, March 31, 1706, and April 14, 1731, AHN, Clero, leg. 381.
108
The Assembly of 1717 itself was a fiasco, and the deliberation fell apart before anything substantial could be accomplished. See Iturrioz, op. cit., pp. 133–137.

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

55

separate themselves from the common representation. Chapters, such
as Seville, Cuenca, Astorga, Palencia, Plasencia, Cartagena, and the Canaries, ceased to pay their share of the common costs, including the
Procurator General’s salary. In fact, they went so far as to say that the
Procurator General no longer represented them because he was not
properly elected. Instead, they planned to use exclusively their own
agents at court in their negotiations with the crown, councils, and judiciary.
The failure of these chapters to pay the common costs prompted the
Procurator General, in accordance with his instructions, to petition the
Council of the Crusade to order them to pay. The Council of the Crusade sent letters to the delinquent chapters in 1726 ordering them to
pay their share of the common costs.These chapters objected to the order, arguing that they had separated themselves from the common representation of the ecclesiastical estate in 1717 when they negotiated
directly with the crown and did not participate in that assembly. Therefore, they did not have to pay the common costs, and they also argued
that the Council of the Crusade had no jurisdiction in the matter. Litigation soon followed in the tribunal of the Council of the Crusade. The
chapter of Toledo countered that, in a collective body, the majority
ruled for the good of the body. It also pointed to precedents: the failure
of Cartagena to avoid contributing to the salary of the Procurator General in 1602 and the failure of an unspecified chapter to avoid paying
the common costs between 1666 and 1717.Toledo also argued that the
Procurator General was elected in 1714 after consultations with all the
chapters following Cuenca’s attempt to separate itself from the common representation, and although the Assembly of 1717 did not name a
new Procurator General,it did confirm the naming of Adrián de Coniqui.
For Toledo, a single church did not have the right to revoke its power
or to act against the majority. Toledo then accused Seville and its codefendants of trying to create disunity in the ecclesiastical estate. This
litigation continued until 1753 without a resolution.109 Nevertheless,the
Procurator General still continued to function at least nominally through
the first half of the eighteenth century as the representative of the entire ecclesiastical estate. For example, in 1740 the chapter of Cuenca,
which advocated suppressing the office, actively sought the Procurator
General’s assistance in defending the ecclesiastical estate against a new
109
Representacion juridica, BN, R23910, pp. 20–36; Carpintero,“La congregación,” pp.
409–417.

56

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741

ecclesiastical contribution conceded to the crown by the papacy in the
Concordat of 1737.110
The last Procurator General that I have identified died in 1741, but
the documents suggest that the position did not die with him.111 With
the growing disunity among the chapters, however, it is not clear how
effective the Procurators General after 1714 were at representing the
ecclesiastical estate, especially considering that several chapters ostensibly no longer recognized the Procurator General and preferred to use
their own representatives. Yet, for almost 150 years from 1592 to at least
1741, the Procurator General represented the interests of the Assembly
and the secular clergy at court. His instructions and communiqués with
the various chapters ensured that he worked for the common good of
the ecclesiastical estate (or at least the cathedral chapters).The amount
of consultation regarding the office of Procurator General and its duties
between Toledo and the other chapters from 1666 to 1717 also suggests that the Procurator General really did represent the interest of the
majority despite the complaints of Seville and some other chapters in
the eighteenth century.112 Still, there clearly were fault lines within the
ecclesiastical estate that could and did threaten ecclesiastical unity; as
noted earlier, around 1647 many chapters were concerned that Toledo
might gain too much influence over the Procurator General and the affairs of the ecclesiastical estate, and some chapters still feared the possible ascendancy of Toledo after 1684. Toledo, however, never managed
to gain absolute control over the Procurator General or ecclesiastical affairs. All the chapters nominated the Procurator General, had an input
in what he did, and paid for his salary. Even though he was not the only
clerical representative at court as each chapter sent its own agent to
handle local concerns, the Procurator General was the agent who represented the collective interests of the ecclesiastical estate.
More importantly, the office of Procurator General permitted the
continuation of the corporate identity of the Assembly between sessions. When the king and his ministers negotiated with the Procurator
General for contributions or on other matters, these negotiations were
occasions for the needs and the interests of the crown and the ecclesi110
Antonio López Ferreiro, Historia de la Santa A.M. Iglesia de Santiago de Compostela (Santiago, 1908), X, Appendices, pp. 36–37.
111
A circular letter from Toledo refers to the agent of the procuration general in 1747.
See Circular letter from Toledo, July 1, 1747, AHN, Clero, leg. 381.
112
One needs to remember that there was a serious rivalry between Toledo and Seville
for primacy in Castile. The conflict over the Procurator General was probably caused in
part by this rivalry. See Carpintero,“La congregación,” pp. 401–417.

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

57

astical community to come together.113 The Procurator General was often
an informational intermediary between court and country, providing
the chapters with updates on developments at court and letting the
court know where the chapters stood on the issues of the day. How effective all this was is hard to say at present. The Procurator General
clearly had some success in protecting the clergy against the sequestration of grain, illegal taxes, and other abuses. He also successfully negotiated discounts and smaller contributions for the clergy. Further research
is still needed to assess accurately the effectiveness of the Procurator
General, but this office ensured that political maneuvering and defending of rights took place between meetings of the Assembly. The advancement of ecclesiastical interests,however,did not necessarily mean
conflict with the crown. The Procurator General was not only a focal
point for antagonism between church and state, but also a bridge between the two sides. For example, on October 30, 1683, the Council of
the Crusade informed the Procurator General that Segovia and Almería
still had not sent powers to renew the subsidio and excusado.114 The
council clearly hoped that the proctor could help move the process
along. Although negotiating the terms of payment could be difficult, it
was in the interests of both sides that the Procurator General and royal
ministers reach an agreement.115 In the process, the Procurator General
might rightfully ingratiate himself with the crown and with the cathedral chapters.
As mentioned earlier, the Assembly of the Clergy was not the only
body that appointed procurators general.Cities,Generalitats,juntas,military orders, and regular clergy all sent proctors to Madrid and to Rome
to petition the crown and papacy and to defend their interests in judicial proceedings.116 More still needs to be learned about the various
agents at court (Were they permanent or temporary? What did they do?
113
For more on how standing committees represented the interests of the community,
see Graves, op. cit., p. 186.
114
Royal Decree, October 30, 1683, AHN, Consejo, leg. 7424.
115
In some ways, the agreements probably benefited the clergy more than the crown.
In the middle of the eighteenth century, for example, royal officials briefly collected the
excusado on two occasions (1751–1752 and 1761–1764),and they collected almost eight
million reales more than the clergy would have collected according to the agreements for
the excusado. Yet, the disruptions created by the clergy through protests and appeals
may well have outweighed for the crown the fiscal advantage gained through direct royal
collection, because the crown soon reached agreements with the cathedral chapters for
them to collect the contribution. See Iturrioz, op. cit., chap. 6.
116
The city of Barcelona, for example, maintained an ambassador in Rome. See
Corteguera, op. cit., p. 27.

58

THE PROCURATOR GENERAL OF THE CASTILIAN ASSEMBLY OF THE CLERGY, 1592–1741

How effective were they?),but one conclusion seems clear:the absence
of representative institutions did not bring the political dialogue to a
halt or lead to royal absolutism. There was simply a change of venue for
negotiations between the king and his subjects. It undoubtedly was a
change that the crown preferred, but this change did not obviate negotiation and co-operation between king and subject. To better understand these non-parliamentary negotiations,we might benefit by looking
more closely at the use of proctors. Originally, in the twelfth century,
the king negotiated with individual corporations, not the entire realm.
The medieval kings were able to use negotiations with proctors to extend royal authority, but these same negotiations gave localities the
means to defend their liberties and rights.117 In the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, proctors still served the same function. The disappearance of representative institutions or the infrequency of their
meetings, then, does not equate to the triumph of the all-powerful state
over the locality or interest group.

117

Post, op. cit., pp. 4, 162.

59

BY SEAN T. PERRONE

Appendix

Procurators General of Madrid (incomplete list)
Name

Diocese

Years

Juan Alonso de Córdoba
Unknown
Alonso de Salazar Frias
Unknown
Alvaro de Toledo
Diego de Zúñiga
Juan de Cerro
Andrés Ibáñez de Heredia
Juan Astorga de Castillo
Gabriel Alvarez Alfonso
Alejandro Ortiz de Valdés
Jerónimo Martínez de Alarcón
Dr. Francisco Ruiz de Castañeda

Palencia
—
Jaén?
—
Unknown
Unknown
Astorga
Seville
Santiago
León
Segovia
Córdoba
Córdoba

Dr. Miguel Francisco Guerra
Miguel Pérez de Lara
Christoval Antonio de Solís
Adrián de Coniqui
Dr. Roque Jacinto Gómez de Terán

Segovia
Segovia
Sigüenza
Salamanca
Mondoñedo

1592–1596?
—
c. 1602
—
May, 1613–May, 1619
1620–1624
November, 1624–June, 1629
1630?–March, 1650
March, 1650–April, 1661
April, 1661–December, 1665
December, 1665–August, 1684
October, 1684–October, 1696
Elected December, 1696—
Declined January, 1697
January, 1697–October, 1697
November, 1697–1705
January, 1705–May, 1705
July, 1705–September, 1728
September, 1728–July, 1741

Sources:ACT,Actas Capitulares,lib.23,fol.12v;ACT,O.F.338,fols.20v–37v;ACT,O.F.1350,
fol.103v;ACT,O.F.n° 1352,fol.113;Cuentas de . . . el dizemo quinquenio del subsidio . . . ,
BN V.E. 177–113, fol. 3 and Cuentas de . . . el duodecimo quinquenio del subsidio . . . ,
BN V.E. 177–113, fol. 5v; Assientos de la congregacion que celebraron las santas iglesias
metropolitanas y catedrales de los reynos de la corona de Castilla y Leon . . . 1648 . . . ,
BN 3/13076, fol. 318v.

“THE INDIANS GENERALLY LOVE THEIR WIVES AND
CHILDREN”: NATIVE AMERICAN MARRIAGE
AND SEXUAL PRACTICES IN MISSIONS
SAN FRANCISCO, SANTA CLARA, AND SAN JOSÉ
BY

QUINCY D. NEWELL*

“Fornication,” wrote Fathers Magín Catalá and José Viader in 1814,
ranked “first”among “the most dominant vices of the Indians”at Mission
Santa Clara, near the San Francisco Bay in Alta California.1 Other missionaries agreed. “The dominant vices of the Indians,” wrote Fathers
Narciso Durán and Buenaventura Fortuny from nearby Mission San
José,“are those which are prohibited in the fifth, sixth, seventh and the
first part of the eighth commandments of the holy law of God.”2 Those
commandments enjoined believers to refrain from murder, fornication,
theft, and lying. Of the sixteen missions that responded to the question,
“Which vices are the most dominant among them and in which sex?,”
thirteen mentioned “impurity,”“unchastity,”“incontinence,”“lust,” or “fornication.”3 Clearly, to the missionaries, sexual immorality was a major
*Dr. Newell is an assistant professor of religious studies in the University of Wyoming.
She would like to thank Professors Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Michael D. Green, and Grant
Wacker as well as the anonymous reviewer for The Catholic Historical Review for their
perceptive comments on earlier drafts of this essay.
1
Magín Catalá and José Viader, Response to 1812 questionnaire, November 4, 1814, Preguntas y Respuestas, Santa Barbara Mission Archive Library, Santa Barbara, California. In
subsequent references, this collection will be abbreviated as SBMAL.
2
Narciso Durán and Buenaventura Fortuny,Response to 1812 questionnaire,November
7, 1814, SBMAL.
3
Maynard Geiger (trans. and ed.) and Clement W. Meighan (ed.), As the Padres Saw
Them: California Indian Life and Customs as Reported by the Franciscan Missionaries,
1813–1815 (Santa Barbara, California, 1976), pp. 105–106. As the Padres Saw Them is the
only complete publication of the questionnaire and the extant responses, which are now
in the Santa Barbara Mission Archive Library, Santa Barbara, California. I am grateful to Father Virgilio Biasiol, O.F.M., the archivist at the SBMAL, for sending me reproductions of
the original responses from Missions San Francisco, Santa Clara, and San José, which were
all signed within a week of each other in November, 1814. For the most part, I have used
my own translations of these manuscripts. Where a word or phrase was illegible or unintelligible, I have used Geiger’s translation in As the Padres Saw Them as a guide.

60

BY QUINCY D. NEWELL

61

problem. But how did the Central Californians themselves perceive
their sexual conduct? By reinterpreting the missionaries’ reports about
Native Americans’ marriage and sexuality in Missions San Francisco,
Santa Clara, and San José in the light of anthropological evidence on
Central Californian Indians, I argue that what the missionaries saw as
the sexual immorality of Catholic Indians, the Central Californians themselves likely interpreted as legitimate sexual behavior.
Before the Spanish arrived, many small tribelets occupied the San
Francisco Bay area. They spoke dialects of five mutually unintelligible
languages:Costanoan,Bay Miwok,Coast Miwok,Patwin,and Wappo.Anthropologists and historians believe that these tribelets were culturally
similar,though geography and ecology caused some differences between
tribelets in different areas. Tribelets interacted regularly, creating social,
political, and economic ties that bound them to their neighbors.4
For the Spanish crown, the Alta California missions were an inexpensive means of establishing a physical presence in lands claimed by the
Spanish crown, thus discouraging incursions by the British, Americans,
and Russians. Missions San Francisco, Santa Clara, and San José were
among the last of the missions to be founded, beginning in 1776, 1777,
and 1797, respectively. As they founded missions, the Spanish also established military outposts and civil settlements, the latter often inhabited
by soldiers and, occasionally, their families. Men formed the overwhelming majority of the early settlers in Alta California. The first president of
the California missions, Junípero Serra, urged the government to send
more families to live in the region, so “that the Indians, who until now
have been very surprised to see all the men without any women,see that
there are also marriages among Christians.”5 In the San Francisco Bay
area, the Hispanic colonists built the San Francisco presidio in 1776 and
settled the town of San José in 1777. Fourteen families lived in San José,
nine of them headed by soldiers.6 The settlements grew slowly; by 1810,
according to the historian of California Hubert Howe Bancroft, the Hispanic population of the Bay Area remained under five hundred.7
4
For a concise overview of the “Tribal World” of the San Francisco Bay region, see Randall Milliken, A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San
Francisco Bay Area, 1769–1810 (Menlo Park, California, 1995), Chapter 2.
5
Junípero Serra to Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursua, Mexico City, March 13, 1773, in
Antonio Tibesar (ed.), The Writings of Junípero Serra, Vol. I (Washington, D.C., 1955), p.
310, my translation.
6
David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, Connecticut,
1992), pp. 258–259.
7
Bancroft estimated the Hispanic population in 1810 to be approximately 435 people.

62

“THE INDIANS GENERALLY LOVE THEIR WIVES AND CHILDREN”

Scholars studying the Spanish missions in Alta California disagree—
sometimes vehemently—about whether the mission system was helpful or harmful to the Native American population of the area. Yet
whether they see the missions as an oppressive regime designed to destroy Native American cultures or as the most effective means of protecting Indians from the deleterious effects of Spanish invasion,
scholars rarely question the ideological dominance of Catholicism
within the mission walls. Scholars who see the mission system in a positive light tend to follow the missionaries’ own understanding of the
missions as islands of Catholicism in a sea of traditional Indian religion.8
On the other side of the debate, scholars who see the missions as oppressive institutions have tended to be interested in Native American
resistance to the mission system. They have focused their research on
physical resistance, primarily in the forms of armed conflict and fugitivism.9 When looked at in this way, the missions appear to be enclaves
of Catholicism to be escaped or avoided altogether.
However, the interaction of Catholic and traditional practices in the
missions was far more complex than either of these views recognizes—
the missions were not the islands of Catholicism that the missionaries
and many later scholars have believed them to be. Traditional Central
Californian practices and beliefs persisted for generations, even among
Native Americans who did not physically resist the mission system. If
we take into account the persistence of traditional practices, reinforced
by regular contact between Native Americans in the missions and Central Californians who remained outside the mission system, we begin to
see the missions less as pockets of Catholic hegemony, set apart from
surrounding communities, and more as centers of intense interaction
between Central Californians and Hispanic colonists.
Though the missionaries referred to all of the Native Americans in
the missions as “neophytes,” implying that the mission residents were
Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, Vol. II: 1801–1824 (The Works of Hubert
Howe Bancroft,Vol. 19 [San Francisco, California, 1885]), p. 126.
8
See, for example, the works of Zephyrin Engelhardt, such as San Francisco or Mission
Dolores (Chicago, Illinois, 1924); Francis F. Guest, “An Examination of the Thesis of S.F.
Cook on the Forced Conversion of Indians in the California Missions,” Southern California Quarterly, 61 (1979), 1–77.
9
See, for example, George Harwood Phillips, Indians and Intruders in Central California, 1769–1849 (Norman, Oklahoma, 1993); James A. Sandos, “Levantamiento!: The
1824 Chumash Uprising Reconsidered,” Southern California Quarterly, 67 (1985),
109–133; Edward D. Castillo,“The Assassination of Padre Andrés Quintana by the Indians
of Mission Santa Cruz in 1812: The Narrative of Lorenzo Asisara,” California History, 68
(1989), 116–125, 150–152.

BY QUINCY D. NEWELL

63

primarily interested in becoming Catholic, later scholars have suggested
that most Native Americans did not enter the missions because of a realization of spiritual truth, but rather out of a desire for food, material
goods, technology, and/or political, military, or spiritual power that the
Spanish could provide.10 In this light, the conversions that the missionaries (and some mission historians) celebrated become cynical manipulations of the Spanish,efforts to benefit from an otherwise unwelcome
presence. As the debate has raged over the beatification and canonization of Junípero Serra, founder and first president of the Alta California
mission system, scholarship on the missions has tended to focus on the
treatment of Native Americans by the Spanish, both inside and outside
the missions, and on physical resistance to that treatment. This focus
leaves the religious side of this encounter underexplored: how did the
Native Americans understand, adapt, adopt, or reject the beliefs and
practices advocated by the missionaries?
Part of the difficulty in studying Native Americans’ religious beliefs
and practices in the missions arises from the fragmentary and one-sided
nature of the available evidence. Most of our information on the Spanish missions comes from the Spanish themselves, both missionaries and
colonial government officials. Other Europeans and Americans who visited the missions later wrote about what they saw, adding another layer
of description. The number of written accounts produced by Native
Californians, however, can be counted on the fingers of one hand.11
10
For a representative sampling of theories on Native American motives for entering
the missions, see Edward D. Castillo,“The Native Response to the Colonization of Alta California,” in David Hurst Thomas (ed.), Columbian Consequences, Vol. 1, (Washington,
D.C., 1989), pp. 377–394; Gary Combs and Fred Ploogh,“The Conversion of the Chumash
Indians: An Ecological Interpretation,” Human Ecology, 5 (1977), 309–328; John R. Johnson,“The Chumash and the Missions,” in Columbian Consequences, I, 365–375; Florence
Shipek, “California Indian Reactions to the Franciscans,” The Americas, 41 (1985),
480–492.
11
Pablo Tac, who wrote about life in Mission San Luis, is the only Native Californian
known to have written his own account of life in the missions. He composed his narrative as a twelve- or thirteen-year-old while training for the priesthood in Rome. See Minna
Hewes and Gordon Hewes (trans. and eds.),“Indian Life and Customs at Mission San Luis
Rey:A Record of California Mission Life Written by Pablo Tac, an Indian Neophyte (Rome,
ca. 1835),” The Americas, 9 (1952), 87–106. Two other California Indians, Lorenzo Asisara
and Fernando Librado, gave oral accounts of mission life to researchers. For Asisara’s accounts, see Edward D. Castillo (trans. and ed.),“An Indian Account of the Decline and Collapse of Mexico’s Hegemony Over the Missionized Indians of California,” American
Indian Quarterly, 13 (1989), 391–406; Edward D. Castillo (trans. and ed.),“The Assassination of Padre Andrés Quintana by the Indians of Mission Santa Cruz in 1812: The Narrative of Lorenzo Asisara,” California History, 68 (1989), 116–125, 150–152; E. L. Williams,
“Narrative of a Mission Indian, etc.,” in Edward S. Harrison, History of Santa Cruz County

64

“THE INDIANS GENERALLY LOVE THEIR WIVES AND CHILDREN”

Scholars are rightly wary of depending too heavily on European sources
to reconstruct the Native Americans’ experience of the missions. Many
would prefer to use these sources as texts for understanding Europeans.
The descriptions left by priests and European travelers,for example,could
be used to explore European perceptions of the Other, or the ways in
which Europeans constructed Others against which they could define
themselves.12 To see these sources only as texts that reflect on their European authors,however,leaves us with very little documentary evidence
with which we may understand Native Americans’ lives in the missions.
It is true that biases pervade the writing of priests and other European
and Euro-American observers of the Native Americans,but as most scholars recognize, no historical source is bias-free. Our task, as historians,
must be to use these sources critically, as we would any sources, rather
than to disregard them altogether.
By re-reading the European and Euro-American sources on indigenous Americans in the light of evidence available from other disciplines,historians can still gain insight on Native American history.In the
case of the California Indians, ethnohistorians have taken the lead in using anthropological and archaeological data to reinterpret the information (and misinformation) provided in historical texts.An ethnohistorical
examination of marriage and sexual practices offers one way of exploring religious contact between the Spanish and the Native Americans.
Marriage was an oft-repeated ritual in the missions, so the missionaries had ample opportunity to observe it and to verify their observations. The missionaries’ descriptions of the Native Americans’ ritual
practices are consistent with each other and with anthropological data
on Central Californian marriage practices, though their interpretations
of Central Californian marriage and their renderings of Central Californian beliefs about marriage are not. Fathers Catalá and Viader at Mission Santa Clara, for example, wrote, “[T]he Indians in their Gentile
[non-Catholic] state do not celebrate formal agreements, pacts, nor con(San Francisco, California, 1892), pp. 45–48. For Librado’s account, see Fernando Librado,
Breath of the Sun (Banning, California, 1979).
12
On the European encounter with “the Other” in the Americas, see Tzvetan Todorov,
The Conquest of America:The Question of the Other (New York,1984);Anthony Pagden,
The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (New York, 1982). On the European encounter with “the Other” more generally,
see Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York,
1992); Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Patrick Williams and
Laura Chrisman (eds.), Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader (New
York, 1994), pp. 66–111; Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1979).

BY QUINCY D. NEWELL

65

ditions [for marriage].”13 However, anthropological evidence demonstrates that the Native Americans did,in fact,enter into formal agreements
for marriage, symbolized in the exchange of gifts between families.14
Catalá and Viader went on to describe, in the same paragraph, the
making of such an agreement.“The suitor, having obtained the consent
of the bride and of her parents, gives them some little gift, and from this
hour they are considered married.”15 Catalá and Viader’s failure to recognize gift exchange as a formal agreement illuminates something about
what they were looking for—a ceremony analogous to the Catholic
church wedding,perhaps—but tells us little about what the Central Californians did. Their subsequent description of gift exchange between
families, however, shorn of the culturally chauvinistic interpretation
that it was not a “formal agreement,” demonstrates the persistence of
traditional marriage customs in the missions.
Marriage was not only frequent; it was important. Societies organized
around kinship, such as those in Central California, used marriage as a
primary means of creating kinship bonds. Marriage converted enemies
into kin, thus extending social, political, and economic ties. The modification of marriage practices, therefore, carried great weight. Marriage
was also a central institution in Spanish culture, which was deeply concerned with the twin values of honor and virtue. Marriage marked the
boundaries of appropriate sexual activity, and Spanish men and women
maintained their honor and virtue through careful observation of those
boundaries.Marriage was also a Holy Sacrament in the Catholic Church,
and thus of particular concern to the Spanish missionaries. Because of
the importance of marriage in both Native American and Spanish culture, an examination of the ways the mission residents practiced and
understood it sheds considerable light on the larger question of how
they practiced and understood both Catholicism and traditional Native
American customs.
The missionaries revealed their concern with the Native Americans’
sexual conduct—or misconduct—in their responses to a questionnaire
sent to Mexico from Cádiz, Spain, by Don Ciríaco González Carvajal,
Secretary of the Department of Overseas Colonies,in 1812.The Spanish
Catalá and Viader, Response, SBMAL.
Lowell John Bean,“Social Organization,” in Handbook of Native American Indians,
ed. William C. Sturtevant,Vol. 8: California, ed. Robert F. Heizer (Washington, D.C., 1978),
p. 677; Edith Wallace, “Sexual Status and Role Differences,” in Handbook, Vol. 8, California, pp. 684–687.
15
Catalá and Viader, Response, SBMAL.
13
14

66

“THE INDIANS GENERALLY LOVE THEIR WIVES AND CHILDREN”

empire was in political turmoil at the time. The colonial government in
New Spain had recently put down a major rebellion that pitted the indigenous Mexicans against the creole and Spanish colonists. Napoleon
had captured the Spanish monarch a few years earlier, and King Ferdinand VII remained Napoleon’s political prisoner. As they awaited their
sovereign’s return, the leaderless subjects of the Spanish crown governed themselves through independent local bodies called cortes.
Spain’s American possessions floated in governmental limbo; theoretically equal to peninsular Spanish territories and subject only to the
Crown, most colonies resisted the intrusion of European-based cortes
on their governmental authority. Even so, the Iberian bodies occasionally attempted to regulate the colonies.González Carvajal’s questionnaire,
sent on behalf of the Cádiz cortes, represents an attempt by one branch
of the Spanish governmental bureaucracy to exert control over the American colonies through the accumulation of knowledge about the inhabitants of the area.16
“Presumably,” writes the Franciscan historian Maynard Geiger, González Carvajal’s “request [for information] was sent to the American
viceroys, who in turn sought the answers through their subordinate officials in state and church.” On August 13, 1813, as colonial governmental forces struggled against another major rebel movement, Don Ignacio
María Saludo, in Culiacán, Mexico, forwarded the questionnaire to the
president of the Franciscan missions, Fray José Señán, who resided at
Mission San Buenaventura. Señán circulated the questionnaire among
the missionaries at the twenty missions in Alta California. It took two
years for all of the missionaries to complete their responses. By that
time, the colonial military had all but quashed the rebellion in Mexico,
and in Spain Ferdinand VII had regained his throne.Geiger suggests that
because of the political upheaval in Mexico, however, Señán may never
have sent the answers back to Mexican or Spanish authorities.17
The Spanish missionaries defined impurity, unchastity, incontinence,
lust, and fornication as vices on the basis of Catholic teachings about
human sexuality and marriage. These teachings provided a framework

16
On the accumulation of knowledge as a form of power, see, for example, Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 (New
York 1980), especially Chapter 5; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York,1991),especially Chapter 10.
17
Maynard Geiger,“Historical Introduction,” in Geiger and Meighan, op. cit., pp. 1–2.

BY QUINCY D. NEWELL

67

for the regulation of sexuality in European societies. Ideally, according
to the priests, all unmarried persons abstained from sexual activity, and
each married person (married to only one person) had sexual relations
only with his or her spouse.The missionaries assumed that Native Americans living in the missions had converted, or were about to convert, to
Catholicism,and were therefore subject to the behavioral regulations of
the Catholic Church. Thus, the priests interpreted all of the mission residents’ sexual activity outside the bounds of a Church-sanctioned marriage as sin.
Confessional aids from the missions, organized in the order of the Ten
Commandments, generally grouped questions about sexual activity under the sixth commandment, which prohibited fornication. The questions, however, demonstrate that sexual sin covered far more than simple
fornication. Juan Cortés, a missionary at Santa Barbara, included translations of phrases and questions about immoral thoughts, masturbation,
sodomy, homosexual acts, and heterosexual acts with partners other
than one’s spouse. Priests at other missions had their own confessional
aids with translations into the local indigenous languages. They used
these booklets when they heard mission residents’ confessions, using
the phrases like the ones Cortés included to root out what they saw as
sexual sin among the Indians.18
According to Catholic doctrine, marriage provided the only legitimate outlet for sexual urges. However, Cortés also translated questions
such as,“How many times have you spilled your semen?” and “Did you
couple [with your spouse] in the right way?”indicating that even within
the confines of marriage, sexual sin remained a danger. Coitus interruptus and intercourse in positions proscribed by the Church, which contradicted the Church’s teachings on sexuality, also constituted sins.19
Central Californians also used marriage as a means of regulating sexuality, but the traditional Californian understanding of what constituted
appropriate sexual practices differed sharply from that of the Catholics.
Anthropological research indicates that many practices that the Catholics
classified as sins, such as homosexual acts, were commonly accepted in

18
Harry Kelsey (trans. and ed.), The Doctrina and Confesionario of Juan Cortés (Altadena, California, 1979), pp. 17, 115–117.
19
Ibid., pp. 113, 116;Asunción Lavrin,“Sexuality in Colonial Mexico,”in Asunción Lavrin
(ed.), Marriage and Sexuality in Colonial Latin America (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1989), pp.
53, 74.

68

“THE INDIANS GENERALLY LOVE THEIR WIVES AND CHILDREN”

Central California. The Spanish documentary record confirms this acceptance.Recalling the founding of Mission Santa Clara,Father Francisco
Palóu described one person who, “by reason of the decorously worn
dress, pagan ornaments, manner of working, sitting, etc., had all the appearances of a real woman; but in facial appearance and the absence of
breasts” caught the attention of the Spanish priests. When the missionaries asked about that individual, the Native Americans informed them
“that it was a man, and that he went about dressed as a woman and always went with the women.” Spanish soldiers confronted the man,
stripped him of his clothing, and kept him locked up for three days.“After he had been told that it was unbecoming for him to go around in
woman’s clothes, and still more to mingle with the women, with whom
it was presumed he was sinning, they let him go,” recounted Palóu. The
Spaniards’ treatment of the man might have been more severe if they
had understood that he “sinned” not with women, but with other men.
When the Spanish released him, the man fled, and continued his life as
a berdache in another village.20
Even more bewildering to the Spanish was the apparent practice of
same-sex marriages between men. When the priests at Mission San Antonio caught two men engaging in “an unspeakably sinful act,” and
“tried to present to them the enormity of their deed,” wrote Palóu, one
of the men protested that the other “was his wife.”21 Anthropological
and historical evidence indicates that berdaches, males who dressed in
women’s clothing and performed women’s work,were common throughout California and in much of North America.22 Many tribes believed
that berdaches were spiritually powerful, and thus marriage to a berdache could bring a man significant social and political advantages.23 By
the time the missionaries at Santa Clara responded to the 1812 questionnaire, Central Californians had either discontinued the berdache
tradition in that region or successfully hidden it from the missionaries.24
20
Maynard Geiger (trans. and ed.), Palóu’s Life of Fray Junípero Serra (Washington,
D.C., 1955), p. 198.
21
Ibid., p. 199.
22
Wallace, op. cit., pp. 688–689; Walter L. Williams, The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture (Boston, 1986), pp. 3–4.
23
Williams, op. cit., pp. 31–43.
24
On the eradication of the berdache tradition in California by the Spanish, see ibid., p.
139. The Jesuit Alonso de la Peña Montenegro, whose moral theology was widely read by
Franciscans in Alta California, wrote that sodomy and bestiality were the first vices that
missionaries to Indians had to eradicate.See Montenegro,Itinerario para Parochos de Indios (Madrid, 1668), p. 124. For the prevalence of Montenegro’s work in California, see
Francis F. Guest,“Junipero Serra and His Approach to the Indians,” in Guest, Hispanic Cal-

BY QUINCY D. NEWELL

69

Catalá and Viader never mentioned homosexual practices in their mission, nor did the missionaries at Missions San Francisco or San José.
The priests wrote far more about polygamy and incest than about
homosexual activity, indicating the greater visibility of, and their proportionately greater concern with, these practices.“[The Indians] recognize in their marriages no relationship of affinity,” wrote Father
Francisco Palóu. Whereas Catholic doctrine prohibited marriage between affinal kin, Palóu complained that “on the contrary, this [relationship] incites them to take as wives their sisters-in-law, and even the
mothers-in-law. The custom they observe is that he who takes a wife
takes also as wives all her sisters.”25 Palóu exaggerated: most Central Californians did not practice polygyny. Generally, only wealthy, high-status
men such as village headmen and shamans could support multiple wives
or needed the additional help that extra wives could provide.26 Some
tribes practiced sororal polygyny, as Palóu observed; in others, the wives
came from multiple families, and often, multiple villages.27 In kinshipbased societies, such as those in Central California, leaders used polygyny to strengthen their authority. By marrying women from high-status
families and women from other villages, a leader could consolidate his
own social position, facilitate trading relationships between villages,
and end conflicts between enemy groups.
When a polygynous man entered the missions, the missionaries
forced him to choose one wife with whom to “solemnize” his marriage.
Though the priests expected him to remain with his first wife, many
men opted instead to solemnize a more recent union with a younger
woman. This choice may have been based partly on sexual desire, but
there were also more pragmatic considerations:a younger woman would
bear more children and be better able to care for her husband in his old
age. Randall Milliken observes that “many women were left without
spouses . . . when their husbands were forced to marry only one cowife.”28 While it is true that many women were left without ecclesiastiifornia Revisited: Essays by Francis F. Guest, O.F.M., ed. Doyce B. Nunis, Jr. (Santa Barbara,
California, 1996), p. 185.
25
Geiger, Palóu’s Life of Fray Junípero Serra, p. 194.
26
Bean, op. cit., p. 677.
27
The Yokuts are an example of a tribe that practiced the latter type of polygyny. The
anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber writes, “A man with several wives seems normally to
have been married in as many villages, dividing his time between his various households.”
Alfred L. Kroeber, Handbook of the Indians of California (Washington, D.C., 1925), p.
493.
28
Milliken, op. cit., p. 135.

70

“THE INDIANS GENERALLY LOVE THEIR WIVES AND CHILDREN”

cally sanctioned spouses, James Sandos, an ethnohistorian writing on
the Chumash of Southern California, cautions against too easily assuming correspondence between what the Church sanctioned and what
the mission residents did.“If concurrent marriage for chiefs prevailed
outside the mission,”he asks,“why should we think that ipso facto it disappeared when chiefs were baptized?”29 Sandos’ point is that we should
not think it did. Absent specific evidence to the contrary, the most logical assumption is that deeply ingrained cultural practices such as polygyny persisted.
Milliken’s analysis of baptismal and marriage records at the Santa Clara
mission indicates that many women over forty and men over sixty years
of age never remarried after entering the missions.30 While the persistence of polygyny would not explain any reluctance to remarry on the
part of older men, the women’s aversion to remarriage may indicate that
some of them continued to consider themselves cowives of their original
husbands. The missionaries simply failed to recognize the existence—
and persistence—of these marriages.
Some cowives may well have chosen to remain outside the mission
altogether. Californians living at the missions frequently left to gather
food or to visit friends and family outside the mission.31 While these furloughs benefited the mission economy by reducing the amount of food
required for each resident, the missionaries worried that the converts’
spiritual progress suffered when they were away from the missions. Fathers Ramón Abella and Juan Sainz de Lucio complained, “There are
many, or the majority, come from the countryside, and they are mixed
up with the Gentiles like their parents.”32 In addition to compromising
the Native Americans’ spiritual progress, these expeditions provided

29
James A. Sandos, “Christianization Among the Chumash: An Ethnohistoric Perspective,” American Indian Quarterly, 15 (1991), 75.
30
Milliken, op. cit., p. 135.
31
Luis Arguello reported to Governor Diego de Borica, for example, that the missionaries “usually give them [the mission residents] passes in the time of their seeds for a week
to harvest them in their lands.”Arguello to Borica, San Francisco, December 11, 1798. California Mission Documents Collection,Santa Barbara Mission Archive-Library.Millikin documents several of these trips, which were called paseos. See Milliken, op. cit., pp. 88, 95,
180, 203, 209, 300. See also James A. Sandos,“Between Crucifix and Lance,” in Ramón A.
Gutiérrez and Richard J. Orsi (eds.), Contested Eden: California Before the Gold Rush
(Berkeley, California, 1998), p. 209.
32
Ramón Abella and Juan Sainz de Lucio, Response to 1812 questionnaire, November
11, 1814, SBMAL.

BY QUINCY D. NEWELL

71

opportunities for conjugal visits between polygynous male mission residents and their “former” wives.
Because only the wealthiest men were able to support multiple
wives, polygyny alone does not explain the apparently high rate of “fornication” that the missionaries observed. In traditional Californian societies, anthropologists believe, even the poorest men and women were
able to divorce their spouses.33 The process for obtaining a divorce appears to have been simple: one partner or the other simply left, usually
returning to her or his family.34 Among some tribes, a divorce required
that the bride’s family return gifts they had received from the groom
and his family.35
The missionaries knew of the ease with which the Native Americans
divorced one another. Francisco Palóu remarked that the marriages of
unconverted Californians “last until there is a quarrel, when they separate. Then they marry another man or woman. . . . The only expression
they use concerning the dissolution of the marriage is:‘I threw her over,’
or ‘I threw him over.’”36 What is not clear is whether Palóu or his fellow
Franciscans understood that separation fully dissolved the marriage
bond, freeing each partner to remarry without stigma.As such, what we
now call “divorce” among Californians was closer to the Catholic concept of annulment, which declared that a marriage never actually existed. The Catholic Church, however, granted annulments only under
very limited conditions. Divorces were easier to obtain, but as Asunción
Lavrin explains, in Catholic terms,“‘divorce’ meant physical separation
of the couple. Remarriage after ‘divorce’ could take place only after the
death of one of the spouses.”37 Because these restrictions did not apply
in the Central Californian understanding of marriage and divorce, missionaries may well have interpreted normal sexual activity in a second
marriage as “fornication.”
The missionaries’ responses to one question—asking if the Native
American men “love[d] their wives and children”—indicate that the
33
Anthropologists agree that it was easier for men to initiate a divorce than for women,
due at least in part to the patriarchal nature of Californian societies. See, for example,
Bean, op. cit., p. 677, and Wallace, op. cit., p. 686.
34
Abella and Sainz de Lucio, Response, SBMAL.
35
Wallace, op. cit., p. 686.
36
Geiger, Palóu’s Life of Fray Junípero Serra, p. 194.
37
Asunción Lavrin,“Introduction: The Scenario, the Actors, and the Issues,” in Sexuality
and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, p. 43 n. 55.

72

“THE INDIANS GENERALLY LOVE THEIR WIVES AND CHILDREN”

priests believed age was an accurate predictor of marital satisfaction.
“The Indians generally love their wives and children,” wrote the missionaries at San José,“although there are plenty of examples of the contrary, especially among the young people.”38 The missionaries at San
Francisco highlighted a similar pattern.“Naturally they love [their wives
and children], and particularly if they have persevered in their marriage
for years,” they wrote.39 These remarks demonstrate the priests’ belief
that older couples were more likely to love each other and remain together.
The meaning of the word “love”in both the question and the answers
here is important to our understanding of the missionaries’ observations.The question asked “if they have love for their wives and children,
what sort of education do they give the latter and if they urge them on
in agriculture, or the mechanical arts?”40 “Love,” in this case, appears to
be related to practical considerations such as providing education and
a trade for children. However, the missionaries’ answers do not support
this connection. At Mission Santa Clara, for example, Fathers Magín
Catalá and José Viader wrote,“Generally the Indians, as much the Christians as the Gentiles, love their wives and children.” They went on to
note, however,“The latter [Gentile Indians] do not give any education
to their children,”41 negating any relationship between love and practical actions on behalf of the beloved.
The missionary responses suggest an interpretation of “love”which is
more in line with modern notions of romantic love. Over thirty years
earlier, an anonymous Franciscan published a work of moral theology
entitled “Brief Instruction to Married Christians and Useful Warnings to
Those Who Intend to Be Such,” in which he emphasized the need for
love in a marriage.“Love makes chores soft and sweet,”he wrote,“and as
in the conjugal life there are so many, and such large chores, if love is
lacking between the spouses, [the chores] become intolerable—but
love makes them easier.”42 Here “love” is not based on duty, nor is it
demonstrated through practical action on behalf of one’s beloved.
Rather, in this context,“love” is what Asunción Lavrin has termed “the

Durán and Fortuny, Response, SBMAL.
Abella and Sainz de Lucio, Response, SBMAL.
40
Ibid.
41
Catalá and Viader, Response, SBMAL.
42
Breve Instrucción a los Christianos Casados y Utiles Advertencias a los que Pretenden Serlo, 4th ed. (Mexico City, 1791), p. 14, my translation.
38
39

BY QUINCY D. NEWELL

73

force that should bind husband and wife.”43 That “force,” in the equation
laid out by the Franciscan author, directly affects the happiness of the
married couple. If love is present, the chores of marriage, and by extension, the marriage itself, is “soft and sweet,” but without love, the marriage becomes “intolerable.”
If we are to believe the missionaries at San Francisco and San José,
younger couples in the missions were less likely to love each other. On
what might the priests have based this judgment? They had three measures of marital satisfaction readily available: complaints to the missionaries, the mission birth rate, and the divorce or separation rate.
The missionaries of San Francisco and San José may have drawn the
conclusion that younger couples loved each other less from complaints
voiced by the Native Americans in question. This conclusion, based on
verbal communication, would only be trustworthy if Native Americans
of all ages expressed their feelings about their partners to the missionaries, and if all of them were equally forthcoming. However, the missionaries themselves noted that Native Americans’ mastery of Spanish varied
with age. Many “understand and speak Spanish pretty well (although
not among themselves); mostly if they were baptized as youths,” wrote
Fathers Narciso Durán and Buenaventura Fortuny from San José.44 Abella
and Sainz de Lucio wrote,“The people who come [to the mission who
are] thirty years [of age] and above never learn another [language] than
their own,”45 clearly indicating the difficulty of communicating with
older Native Americans in the missions.
The missionaries’ own skill in native languages was almost certainly
no better. Though the president of the Alta California missions sent circular letters in 1813 and again in 1817 urging the missionaries to learn
the local Indian languages, few Franciscans managed to do so.46 A 25043
Lavrin, “Sexuality in Colonial Mexico,” in Lavrin (ed.), Sexuality and Marriage in
Colonial Latin America, p. 59. See also Ramón A. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn
Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (Stanford, California, 1991), pp. 329–333. Gutiérrez argues that by approximately 1800, the
verb amar,“to love,” had taken on the connotations of romantic love with which we associate it today,and further,that this emotion had become a socially acceptable motive for
marriage.
44
Durán and Fortuny, Response, SBMAL.
45
Abella and Sainz de Lucio, Response, SBMAL.
46
Zephyrin Engelhardt, The Missions and Missionaries of California, Vol. 3 (San Francisco, California, 1913), pp. 4, 42, 607, 609.

74

“THE INDIANS GENERALLY LOVE THEIR WIVES AND CHILDREN”

year-old law, still in effect, mandated,“Where it is possible, schools for
learning the Castilian [Spanish] language are to be established in order
that the Indians might learn it,”47 creating a disincentive for missionaries
to learn native languages.Visitors to the northern missions remarked on
the priests’ inability to communicate in the local languages and their
seeming lack of interest in learning them, but the task must have been
daunting.48 Catalá and Viader counted three languages spoken at Santa
Clara; Abella and Sainz de Lucio counted five at San Francisco; Durán
and Fortuny did not give a number.“In the space of fifteen to twenty
leagues [the Indian languages] tend to be so different that one person
cannot understand another,” they wrote, implying that mastery of the
Native American languages was an impossible dream.49
The Franciscans’ struggle with the native languages is also evident in
their efforts to compose adequate catechisms.“With much labor we are
compiling that which is most necessary for salvation,” wrote Abella and
Sainz de Lucio.They felt compelled to remind their readers,“Upon passing a marsh or a range of hills, there is another language, and in this mission there are five languages, some of them as different from each other
as Castilian is from Mexican [Nahuatl].”50 Such comments seem designed
to impress upon the reader the great difficulty of learning the Native
American languages. The missionaries at San Francisco, San José, and
Santa Clara probably spoke the local languages haltingly, at best. The
younger Native Americans, then, who demonstrated greater fluency in
Spanish, were better equipped to communicate their marital dissatisfaction to the missionaries verbally than were their elders.
Younger Native Americans, many of whom grew up in the missions,
may also have been more comfortable than their elders in expressing
such feelings to the missionaries, further skewing the priests’ impres47
Law 18, Title 1, Book 6, folio 190 of Recopilación de Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias, Tomo Segundo (Madrid, 1681), quoted in Geiger and Meighan, op. cit., p. 166 n. 49.
48
Otto von Kotzebue visited Mission San Francisco in 1816; Frederick W. Beechey visited Missions San Francisco and San José in 1826. See Kotzebue, A Voyage of Discovery
into the South Sea and Beering’s Straits,Vol. 1 (New York, 1967), p. 280; Beechey, Voyage
to the Pacific,Vol. 2 (New York, 1968), pp. 21–22. Zephyrin Engelhardt, a sympathetic historian of the California missions, does not dispute Kotzebue’s and Beechey’s assertions
that the missionaries did not speak the local languages. See Engelhardt, op. cit., pp. 156,
190. Alonso de la Peña Montenegro, the Jesuit moral theologian so widely read by the
Franciscan missionaries in Alta California, also argued that missionaries must learn the
local languages, but he also allowed for the training and use of Indian interpreters. See
Montenegro, op. cit., pp. 122–123.
49
Durán and Fortuny, Response, SBMAL.
50
Abella and Sainz de Lucio, Response, SBMAL.

BY QUINCY D. NEWELL

75

sions of marital satisfaction among the mission residents. The missionaries took an active role in the education of mission children, teaching
the boys to read, write, and occasionally sing, as well as training them in
“agriculture and other mechanical arts.”51 As Abella and Sainz de Lucio
wrote,“In a word we all live as a father with his family. Since to their
manner of thinking they don’t need all these [European] things to subsist, it is necessary to guide them. . . .”52 While the oppressive paternalism of the missions may have chafed for those who were accustomed to
a life of liberty outside the mission, those who grew up under the missionaries’ watchful eyes probably felt more at ease, and thus more willing to confide in the priests.
Missionaries could also gauge marital satisfaction more indirectly
through the birth rate. According to Catholic doctrine, each spouse
“had the duty of satisfying the sexual desire of the other whenever it
was requested,” though this should not occur any more often than necessary to avoid sin.53 Presumably,in the absence of birth control,happily
married couples would produce numerous children. In the missions,
however,the birth rate was lower than the death rate,and many women
could not bear children. Throughout Alta California, missionaries suspected that the relative infertility of the mission women resulted from
the widespread practice of abortion.“Have you aborted anytime through
your own fault,” asked Father Juan Cortés in his 1798 confesionario,“or
have you advised any woman to abort?”54
Almost two decades later, missionaries were still concerned about
abortion. “For the women, in addition to the other [dominant vices],
abortion must be added,” wrote Fathers Durán and Fortuny in response
to the 1812 questionnaire, asserting that the practice was the “principal
cause of the scarcity of births”in the mission.55 In a letter describing the
San Gabriel mission, Hugo Reid, a Scotsman who married a Native Californian woman, wrote, “When a woman had the misfortune to bring
forth a still-born child, she was punished. The penalty inflicted was,
shaving the head, flogging for fifteen subsequent days, iron on the feet
for three months, and having to appear every Sunday in church, on the
51
Abella and Sainz de Lucio, Durán and Fortuny, and Catalá and Viader, Responses,
SBMAL. Fathers Catalá and Viader, of Mission Santa Clara, wrote,“Boys are obliged to come
to school, and the women are given chores appropriate to their sex, and all is directed to
the good and common use of the Mission.”
52
Abella and Sainz de Lucio, Response, SBMAL.
53
Lavrin,“Sexuality in Colonial Mexico,” p. 53.
54
Kelsey, op. cit., p. 114.
55
Durán and Fortuny, Reponse, SBMAL.

76

“THE INDIANS GENERALLY LOVE THEIR WIVES AND CHILDREN”

steps leading up to the altar, with a hideous painted wooden child in
her arms!”56 While Reid’s account may be exaggerated, it is clear that
the missionaries saw abortion as a significant problem in the missions.
Other evidence from the 1812 questionnaire and other missionary
writings suggest that the low birth rate was due to factors beyond the
Native Americans’ control. The missionaries knew that syphilis was
rampant in the Native American population by the second decade of
the nineteenth century.57 As Abella and Sainz de Lucio wrote,“the dominant disease is syphilis, but it is quite concentrated, from which originates an infinity of illnesses.”58 Though they recognized the disease, the
missionaries failed to realize the effects of syphilis on women’s childbearing abilities.Medical experts now know that if left untreated,syphilis
in pregnant women causes spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and birth
defects.59 Many of the abortions that the missionaries believed were deliberate sins were probably caused by syphilis.
Those women whose childbearing capabilities were unimpaired by
syphilis may have observed sexual taboos that lowered the frequency
of pregnancy. Costanoans, for example, abstained from sex during the
eighteen to twenty months between the birth of a baby and its weaning; anthropologists know that Coast Miwoks also abstained after the
56
Robert F. Heizer (ed.), The Indians of Los Angeles County: Hugo Reid’s Letters of
1852 (Los Angeles, 1968), p. 87.
57
Indeed, syphilis had become a problem of epidemic proportions much earlier. Sherburne F. Cook suggested that syphilis was introduced into Alta California populations by
Spanish explorers by the 1770’s.“Once introduced,” he wrote,“the spread was an easy
matter.” Cook used missionary estimates to argue that syphilis infection was universal, or
nearly so, among the Native American population. See Sherburne F. Cook,“The Indian versus the Spanish Mission,” in The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization (Berkeley, California, 1976), pp. 23–30.
58
Abella and Sainz de Lucio, Response, SBMAL.
59
King K. Holmes et al., Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 3rd ed. (New York, 1999), p.
1168; Robert K. Creasy and Robert Resnik, Maternal-Fetal Medicine, 4th ed. (Philadelphia, 1999), p. 698. A recent study conducted in Ethiopia indicates that pregnant women
who test positive for syphilis are five times more likely to have a spontaneous abortion or
stillbirth than women who test negative. While Ethiopian women receive less prenatal
care than women in many other countries, they still receive more effective medical attention than did syphilitic Native American women in California missions. See Holmes, et
al., op. cit., pp. 1168–1169. Sherburne F. Cook, a physiologist and the pioneer of demographic studies of the Native Californian population, suggested that syphilis had a negligible effect on the crude birth rate in the missions and therefore “venereal disease did not
reduce reproductive power among the mission Indians”(Cook,op.cit.,p.29).However,he
failed to differentiate live births from stillbirths.The suggestion that syphilis would not affect the reproductive capacity of infected women is scientifically untenable.

BY QUINCY D. NEWELL

77

birth of a child.60 Before the advent of the Spanish,these practices helped
maintain Native American populations at sustainable levels; combined
with the adverse effects of syphilis on the birth rate,however,these sexual taboos could have caused a downturn in Native American population.
Syphilis is most likely to adversely affect reproductive capacity
within the first four years of infection.61 Thus, older women who had
been infected earlier had a better chance of bearing healthy children by
the time they entered the mission. Many of the older female Native
Americans may also have given birth to one or more children before
contracting the disease. These children stood as living testaments to
these women’s abilities to satisfy their husbands sexually. The combination of syphilis,birth spacing customs,and stress,however,probably significantly reduced the fertility of younger women. We know that the
missionaries suspected childless women of practicing abortion; they
may also have wondered whether these women, or their husbands, fulfilled their marital obligations to satisfy their spouses’ sexual desires.62
In the absence of birth control, the missionaries may have interpreted
the scarcity of children as an indication of infrequent sexual activity
and less satisfactory marriages.
It is possible that the missionaries misjudged the relative marital satisfaction of young and old couples, based on the younger couples’
greater ability to voice complaints about married life, their greater comfort in doing so, and their apparent lack of sexual activity. It is also possible, however, that younger couples actually found less satisfaction in
their marriages than did older couples. Perhaps the most reliable way
for the priests to estimate marital satisfaction was to observe the rate of
separation. While marriage served both social and political functions, it
60
Isabel Kelly,“Coast Miwok,” in Handbook, Vol. 8: California, p. 416. Infanticide may
also have kept the population down. Kelly’s informant states that after a woman had
borne three children, subsequent infants might be killed by stepping on a stick placed
across the child’s throat. Kelly notes that “[t]his procedure seems to have held more in
theory than in practice,” though the practice of infanticide was not unknown in other
parts of California. Chumash women killed their firstborn children in the belief that failure to do so would prevent them from having more children. Sandos,“Christianization
Among the Chumash,” p. 73.
61
Holmes et al., op. cit., pp. 1169–1170.
62
See Lavrin,“Sexuality in Colonial Mexico,”pp.53–54,for an analysis of the Catholic understanding of the “marital débito,” the contractual obligation in marriage to satisfy the
spouse’s sexual desire “whenever it was requested.” Cortés’ confesionario included a
question on this matter:“Have you coupled with your Wife,[or] with your Husband,when
he or she wished and he or she was not sick?” Kelsey, op. cit., p. 116.

78

“THE INDIANS GENERALLY LOVE THEIR WIVES AND CHILDREN”

was also a relationship between two individuals, and Spanish Catholics
and Native Americans agreed that men and women should enter marriage willingly, having chosen their partners freely.63 Many marriages
contracted in the missions, however, probably fulfilled this expectation
only nominally.
For many women in the missions, marriage was a means of improving their living conditions. In an effort to maintain the sexual “purity” of
women they considered to be unmarried, the missionaries provided
separate housing in buildings that came to be known as monjerías, or
“convents.” Robert Jackson and Edward Castillo note that these buildings, and the social control they represented, were very important to
the mission enterprise. Archaeological evidence demonstrates that the
dormitories,along with chapels and missionary residences,received high
priority in mission construction and were usually completed within
one to two years of the establishment of a mission.64 Descriptions of
the dormitories in travelers’ accounts are generally unflattering. The
German naturalist Georg von Langsdorff’s account of Mission San Francisco is typical:“All the girls and widows are closely guarded in separate
houses [from the general populace], as though under lock and key, and
kept at work,”he wrote.“They are but seldom permitted to go out in the
day, and never at night. As soon, however, as a girl marries, she is free,
and, with her husband, lives in one of the Indian villages belonging to
the Misión.” The “villages” to which Langsdorff referred lay only “about
a hundred paces from the buildings properly called the Misión,”65 but
the contrast between the women’s dormitory and the single-family
homes available in the “villages”probably made marriage very attractive
to some women. The choice of partners may have been a secondary
consideration for those women who used marriage to increase their independence.
The missionaries’ insistence that the mission residents marry other
Catholics radically restricted their choice of marriage partners. Many of
63
Both Native American and Spanish societies placed limits on the freedom to choose
one’s marriage partner, but both endorsed the principle of choice. See Wallace, op. cit., p.
684, and Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor and Obey in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, California, 1988), p. 7.
64
Robert Jackson and Edward Castillo, Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization:The Impact of the Mission System on California Indians (Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1995), p. 48.
65
Georg H. von Langsdorff, Langsdorff’s Narrative of the Rezanov Voyage to Nueva
California in 1806 (1927; reprint, Fairfield, Washington, 1988), p. 50.

BY QUINCY D. NEWELL

79

their parents had married people from other villages, or even other
tribes, strengthening and extending the kinship networks that connected Central Californians with one another. The younger generation
could choose only among those with whom they had grown up in the
mission, and those Californians who had recently entered the missions.
Many opted for the unknown quantity, choosing a newly baptized Californian as their marriage partner.66 Indeed, marriage often followed
closely on the heels of baptism, sometimes coming only hours afterward. If a couple entered the mission together, or if one spouse joined
another already in the mission, a missionary solemnized their marriage.67
Younger people who had not already chosen mates might marry veteran
mission residents. For women, particularly, these marriages may have
been an important way to establish a place for themselves and their relatives within the mission community.68 The haste with which these marriages were contracted and the possibility that the women involved saw
them primarily as a way out of the dormitories or as a way of securing
their social location suggest that marital dissatisfaction was a significant
possibility. Divorce would have been a logical solution.
On the other hand, divorce may not have seemed necessary to the
Native Americans involved. We do not know how much the newly baptized Indians or the veteran mission residents understood of the
Catholic sacrament of matrimony. Father Juan Cortés included a sample
exhortation on the topic in his confesionario: “Now look, you must
marry as Christians and not like the Gentiles; the husband must always
love his wife and she her husband, and you must go now and receive
66
Cross-referencing the baptismal and marriage registers at a single mission reveals that
marriage between long-standing mission residents and newly-baptized Californians occurred regularly. See, for example the Libro de Bautismos and the Libro de Matrimonios
for Mission San Francisco de Asís (Dolores), Santa Barbara Mission Archive-Library. In an
analysis of marriage records for eight northern California missions, Cook and Borah found
“solteros and solteras of 40, 50, and 60 years of age marrying partners of ages as low as 13
or 14.” It is quite possible that one or both of the two people in each of these marriages
had newly entered the mission. Sherburne F. Cook and Woodrow Borah,“Mission Registers as Sources of Vital Statistics,”in Essays in Population History,Vol. 3: Mexico and California (Berkeley, California, 1979), pp. 280–281.
67
The mission marriage registers are rife with examples of marriages performed immediately after baptism. See, for example, the entries on May 2, 1784, in the Libro de Matrimonios for Mission San Francisco, where the remarriages of nine newly baptized couples
are recorded. San Francisco de Asis (Dolores) Mission Marriage Register, 1776–1806,
Book I, Santa Barbara Mission Archive-Library. See also Milliken, op. cit., p. 134.
68
Milliken, op. cit., p. 178.

80

“THE INDIANS GENERALLY LOVE THEIR WIVES AND CHILDREN”

the Holy Sacrament that is called Matrimony. Now do you understand
this?”69 Even a perfect translation by the Native American interpreter
may not have been sufficient to communicate the wealth of implications that those few lines carried. We cannot be sure whether the Native Americans involved understood that the missionaries intended to
create eternal bonds between the marriage partners, nor even if they
realized that the missionaries were creating marriage bonds at all. Elements of traditional Central Californian marriages,such as the exchange
of gifts between families, may not have figured at all in these marriages.
Whether or not the newly-married Native Americans understood that
they had become husband and wife, the marriages they contracted
were susceptible to divorce, or “separation,” as the missionaries saw it.
According to Native American custom, those who did separate were
free to remarry. Together with polygyny, remarriage drove up the incidence of “fornication,” in the missionaries’ terms.
Some Native Americans surely accepted the new Catholic framework
for marriage and sexuality.They strove to remain chaste before marriage
and to be sexually faithful within marriage. However, the missionaries’
complaints about fornication and abortion, as well as their impression
that younger couples were less likely to love each other, suggest that
many Native Americans did not follow Catholic teachings on marriage
and sexuality. These Native Americans were not the only people guilty
of fornication in the eyes of the Church. Priests in all of New Spain
struggled to correct what they saw as the sinful sexual behavior of their
parishioners, both Native American and Hispanic. The Central Californians undoubtedly knew of the Hispanic settlers’ sexual indiscretions—far too often, these took the form of the rape of Native American
women by Hispanic men. The Native Americans also interacted with
townspeople on other occasions. Ranchers and other Hispanic settlers
could contract with the missionaries for Native American labor, provided by Central Californians living at the missions, and soldiers occasionally married Native American women. It is impossible to say how
much the sexual practices of the settlers affected the Native Americans’
behavior in the missions. The priests bemoaned the settlers’ pernicious

69
Kelsey, op. cit., p. 95, his translation. A more literal translation reads,“Make sure you
marry like Christians, and not like Gentiles, the Husband to always love his Woman, and
she her Husband, and you go to do [it], and to receive a Holy Sacrament that is called Matrimony: now do you understand it?”

BY QUINCY D. NEWELL

81

influence on the California Indians, accusing them of preventing the
conversion of many Central Californians.70 However, they tended to attribute the mission residents’ sexual improprieties to the lingering influence of indigenous cultures, rather than the imitation of Hispanic
settlers.71
The missionaries classified much of the Native Americans’ sexual behavior as “vice” because they assumed that the Native Americans living
at the missions had converted to Catholicism and were therefore bound
to follow the sexual norms prescribed by the Church.However,if we interpret the missionaries’ complaints in the light of anthropological data
about Central Californian cultures, we see that many of the Native Americans’ marriage and sexual practices corresponded to traditional norms.
This is not to say that the Central Californians wholly resisted the missionaries’ assertions of authority over marriage and sexuality; many mission residents participated in Catholic marriage ceremonies, in addition
to performing traditional marriage rituals such as gift exchange. However, missionary complaints suggest that Native Americans who went
through Catholic marriage rituals retained traditional understandings of
marriage and sexuality,in which polygyny,divorce,and remarriage were
all acceptable practices.72
Recognizing the persistence of traditional Native American concepts
of marriage and sexuality through multiple generations in the missions
allows us to see more clearly the complexity of the cultural encounter
between the Spanish and the Native Californians. Though the missionaries and later scholars have written about the missions as though they
were islands of Catholicism surrounded by a sea of traditional Indian religion,this study shows that traditional Native American practices existed
even within the missions, alongside the Catholic practices prescribed
by the missionaries. The frequent movement of both Native Americans
and missionaries across the boundaries of the missions may have done
much to reinforce traditional Native American beliefs and practices in
70
Francis F. Guest,“Municipal Government in Spanish California,” in Guest, op. cit., pp.
51–52.
71
See, e.g., Abella and Sainz de Lucio, Response, SBMAL.
72
See also Francis F. Guest, who suggests,“If, in their life together, mutual adjustment
should present insoluble difficulties [to a married couple in the Alta California mission
system], escape from its trials and tentacles could be found in divorce, remarriage, and
flight from the mission into the interior.” Guest,“The California Missions Were Far From
Faultless,” in Guest, op. cit., p. 323.

82

“THE INDIANS GENERALLY LOVE THEIR WIVES AND CHILDREN”

the missions as well as to spread Catholic beliefs and practices outside
the missions. Seen in this way, the missions appear not as enclaves of
Catholicism, cut off from neighboring communities, but as hubs of activity, integrated into a web of relationships connecting the residents of
Alta California to each other.

SANKT RAPHAELS VEREIN AND GERMAN-CATHOLIC
EMIGRATION TO CANADA FROM 1919 TO 1939
BY

GRANT W. GRAMS*

By the 1860’s members of the Catholic Church administration had
observed German emigrants suffering in domestic harbors and paying
exorbitant prices for basic goods. They became concerned about the
health and welfare of these emigrants culminating in 1871 with the
founding of Sankt Raphaels Verein zum Schutze katholischer deutscher
Auswanderer (Saint Raphael’s Society for the Protection of GermanCatholic Emigrants—SRS). By the end of World War I this organization
was firmly established in Germany. It played a role in the emigration
movement in an advising and humanitarian capacity throughout the interwar time period. The SRS’s goals were to provide a network of support and shelter in Germany’s harbors for emigrants and to negotiate
conditions of emigration between government officials, churches, and
shipping companies. Most important were the contacts established overseas within foreign ports and the intended destinations abroad. This article will trace the observations and actions of the SRS within German
immigration to Canada between the two World Wars; emphasis will be
focused on the pre-Nazi time period. German emigration to other countries, German settlements, and emigration that occurred prior to World
War I are not topics within this work.1 This paper was written due to
the lack of research on church-led organizations within German emigration history.Although the efforts of the Protestant church have been
studied, specifically Dr. Hermann Wagner’s work on behalf of the
Lutheran Immigration Board (LIB) by Ulrike Treplin and Jonathan Wagner, the Catholic Church’s labors on behalf of German-Catholics immi*Dr.Grams is an adjunct professor of history in the University of Alberta and a sessional
lecturer in history in Concordia University College of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta.
1
Victor Mohr, Die Geschichte des Raphaels-Werkes—Ein Beispiel für die Sorge um
den Menschen unterwegs in Michaels Rehs (ed.), Zeitschrift für Kulturaustausch (Institut für Auslandbeziehungen, Stuttgart), 39 (1989), 354–358, and Peter Hahn,Achtzig Jahre
St. Raphaels Verein (1871–1951), ed. Generalsekretariat des St. Raphaels Verein (Hamburg, 1951), pp. 7–14.

83

84

SANKT RAPHAELS VEREIN AND GERMAN-CATHOLIC EMIGRATION TO CANADA

grating to Canada appears to be forgotten within the annals of history.2
After World War I the German government was so impressed with the
support that German Catholics received, that some authorities remarked that the centralized efforts taken by the SRS was a role model
for Protestant organizations to imitate in all emigration matters.3
Canadian immigration policy after World War I was geared to the
needs of Canada as viewed by the federal authorities and was intended
to increase the prosperity of the country.4 In the wake of the war German
emigration to Canada was officially forbidden.However,by January,1923,
Germans wanting to emigrate were considered if relatives in Canada
were farmers and ready to employ family members. On April 7, 1923, by
Order-in-Council the Canadian government eased restrictions against
German nationals, allowing the entry of German bona-fide farmers,
farm laborers, wife or children under eighteen years of age, and female
domestic servants. However, Germany was still classified as a non-preferred country of immigration.5 The lands of preferred immigrants were
countries deemed easily assimilated to Canadian life such as the United
States or Great Britain with the non-preferred countries being the lands
of central and eastern Europe.6 On November 15, 1925, the Canadian
Railway Agreement was enacted, which allowed a united immigration
effort in Europe. This agreement combined the influence and propaganda of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), and the Canadian government. The immigration standards of the Canadian authorities remained
unchanged, but European emigrants were now to be examined in Europe prior to departure. With the enactment of this agreement railway
companies were authorized to recruit legitimate agriculturalists. This
definition was open to interpretation by the railway officials. It did not
take long for the terms “preferred” and “non-preferred” immigrants to
2
Ulrike Treplin, “Die deutsche Kanada-Auswanderung in der Weimarer Zeit und die
evangelische-lutherische Auswanderermission in Hamburg,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft
für Kanada-Studien, 7 (1987), 167–192, and Jonathan F. Wagner, Troubles in Paradise—
Letters to and from German Immigrants in Canada, 1925–1939 (St.Katharinen,1998).
3
Kirchenkreis Alt-Hamburg Archiv (hereafter KKA), Eingliederung der Auswanderermission in den Verein für Innere Mission, 1924–25 VII. 50. 25. 3: Central-Ausschuß für
die Innere Mission der deutschen evangelischen Kirche to Landesverband für Innere Mission Hamburg, signed Steinweg, dated Berlin-Dahlem, May 24, 1924.
4
Robert J. Stead,“Canada’s Immigration Policy,” Contract Record and Engineering Review, January 9, 1924, p. 24.
5
National Archive of Canada (hereafter NAC), C4689: F. C. Blair, Secretary of Immigration, to Georg Kirsch, January 3, 1923, and ibid.: W. J. Egan, Deputy Minister, to Sir Joseph
Pope, Under Secretary of State for External Affairs, Ottawa, February 8, 1924.
6
Victor Malarek, Haven’s Gate—Canada’s Immigration Fiasco (Toronto, 1987), p. 1.

BY GRANT W. GRAMS

85

become blurred, influencing the Canadian government to alter some of
its immigration legislation. This resulted in restrictions on German emigrants wishing to enter Canada being lifted on January 8,1927.7 Germans
were now classified as preferred immigrants and were under normal
immigration requirements such as guaranteed employment or sufficient
funds to support themselves until they found employment.Through this
agreement 185,000 immigrants were allowed to immigrate to Canada.
These figures were bolstered through the work of religious immigration associations.
Prior to World War I, Canadian Catholics organized churches, which
served both religious and social functions. This was especially true
amongst immigrants. After the war members of the Canadian Catholic
Church became interested in organizing churches according to linguistic groups. It was believed that German churches with a German-style
administration would best serve German Catholic emigrants’ spiritual
needs. Before April, 1923, some German settlements had been quietly
growing, but with new Canadian legislation allowing German farmers
to immigrate German Catholic churches anticipated great things. These
immigrants were from Germany, but also from other countries with a
German-speaking minority such as Russia,Poland,Romania,and Hungary.
Church-led immigration organizations were non-profit organizations;
their efforts were purely humanitarian. Relatives or farmers needing additional labor would pay part of the shipping costs with the CPR transporting emigrants to Canada on credit—this debt would be repaid
through the emigrants’wages.Through a business arrangement,churches
agreed to settle immigrants in German Catholic congregations for one
year. After this time period expired the immigrants would be free to
move about as they wished. The churches’ work included assisting and
supporting German-speaking immigrants with their legal entry into
Canada, securing job placements, buying land, securing loans, etc.8

7
Grant Grams, German Emigration to Canada and the Support of Its Deutschtum
during the Weimar Republic, The Role of the Deutsches Ausland Institut, Verein für das
Deutschtum in Ausland and German-Canadian Organsations (Frankfurt, 2001), p. 128,
and Patrick Opdenhövel, Die kanadisch-deutschen Beziehungen in der Zwischenkriegzeit, Handel und Außenpolitik 1919–1939 (Frankfurt, 1993), p. 37.
8
Saskatchewan Archive in Regina (hereafter Sask. [R]), R249, Vol. 44: Kierdorf to Royal
Commission on Immigration and Settlement (hereafter RCIS), Winnipeg, May 6, 1930; St.
Mary’s Oblate Archive in Saskatoon (hereafter St.MA),AI/03: P. Max. Kassiepe to Reverend
Father, Winnipeg, August 7, 1923, St.MA AI/0 1: P. Hilland to Reverend Father Provincial,
Winnipeg, March 12, 1920; St.MA AI/1 63: Aug. Dontenwill to Father Ueberberg, Rome,
September 13, 1928; Patres Oblaten, St. Joseph’s Colony 1905–1930 (Regina, 1930), pp.

86

SANKT RAPHAELS VEREIN AND GERMAN-CATHOLIC EMIGRATION TO CANADA

Due to Canada’s relative prosperity between 1923 and 1930, Canada’s
immigration policy became liberalized allowing a constant immigration
into Canada. The stock market crash in 1929 changed this, and new restrictions were enacted. In August, 1930, immigration was limited to
farmers with sufficient capital to support themselves and the wives and
children of those immigrants that had already established residence in
Canada. By March, 1931, further legislation was passed, placing yet more
restrictive measures on newcomers. This allowed only British subjects
and American citizens with sufficient funds to support themselves until
they found employment, agriculturalists with sufficient funds, farm laborers with guaranteed employment, immigrants engaged in the mining or logging industry with guaranteed employment, and the wives
and children of adult males that were legally resident in Canada.This decree ended immigration to Canada from Germany for the remainder of
the 1930’s.
In contrast to the Canadian government their German counterparts
fought against an emigration of its citizens throughout the interwar
years. Emigration was seen to be depleting Germany of its precious labor after a terrible war where up to two and a half million men died or
were permanently disabled in some way.Another factor influencing the
German government to try to restrain its citizens was its agricultural labor shortage, which forced Germany to import foreign laborers. The
German government was unable to supply its agricultural labor needs
due to the poor wages and working conditions offered for farm work.9
The Canadian immigration policy appeared to be in direct competition
to Germany’s agricultural needs—Canada wanted exactly what Germany
deemed it needed at home, agriculturalists. Many in Germany main-

7–125, and Grant Grams,“Der Verein für das Deutschtum in Ausland and its Observations
of Canada prior to World War One,” Journal of Canadian Ethnic Studies, 33 (2001),
110–121; St.MA F/I/1a14: Application for incorporation without share capital under the
first part of “The Companies Act”as amended by the Companies Act Amendment of 1917,
dated 1928, pp. 1–4.
9
Richard Sturm,“Weimarer Republik,” in Informationen zur politischen Bildung, herausgegeben von Bundesstelle für politische Bildung, Nr. 261, 4. Quartal, 1998, p. 19; Bundes
Archiv Berlin (hereafter BAB), R1501/1794: Deputy Minister of Department of Immigration and Colonization (hereafter DIC) to L. Kempff GGC, January 8, 1927; Malarek, op.cit.,
pp. 12–13; Valerie Knowles, Strangers at our Gates—Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540–1990 (Toronto, 1992), p. 108; BAB, R1501/1794: RA to RMI
signed Hintrager, dated January 6, 1927; Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter BAK), R57/37:
Rundschreiben Nr. 828, signed Hintrager, dated January 7, 1927, and BAB, R1501/1793:
Reichsminister für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft to RMI, signed Faaß, dated August 27,
1926.

BY GRANT W. GRAMS

87

tained that emigration would hinder Germany’s revival and contribute
to its possible demise.It was in this light that the Reichswanderungsamt
(Imperial Migration Office—RWA) was formed on June 1,1919.Its function was to co-ordinate the return and integration of Germans from the
former colonies and eastern Europe as well as overseeing the emigration movement. Their influence was made yet wider when SRS branch
offices were used. For German nationals contemplating emigration, the
RWA appeared to offer advice, but in reality it discouraged emigration.
Those that were adamant about emigrating were directed to countries
where it was believed they would be able to retain their German language and heritage. German authorities believed all employment opportunities should be exhausted within Germany before emigration
was considered.10 Throughout this time period the RWA and the SRS enjoyed good relations with many of the latter’s offices being used to distribute the official government propaganda against emigration.11 The
SRS publications pledged to conform to the official government mandate for the benefit of German society, e.g., articles on Canada reported
the bureaucratic hardships and the physical struggle involved in immigrating to this country.12 Soon it became increasingly apparent that the
RWA had not been able to adequately combat emigration from Germany and the financial crisis of 1923 dictated that changes were needed
inside the federal government. This resulted in the RWA being abolished on April 1, 1924. Other reasons for its demise were: it was viewed
negatively by large sections of Germany’s population; it overstepped its
mandate; and it had become involved with the movement of Germans
within Germany. Another complicating factor was that the RWA was
controlled by both the Auswärtiges Amt (German Foreign Office–AA)
and the Reichsministerium des Innern (Imperial Ministry of the Inte-

BAK,R57/38:Dr.Georg Timpe,St.Raphaelsverein,to DAI,August 14,1924; Wagner,op.
cit., pp. 15–16; Karl Thalheim, Das Deutsche Auswanderungsproblem der Nachkriegszeit (Crimmitschau, 1926), pp. 114–119; Ernst Ritter, Das Deutsche Ausland-Institut in
Stuttgart 1917–1945 (Wiesbaden, 1976), p. 43; Georg Schreiber,“Das Auslanddeutschtum
als Kulturfrage,” Deutschtum und Ausland, 17/18 (1929), 261–264.
11
Benedikt Kreutz,“Das Reichswanderungsamt,” Raphaels Blatt, July–August, 1919, pp.
29–30;“Reichswanderungsamt und St. Raphaelsverein,” Raphaels Blatt, March, 1921, pp.
43–44. There were twenty-six SRS offices operating at this time.
12
Öffentliche gemeinnützige Auskunfts- und Beratungsstellen des Raphaelvereins und
Caritasverbandes in Deutschland,” Raphaelsblatt, July–August, 1919, pp. 69–70; “Nachrichten aus allen Ländern—Kanada,” ibid., March–April, 1920, pp. 43 and 63;“Landerwerb
in Kanada,”ibid.,March,1921;Eugen Reich,“Wohin kann ich auswandern?”ibid.,April–May,
1922, pp. 57–59, 74–76, 93–94;“Wohin kann ich auswandern?” ibid., January–April, 1923,
pp. 15–17 and 43–48.
10

88

SANKT RAPHAELS VEREIN AND GERMAN-CATHOLIC EMIGRATION TO CANADA

rior—RMI). Its effectiveness was weakened by conflicts of opinion and
personality.
After the abolishment of the RWA, relations with its successor, the
Reichsstelle für das Auswanderungswesen (Imperial Office for Emigration Matters—RA), appeared to be just as good. The German government hoped the newly refurbished agency would be more successful in
fighting emigration concerns than its predecessor. This office started
functioning as a government body in April, 1924, with the purpose of
organizing and controlling emigration information dispensed during
consultation services, but this information was not to come directly
from the German government. Both emigration offices wanted to discourage Germans from emigrating abroad but from the original goals
the RA retained two: first, to provide detailed reports to the general
public on future prospects for German emigrants abroad and supply
these reports to the emigration advisory institutions; secondly, to observe the emigration movement, regional authorities, and emigration
advisory institutions within Germany while fighting against any mismanagement or misunderstanding linked to the emigration trade. Both
did not recommend Canada as a land for German emigration due to perceived notions of low wages, destitute living and working conditions,
and poor treatment of German emigrants. Although emigration could
not be officially forbidden, it was adamantly discouraged with the RA
consistently describing Canada in negative terms.13
Due to the SRS placing great importance on establishing contacts
overseas at harbors and inland destinations for German emigrants, their
affiliated representatives customarily met German-Catholic emigrants
in ports of entry; e.g., for thirty years B. Friedrich met German emigrants landing in the United States providing aid and support wherever
necessary. P. Casgrain met Germans landing at ports in Quebec. On occasion, affiliated representatives such as Father Christian August Kierdorf of the Volksverein Deutsch Canadier Katholiken (Society of German
13
Die Getreuen—Zweimonatsschrift des Reichsverbandes für die Katholischen Ausland deutschen und des St. Raphaels Verein, 10 (1933), 213; Jahresbericht des St.
Raphaelsverein für das Jahr 1926 (Osnabrück); Verhandlungen des Reichstags, I
Wahlperiode 1920, Band 338, 86. Sitzung (March 16, 1921), p. 3041; Klaus Bade,“Amt der
verlorenen Worte: Das Reichswanderungsamt 1918–1924,” Zeitschrift für Kulturaustausch, Institut für Auslandbeziehungen-Stuttgart, 3 (1989), 320; Thalheim, op. cit., pp.
117–124, Wagner, op. cit., pp. 12–15; BAB, R1501/1792: RA Rundschreiben, signed Hintrager, dated August 21, 1925, and Deutsche Welt 1924,Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland, Dresden, p. 173.

BY GRANT W. GRAMS

89

Canadian Catholics—VDCK) met German speakers traveling under SRS
protection landing in Canadian harbors.14 The VDCK was established in
July, 1909, in Winnipeg in order to promote Catholic interests and the
German language. Heinz Lehmann claimed it was founded using the
Volksverein für das katholische Deutschland (People’s Association for
Catholics in Germany) as a model. From its modest beginning, the
VDCK grew to become one of the largest German-Canadian religious
organizations.15 By 1924 the SRS had established a formal relationship
with the VDCK. Their common goal was not to foster emigration
abroad, but to help those who had decided to leave Germany for
Canada. Kierdorf had been dispatched to Canada from Germany by his
church superiors in 1920 and slowly became involved in VDCK’s work
as general secretary. After a few years as a priest for German-Catholic
farmers in Saskatchewan,Kierdorf became accustomed to the Canadian
west and its lifestyle. It was because of his experiences that many in
Germany saw the VDCK and SRS’s work as beneficial to German
Catholics because their spiritual and cultural needs were met.16 Individuals like Friedrich and Kierdorf served important functions such as
acting as translators and advisors as well as serving in a religious capacity for newcomers upon their arrival in foreign harbors. Periodically
they accompanied immigrants inland. SRS contacts also sent information to Hamburg regarding recent Canadian immigration developments. If a German desired to immigrate to Canada under the care of
the SRS-VDCK system, one needed a letter of recommendation from a
priest of a local Catholic church, which included a religious testimony
and identification card. All participants had to be Christians of the
Catholic faith and regularly attending church members.
14
George Timpe, Durch USA und Kanada von See und Landfahrten (Hamburg,
1928), pp. 31–42 and 164–174; St. Raphaelsverein Flugblatt 14: Kanada. Allgemeines—
Auswanderungsziel (Osnabrück,undated,probably 1927);NAC,C7390,File 48905 Part 1:
F. I. Hauser and Father A. Kierdorf to W. J. Egan, Winnipeg, March 12, 1924; St.MA BIII/2 10:
District of St. Joseph, Winnipeg, March 5–6, 1929; Glen M2269, File 648: Minutes of the
Meeting of the Executives of the CCA held in [ . . . ] Winnipeg, Manitoba, February 10,
1927;“Ein Gedenkblatt auf das Grab von P. Chr. A. Kierdorf,” in Die Getreuen, 43 (1932),
25–26; and “Pater Kierdorf zum Gedächtnis,” in Die Getreuen, 42 (1931), 130.
15
Heinz Lehmann, Das Deutschtum in Westkanada (Berlin, 1939), p. 281.
16
BAB, R1501/1792: Deutsches Ausland Institut an die mit dem Deutschen Ausland Institut in Arbeitsgemeinschaft stehenden Auswanderungsberatungsstellen, “Kanada als
deutsches Auswanderungziel,” signed Grisebach, dated Stuttgart, October 30, 1924; NAC,
C7390, File 1489095, Part 1: Association of German Canadian Catholics to Hon. Jas. A.
Robb, signed L. J. Hauser, dated Saskatoon, February 21, 1924; Grams, German Emigration, pp. 170–171; Der Auslandsdeutsche, 1931, pp. 615–616 and 709.

90

SANKT RAPHAELS VEREIN AND GERMAN-CATHOLIC EMIGRATION TO CANADA

The SRS’s attempt to aid German emigrants culminated with the
steady growth of its consultation services. The number of advisement
offices under the society’s guidance grew to sixty-six by 1926 with the
most important offices being Hamburg and Bremen.17 The SRS advisement statistics for the years 1919 to 1939 were listed as:
Year

Consultations

Year

Consultations

Year

Consultations

1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925

300 (Hamburg)
3,856
3,292 ( Jan.–June)
15,000
17,661
16,766
21,160

1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1932

27,998
7,778 (Hamburg)
11,757
12,645
11,583
17,300
12,845

1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939

16,946
14,278
14,196
10,678
12,485
14,727
17,59418

Both the VDCK and SRS administrations believed that Canada offered
good opportunities for all German speakers.Although the SRS had good
relations with Germany’s emigration authorities, it believed constant
warnings against emigration from the government were useless. It appears that after April, 1923, Germans requesting information on Canada
from SRS emigration consultation offices increased.Therefore,it became
imperative that a member of their administration travel to Canada. This
prompted Dr. Max Größer to make observations in Canada on behalf of
the SRS from May to June, 1924. Little is known of his travels or observations, but Größer found the conditions compatible for German nationals. This was especially true for German-Catholic farmers and farm
laborers if they traveled with the aid of the SRS and VDCK. Größer
viewed the VDCK as working for the social and spiritual needs of
Catholics. In his opinion the Prairie Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta were the most advantageous places for German
Catholics to reside in Canada. Although eastern Canada also contained
German speakers, assimilation was always a threat.19 He believed that
17
Sankt Raphaels Werk Archiv (SRA), Brief des Herrn Breuer an Bischof Dr. Berning,
dated September 22, 1930; BAB, R1501/1882: Evangelische Auswanderermission to Mr.
Plöntzke, signed H. Wagner, dated January 26, 1926; Sask. (R) R249, Vol. 44: Kierdorf to
RCIS, Winnipeg, May 6, 1930.
18
SRA, Jahresberichte des St. Raphaelsverein für die Jahren 1921–1939 (Osnabrück).
19
BAB, R1501/1792: Deutsches Ausland Institut an die mit dem Deutschen Ausland Institut in Arbeitsgemeinschaft stehenden Auswanderungsberatungsstellen, “Kanada als
deutsches Auswanderungziel,” signed Grisebach, dated Stuttgart, October 30, 1924; BAB,
R57/38: Betrifft Stellenvermittlung landwirtschaftlicher Arbeiter nach Canada, Stuttgart,

BY GRANT W. GRAMS

91

Canada offered poor German emigrants a new start due to the mixture
of European cultures flourishing on the western plains, the ease at
which fertile farmland could be acquired, and the possibility of group
settlements.20
In the 1924 yearly report the SRS praised the VDCK for helping German speakers immigrate to Canada.21 In the same year, the Deutsches
Ausland Institut (German Foreign Institute—DAI) reported that those
German citizens that had emigrated through the SRS/VDCK connection
were content with the aid they received en route to and in Canada.The
SRS also expressed their satisfaction regarding the salary, three hundred
dollars a year, but this was against the cost of the overseas ticket. Größer
believed that this income was appropriate because Canadian farming
was different and immigrants had to learn new farming methods before
they could hope for top wages. He rationalized that large farm owners
in Germany did this as well. Größer consistently defended emigration
to Canada and all farm labor contracts offered as fair.Others in Germany
had a different opinion.Manfred Grisebach,director of DAI’s emigration
consultation services, believed that the observations of the SRS were incorrect since most of the ethnic Germans they had helped to Canada
were from Russia and not from Germany. He maintained that eastern
European Germans had different expectations than German nationals
and that the DAI believed the VDCK held too much power with recent
immigrants; they lacked the mobility and outlet to complain.22 The SRS
rationalized this matter, yet agreed that at first glance the farm work offered from Canada appeared to be meager. Wages of three hundred dol-

August 25, 1924; Max Größer;“Deutsche Prärie,” in Die Getreuen, 1 (Berlin, 1924), pp.
89–94; Jahresbericht des St. Raphaelsverein für das Jahr 1924, Flugblatt 14 (Osnabrück,
1924), p. 94
20
Max Größer, Die Möglichkeit deutscher Auslandsiedlung, Antwort auf Fragen zur
Auswanderung (Berlin, 1932), pp. 8–20, and BAK, R57neu/897: “Zum Protokoll der
Sitzung des Beirats der Mittelstelle für deutsches Auslandbüchereiwesens, Referat von Dr.
Max Größer, Hamburg über die Frage des deutschen Bücherwesens in Kanada, mit besonderer Beziehung auf das dortige deutschtum” (undated—early 1930’s).
21
Jahresbericht des St. Raphaelsverein für das Jahr 1924, Flugblatt 14 (Osnabrück,
1924), p. 94.
22
Staatsarchiv Hamburg Auswanderungsamt I 373–7 I II F 3 Nr.52: St. Raphaels Verein
to die Behörde für das Auswanderungswesen Hamburg, signed Dr. Max Groesser, dated
Hamburg, June 23, 1925; BAK, R57/38: Betrifft Stellenvermittlung landwirtschaftlicher Arbeiter nach Canada, Stuttgart, August 25, 1924, Deutsches Ausland Institut; BAB, R1501/
1792: Deutsches Ausland Institut an die mit dem Deutschen Ausland Institut in Arbeitsgemeinschaft stehenden Auswanderungsberatungsstellen, “Kanada als deutsches Auswanderungziel,” signed Grisebach, dated Stuttgart, October 30, 1924.

92

SANKT RAPHAELS VEREIN AND GERMAN-CATHOLIC EMIGRATION TO CANADA

lars were customary for new emigrants, but this was for a full year. One
would not be thrown out during the throes of a Canadian winter or
forced to find private accommodations. In addition the agricultural experience was important in establishing an independent farm.
Although most German newcomers were happy in Canada, not all
Germans who emigrated through this Catholic affiliation were content
once abroad; e.g., Georg Wimmer from Obertal, Bavaria, age 22, emigrated on May 9, 1924, and settled in Saskatchewan. After less than one
year in Canada he returned to Germany blaming personal reasons for
forcing his return. Nonetheless, he emphasized that he was not content
with developments in Canada. He complained of the cool climate and
blamed the SRS and their affiliation with the VDCK as compounding his
bad experiences. The SRS defended their actions and maintained that
Wimmer wrote several letters to them prior to his emigration urgently
asking for advice. Initial correspondence concerned Brazil, but on April
24, 1924, he suddenly became interested in Canada. Wimmer explained
that this country was strongly recommended to him and he believed if
Canada was not to his liking, he would have earned so much money
during his stay there that he could return to Germany the following
year. Wimmer reported he received encouragement from SRS articles
that were available through their Munich office. This statement perplexed the SRS administration; they maintained that their publications
prior to Wimmer’s emigration in no way endorsed Canada. Once
abroad he did not express any dissatisfaction to them. SRS was adamant
that they did not encourage him to emigrate nor had they described
Canada in glowing terms. A friend of Wimmer also immigrated to
Canada through the SRS/VDCK connection and signed the same work
contract with a German-Canadian farmer as Wimmer, but was content
in Canada. Wimmer admitted that his work experiences with a GermanCanadian farmer were positive—the treatment and provisions were
good. But Wimmer was critical of Kierdorf for forcing him and other
German immigrants to sign an English work contract.23 Wimmer and his
accusations did not disturb the SRS, as they believed that his troubles
were of his own making and a reflection of his personality, not an indication of imperfections within the VDCK or themselves.24
23
Staatsarchiv Hamburg Auswanderungsamt I 373–7 I II F 3 Nr. 52: St. Raphaels Verein
to die Behörde für das Auswanderungswesen Hamburg, signed Dr. Max Groesser, dated
Hamburg, June 23, 1925; Raphaels Blatt, 1923/24, pp. 36 and 45; Staatsarchiv Hamburg
Auswanderungsamt I 373–7 I II F 3 Nr. 57: Georg Wimmer [to Sankt Raphaels Verein],
dated Obertal, Bayern, June 14, 1925; ibid., Nr. 49 und 50: Behörde für das Auswanderungswesn to RA, dated Hamburg, June 12, 1925, and Timpe, op. cit., pp. 164–165.
24
Staatsarchiv Hamburg Auswanderungsamt I 373–7 I II F 3 Nr. 52: St. Raphaels Verein

BY GRANT W. GRAMS

93

Canada’s growing attractiveness as a destination for German emigration dictated that new observations on behalf of German-Catholic emigrants were needed,even though a representative of the SRS had traveled
in Canada in 1924.25 Between November, 1926, and February, 1927, a
senior member of the SRS administration, Georg Timpe, traveled to
Canada and the United States to inspect conditions for emigrating Germans. As well as serving as secretary general since 1920, Timpe also
held the position of SRS Canadian representative in Germany.The exact
date on which Timpe assumed the position is unknown,but by February,
1924, he also held administrative responsibilities on behalf of Canada.
Timpe supported a small-scale emigration to Canada for poor Germans,
especially agriculturalists.26Timpe also commented that Catholic priests
appeared to be making huge sacrifices to help and accommodate
German-speaking immigrants; yet he remained unsure if the desires of
the VDCK remained compatible with those of German nationals and
the SRS. Timpe acknowledged that Germany should retain its own agriculturalists; yet poor farmers who did not have prospects of possessing
their own land could emigrate and achieve some measure of success in
Canada. He also discouraged skilled tradesmen from immigrating to
Canada. In his opinion, such individuals would fare better if they went
to the United States, due to its industrialization. Another reason Timpe
supported German nationals immigrating to Canada was to strengthen
the already established German culture there. Timpe believed that emigration to Canada was essential for strengthening the German settlements
in the west. German labor and diligence helped lay the foundations of a
modern society, especially in the Prairie Provinces. German agriculturalists would prosper in Canada and attract others who had learned trades,
which could lead to the establishment of a closed German colony. The
to die Behörde für das Auswanderungswesen Hamburg, signed Dr. Max Groesser, dated
Hamburg, June 23,1925. Wimmer claimed to be encouraged by articles in Raphaels Blatt,
1923/24, pp. 36 and 45.
25
BAB, R1501/1792: Deutsches Ausland Institut an die mit dem Deutschen Ausland Institut in Arbeitsgemeinschaft stehenden Auswanderungsberatungsstellen, “Kanada als
deutsches Auswanderungziel,” signed Grisebach, dated Stuttgart, October 30, 1924; BAK,
R57/38: Betrifft Stellenvermittlung landwirtschaftlicher Arbeiter nach Canada, Stuttgart,
August 25, 1924; Max Größer,“Deutsche Prärie,” Die Getreuen (Berlin), 1 (1924), 89–94.
26
Georg Timpe, “Von Deutschtum in Kanada,” Die Getreuen (Hamburg), 38 (1927),
84–87;idem, Durch USA und Kanada,pp.72–174;NAC,C7390,File 148905,Part 1:VDCK
to J. A. Robb, Minister of Immigration, signed Hauser, dated Saskatoon, February 21, 1924;
ibid., Parts 1 and 2:VDCK to W. J. Egan DIC, signed Hauser and Kierdorf, dated Ottawa, January 31, 1925; Hahn, op. cit., p. 10; and BAK, R57/38: Betrifft Stellenvermittlung landwirtschaftlicher Arbeiter nach Canada, Deutsches Ausland Institut Stuttgart, August 25,
1924.

94

SANKT RAPHAELS VEREIN AND GERMAN-CATHOLIC EMIGRATION TO CANADA

efforts of the Catholics ensured that ethnic German Catholics lived
close to each other and strengthened existing German-Catholic communities.27
At the beginning of its operation the VDCK co-operated with the CPR.
Later it attempted to work with both the CPR and CNR, but rivalry between the two ended this co-operation in May, 1928. Due to this rivalry
the VDCK decided to work exclusively with the CPR; the CNR felt compelled to establish its own immigration boards. In October, 1928, the
CNR founded the Catholic Immigration Aid Society (CIAS) and shortly
afterwards the Canadian Lutheran Immigrant Aid Society (CLIAS).These
new organizations were designed to co-operate with the CNR exclusively in handling immigration from Europe. The CNR planned to have
all arrangements ready for both organizations to be functioning for
1929. Surprisingly, both CIAS and VDCK were affiliated with SRS—the
VDCK with the office in Hamburg, the CIAS with its affiliate in Bremen.
Germany’s emigration authority looked upon any affiliation between
profit-oriented companies and religious immigration boards very suspiciously. It maintained that the VDCK did not function through their own
financing but were totally dependent on the CPR and therefore did not
have the interests of Germany or German emigrants at heart.Predictably,
the RA consistently fought against the VDCK’s efforts and compared the
farming positions offered in Canada to slavery.28
The RA observed that the VDCK had their Winnipeg offices within
the CPR’s business center—this close relationship caused German authorities to view this affiliation with skepticism. In contrast to the RA,
the AA described the VDCK as trying to revive the religious life and protect the rights of German minorities in Canada through their work in
schools and churches. The DAI believed the services offered by the
VDCK and the SRS helped Germany’s citizens who wanted information
regarding Canada, along with efforts that supported the German cul27
SRA: Bericht [from] P. Timpe,“Auf der Fahrt von Toronto nach Winnipeg,” dated August 21, 1929, signed Georg Timpe; Johannes Vollmer, St. Raphaels-Verein zum Schutze
Katholischer deutscher Auswanderer e.V., Zur 10jährigen Wiederkehr der Wiedereröffnung des R.V., Hamburg, October 24, 1957, and Timpe, Durch USA, pp. 62–191.
28
Die Getreuen (Hamburg), 41 (1930), 10–11; NAC, C10256, File 377272,Vol. 350: CIAS
to W. J. Egan DIC, signed G. Hilland, dated March 1, 1929; NAC, C10256, File 377272, Vol.
350: Memorandum from DIC initialed F. C. Blair, dated Ottawa, November 24, 1928; Political Archive of the Auswärtiges Amt (hereafter PAAA), Wa2 Beiakten Deutsches Konsulate
Winnipeg, Band 1: RA to AA Abteilung VI, signed Hintrager, dated Berlin, April 21, 1927;
BAB, R1501/1455: RA Memorandum signed Hintrager, dated August 7, 1924, and BAB,
R1501/1797: RA Rundschreiben signed Hintrager, dated January 7, 1927, and Wagner, op.
cit., pp. 16–17.

95

BY GRANT W. GRAMS

ture. AA representatives in Canada, such as Dr. Ludwig Kempff, also endorsed the work of both VDCK and SRS.29 Complete statistics of how
many Germans the VDCK and SRS aided in immigrating to Canada is
unknown, yet those existing give an indication of the influence these
organizations had on German immigration to Canada. Kierdorf estimated
that between April, 1923, and May, 1930, it placed five thousand single
men for a total of 10,000–12,000 ethnic German settlers in western
Canada. All were farmers or farm laborers, with roughly half settling in
Saskatchewan. It is unknown how many came directly from Germany,
but Kierdorf’s estimate to a government of Saskatchewan immigration
commission could have been intentionally low due to the current antiforeigner atmosphere at the time of the investigation.The following statistics give an indication of the SRS’s and VDCK’s work with German
immigrants.30
Year

German Statistics

VDCK/SRS

Percentage from Germany

1924
1929
1930

2,221
4,625
4,631

100
920
1,315

4.5%
19%
28%31

These partial statistics total 2,335. If only ten percent of German nationals chose the SRS services, then an estimation of 3,500 German nationals immigrating to Canada through the SRS-VDCK affiliation between
1923 and 1930 appears realistic. But the SRS emigration work regarding
Canada did not end here.Their affiliation with the CNR and its CIAS culminated with 928 Germans immigrating to Canada in 1929.32 Unfortunately, it is not known how many Germans immigrated to Canada in
29
BAB, R1501/1792: Deutsches Ausland Institut an die mit dem Deutschen Ausland Institut in Arbeitsgemeinschaft stehenden Auswanderungsberatungsstellen, “Kanada als
deutsches Auswanderungziel,” signed Griseback, dated Stuttgart, October 30, 1924; PAAA,
R6032: GC to AA, signed Lorenz, dated Winnipeg,August 10, 1927; BAB, R1501/1792: GGC
to AA, signed Kempff, dated Montreal, October 27, 1923; and PAAA, Wa2, Deutsche Einwanderung Deutsches Konsulat Band IV: GGC to RA, signed Kempff, dated January 5,
1929.
30
Sask.(R) R249, Vol. 44: Kierdorf to RCIS, Winnipeg, May 6, 1930, and David E. Smith,
Prairie Liberalism (Toronto, 1975), pp. 141–148.
31
BAB, R1501/1792: Deutsches Ausland Institut an die mit dem Deutschen Ausland Institut in Arbeitsgemeinschaft stehenden Auswanderungsberatungsstellen, “Kanada als
deutsches Auswanderungziel,” signed Grisebach, dated Stuttgart, October 30, 1924; and
SRA, Jahresbericht des St. Raphaelsverein für das Jahr 1929–1930 (Osnabrück).
32
Die Getreuen (Hamburg), 41 (1930), 10–11; and Wagner, op. cit., pp. 16–17. CIAS
aided twenty percent of German nationals immigrating to Canada in 1929.

96

SANKT RAPHAELS VEREIN AND GERMAN-CATHOLIC EMIGRATION TO CANADA

later years. But at least 3,263 did immigrate through the SRS’s services
to Canada in the years where statistics exist.During the interwar period
it is possible that up to 5,000 German nationals immigrated to Canada
through the SRS and their affiliated organizations in Canada. From a total of 24,965 Germans who immigrated to Canada between the two
world wars possibly one-fifth emigrated through the SRS and their affiliated agencies.
In comparison, the Canadian Lutheran immigration society figures
show similar figures. Between April, 1923, and January, 1930, the LIB had
succeeded in helping 10,573 ethnic Germans to Canada from Europe—
7,000 arriving between 1927 and 1929. From 7,000, 3,080 settled in
Saskatchewan. Harms, the LIB director, estimated that ten to fifteen percent of the 10,573 immigrants were from Germany—approximately between 1,057 and 1,586.This estimate appears to be conservative, due to
the sum of the 1923, 1924, and 1927 partial statistics totaling 1,393.
Year

German Statistics

LIB

Percentage from Germany

1923
1924
1927

768
2,221
4,515

300
567
526

39%
26%
12%33

Between 2,200 and 2,800 Germans is a more realistic figure. Harms was
also reporting to the same government of Saskatchewan immigration
commission and probably underestimated German immigration figures
due to the current anti-foreigner atmosphere at the time of the investigation. Between the war years the LIB aided at least 4,000 German nationals in immigrating to Canada;34 therefore, it is likely the SRS and the
VDCK helped more Germans arrive in Canada than their Protestant
counterpart.

Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich 1924/25, p. 52, and Statistisches
Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich 1935, p. 60; BAB, R1501/1792: Deutsches Ausland Institut an die mit dem Deutschen Ausland Institut in Arbeitsgemeinschaft stehenden
Auswanderungsberatungsstellen,“Kanada als deutsches Auswanderungziel,” signed Grisebach, dated Stuttgart, October, 30, 1924, provided the 1923 and 1924 statistics; Sask. (S),
R249,Vol. 2: Harms to RCIS Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, January 31, 1930. Wagner, op. cit., p.
33, provided the 1927 statistics. The 1923 statistics are a DAI estimate; the 1924 statistics
are from January to June.
34
Der Auslandsdeutsche 1930, p. 293, and Sask. (S), R249, Vol. 2: Harms to RCIS, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, January 31, 1930.
33

BY GRANT W. GRAMS

97

During the late 1920’s,the Schneider Colony was held up by both the
VDCK and SRS as a shining example of their good deeds on behalf of
German emigrants. This settlement was created through the efforts of
Fritz Schneider, a lawyer from Freiburg, Germany. His goal was to establish a closed German Catholic colony near Winnipeg, Manitoba, in the
spring of 1927.Schneider worked in association with Father Kierdorf of
the VDCK and the SRS office in Hamburg to help spread information
dealing with this settlement and recruit colonists.35 Following proper
procedures, Schneider notified Germany’s emigration authorities of his
activities in recruiting thirty families from southern Germany to emigrate
to Canada.The RA wanted all matters concerning the colony to be dealt
with confidentially. No articles about the colony were to appear in the
German press for fear of giving the settlement any official sanctioning.
The RA maintained Schneider could serve his mother country and help
in the preservation of the German culture if he encouraged German migration to eastern Prussia.36 In Freiburg, German police investigated
Schneider to see if his past involved any shady or scandalous dealings.
Schneider did not have a criminal record. Local police agreed with the
RA that these agriculturalists could be settled in eastern Germany and
help the labor problems regionally, plus solidify the German presence
in the area.
Prior to its establishment, Schneider, Kierdorf, and AA representatives
in Canada discussed the proposed settlement. The AA representative in
Winnipeg, Max Lorenz, reported that this settlement intended to use
unnecessary methods to learn local farming techniques. He maintained
that all levels of the Canadian government, railway companies, VDCK,
and private interests desperately wanted the settlement to succeed.
Anything less would be viewed as a failure in Germany and result in unflattering articles about Canada in the German press.The colony’s close

BAB,R1501/101794:“Unterlagen über die Besiedlung eines Landblocks in Kanada mit
deutschen Farmern.” Unsigned and undated document, probably late 1926; BAB, R1501/
1794: GGC to AA, signed Lorenz, dated November 28, 1926; Dr. Schneider,“Siedlungen in
Kanada,”Die Getreuen, 41 (1930), 3–5; Sask.(R), R249,Vol. 44: Kierdorf to RCIS, Winnipeg,
May 6, 1930, p. 45; and BAB, R1501/1794: RA to RMI, signed Hintrager, dated Berlin, June
30, 1927.
36
BAB, R1501/1794: “Unterlagen über die Siedlung eines Landblocks in Kanada mit
deutschen Farmern,” undated and unsigned document; ibid.: RA to RMI, signed Hintrager,
dated April 12, 1927; ibid.: GGC to AA, signed Lorenz, dated November 28, 1926; and ibid.:
RA to AA Department VI and RMI, signed Hintrager, dated October 28, 1926.
35

98

SANKT RAPHAELS VEREIN AND GERMAN-CATHOLIC EMIGRATION TO CANADA

vicinity to Winnipeg also meant the settlement would receive added
attention and aid.37 The SRS office in Freiburg reported that Kierdorf encouraged Schneider to establish a colony in Canada. Although the statements or actions of Kierdorf are unknown, he did travel to Europe in
1926 on behalf of the VDCK. Upon his return Kierdorf maintained that
he had arranged for the immigration of 400 Catholics to Canada in
1927. The number of immigrants destined for the Schneider colony is
unknown, but he did play an active role in encouraging Germans to emigrate and acted temporarily as an SRS representative in Germany.Timpe
indicated that Kierdorf personally played a large role in the selection
process of the initial colonists, while Hintrager maintained that the selection of the families was entrusted solely to the SRS. Each family was
obliged to contribute 1,000 dollars toward the purchase of building material, livestock, and machinery. The thirty thousand dollars raised was
entrusted to the VDCK to buy animal feed, farming equipment, building
supplies, and seed.38
Georg Timpe, during his visit to Canada in the winter of 1926/27,
scrutinized the site of the proposed colony before the Germans arrived.
Despite viewing an empty settlement, he felt qualified to comment on
the proposed Schneider colony. In his opinion, the buildings and area
looked neglected and unsanitary. This was an important observation
because the colony wanted to sell agricultural products in Winnipeg
and the local board of health would thoroughly inspect all areas of food
production. Timpe correctly predicted that dairy, fruit, and vegetable
sales would be essential to their success. He observed that there stood
one wooden house, which was designated for Schneider and his family.
The other buildings resembled dilapidated barracks in which the thirty
other families were to reside. He sarcastically noted that these other
37
Glen M2269, File 648: Minutes of the Meeting of the Executives of the Canada Colonisation Association, held in the office of the Superintendent of Colonisation, Canadian Pacific Railway at Winnipeg, Manitoba, February 10, 1927; BAB, R1501/1794: GC to AA,
signed Lorenz, dated November 28, 1926; ibid.: GGC to AA, signed Kempff, dated December 6, 1926; ibid.: Untitled document signed Enz Polizeikommissär, dated Freiburg, March
23, 1927; and ibid.: GC to AA, signed Lorenz, dated Winnipeg, August 18, 1927.
38
NAC, C7389, File 147188 V240: Kierdorf to DIC, Winnipeg, March 20, 1926; BAB,
R1501/1794: RA to RMI, signed Hintrager, dated April 12, 1927; ibid.: RA to AA and RMI,
signed Hintrager,dated October 26,1926;Timpe Durch USA,p.72;Der Auslandsdeutsche
1931, pp. 615–616; “Ein Gedenkblatt auf das Grab von P. Chr. Kierdorf O.M.J.,” Die Getreuen, 43 (1932), 25–26; BAB, R1501/1794: GGC to AA, signed Lorenz, dated November
28, 1926; Glen M2269 File 648: Minutes of the Meeting of the Executives of the CCA held
in the office of the Superintendent of Colonisation,Canadian Pacific Railway at Winnipeg,
Manitoba, February 10, 1927.

BY GRANT W. GRAMS

99

dwellings were simple wooden sheds.Meals were to be eaten as a group,
which would work, but the common usage of the kitchen and distribution of the work remained questionable. Timpe argued against the
colony since he believed that it was irresponsible and a crime to bring
these Germans to Canada during winter. Although Timpe respected
Canada for the opportunities it gave to penniless German emigrants, he
continuously viewed the Canadian winter as harsh. Timpe also found
the Schneider Colony too controversial—living together communally
for one to two years would prove tedious. He noted the settlement
could only hope for limited success based on the favorable conditions
of the land bought, availability of electricity, a nearby train station, good
road connections, and vicinity to a large city. Timpe predicted that the
Schneider project would fail because working the land communally
would be impossible. The land itself was nothing special and covered
with too much bush. These factors, coupled with possible clashes of
personality and homesickness, dictated rivalry and hardships for all
involved.39
Upon returning to Germany, Timpe met RA representatives and told
them his observations. He reported that the three main confessional immigration boards in Canada (VDCK, Lutheran Immigration Board, and
the Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonisation) lacked sufficient neutrality to serve the needs of German emigrants and served the needs of
the CPR. All three immigration boards received funding from the CPR.
It was due to this financial dependency that such societies could not be
fully recommended.The local SRS branch office in Baden fought against
the settlement.The RA in their propaganda against emigration to Canada
used Timpe’s statement and the intended SRS publication to fight against
the proposed settlement.40 Despite the reservations of Timpe and others, the selection process for settlers was completed by October,
1926—with the actual departure being planned for the spring of 1927.
The group set sail from Germany aboard the SS Marloch and arrived in
Canada on March 22, 1927. Kierdorf met the immigrants in St. Johns and
escorted the settlers to their new home in Manitoba. Canadian immigration authorities were highly optimistic regarding Schneider’s plans
and saw the farm as a role model of the progress that immigrants could
39
PAAA, Deutsches Konsulat Winnipeg Wa2 Beiakte Wa2: RA to AA VI, signed Hintrager,
dated April 11, 1927; BAB, R1501/1794: RA Aufzeichnung, dated Berlin, April 11, 1927,
ibid.: RA to RMI, signed Hintrager, dated April 12, 1927.
40
BAB, 1501/1794: RA to RMI, signed Hintrager, dated April 12, 1927; Timpe, Durch
USA, pp. 73–74; “Neuer Einwandererstrom—Minister Robert Forke plant Europareise,”
Der Courier, March 23, 1927, p. 1.

100

SANKT RAPHAELS VEREIN AND GERMAN-CATHOLIC EMIGRATION TO CANADA

make under proper instruction and leadership. Kierdorf described the
colony as offering an example of what could be done on a farm if it is
colonized with people who are determined and willing to work.41 General Engelhardt of the Bayerische Landessiedlung (Bavarian Land Settlement—BL) offered a similar opinion. He undertook an investigative trip
to Canada from August to September, 1929, and visited the Schneider
colony. He believed that the colony offered both the protection and the
cultural support that German speakers needed to retain their language
and culture on the Canadian plains.42 The AA maintained that the first
five months were a time of good progress and made many believe that
the colony could prosper. Despite the sacrifices and toil of the newcomers the colony experienced many hardships and disappointments.
One problem was that the milk was deemed unacceptable for human
consumption by the provincial health inspectors. This resulted in
added costs for the colony due to transportation and pasteurization of
all dairy products.
Due to the colony’s financial problems, the construction of singlefamily homes was delayed,causing internal strife in the colony.Schneider
became the target of their frustration, and many wanted him removed
from the project, while others complained that life was better in Germany.43 In order to reduce the conflicts of personality and temperament,
new houses were built dividing the settlement between the Schwarzwald
(Black Forest) and Westfalen (Westphalia) Germans. The SRS reported
to the RA that Schneider had begun a censorship of all correspondence.
The reason for this was unknown, but contributed to the speculation
that relations within the colony were poor. Schneider himself remained
outwardly optimistic for the future, although he freely admitted that
41
NAC, C7390, File 148405, Parts 1 and 2: A. Kierdorf to Robert Forke, Minister of Immigration, Winnipeg, October 5, 1927; Glen M2268, File 1156:“Some recent Developments
in Land Settlement by T. O. Herzer CCA Annual Provincial Conventions in Regina Sask.,”
January 30, 1930; Glen M2269, File 648: Minutes of the Meeting of the Executives of the
CCA held in the office of the Superintendent of Colonisation, Canadian Pacific Railway at
Winnipeg, Manitoba, February 10, 1927; BAB, R1501/101794: RA to AA and RMI, signed
Hintrager, dated October 26, 1926, and NAC, C7390, File 148405, Parts 1 and 2: VDCK to
DIC, signed Kierdorf, dated October 5, 1927.
42
BAK, R57/21:“Bericht über die Studienreise durch Kanada im August und Sept. 1929
von a.D. Engelhardt, Leiter der Auswandererberatungsstelle der Bayerischen Landessiedlung in München,” dated February 15, 1930, and DAI Bericht über die Jahresversammlungen des Deutschen Ausland Institut 1929/30, p. 21.
43
BAB, R1501/1794: GC to AA, signed Lorenz, dated Winnipeg, August 18, 1927; BAK,
R57/37: DAI, Stuttgart, April, 1928, Anhang zu:“Siedlungsunternehmen des Rechtsanwalts
Dr. Schneider Freiburg i. Br. in Canada”; BAB, R1501/1797: GC to AA, signed Lorenz, dated
August 18, 1927; BAK, R57/37: DAI, Stuttgart, September, 1927, Anhang zu:“Siedlungsun-

BY GRANT W. GRAMS

101

things had not always gone as planned.44 By 1930 the settlement was
undergoing several problems and only remained viable through the efforts of the CPR and their associates. Although Schneider still played a
role in the administration of the colony, some settlers resented his presence; therefore he moved onto land near the colony.45 This settlement
failed due to internal problems, financial problems, low prices for farm
produce, and the worldwide recession. This prompted the colonists to
move it to individual lots.Timpe’s prophecy stating that the colony was
doomed to failure proved accurate. Lehmann reported that the Germans’ conversion to exclusive dairy farming and their close proximity
to Winnipeg helped the settlers achieve success in Canada—albeit
much later than they had hoped.46
Although the SRS helped some German nationals emigrate, the worldwide recession saw its attention turn from emigration concerns to return
migration and aiding deportees.47 Statistically, the highpoint of SRS consultation services for possible emigrants appears to have been achieved
during the National Socialist era in Germany. With the ascension of
Adolf Hitler to power, the National Socialist government viewed emigration as an unacceptable loss of manpower and prohibited it.Throughout
the interwar time period,the SRS adamantly strove to aid all emigrants in
only an advisory and humanitarian capacity. The administration had to
be careful not to offend the authorities on migration matters, as any organization that assisted or advised potential immigrants was seen as fostering emigration.48 Throughout this time period the United States and
ternehmen des Rechtsanwalt Dr. Schneider Freiburg i. B. in Canada”: BAB, R1501/1794:
GC to AA, signed Lorenz, dated Winnipeg, August 18, 1927.
44
BAB, R1501/1794: RA to AA Department VI E, signed Hintrager, dated June 30, 1927,
and BAK, R57/37: “Memorandum über den Stand der deutsch-kanadischen Siedlung,”
signed Dr. Fritz Schneider, dated May 31, 1929.
45
Glen M2269 File 654:“Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Directors of the Canada
Colonisation Association Winnipeg Manitoba June 20, 1930,” and Glen M2269 File 646
CPR:“Opening remarks of Mr. T. O. F. Herzer Manager of CCA,” pp. 3–4.
46
PAAA,Deutsches Konsulat Winnipeg, Wa2 Beiakte Wa2:RA to AA VI,signed Hintrager,
dated April 11, 1927; BAB, R1501/1794: RA Aufzeichnung, dated Berlin,April 11, 1927; and
Lehmann, op. cit., pp. 161–162.
47
Walter Knoblich, Die Tätigkeit des St. Raphaels-Verein für Auswanderung der Verfolgten des Dritten Reiches in 80 Jahre St. Raphaels Verein 1871–1951, herausgegeben
von Generalsekretariat des St. Raphaels Verein e.V. Hamburg (Hamburg-Rahlstedt, 1951),
pp.30–32;Jahresbericht des St.Raphaelsverein für das Jahr 1934 (Osnabrück),and SRA:
“Ordner, Chronik-Viertaljahres und Jahesberichte” in Jahresberichte des St. Raphaelsverein für das Jahr 1934.
48
PAAA R67301: “Allgemeine Frage zur Auswanderungspolitik: Der Reichsminister für
Volksaufklärungs und Propaganda an sämtliche Landesstellen des Reichsminister für Volks-

102

SANKT RAPHAELS VEREIN AND GERMAN-CATHOLIC EMIGRATION TO CANADA

South America appear to have been the most popular destinations of
the emigrants, as can be seen in the following SRS consultation statistics.
Although the SRS’s statistics for Hamburg regarding emigration consultations are not complete, they do offer glimpses into the desires of German nationals and their emigration concerns during the years of the
Great Depression.
Country 1929 1930 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 193949
Canada
USA
Brazil
Argentina
Chile
S.W. Africa
Australia
S. Africa
Venezuela

2107
1743
387
287
154
99
—
—
—

82
86
83
52
31
66
—
—
—

—
—
1539
55
251
—
38
—
18

—
—
4699
100
26
106
17
264
—

—
397
3991
497
—
—
—
376
—

7
314
728
476
55
5
10
25
28

—
2181
2356
650
316
123
—
654
53

120
2683
1706
474
471
133
177
338
36

—
837
3489
174
371
—
282
531
—

Another issue for the SRS administration was the discrimination
against and internment of Germany’s Jewish citizens.The SRS’s sense of

aufklärung und Propaganda,” Berlin, 1934, unsigned and undated document; and Wagner,
op.cit.,pp.242–244;SRA:Jahresbericht des St.Raphaelsverein zum Schutz kath.Deutscher
Auswanderer für das Jahr 1931 and 1932 (Osnabrück); PAAA, R67301:“Allgemeine Fragen zur Auswanderungspolitik: Zur Frage der Auswanderungspolitik,” undated, unsigned
document; and Nachrichtensblatt der Reichsstelle für das Auswanderungswesen, 1934,
Berlin, pp. 171–172.
49
SRA: St. Raphaelsverein E.V. Hamburg, 1. Bericht für das 2. Vierteljahr 1929. Information for January–July: 1.Viertel is from January to March 2.Viertel is from April to June, 3.
Viertel is from July to September, 4. Viertel is from October to December. S. Africa designates British South Africa and S.W. Africa designates the former German colony; BAK,
R57/1564: “Winke für unsere Auskunftsstelle,” St. Raphaels-Verein zum Schutze katholischer deutscher Auswanderer Generalsekretariat, dated Hamburg, January 14, 1931. This
is only for the month of December. SRA: Chronik—Vierteljahres und Jahresberichte,
Berichte über 3.and 4.Vierteljahr 1933 and 1.Vierteljahr 1934.Brazil’s statistics are for the
third and fourth quarters, all other countries fourth quarter only. SRA: Chronik—Vierteljahres und Jahresberichte, Berichte über 1. und 4. Vierteljahr 1934. Brazil’s statistics are
from the first, third, and fourth quarters. Argentina, Australia, and Chile are from the first
quarter. S.W. Africa and S. Africa statistics are from the third and fourth quarters; SRA:
Chronik—Vierteljahres und Jahresberichte, Berichte über 3. und 4. Vierteljahr 1935.
Brazil’s statistics are from all four quarters; USA from the third and fourth quarters; Argentina second and third quarters. SRA: Chronik—Vierteljahres und Jahresberichte,
Berichte über das erste Vierteljahr 1936. Canada, Brazil, S.Africa, and S.W.Africa’s statistics

BY GRANT W. GRAMS

103

urgency reached new heights, as they wanted to organize some kind of
agency that would aid non-Aryans trying to leave Germany. In order to
help some flee persecution, Größer traveled to various countries to investigate immigration possibilities. This investigation took him to
Canada in the spring of 1937. Größer reported that there were contacts
within North American agencies that helped some individuals leave
Germany. Unfortunately, his travels abroad and his humanitarian works
led to his arrest by German authorities in October, 1937. Größer remained in custody until early 1938. Despite their experiences and fear
of Nazi reprisals, the SRS continued to help non-Aryans emigrate. It is
not known how many made their way to Canada through the SRS’s services, but they estimated that 200,000 non-Catholics wanted to leave
Germany. They hoped to help some of these individuals through their
international contacts and past emigration activity. Unfortunately, it
caused Nazi officials to continuously scrutinize their actions.50
Immigration to Canada between 1933 and 1939 was negligible due to
a number of factors: the worldwide recession, Canadian legislation forbidding immigration, and the new Nazi government wanting to keep
German nationals at home. Although many were desperate to leave Germany,some German nationals viewed Adolf Hitler’s vision positively and
wanted to return to the Reich. During this time period a comparable
number of Germans returned to Germany from abroad. This was also
true for Canada as in 1938, 93 Germans immigrated to Canada while 68
returned from Canada to Germany. In 1939, 260 Germans immigrated to
are from the first quarter only; Chile, Venezuela, and USA from the first and fourth quarters (statistics also from the first quarter report 1937); Australia from the fourth quarter;
Argentina from the first, second, and fourth quarters; SRA: Chronik—Vierteljahres und
Jahresberichte, Berichte über 2., 3. und 4. Vierteljahr 1937. Brazil, USA, and S. Africa’s statistics are from all four quarters;Chile from the first,second,and fourth quarters;Argentina
from the second, third, and fourth quarters; S. Africa from the first, second, and third quarters; Venezuela from the first and second quarters; SRA: Chronik—Vierteljahres und
Jahresberichte, Berichte über 1., 2. und 4. Vierteljahr 1938. USA and Brazil’s statistics are
from the second, third, and fourth quarter only; Canada and Venezuela from the second
and third quarters; Chile from the first, second, and fourth quarters; Australia and Argentina from the first, second, and third quarters. S. Africa and S.W. Africa from the first
and second quarters. SRA: Chronik—Vierteljahres und Jahresberichte, Berichte über das
1. und 2. Vierteljahr 1939. Brazil, Australia, and USA’s statistics are from the first and second quarters;Chile from the first,second,and third quarters;Argentina from the first quarter; S. Africa for the second quarter only, but all of Africa.
50
SRA: Sankt Raphaels Werk, Chronik—Unterlagen Cahensly: E. Cardinal Pacelli to
Staatssekretariat Seiner Heiligkeit, Aus dem Vatikan dated January 9, 1939; Guenter Lewy,
The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (Toronto, 1964), pp. 282–284; Mohr, op. cit., p.
358, Hahn, op. cit., p. 14; Knoblich, op. cit., pp. 31–32.

104

SANKT RAPHAELS VEREIN AND GERMAN-CATHOLIC EMIGRATION TO CANADA

Canada while 200 chose to return.51 In order to help Germans who
wanted to return to Germany and possibly appease Nazi officials, the
SRS advised German nationals abroad on how to best return to Germany. In this return migration between 1933 and 1939, the SRS played
essentially the same role as it had in the emigration movement to Canada
between 1919 to 1932. They served in an advisory and humanitarian capacity as they sought to alleviate human suffering and discontent in
those wanting to possibly emigrate.52 The return of Germans abroad was
actively encouraged and financially supported by the Nazi party.
Although the SRS encouraged a limited emigration to Canada for
poor German nationals, it did not encounter the same conflicts with
German authorities as their Lutheran counterparts underwent, such as
Reverend Dr. Friedrich Caspar Gleiss and Reverend Dr. Hermann Wagner. In internal RA correspondence, the SRS appeared to hold the official German line on emigration, even if Timpe viewed RA objections in
some emigration matters as meddling. Although success in Canada was
not immediately achievable for all German emigrants such as Georg
Wimmer or some members of the Schneider colony, the SRS believed
that they aided all German-speaking immigrants. The SRS with the assistance of the VDCK served their goals both in Germany and in Canada
through their support and advice.They maintained that they did not encourage Germans to leave the country. The SRS remained adamant that
it merely provided help in a Christian and compassionate way, only to
German speakers who actively sought a better existence elsewhere.
Canada was one such possible destination of German emigrants between the two World Wars.53

51
Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich, herausgegeben vom Statistischen
Reichsamt 1941/42 (Berlin, 1942), p. 94; Statistisches Jahrbuch 1938, p. 72. Statistics for
1939 end on August 31.
52
Jahresberichte des St. Raphaelsverein für die Jahren 1933–1938. The VDCK played
no role in this remigration.
53
Wagner, op. cit., pp. 242–317, and Alfred Vagts, Deutsche-Amerikanische Rückwanderung (Heidelberg, 1960), pp. 29–194; Staatsarchiv Hamburg Auswanderungsamt I
373–7 I II F 3, Nr. 57: Georg Wimmer [to St. Rapahels Verein], dated Obertal, Bavaria, June
14, 1925, and ibid., Nr. 52: St. Raphaels Verein to die Behörde für das Auswanderungswesen Hamburg, signed Dr. Max Groesser, dated Hamburg, June 23, 1925; Mohr, op. cit., pp.
354–358, and Hahn, op. cit., pp. 7–14.

REVIEW ARTICLE
QUONIAM ABUNDAVIT INIQUITAS: DOMINICANS AS
INQUISITORS, INQUISITORS AS DOMINICANS

Praedicatores, Inquisitores. I.The Dominicans and the Medieval Inquisition.
Acts of the 1st Internatonal Seminar on the Dominicans and the Inquisition. Edited by Wolfram Hoyer, O.P. [Institutum Historicum Fratrum
Praedicatorum Romae,Dissertationes Historicae,Fasciculus XXIX.] (Rome:
Istituto Storico Domenicano. 2004. Pp. 816; 1 plate.)
One of the most striking antipapal cartoons of the nineteenth century depicts a statue of St. Dominic about to be raised by ropes and pulleys to the top
of a monumental column set in “The Infamous Piazza of the Holy Office.”The inscription on the base of the column ( partly concealed by the statue, here conjecturally emended) reads:“A ETERNA / [INF]AME MEMORIA / DEL / [SANTO]
UFFIZIO / [RO]MA LIBERATA / ANNO M.D.C.[C.C.] IL.” In the saint’s hands the
traditional Dominican inquisitorial emblematic devices of the leaved branch of
mercy and the sword of justice have been replaced by a nasty scourge and a
sinister-looking dagger. Two dogs run up the street alongside the column, the
Domini canes—the hounds of God. The picture was part of the protest against
the restoration of papal authority in Rome and the rest of the Papal States (and
with it, of course, the Inquisition and its inevitable Dominican agents), after the
failed Roman revolution of 1848, although the Latin title of the picture—Ad
majorem Dei gloriam, is, incongruously, the motto of the Jesuits.1
Ironically, all the components of this hostile iconography—loyalty to the papacy, Dominic as saint and inquisitor (think of the wonderfully anachronistic
painting by Pedro Berruguete), the Spanish Dominican inquisitorial emblems of
1
The cartoon originally appeared in G.Daelli,A Relic of the Italian Revolution of 1849
(New Orleans, 1850, but allegedly first published in Rome in 1849), Pl. 32 (“The Pope reestablished the right holy inquisition,” p. 28); cf. Pl. 22; reproduced in Edward Peters, Inquisition (New York and London, 1988), Pl. 25. The work is a savage cartoon-version of
church history and its terrible political and ethical consequences for mid-nineteenthcentury Italy. Parts, at least, of the Latin phrase had indeed been used by Dominican inquisitors, e.g., Bernard Gui. I am grateful to Peter Biller for his comments and helpful
suggestions on an early draft of this essay.

105

106

REVIEW ARTICLE

mercy and justice, and the (surely much later) play on the name of the founder
that came to be associated with the image of the hounds of God (grandly
memorialized in Andrea de Firenze’s frescoes in the Spanish Chapel of Santa
Maria Novella in Florence)—originated in the Order of Preachers itself, creating
what Grado Merlo, in his fine introductory essay to this volume, calls, “il binomio frati Predicatori/inquisitori,” the inseparable identification of Dominicans and Inquisition, most recently (and tiresomely) reiterated in the depiction
of Bernard Gui, O.P., in the novel and (quite awful) film, The Name of the Rose.2
But if many Dominican inquisitors and historians found it to their advantage to
identify the Order and the institution, so did the enemies of both. Periodic lay
and other hostility toward the persons and sentences of Dominican inquisitors
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries often resulted in acts of violence
against the local Dominican community, inquisitors or not. For better or worse,
the binomial identification has had a long history.

I
But is that conventional history the history? Jean-Louis Biget has recently
pointed out that “the precise evaluation of the role [of the Order of Preachers]
in this area [i.e., that of inquisition history] remains an open problem and
would itself take up an entire scholarly conference.”3 The present volume contains the acta of just such a scholarly conference. Introductory remarks by Arturo Bernal, O.P., President of the Dominican Historical Institute in Rome ( pp.
5–7), provide a historical context for the two Dominican conferences on Dominicans as inquisitors, the papers of the first of which constitute the volume
under review.The call for a “purification of memory”in John Paul II’s Tertio Millennio Adveniente of 1994 and the International Theological Commission’s
Memoria e riconciliazione: la Chiesa e le colpe del passato of 2000 inspired
the Order of Preachers to consider its own memory and history.4 Charged by
2
On the derivation of the name of the Order, see Pierre Mandonnet,“Note de symbolique médiévale: Domini canes,” in Mandonnet, St. Dominique: l’idéé, l’homme, l’oeuvre, 2
vols. (Paris, 1937), Vol. II, pp. 69–81. English translation available at http://www.op.org/
DomCentral/trad/domwork/domworka6.htm.
3
Jean-Louis Biget, “Introduction,” in L’ordre des Précheurs et son histoire en France
méridionale, (“Cahiers de Fanjeaux,” 36 [Toulouse-Fanjeaux, 2001], 5–15, at 11. Cited by
Merlo,“Predicatori e inquisitori: Per l’avvio di una riflessione,” the introductory essay of
the present volume, pp. 13–31, at 13.
4
The “purification of memory,” according to the slightly opaque language of Memoria
e reconciliazione, is: “The process undertaken to liberate personal and collective conscience from all forms of resentment or of violence which the legacy of past guilt may
have left, mediating a renewed historical and theological assessment of the events that
have caused them and leading—if the result is correct—to a corresponding recognition
of guilt and contributing to a real path toward reconciliation.” Cited by Merlo,“Predicatori,” p. 17.

REVIEW ARTICLE

107

the General Chapter meeting at Bologna in 1998 with, “[examining] the role
played by some of [the Order’s] members in the injustices of the past in order
to help to purify our memory and involve the Order in a quest for truth leaving
the judgement of people to God alone,” the Dominican Historical Institute in
Rome held this conference in February, 2002. So the old convention of the binomial identification has now been re-examined—under Dominican scholarly
patronage, but certainly not under any degree of Dominican control. Of the
forty-three participants at the conference ( pp. 11–2) fourteen were Dominican
scholars, and the conference appears to have been a productive combination of
both senior and very talented younger scholars. Merlo’s introductory essay distinctly celebrates the liberation of the history of heresy and inquisition from
earlier confessional and ideological conceptual constraints. As Merlo says in
one of the discussions,“History belongs to no one” ( p. 107) and is not in any
sense subordinate to theology.
The history of inquisitio hereticae pravitatis (which, as H. A. Kelly has
sharply reminded us, is the only proper term to use, rather than the misleading
and nonspecific medieval inquisition) has recently enjoyed a substantial scholarly revival, in monographs, conference volumes, and journals like the Cahiers
de Fanjeaux and Heresis.5 But the specific role of the Mendicant Orders in this
context has not been as extensively studied. In 2001 Laurent Albaret published
a short essay on “Les Prêcheurs et l’Inquisition,” and in 2002 Christine Caldwell
5
On Kelly’s strictures,see the essays in his collection,Inquisitions and Other Trial Procedures in the Medieval West (Aldershot and Burlington, Vermont, 2001). In this volume
Peter Segl echoes Kelly’s concerns ( pp. 214–215, discussed below). The most recent surveys are Laurent Albaret,“L’Inquisition et les hérésies dans le midi de la France au moyen
âge: Essai de bilan historiographique,” Heresis, Nos. 36–37 (2002), 145–159; Peter Segl,
“Mediävistische Häresieforschung,” in Hans-Werner Goetz (ed.), Die Aktualität des Mittelalters (Bochum, 2000), pp. 107–133, and, for Italian historiography, Daniele Solvi,“La parole à l’accusation:L’inquisiteur d’après les resultats de l’historiographie récente,”Heresis,
No. 40 (2004), 123–153, originally published in Italian in 1998. The conference volume,
Texts and the Repression of Medieval Heresy, edited by Caterina Bruschi and Peter Biller,
(“York Studies in Medieval Theology,” IV [York, 2003]), is a major contribution to the literature. Heresis, No. 40 (2004), is a thematic volume with several studies devoted to L’Inquisition et la répression des dissidences religieuses au Moyen Age: Dernières
recherches, including Jean-Louis Biget,“L’Inquisition: Nouvelles approches,” pp. 13–22, as
is Gabriel Audisio (ed.), Inquisition et pouvoir, Actes du colloque international tenu à la
maison mediterranéene des sciences de l’homme,les 24–26 octobre 2002 sur le thème inquisition et pouvoir (Aix-en-Provence, 2004). Peter Biller, Caterina Bruschi, and Shelagh
Sneddon are preparing a critical edition and translation of inquisition trials in Languedoc
in the 1270’s. Grado G. Merlo has announced his own forthcoming study, Le origini
dell’inquisizione medievale, and the papers of a conference on the Inquisition held at
Vatican City in October, 1998, have just appeared: Agostino Borromeo (ed.), L’inquisizione: atti del simposio internazionale (“Studi e testi,” 417 [Vatican City, 2003]). English text of the Pope’s acceptance of the volume may be found at <http://www.catholic.
org/featured/headline.php?ID=1058>.

108

REVIEW ARTICLE

completed her original and learned doctoral dissertation on inquisition and the
pastoral mission of the Order of Preachers.6 Although the research of Mariano
d’Alatri, Grado Merlo, and Jacques Chiffoleau has made a significant contribution, considerably less work even than this has been done on Franciscan inquisitors of heretical depravity, and all of it so far is regional.7 The present
volume, then, is particularly welcome and highly informative. It presents twentyfive studies:eight in English,seven in Italian,five in German,three in Spanish,and
two in French, ranging in length from four to eighty-four pages. The volume also
includes indices of codices and manuscript documents, place names, and personal names. Substantial parts of the conference discussions following groups
of papers are also usefully included, since they are often lively and immediate
items of scholarship in their own right, and some of the observers at the conference, notably Alexander Patschovsky, make valuable contributions. Since at
least several of the papers were delivered in languages different from those in
which they are here printed, there is occasional confusion among internal references, and since several have evidently been revised for print, some of the discussions are not always clearly referential to the papers they address.
Regrettable for the user is the absence of abstracts,either in French,English,and
often other languages, as in recent numbers of the Cahiers de Fanjeaux, or in
French alone, as in some of the conference volumes published by the École
Française de Rome.8 Most of the participants readily use scholarship in all relevant languages, but not every essay is exhaustive in this regard. Further, papers
by Wolfram Benziger and Carlo Longo listed in the conference program ( pp.
9–10) are not in the volume, and one not listed in the program (Lorenzo
Galmés, O.P.,“San Ramón de Penyafort y la Inquisición en la Alta Catalunya”[pp.
85–103], for which see below) is in the volume.
6
Laurent Albaret,“Les Prêcheurs et l’inquisition,” in L’Ordre des Prêcheurs et son histoire (above, n.2), pp. 319–341; Christine Caldwell, Doctors of Souls: Inquisition and the
Dominican Order, 1231–1331 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2002), and
eadem,“Dominican Inquisitors as ‘Doctors of Souls’: The Spiritual Discipline of Inquisition 1231–1331,” Heresis, No. 40 (2004), 23–40. Writing quite independently of each
other, Albaret and Caldwell come to very different conclusions about the role of the Order, the former arguing for a distinct separation between Dominican inquisitors and the
Order, and the latter, in the tradition of Vicaire, arguing for inquisition as an integral part
of the Dominican pastoral mission. On Albaret’s essay in the present volume, see below.
On individual inquisitors, L. Albaret (ed.), Les inquisiteurs: Portraits de défenseurs de la
foi en Languedoc (XIIIe–XIVe siècles) (Toulouse, 2001).
7
Most of it summed up and considerably extended for Provence in Holly Jean Grieco,
A Dilemma of Obedience and Authority: The Franciscan Inquisition and Franciscan
Inquisitors in Provence, 1235–1340 (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 2004). Further,the conference volume,Il Papato Duecentesco e gli Ordini Mendicanti,Atti del XXV
Convegno internazionale della S.I.S.F. (Spoleto, 1998).
8
Most appropriately for the subject of the present volume, Faire Croire: Modalités de
la diffusion et de la réception des messages religieux du XIIe au XIVe siècle (“Collection
de l’École Française de Rome,” 51 [Rome, 1981]).

REVIEW ARTICLE

109

Alas,Biget was wrong;not even this mighty conference volume is or pretends
to be finally comprehensive, but it is invaluable. Its contents, arranged informally into six unnumbered sections divided by transcripts of discussions, begin
with the early period from about 1200 into the 1230’s, continue with the early
inquisitorial enterprises of the Order, and go on to several groups of thematic
and regional studies and studies of individual inquisitors. The remainder of this
review will consider the essays in this volume in terms of themes, regional studies, and individual Dominican inquisitors of heretical depravity.

II
The Order’s memory and historiography are treated in two essays and parts
of several others.Bernard Montagnes,O.P.,“Les inquisiteurs martyrs de la France
méridionale” ( pp. 513–538), extending earlier Dominican and other research,
not only reduces considerably the number of inquisitor-martyrs in the Midi, but
provides a fascinating review of the complex process by which the number of
these was originally inflated, especially in the devotional conflicts of the late
sixteenth century. Gone are nine of the alleged twelve martyrs at Avignonet, the
six cephalophors of Toulouse, François and Bernard de Toulouse, and the martyrs of Cordes. One can only guess how many of the other martyrs on the spectacular plate reproduced facing page 513, from the Triumphus Martyrum
Ordinis Praedicatorum, engraved by Charles and Adriaen Collaerts in Antwerp
in 1610, might also fade when later studies are done. But Montagnes also puts
us securely on the complex track of what Luigi Canetti has gracefully termed
the Dominican “invenzione della memoria,” that is, the creation of collective
memory in the order.9
The second essay directed to the Dominican creation of memory is Alfonso
Esponera Cerdán, O.P.,“Los Dominicos y la inquisición medieval según la Historia de la Santa Inquicisión (1589–1592) de V. J. Antist OP” ( pp. 731–752).
Esponera studies the career and history of Vicente Justiniano Antist (1543–1599),
whose unpublished history of the inquisition was used by Luis de Páramo in his
own more influential history. Antist was widely read and traveled, a friend of
Francisco Peña (the non-Dominican auditor of the Rota and editor of Nicholas
Eymeric, for whom see below), and admirer of Savonarola. Antist’s history sees
the medieval and early modern inquisitions as one and the same, begun by Dominic. These two papers shed considerable light, especially on the sixteenthand seventeenth-century process by which Dominican memory was translated
into Dominican history.
9
Luigi Canetti, L’Invenzione della memoria. Il culto e l’immagine di Domenico nella
storia dei primi frati Predicatori (Spoleto, 1996). For the larger view, Anne ReltgenTallon, La mémoire d’un ordre: les “hommes illustres” dans la tradition dominicaine
(XIIIe–XVe siècles) (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Paris X—Nanterre, 1999).

110

REVIEW ARTICLE

Much of the essay by Laurent Albaret,“Inquisitio heretice pravitatis. L’Inquisition dominicaine dans le Midi de la France aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles ou la première inquisition pontificale” ( pp. 421–446), is a brisk and clear account of
early inquisitorial history and the Dominican role in it, largely restating his earlier argument about the distancing of friar inquisitors from the rest of the Order
(above, n.6), but it also contains ( pp. 440–445) a useful contribution to the
theme of memory and history, building on the earlier work of Vicaire, in tracing
the history of the image of St. Dominic as the first inquisitor from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries via the Berruguete painting, until the
critical research of Manrique, Échard, and the Bollandists finally clarified the
saint’s emphatically non-inquisitorial role.And one hopes that few beside its author have ever taken seriously the 1374 assertion that St. Boniface had been
made inquisitor haereticae pravitatis by papal authority ( p. 313)!
A second theme is the training of Dominican inquisitors. M. Michèle Mulchahey, “Summae Inquisitorum and the Art of Disputation: How the Early Dominican Order Trained its Inquisitors” ( pp. 145–156) draws on her own earlier
work on Dominican education to consider how, although there were no special
courses of study or examinations for Dominican inquisitors, Dominicans were
made into successful inquisitors. Her answer is that the unique educational system in Dominican convents, especially the weekly or biweekly collatio scientifica—the learning of debate and the art of memory—more than adequately
prepared the future inquisitor to understand and apply the materials from the
early inquisitors’ manuals and to undertake his own processus inquisitionis.
A third theme is popular protest deriving from differing perceptions of
heresy and local inquisitorial style. Augustine Thompson, O.P.,“Lay Versus Clerical Perceptions of Heresy: Protests Against the Inquisition at Bologna, 1299”
( pp. 702–730), studies the local circumstances that led to a near-riot against the
inquisitor Fra Guido of Vicenza at the execution of the condemned heretic
Bompietro di Giovanni, when Bompietro requested confession and communion before being executed and Guido quite uncanonically refused. The execution was the trigger, however, for a long built-up local resentment of Fra Guido’s
evidently abrupt inquisitorial style. Thompson elegantly orchestrates and analyzes the varieties of protest from the crowd and the inquisitor’s deliberate and
successful steps to punish those responsible, concluding that the relentless inquisitorial pursuit of a locally respected man, more than general hatred of the
inquisitors or a clandestine sympathy for heresy, was likely to focus local outrage and put undiplomatic inquisitors at potential risk.
In “Il tempus gratiae,I domenicani e il processo inquisitoriale”( pp.655–680),
taking up the theme of inquisitorial procedure, Andrea Errera emphasizes how
unorganized and unsystematic were the legal procedures available to inquisitors in most of the second quarter of the thirteenth century—a lacunosità normativa ( p. 658) that began to be stabilized only by Raymond of Penyafort’s
editorial work on the Liber Extra of Gregory IX in 1234. But even then the

REVIEW ARTICLE

111

considerable and often dismaying discretion exercised by individual inquisitors
(e.g., Robert le Bougre and Conrad of Marburg) suggested that many norms still
needed to be established.Diligent inquisitors turned first to the consultatio,the
request to expert jurists about specific points of law. To these were added the
famous manuals for inquisitors whose study was pioneered by Dondaine.10 Dominicans, then, began to create a normative inquisitorial jurisprudence. Errera
then considers the tempus gratiae sive indulgentiae, a spontaneous judicial
creation of Dominican inquisitors without an origin in the norms of learned
law,as an example of this process of Dominican inquisitorial jurisprudence.The
essay is a substantial contribution to the still-vexing problem of the development of a distinctively inquisitorial procedure.
The subject of the popes and the Order includes an important study by
Werner Maleczek,“Innocenz III., Honorius III. und die Anfänge der Inquisition”
( pp. 33–43) and one by Ludwig Vones,“Papst Urban V (1362–1370) und die dominikanische Inquisition” ( pp. 495–511). Maleczek points out that in spite of
Innocent III’s profound concerns about heterodoxy, his initial approval of inquisitorial procedure was not directed at them, but rather at criminous clergy,
although its locating both prosecutor and judge in the same person would later
prove “fatal” when the procedure was applied to heretics. Innocent also vehemently invoked the support of temporal authorities in the struggle against
heresy, emphasizing the extent to which notices of heterodoxy in different
parts of Europe rapidly attracted Innocent’s attention. Maleczek also reminds us
that Cardinal (since 1198) Hugolino, later Gregory IX, was intimately familiar
with Innocent’s concerns over heterodoxy. Innocent’s successor, Honorius III,
older than his very young predecessor, turned toward temporal authorities, including Frederick II’s antiheretical legislation in the Compilatio quinta of
1226. The two pontificates set the stage for Honorius’ successor, Gregory IX.
Vones’ study considers the extreme concern over heterodoxy on the part of
Urban V and Charles IV, chiefly in Central Europe, a window of papal-imperial
co-operation not possible in the reign of Louis of Bavaria and not continued
during the Great Schism. As part of Urban’s grand plan for Church reform, his
inquisitorial appointments in 1362 and 1363 in France, the Empire, and Italy
were all Dominican, except for the traditional Franciscan territories of Provence, the Dauphiné, and Savoy. Urban’s targets were Beguines, Beghards, and
the “Free Spirit,” as well as the great military companies, whose attacks on ecclesiastical property and blasphemy were equated to heresy.
10
To whose work should be added Thomas Scharf,“Schrift zur Kontrolle—Kontrolle der
Schrift. Italienische und franzözische Inquisitoren-Handbücher des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 52 (1996), 547–584, and Riccardo Parmeggiani,“Un secolo di manualistica inquisitoriale (1230–1330): intertestulità e
circolazione del diritto,” Revista Internazionale di Diritto Comune, 13 (2002), 229–270.
On Conrad, see the revisionist argument of Alexander Patschovsky,“Zur Ketzerverfolgung
Konrads von Marburg,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 37 (1981),
641–693.

112

REVIEW ARTICLE

Most of the themes identified here—and some of the individuals—recur in
Thomas Scharf, “Die Inquisitoren und die Macht der Zeichen. Symbolische
Kommunikation in der Praxis der mittelalterlichen Inquisition” ( pp. 110–143).
Contrary to modern perceptions of vast inquisitorial power, Scharf points out,
the inquisitors perceived themselves as weak and persecuted (one of the
sources both for inquisitor-martyrs and of the rights of inquisitorial bodyguards
to bear arms), not entirely without cause when the essential assistance and protection from temporal authorities was missing or delayed:“against massive resistance from large groups the inquisitors were virtually powerless” ( p. 118, and
the several references throughout to Bernard Délicieux, O.F.M., and the excellent recent work of Alan Friedlander). Heretical opposition and inquisitorial
weakness were also reflected in the heretics’ alarmingly deceptive speech—
manuals complained that even a humble kitchen maid could use peasant cunning to conceal her heresy from even the most learned of inquisitors.
Dominican inquisitorial self-defensiveness developed the symbolic communication of inquisitorial paraliturgies.Scharf considers the prescribed humble and
merciful conduct of the inquisitor during the sermo generalis, the occasion of
announcing sentences, and the contrasting use of symbols of force in the progressive announcement of penances from the lightest to the most severe. The
different colors of crosses to be worn on clothing, the exhumation of the
posthumously convicted and the ensuing damnatio memoriae, all were orchestrated to give the weak and defensive inquisitors both the signs and the realities of great and varied power. Fra Guido of Vicenza at Bologna turns up again
in this context on page 136. The case of torture is one of the exercise of both
symbolic and material power:“The tortured person is made aware in the most
brutal way of exactly how great is the power of the torturer over him” ( p. 140).
Scharf’s is a stimulating analysis of the public display of Dominican inquisitorial
mixed identity. Another theme that clearly emerges in a number of the articles
is that of the decentralized character of inquisitorial activity before the sixteenth century and the long-underestimated role of episcopal authority on the
local level.11 But this is a theme more effectively brought out in the regional
studies.

III
The regions treated in these essays include the Midi (the essay by Albaret, discussed above), Poland, the Empire generally, and the archdiocese of Mainz.
Francesco Quaranta, “L’inquizione e gli italo-greci” ( pp. 625–641) is also a regional study of the inquisitorial problem in south Italy, an ethnic, religious, and
11
The frequent references in several of the essays to Wolfram Benzinger, “Dezentralisierung und Zentralisierung.Mittelalterliche Ketzerinquisition und neuzeitliche Römische
Inquisition,” Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 81
(2001), 67–106, reflect the point made often here that inquisitorial activity before the sixteenth century was hardly centralized from Rome or anywhere else.

REVIEW ARTICLE

113

linguistic Mediterranean frontier. Greek language and rites (schismatic and “superstitious”), the azyme problem, Greek monasteries, Italo-Greek residual
Staufer sympathies after the Angevin conquest, the Sicilian Vespers, and the
Angevin-supported Dominican inquisitors complicated the long process of assimilating Italian Greek Christianity to acceptable Latin norms.
Pawel Kras,“Dominican Inquisitors in Medieval Poland (14th–15th c.)” ( pp.
249–309), is one of the most valuable in the book, since it synthesizes considerable research on Poland, much-neglected in western historiography because
linguistically inaccessible, and it opens both a geographical and methodological
vista on the conference topic.12 Kras criticizes older assertions of a prominent
papal inquisition in Poland, arguing instead for a strong episcopal inquisition in
which Dominicans played rather an auxiliary role.Although established by John
XXII in 1318–1327, chiefly to deal with immigrant German Waldensians, and
later, Beguines, and Beghards, the Dominican inquisitors were appointed by the
Polish provincial and always required confirmation from the local bishop and
charters of protection from monarchs. Polish Dominican inquisitors had ready
access to the manual-literature, possibly to some excerpts of Bernard Gui, and
certainly to several manuscripts of Nicholas Eymeric, and evidently enjoyed
considerable prestige and respect, although they left few records of interrogations and sentences. It is overall a rather different picture from that of isolated
and autonomous Dominican inquisitors that one often finds elsewhere.Kras appends a useful annotated list of Dominican Inquisitors in Poland.
Peter Segl’s “Dominikaner und Inquisitoren im Heiligen Römischen Reich”
( pp. 211–248) is another substantial piece of regional coverage, since the Empire was a particular reality, and modern differing meanings of “Central Europe”
in different languages do not quite convey that reality.Segl’s second preliminary
point is the differences among types of inquisitorial enterprises, reiterating that
his study concerns Dominicans specifically as inquisitors of heretical depravity.
The definition of this term is crucial to Segl, since he is reluctant to accept the
standard date of November 22, 1231—the dispatch of Gregory IX’s decretal Ille
humani generis to the Prior of the Dominican convent at Regensburg—as the
formal beginning of such an inquisition. For Segl, Gregory IX’s letter charges
only a generalis praedicatio, listening to accusations, and applying previous papal statutes—only those of IV Lateran c.3, the 1229 Council of Toulouse, and
Gregory’s own statutes of 1231 with the Annibaldini capitula, none of which
for Segl indicates the later inquisitorial office. Segl regards the bulls of 1231 and
1232 (the latter to Würzburg) as primarily pastoral exhortations (urging cooperation with local bishops) rather than judicial appointments. The catastrophe of Conrad of Marburg illustrates either an excessively broad interpretation
of the papal commission or Conrad’s indifference to its limitations.
12
Kras has also published another study,“Pro fidei defensione contra modernos hereticos. Hérétiques et inquisiteurs en pologne au Moyen Áge (XIVe–XVe siècles),” Heresis, 40
(2004), 69–94.

114

REVIEW ARTICLE

Although Segl may be accused of putting too fine a point on a date and occasion that have become very widely accepted, his argument is compelling and
his evidence substantial. Here, the argument of Errera (see above) would seem
to support him. For Segl, the legislation of Frederick II and later Innocent IV offer much surer ground for the establishment of a judicial inquisitorial office
proper.
The remainder of Segl’s article describes the operation of Dominican inquisitors in Austria, Bohemia, Silesia, and the Rhineland up to the mid-fourteenth
century, the period of the resurgence of inquisitorial activity under Urban V
(echoing the study by Vones, cited above), and again under Boniface IX, and the
Hussite crisis, Segl concludes with a discussion of Heinrich Institoris and the
role of temporal jurisdiction in cases of witchcraft and a consideration of open
questions.
The last,longest,and most impressive of the regional studies is Klaus-Bernward
Springer, “Dominican Inquisition in the Archdiocese of Mainz (1348–1520)”
( pp. 312–393). Springer begins by emphasizing the decentralized character of
papally appointed inquisitorial enterprises in the face of episcopal authority in
the Rhineland. The first papally appointed Dominican inquisitor, Johannes
Schadland, appointed for totam Alamaniam in 1348, failed to obtain funding
from any German bishop and resigned his office, probably in 1357. In addition,
bishops sometimes appointed their own inquisitors, including Dominicans, but
even these relied heavily on the support of temporal authorities. When, under
Urban V, papally appointed Dominican inquisitors resumed work in Germany in
1364, they were appointed in terms of Dominican provinces (in the case of
Mainz those of Teutonia and Saxonia) rather than the archiepiscopal provinces:
“So the Dominican provinces were the first principle of organization and then
the archbishoprics within the Dominican provinces the second” ( p. 326). This
division of authority sometimes caused problems: in 1377 Gregory XI wrote to
several German prelates complaining that his own (Dominican) inquisitors
were persecuting Beguines and Beghards for trivial reasons, as did Boniface IX
in 1394. Springer meticulously surveys the activities of Dominican and other inquisitors in Mainz from Henricus de Agro in 1364 to Jacob Hoogstraeten (ca.
1460–1527), the prosecutor of Johannes Reuchlin, including the rivalry between Henricus Institoris and Jacob Sprenger, his alleged co-author of the
Malleus Maleficarum. Springer prints a useful inventory of inquisitors on pp.
354–358 (for Teutonia) and pp. 386–389 (for Saxonia). Generally, from the midfifteenth century,the importance of inquisitorial activity declined,with only the
Observant Hoogstrataen and the Conventual Institoris the exceptions, leading
to Springer’s conclusion that there was neither particular Observant enthusiasm for the prosecution of heretics nor particular Dominican interest in the
prosecution of witches.
Springer also points out the substantial differences in Dominican inquisitorial activity in Teutonia and Saxonia.In the former there were relatively few pros-

REVIEW ARTICLE

115

ecutions, while in the latter there were considerably more inquisitorial convictions. Springer observes that “the papal Dominican inquisition differed tremendously even within one diocese” ( p. 391). Dominican inquisitors remained
closely connected to archbishops, bishops, and temporal authorities. Finally,
Springer raises an important (and so far unanswerable) question about numbers of victims—with only one death sentence in Teutonia between 1348 and
1520, but considerable numbers in Saxonia during the same period,“it is difficult to understand how the inquisition is supposed to have caused ‘millions of
victims’ or how some authors even speak of ‘genocide’” ( p. 393). The question
of soberly reduced numbers is a reminder that the purification of memory
works both ways.
I
V
The names of some individual inquisitors—Conrad of Marburg, for example,
and Heinrich Institoris—run through several of the essays here. Others (including Institoris, for whom see below) are the subjects of individual studies. In the
shortest essay in the volume, Simon Tugwell, O.P.,“The Downfall of Robert le
Bougre, OP” ( pp. 753–756), makes a characteristically persuasive case that the
discreet reference in the Vitas fratrum to a certain alius in Francia nominatus who refused to heed the advice of his superiors and instead spread discord
is indeed to Robert le Bougre. Comparing the two versions of this account with
Matthew Paris, Tugwell demonstrates the caution with which Gerald of Frachet
treated the subject and how the more detailed account by Humbert of Romans
coincides precisely with Matthew Paris’s description, suggesting also that
Robert left the Order of Preachers shortly after his disgrace.
Giovanni Viarengo,“Gli inquisitori e frate Giordano di Sassonia” ( pp. 45–84)
examines the role of the second Minister General of the Order of Preachers in
the Dominican battle against heresy, particularly in light of earlier influential
scholarship—that of Mortier and Scheeben—that asserted the direct link between Gregory IX and individual convents and inquisitors, bypassing Jordan,
who allegedly said nothing and had little interest in the inquisitorial function.
Viarengo’s essay is an examination of the extent to which Jordan of Saxony’s interests may have indeed coincided with the inquisitorial activity of the Order
and how the ideas of Jordan concerning this new role of the Order shaped the
later identity of the ordo fratrum Praedicatorum.
Viarengo begins by noting the one connection among Gregory IX, Jordan of
Saxony, and the struggle against heresy, the constitution Experimentis multiplicibus of May 18, 1235, which confides to Jordan the responsibility for the religious instruction of one of the earliest antiheretical confraternities, the Militia
Christi of Parma.He next considers Jordan’s historical treatment of St.Dominic’s
struggle against heresy in the Libellus de principiis:“Jordan’s Dominic is characterized expressly as the exemplary type of the struggle against heterodoxy
conducted by preaching, the witness of charity, and evangelical poverty”

116

REVIEW ARTICLE

( pp. 64–65)—the antiheretical saint, a role later confirmed by documents and
testimony in the canonization process. The creation of the Order specifically as
an antiheretical agency was developed in the work of Roland of Cremona and
Jordan of Saxony himself. The shift of part of the Order from the officium sanctae praedicationis to the officium haereticae pravitatis was a considerable
one, and Jordan’s silence on that aspect of the transformation may well have reflected the uncertainty of the 1230’s and 1240’s—too early for Jordan or anyone
else to have elaborated a fully developed Dominican justification for the office of
inquisitor within the Order.
Lorenzo Galmés Mas, O.P.,“San Ramón de Penyafort y la inquisición en la Alta
Catalunya” ( pp. 85–103), is rather a study of Raymond’s work on the Liber Extra of Gregory IX between 1229 and 1234 and Raymond’s Summa de Paenitentia—that is, on Raymond as a canonist and as a pastoral moralist, both roles
mutually influencing one another in the broad perspective shaped during Raymond’s years at the papal court and reflected in the revised version of the
Summa. Although never an inquisitor himself, Raymond (as Errera points out
elsewhere in the volume) provided a much more satisfactory and coherent rationale for the adjudication of criminal sin than any canonist before him.
The substantial study by Marina Benedetti,“Frate Lanfranco da Bergamo, gli
inquisitori, l’ordine e la curia romana” ( pp. 157–204), examines the quaternus
racionum of his own service as inquisitor of Lanfrancus de Amiziis of Bergamo, O.P., inquisitor at Pavia for Lombardia superior from 1292 to 1305, contained in Collectoria 133 of the Archivio Segreto of the Vatican. Frate Lanfranco
seems to have meticulously recorded everything from details of costs and reimbursements to meetings with other inquisitors and the provincial. Benedetti
focuses on the fascinating case of Pagano da Pietrasanta of Milan, a long-drawnout affair of complex negotiations among the Order, a number of inquisitors,
and appeals to the popes, virtually unique in inquisitorial annals.
Riccardo Parmeggiani,“L’inquisitore Florio da Vicenza” ( pp. 681–699) deals
with an exceptionally long (1278–1293) inquisitorial career that illustrates a
number of themes considered in other essays: the difficulty of identifying individual inquisitors, local resentment at Dominican convents (Parma, 1279), the
problem of the relapse of converted Jews (Ferrara, 1279), and inquisitorial consultation with iurisperiti (at Bologna and Padua, including Dino del Mugello).
Parmeggiani also includes transcriptions of the inquisitor’s meticulously notarized papal appointment and two of his sentences.
Caterina Bruschi,“Gli inquisitori Raoul de Plassac e Pons de Parnac e l’inchiesta tolosana degli anni 1273–1280” ( pp. 470–493), considers the style and
tenor of two Toulouse inquisitors dealing with eighty-two accused persons at a
period and place when the inquisitorial procedure had reached a stage of maturity. Bruschi is particularly articulate about the problems surrounding the
making of the seventeenth-century Collection Doat,from which many of the interrogatory materials derive. She considers the different techniques of ques-

REVIEW ARTICLE

117

tioning witnesses and accused in different situations and points out occasions
when the two inquisitors were stimulated by the individual or occasion to vary
established techniques of interrogation. The questioning was directed at the
creation of a body of knowledge based on testimony that would inculpate or
exculpate a suspect,“or better: to ascertain the guilt or innocence of an accused
party and of others involved with him in activities and illicit conversations” ( p.
491).The records of Plassac and Parnac offer considerable opportunities for the
consideration of both interrogation techniques and the psychological insight
that experienced inquisitors had acquired by using them over a period of years.
Peter Biller, “Bernard Gui, Sex, and Luciferanism” ( pp. 455–470) considers
why Bernard Gui, ordinarily a knowledgeable and meticulous analyst of the differences among heterodox sects, should attribute to Waldensians the worship
of Lucifer and nightly assemblies of indiscriminate sexual coupling, especially
when several earlier and later inquisitors,“out of certain knowledge and experience knew the opposite” ( p. 455). After establishing—and largely disqualifying—an inventory of possible early (and frequently cited) sources for Gui’s
opinion, Biller focuses on Gui’s identification of particular groups of Burgundian Waldensians on the basis of his experience in Piedmont and his extraordinarily wide range of informants who attributed such activities to “Waldensians”
elsewhere, concluding that Gui was not at all fabricating his information, nor
did he accept it uncritically.
The most important of the studies of individual inquisitors, however, are two
studies of Nicholas Eymeric, whose Directorium Inquisitorum was far more
substantial and far more widely and longer read than that of Bernard Gui.
Jaume de Puig i Oliver, “Nicolás Eymerich, un inquisidor discutido” ( pp.
545–593), focuses on several aspects of the later part of Eymeric’s career—his
condemnation of the works of Ramon Llull and his own indictment by Juan de
Vera of Valencia in 1388, and his immense Directorium Inquisitorum,“his vast
and magisterial work on inquisitorial procedure, destined to supplant all tentative earlier such works, and to establish itself in the future as the most secure
guide for judges in matters of the faith” ( p. 546). But Eymeric was also an inquisitor with a method, and Puig i Oliver uses Eymeric’s charges of heterodoxy
against Llull to analyze that method and to consider the vindication of some, at
least, of Llull’s doctrines by a later inquisitor, Bernat Ermengol, in 1386, a reaction on the part of professional theologians against Eymeric’s method.
The second and longer part of the essay treats the ten Valencia accusations
against Eymeric (on, among other charges, the grounds that he had slandered it
by calling it a city full of heretics) as a consequence of his condemnation of
Llull. The charges are listed on pp. 561–562. Eymeric was an inquisitor who
made enemies among kings as well as entire cities, and Puig i Oliver’s analysis
of the Valencia charges examines each of them and those who testified to them
in detail in order to assess their validity—which turns out to be very doubtful.
Puig i Oliver argues that Eymeric’s Directorium is the most reliable guide to the

118

REVIEW ARTICLE

inquisitor’s actual practices.Eymeric’s accusers,like Thompson’s Bolognesi,recognized the validity of the tribunals of faith, but often objected to particulars of
their procedures. For Puig i Oliver, Eymeric “is an extremely frank and direct
writer, hardly cryptic, and, as a Catalan, little given to diplomatic niceties” ( p.
590), but he and the Valencian Llullistas of 1388 inhabited very different mental
worlds. And even the most knowledgeable and skilled of all inquisitorial practitioners could not bring those worlds into agreement.
Puig i Oliver defers—as all students of Eymeric must—to the pathbreaking
work of Claudia Heimann, whose own “Quis proprie hereticus est? Nicolaus
Eymerichs Häresiebegriff und dessen Anwendung auf die Juden”( pp. 596–624),
is another of her substantial contributions to the study of Eymeric.13 Heimann
considers Eymeric’s conception of papal (and by delegation inquisitorial) jurisdiction over Jews in terms of both traditional inquisitorial authority and
Eymeric’s developing definition of heresy and heretics, using not only the 1376
Directorium Inquisitorum, but also Eymeric’s earlier tract of 1359, De iurisdictione inquisitorum in et contra christianos demones invocantes, and his
subsequent (ca. 1370) De iurisdictione ecclesie et inquisitorum contra infideles demones invocantes vel alias fidem catholicam agitantes. Heimann bases
her analysis on Codex 104-II-7 of the Biblioteca Bartolomeu March in Palma de
Mallorca, a late fourteenth-century manuscript containing all three works with
corrections by Eymeric himself.
The question of inquisitorial (and behind that papal) power over unbaptized
Jews was a matter of considerable dispute in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, from the Talmud trials in France to the developing heresiological doctrines of the following decades. Eymeric took his own basic definition of heresy
from Isidore of Seville, requiring the three elements of electio, adhaesio, and divisio, and he applied these to Jews when Jews believed otherwise than the Old
Testament commanded (except in the case of their conversion to Christianity),
or when they relapsed into Judaism or protected Christian heretics or committed an act prohibited by both Testaments, e.g., the sin of idolatry when invoking demons.
In order to determine the degree of Eymeric’s originality, Heimann compares
his own arguments to those of his contemporary, the Carmelite theologian and
Provincial of his order in Aragon, Felip Ribot (†1391), whose definition and
derivation of heresy was exactly the same as Eymeric’s—except that Ribot denied inquisitorial jurisdiction over Jews on the grounds of the Christological
origin of the Old Testament, which Jews did not recognize. Heimann concludes
with a consideration of actual fourteenth-century Aragonese practice in cases
of ecclesiastical claims to authority over Jews. One element, also found in
Eymeric’s earliest and latest concerns, was the practice of sorcery, a growing
13
Claudia Heimann, Nicolaus Eymerich (vor 1320–1399) “praedicator veridicus, inquisitor intrepidus, doctor egregius.” Leben und Werk eines Inquisitors (Münster,2001),
is now the standard work.

REVIEW ARTICLE

119

concern throughout the fourteenth century, exploding into the theories of diabolical sorcery and witchcraft in the second quarter of the fifteenth century.
Not surprisingly, the essays on Eymeric trigger some of the liveliest discussions of the conference, including the striking charge laid down to the conference by Werner Maleczek—that on moral grounds the medieval inquisition was
“un orrore” ( p. 647), a point usually avoided by historians, generating several
pages of heated discussion that indeed, as Arturo Bernal acknowledges, directly
address the core of the original charge to the Dominican Historical Institute
( pp. 653–654).

So far, studies of individual inquisitors in this volume have tended to locate
their subjects in a coherent world-view that tends to contextualize their inquisitorial activities. The last individual inquisitor considered, Heinrich Institoris, is an inquisitor of another color. Walter Senner, O.P., “How Henricus
Institoris Became Inquisitor for Germany: The Origin of Summis desiderantis
[sic] affectibus” ( pp. 395–406), is an original and important study of Institoris’s
early career. After a modest early career as crusade preacher and teacher in a
Dominican convent, Institoris was made a praedicator generalis in 1478 or
1479. In 1478 he was appointed by Sixtus IV as inquisitor for Alemania superior and in 1482 as inquisitor in the diocese of Basel.In 1483 and 1484 Institoris
corresponded with Sixtus IV complaining of obstacles put in his way and for
the first time noting the dangers posed by mulierculum quarundam, fidem
catholicam erga incubus demones abnegantes ( p. 397). Institoris finally
elicited the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus from Innocent VIII, which
gave him inquisitorial authority over a large part of Germany and associated
him in this enterprise with Jacobus Sprenger, a respected inquisitor with whom
Institoris appears to have had extremely poor relations—as he did with many
others. With the papal bull in hand, Institoris began his ruthless career of fighting,“war against the axis of evil: the pactus between the powers of hell and malignant women” ( pp. 403–404). In one of the discussions, Senner dismisses
Institoris as “un uomo che mancava di fede cristiana” ( p. 453). Senner prints
an edition of Institoris’s Supplicatio for the bull on pp. 404–406.
The intelligent piece of detective work by Michael Tavuzzi, O.P.,“Lorenzo Soleri da Sant’Agata OP [ob. Ca. 1510]: The ‘inquisitor cumanus’ of the Malleus
Maleficarum. A Biographical Note” ( pp. 407–420), successfully identifies the
Como inquisitor mentioned, but not identified, by Heinrich Institoris in the
Malleus Maleficarum. For all the nuancing done on the careers of well-known
inquisitors here, there remains more to be done on other individual inquisitors.
But if Eymeric can and should be more carefully studied, as he is in the brilliant
work of Heimann, the same process at the hands of Senner confirms the conventional portrait of Institoris as a spiteful, envious, ambitious, and obsessed little man.

120

REVIEW ARTICLE

V
The problems of introducing and concluding such a collection as this are formidable. Grado Merlo’s opening essay is a characteristically learned and sensitive presentation of the state of scholarship on the broad topics of both Order
and inquisition. Nicole Bériou has a more difficult task—to assess the contribution of the conference volume to the state of the field and to suggest where the
field should go from here. Her concluding essay manages deftly to relocate virtually all of the papers and some of the discussions into the context of inquisitors as Dominicans.
Bériou begins with the reminder that although the Order and the inquisitorial process grew up together, the Order was not the master of the game. Popes,
bishops, and temporal authorities all played stronger authorizing and instrumentalizing roles—placing great responsibilities on the Order, particularly its
convents, and its non-inquisitor members for the success of the inquisitorial enterprise. Thus, the culture of the inquisitors must be understood in the context
of the culture of the Order, including the dangers of applying extensive theological learning into complex questions that confuse the faith of simple folk—
a point Bériou emphasizes by quoting Albertus Magnus to the effect that
inquisitors who do such things should be burned themselves!
One of the key questions for Bériou is the relation of Dominican inquisitors
to the Dominican Order, in terms of the absorption of inquisitor-martyrs into
the Order’s memory. Isolation of the inquisitor from the Order, however, seems
to her the exception. The assistance of non-inquisitor brothers, the rich conventual archives and documentary collections necessary for inquisitors, the
common Dominican experience of the searching of souls and the art of confession (the location of some of Bériou’s own earlier work), and the public resentment expressed at convents and the Order in general rather than against
individual inquisitors all reinforce her point. That is, to consider Dominican inquisitors exclusively as inquisitors is to neglect the nature and role of the Order
in their sense of identity and much of their work.
Bériou also suggests broadening the parameters of the problem of Dominicans as inquisitors so as to include other kinds of sources besides those most
commonly used by historians—Dominican scriptural exegesis,for example,and
the rich collection of sermon exempla, the Legenda Aurea, to demonology and
Dominican liturgy: “the massive intellectual production of the Dominican
brothers without doubt merits further investigation”( p. 780).And it will doubtless receive it as the work of Merlo and Bériou, their colleagues at this conference, and their successors—especially the excellent very young scholars
Parmeggiani, Heimann, Scharf, and Kras—goes on.

If memory is purified by historical clarification, the participants in this conference—and the Dominican Historical Institute in Rome—have done their job

REVIEW ARTICLE

121

well, although, as historians, perhaps somewhat differently from the way in
which the theologians who originally charged them may have expected. We
know much more about Praedicatores as Inquisitores at the end of this volume
than we did at its beginning. But we have also learned that it may be even more
illuminating to consider some Inquisitores as Praedicatores. Inquisitor hereticae pravitatis was always an office given to someone who was already something else—a Friar Minor, a Celestine, a Dominican—with the vocation,
education, training, acculturation, resources, and sense of self that such experiences and identities imparted. Surely Bériou’s suggestions in this regard lay out
inviting and important paths of future research—and not only for Dominicans
as inquisitors.14
EDWARD PETERS
University of Pennsylvania

14
One important study dealing with both the clarification of historians’ perspectives
and conceiving inquisitorial activities within “religion”is the article by Christine Caldwell
Ames,“Does Inquisition Belong to Religious History?” forthcoming in the American Historical Review (February, 2005).

BOOK REVIEWS

G e n e r al
The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the TwentyFirst Century. Edited by Doris L. Bergen. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 2004. Pp. xiv, 298. $37.50 hardback; $18.00
paperback.)
Military chaplaincy has a long history and, at a time of military conflict, reflection on its historical development is timely. This collection, put together by
a distinguished historian of religion under the stress of war and dictatorship in
mid-twentieth-century Germany,examines the development of chaplaincy from
the early church until the Vietnam war, looking chiefly at the Western tradition.
The early history of chaplaincy remains obscure; despite the search for scriptural precedent such as the support, literally, offered to Moses by Aaron and Hur
in the struggle against the Amalekites, it is not until the fifth century that Christian clerics accompanied soldiers into battle, as comforters rather than exhorters. This was to change radically with the development of “just war” theory so
that, in the Middle Ages, chaplains were used to justify the cause and boost the
morale of participants, often in highly developed quasi-liturgical ways which
were best expressed in those bloody endeavors under the Cross, the Crusades.
This justificatory role developed further under the fragmentation of Christendom during the Reformation, when the threat was not from the distant “other”
but from the enemy within, usually depicted as the forces of Antichrist or of Satan. Chaplaincy during these wars of religion, which convulsed Europe for almost two centuries, is treated rather briefly in the volume, by one essay on the
Civil Wars in mid-seventeenth-century Britain. In this essay, however, the importance of excoriating the enemy, as well as preaching the cause, is well illustrated by the differing approaches which Parliamentary chaplains had to their
Scottish Presbyterian opponents and the Irish Catholic enemies, against whom
violence was more easily justified. It is with the modern era, when the technological impact of violence on both individual combatants and groups becomes
extreme, that the volume is most concerned. The experience of chaplains during the American Civil War revealed to many of them the tension between religious faith and military efficiency, but by the early twentieth century it would
appear that, in a period of nation building, the priorities of governments meant
that “nationalistic rhetoric had defeated theological reflection.”

122

BOOK REVIEWS

123

The horrors of World War I were to shift the balance once again, and the experience of military chaplains led many Christians, at a time of de-Christianization,
to withdraw from their exhortatory role and give priority to that of comforter
once again. Comfort to the individual suffering soldier became combined with
what might be termed the role of ethical advisor to those engaged in modern
warfare, often conducted by weaponry which is designed to deliver its “payload” at some distance. In this context chaplains have become, where governments still seek to employ them (and those numbers are shrinking), the
defenders of the proper conduct of war, as much concerned with the treatment
of victims on both sides as with their own. This volume is given great force by
two chapters written by chaplains sharing their experiences; that of Rabbi Wall
in World War II, who was prepared to defy his military superiors in order to assist his surviving co-religionists in war-torn Europe, and of Father Joe O’Donnell, whose concerns about the purpose of his role in Vietnam led him to see
the need for a renewal of the basis for ethical policy thereafter. That tension
still, of course, exists, and chaplaincy faces the twin challenges of, on the one
hand, operating in an increasingly secularized world and, on the other, of adjusting to work within a multi-faith environment. History shows that chaplains
were often in the forefront of ecumenical endeavor, and of the care of victims.
It is to be hoped that reflection on the past will secure a positive future for a
civilizing presence in what is often, as recent news pictures have revealed, a
barbaric and barbarizing environment.
W. J. SHEILS
University of York

Sacred Tracks: 2000 Years of Christian Pilgrimage.By James Harpur.(Berkeley:
University of California Press. 2002. Pp. 192. $29.95 paperback.)
This nicely illustrated and well written volume focuses on some of the most
famous pilgrimage routes and sites of Western Europe. In the context of a broad
overview of church history, the author provides sufficient depth and understanding of history, theology, and of the nearly two-millennia-old phenomena of
Christian pilgrimage for the general reader. James Harpur, who wrote this book
while poet in residence at Exeter Cathedral in Devon, England, has divided the
text into three sections, thus emphasizing a classic manner of elementary historical “periodization”: the early, medieval, and modern church. While convenient for the purpose of the organization of his material, this approach has also,
and unfortunately, fostered views of “dark ages” and “Reformers” that are perhaps too simplistic, especially given the last generation of scholarship.
The text is compact with much interesting information, including important
quotations from historical figures and scholars. Generally rather accurate with
regard to places, church doctrines, and ecclesiastical structures, there are some

124

BOOK REVIEWS

errors and oddities (e.g.,“friars” who are referred to as “monks” and the designation of the Roman basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme as “St.Cross”).Anyone with a desire to pursue further research will undoubtedly be frustrated,
however, due to the fact that there are no footnote or endnote references to
such citations or to any other sources of information. There is a select bibliography and a helpful index. The book would also have been improved by the addition of maps, outlining both the location of the shrines described and the
traditional pilgrimage routes to them.
In essence, ten centers of prayer are highlighted: Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago
de Compostela, Canterbury, Lourdes, Knock, Croagh Patrick, Fatima, Iona, and
Taizé. Each is described in some detail with regard to historical and devotional
developments. Seven other centers are given brief notice in a four-page “gazeteer” section. In addition, there is discussion of the tradition of the Irish peregrini, the ebb and flow of the cult of relics, traveling conditions during the
medieval period, and of theological and spiritual opposition to pilgrimage, and
other appropriate commentary. Harpur is right to note that in an age when
“many churches in the West are more or less in decline, pilgrimage, with or
without secular adjuncts such as sightseeing or keeping fit, continues to thrive”
( p. 180). Though largely divorced from the ancient purpose of penance in the
mind of many modern practitioners, detachment from the ordinary and at least
some physical exertion beckons a new generation to traditional sites, as this
book reminds us.
JAMES F. GARNEAU
Diocese of Raleigh

L’archivio particolare di Pio X: Cenni storici e inventario. By Alejandro M.
Dieguez. [Collectanea Archivi Vaticani, vol. 51.] (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano. 2003. Pp. xxxii, 500. €30 paperback.)
The title of this oversized volume accurately indicates its contents: An inventory of the personal archives of Pope Pius X preserved in the Archivio Segreto
Vaticano; the inventory is introduced by the compiler’s “Historical Hints.” Most
of the fifty-three volumes of the Collectanea Archivi Vaticani series, begun in
1968 and detailing the Vatican Archives’ remarkable riches, are in print; several
are announced as “in preparation.”
The more casual researcher will perhaps find Dieguez’s heavily footnoted introduction more interesting than the exhaustive inventory. It presents in clear
and readable fashion valuable information about Pius X, his personal secretary,
Giovanni Bressan, and Bressan’s assistants, along with a host of other figures
who worked in various Vatican offices, congregations, and commissions. Included are thirty-four photographic reproductions of the pope, his personal
staff, and selected manuscript notes and letters. One gets a fascinating picture

BOOK REVIEWS

125

of the inner, quotidian operation of the papal offices and the Vatican during the
pontificate of Pius X.
The more serious researcher, however, will want to consult the six copiously
annotated inventories and appendix: (1) Pp. 1–219: Correspondence received,
materials arranged chronologically, with folio numbers supplied for each piece
of correspondence. (2) Pp. 221–227: Petitions for papal blessings. (3) Pp.
229–297: Requests for financial aid and a catalogue of gifts (unspecified) distributed to poor churches around the world (although most gifts went to Italian
churches) on the occasion of Pius X’s sacerdotal jubilee—clear evidence that
the pope perceived himself and was perceived by his clientele as a padrone; a
glance at the index shows that the vast majority of the correspondence was with
Italian clients. (4) Pp. 299–313: A record of thousands of requests for Masses to
be celebrated and to whom the Masses were disbursed—bishops and priests
throughout Italy (I saw no non-Italian name); presumably a stipend accompanied each request. (5) Pp. 317–355: A catalogue of correspondence regarding
subsidies to various personages and organizations, such as bishops, pastors, and
confraternities, for the construction or restoration of churches. (6) Pp. 357–361:
The Registri,a section listing the protocols and rubrics compiled by Bressan’s assistants relative to the correspondence and requests for financial aid. Finally,
L’Appendice, pp. 363–385: a heterogeneous collection of the writings of Pius X;
most had been borrowed from the Archivio Particolare for use in the pope’s canonization process.
An extensive name/place index, including names of groups (e.g., Compagnia
di Gesù) rounds out the volume. The lack of a subject index, however, means
that researchers will have to labor through hundreds of pages of text in undersized fonts to compile references to subjects of interest.The labor,however,will
be generously rewarded with numerous references to critical issues of the day
(e.g., Modernism)—a negligible price for the inestimable convenience of having a completely annotated catalogue at your fingertips and not having to pore
over innumerable manuscripts to find just the ones of interest to you.
The volume arrives with its pages uncut; apparently it is expected to sell only
to libraries that will send it to a binder to be cut and bound in hard covers.However, for the researcher interested in any issues during the pontificate of Pius X,
hand-slitting the pages will seem an insignificant inconvenience compared to
the ready access to the mountain of information provided. The €30 price tag
makes this book a terrific bargain for the interested scholar.
DAVID G. SCHULTENOVER, S.J.
Marquette University, Milwaukee

Kirche und Katholizimus seit 1945. Band 4: Die britischen Inseln und Nordamerika. Edited by Erwin Gatz. (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. 2002.
Pp. 150. €22.80.)

126

BOOK REVIEWS

In four chapters of unequal length this modest but well produced book informs German-speaking readers about the Church and Catholicism since 1945
in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. The presentations, well translated from English (save for a glitch regarding the length of Father Robert Drinan’s United States congressional terms), are uniformly clear and well written.
They are introduced, as one expects in a scholarly German work, by extensive
bibliographies, and supported by ample footnotes.
The Irish Jesuit Oliver P. Rafferty describes the situation of Catholics in Great
Britain. No longer a small despised minority, British Catholics today, thanks in
good part to the leadership of the late Cardinal Hume, are “more alive, less alien,
and more integrated into society than at any previous time in history.” Despite a
steep decline in religious practice, the number of Catholics who still practice
their faith is far higher than that of all other Christians combined. Though this
would qualify them to exert their influence on various levels,“English Catholics
remain reluctant, because of their history, to assume a leading role in society.”
Rafferty’s chapter on Ireland deals separately with the Church in the Republic and in Northern Ireland. Despite clergy sexual abuse scandals, the materialism engendered by unprecedented economic prosperity, and widespread
rejection of the Church’s teaching about sexual morality, “the Irish remain a
deeply religious people. . . . Sixty-three percent of Irish Catholics are still at
Mass on Sunday, a higher percentage than even in Poland.”
Jean-Claude Petit writes about the Church in Quebec. All-powerful as late as
the 1960’s, the Church’s only remaining trace of its former power and glory is
the large number of imposing church buildings and other institutions with their
ugly silver-painted roofs. Petit cites evidence, however, that Quebec Catholics
are starting to develop “a new self-understanding, and fresh credibility.”
Roberto Perrin portrays the Church in English-speaking Canada. Once a small
minority alienated from the overwhelming Protestant culture, Canada’s Catholics
are now a multi-cultural community and the largest religious body in the country. Led by bishops far more independent of Rome than their counterparts in
the United States and characterized by strong concern for social justice, Canadian Catholics today, Perrin writes, are “like Canadian society as a whole, in a
time of transition.”
The longest chapter, almost half the volume, is that on the United States. It is
written by the American Jesuit Gerald P. Fogarty (whose name is several times
misspelled). Fogarty is uniquely qualified for his task and executes it well. He
brings alive the exciting days of the Council. Though the pre-Vatican II American bishops,“more organizers and doers than thinkers and theologians,” were
ill-prepared for the Council, “they played a leading role in the areas of ecumenism, religious freedom, and relations with non-Christians” [i.e., Jews].
Fogarty introduces European readers to Cardinal Spellman, neither thinker
nor theologian, but a stout defender of a national church which could boast, as

BOOK REVIEWS

127

late as 1962, that seventy-five percent of its members attended Sunday Mass.
Fogarty cites the November, 1963, Council intervention of Auxiliary Bishop
Stephen Leven of San Antonio,Texas,refuting the charge that American support
for ecumenism reflected weakness in Catholic commitment: “It is not our
Catholics who stay away from Sunday Mass, do not receive the sacraments, and
vote Communist. Our Catholics are good Catholics, loyal to us bishops and to
the Holy Father. We have not lost the working classes. They are the foundation
and principal support of our church.” Fogarty’s laconic comment:“That was an
unmistakable allusion to conditions in Italy.” That such blunt speech is inconceivable today is a measure of how completely the American hierarchy has
been transformed in the present pontificate. Fogarty concludes with a full
description of postconciliar developments and the situation of American
Catholics in 1999.
German-speaking readers will find in these pages, alongside much that is familiar to them, also much which is not. One hopes that the book will be widely
read.
JOHN JAY HUGHES
Archdiocese of St. Louis

L’Opera Salesiana dal 1880 al 1922: Significatività e portata sociale.Volume
I: Contesti, quadri generali, interpretazioni; Volume II: Esperienze particolari in Europa, Africa, Asia; Volume III: Esperienze particolari in America Latina.Edited by Francesco Motto.[Instituto Storico Salesiano—Roma,
Studi 16–18.] (Rome: LAS [Libreria Ateneo Salesiano]. 2001. Pp. 469, 479,
557. €67,14 paperback for the 3 volumes.)
This particular series of volumes represents a significant step in the historical
self-evaluation of the Salesian mission in the period after the death of its
founder, Don Bosco, in 1888. What is published here in three volumes are the
papers that were first presented to the Salesian International Historical Congress, held at Rome October 31–November 5, 2000. It was the third worldwide
conference in a series which the Salesians have organized, the first being the
centenary conference in 1988, which considered the state of historical scholarship on Don Bosco’s life and work. Under the direction of Father Francesco
Motto, the Salesian Historical Institute have organized the subsequent Salesian
International Historical Congresses of 1995 and 2000, which concentrated
firstly on the available historical sources and then on the early development of
the Salesian work in the period after the death of Don Bosco.
The existence of the Salesian Historical Institute and its promotion of deeper
research and critical reflection have marked the coming of age of both the Salesian historians and the Major Superiors.Since the election of Father Egidio Vigano
as Rector Major, the Salesian Superiors General have been very open to the im-

128

BOOK REVIEWS

portant part that historical studies can play in developing the self-understanding
of a religious family. The ordinary Salesian’s natural tendency, given the urgent
needs of their mission to the young, is more often to make history and to be
rather impatient with those who want to research and study it critically. This series marks a considerable step forward in the acceptance of serious scholarship
as part of the common Salesian inheritance.
The present congress focussed on the “social impact and significance” of the
Salesian work, and the three volumes are divided thematically. The first volume
looks at the wider historical context of the development and attempts to interpret the Salesian phenomenon. The second volume looks at particular experiences in Europe,Africa, and Asia, and the third volume at particular case studies
in Latin America.
The very length of these volumes, each running to nearly 500 pages, and the
breadth of different experiences represented here highlight both the immense
vitality of the early development of the Salesian work and the difficulty of finding adequate historical sources and suitable perspectives for a critical evaluation of this experience.
The diversity of languages: the articles come in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and English, and the differences of culture and approach to historical
problems in those cultures make the volumes both very varied and also uneven.
Sometimes the articles can seem to be more commemorative rather than truly
critical.
The proceedings of the third international Salesian Historical Congress are
here published for a wider audience of scholars. They include the papers presented by fifty-five different scholars from across the world and reflect the
worldwide spread of the Salesian work.This third congress tried to focus on the
significance and social impact of the Salesian work from 1880 to 1922, that is,
during the last decade of Don Bosco’s life and during the massive expansion
which took place during the period of his two successors, Father Michael Rua
(1888–1910) and Father Paul Albera (1910–1921).
The various papers try to assess whether and to what extent the Salesian
model of working of a hundred years ago actually made any significant social
impact on building up its chosen field of work, namely, the young and the poor.
Father Motto suggests that the answer is a positive one: “The Salesians and
Daughters of Mary Help of Christians (Salesian Sisters) with their marked effort
in the social field (and in others) have left a real mark on the history of the
epoch. The pages which follow show or, more correctly, allow us to deduce by
intuition, how their (Salesian) objective was achieved by long and fatiguing
hard work on the part of generations of educators, thousands of persons who
faced up to sacrifice, conflicts and disappointments without giving up or forgetting to nurture their hope for a better world of an improved and more civilized Christian society” (vol. 1, pp. 5–6).

BOOK REVIEWS

129

The three volumes are divided thematically:a first volume,which aims to give
the general historical background, and some overview and interpretation; a second, which looks at particular experiences in Europe, Africa, and Asia, and a
third volume devoted to experiences in South America. This apparent imbalance devoting a whole volume to South America, in fact, reflects the real historical importance of the Salesian work in that region, first in Argentina and
then throughout the whole continent.
Given the fifty-five different contributors and the diversity of situations, particularly in terms of existing background studies, it is not surprising that there
is sometimes a certain unevenness among the various papers. In some situations the absence of many written sources has led to the extensive use of “aural
narratives” and the consequent difficulties in terms of balance and accuracy
that have sometimes arisen. The tendency to emphasize the achievements and
gloss over the disappointments and disasters is sometimes discernible in some
of the contributions. However, the whole congress was carefully set in context
by the papers given by M. Wirth and S. Sarti, which described the wider context
for the Salesians in terms of ideals and statistics, and those of G. Loparco and E.
Rosanna, who do the same for the Salesian Sisters.
Morand Wirth, with characteristic French clarity, raises the deeper question
of the title of the Congress. What do we mean by the social impact? Don Bosco
himself over and over again counseled the Salesians to avoid politics,“Ours is
the politics of the ‘Our Father.’” He seems deliberately to have avoided any
specifically intended social impact. The history of the Catholic Social Movement in Italy, however, was primarily a political one looking toward the foundations of the Partito Popolare and the Christian Democratic movement,
following the Opera dei Congressi. Wirth’s conclusion is that the Salesians deliberately focused on working for the needs of youngsters of the poorer sections of society but avoided adopting any specific political programme for the
transformation of that society.
Among the regional studies, the study by J. Borrego of the almost “physiocratic”ideas of Stanislaus Sollari, an Italian economist, promoted among Spanish
and Italian smallholders by Father Carlo Baratta and Father Peter Ricaldone is
outstanding. It shows that in an era of agricultural crisis and rural social unrest
and depopulation, the Salesians were at the forefront in promoting and diffusing both by education and publishing a different cooperative model to a society
in violent conflict.The extensive work of the Salesians in agricultural education
is well represented by this excellent article.
The section of this first volume on the Patagonian mission which disrupts the
overall organization of the three volumes, however, is probably justified in that
it indicates the huge significance that this, the first foreign mission, had for Don
Bosco himself, as being specifically granted to the Salesians as a Vicariate Apostolic. The pioneering work of the Salesians in this inhospitable land is celebrated both in its scientific educational and medical aspects by the articles on

130

BOOK REVIEWS

the work of Father Lino D. Carabajal, the Teachers Training college at Bahia
Blanca, and the hospitals of Viedma and Rawson.
In the second volume, on Europe,Africa, and Asia, the papers on Italy are carefully chosen to reflect the development of the work outside Piedmont, at Milan,
Trieste,Rome as well as Venice,Naples,and Macerata.In the rest of Europe,there
are papers on Madrid and Malaga as well as on foundations in Belgium, Paris,Vienna, Zurich, and Poland. On Africa, the foundations in Mozambique, Cape
Town,and the Congo receive attention,while in Asia,Tanjore in South India and
Macao in China are studied. Any attempt to generalize about such different
foundations and comment on the contributions of so many different authors is
futile. Suffice it to say that the scholars writing in this volume are very conscious of the social and political and the ecclesiastical background, which is
well established,and hence their articles can explore critically the social impact
of the Salesian work in each of the different contexts.
In particular, the paper by Father Carlo Sokol on the School of Arts and
Trades in Macao traces not only the development of the work itself but sees it
within the complex historical and social situation in this Portuguese colony already situated in a China in revolution. Here the significance of the Salesian
work is clear. The enterprise of offering modern technical education to the
poorest section of society, promoted not just their social advancement, but also
gave a clear message to this quasi-postcolonial society about the values espoused by Catholic missionaries in a rapidly changing Chinese context.
Perhaps less dramatically highlighted in the paper on Tanjore in South India is
the social impact of that particular work of technical education for orphan boys,
though probably the conclusion is much the same.Perhaps,to understand the social impact the reader requires more explanation of the vastly complex social,political, and multi-religious Indian situation to an audience unfamiliar with them.
This could also have helped to raise the essay from one of mostly local ecclesiastical interest to one of a case study of the wider social impact of the Salesian work
worldwide. It is clear, however, that the complex questions of the Portuguese
Padroado, the local non-Christian religious, caste, and cultural context, all contributed to the significant impact and ultimate failure of this particular work.
In the paper on Cape Town, the suggested conclusion is that the impact of
the cultural, religious, and social situation in South Africa effectively handicapped the Salesian mission not only in its foundation but also for many generations to come.
Having said that, these papers clearly indicate the immense impact of the expansion of Salesian work in so many contexts and are testimony to the worldwide importance if not the particular social significance of the Salesian work.
With almost no resources of money, political backing, or a highly educated elite
band of disciples, the Salesian work spread and took root not only all over Europe but in some parts of Africa and Asia as well as very extensively in Latin
America. Perhaps, this aspect highlights the most significant social impact of

BOOK REVIEWS

131

the Salesian work. How a small group of not exceptionally well educated but
highly motivated religious and lay people, without either government or much
private funding, changed the lives of generations of young people is an extraordinary story.
These volumes are to be sampled rather than read in their entirety, but given
their geographical spread and depth, there is something for almost everyone
here.
JOHN DICKSON, S.D.B.
Salesian House
Farnborough, Hants.

Ancient
Historia contra Mythos. Die Schriftauslegung Diodors von Tarsus und
Theodors von Mopsuestia im Widerstreit zu Kaiser Julians und
Salustius’ allegorischem Mythenverständnis. By Felix Thome. [Hereditas:
Studien zur Alten Kirchengeschichte, 24.] (Bonn: Verlag Norbert M.
Borengässer. 2004. Pp. xxxv, 252. €32; sFr 56,50.)

Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodorus of Mopsuestia are well-known representatives of the so-called Antiochene school of biblical exegesis. Their refusal to
accept allegorical interpretation of Scripture and their insistence upon its literal
truth put them at odds with Alexandrian exegetes, who, as heirs of Philo and
Origen (to say nothing of the Hellenistic Homerists), readily invoked allegory to
make sense of improbable or outlandish traditions. The emperor Julian enters
this debate because he encountered Diodorus personally at Antioch and wrote
a poisonous letter about him. Theodorus, a pupil of Diodorus, later wrote a reply to Julian’s anti-Christian tract contra Galilaeos. Since this followed the attack on Julian’s work from Cyril of Alexandria more than a generation earlier, it
is not impossible that Theodorus was simultaneously replying to Cyril.
The undisputed relevance of Julian to our understanding of Diodorus and
Theodorus has naturally impelled some scholars to look to him for an explanation of the hostility of these two exegetes to allegorical interpretation. Julian
had himself espoused such interpretation in making sense of the pagan myths
that he actively promoted during his reign. His position can be seen in his assault on the Cynic Heraclius and in his treatise on the Mother of the Gods (Cybele).So it was not unreasonable for Alois Grillmeier and Augusto Guida to raise
the issue of Julian’s influence on Diodorus and Theodorus, whose notorious
views supported a Nestorian separation of Christ’s divine and human natures.
With the encouragement of Hermann Vogt at Tübingen Felix Thome wrote a
doctoral dissertation to explore the whole matter.

132

BOOK REVIEWS

The book under review is that dissertation. Thorough as it is, it unfortunately
fails to make the case, as Vogt himself candidly acknowledges in a preface to
this publication. The book ploughs doggedly through all pertinent texts of Julian, Diodorus, and Theodorus, and it also throws in briefly the little treatise on
the gods and the cosmos by Julian’s contemporary, Salustius. But nothing ever
emerges to prove that the Antiochene resistance to allegory had its roots in a reaction to Julian on pagan myths. Julian’s religious convictions, and, above all, his
work against the Galilaeans were more than sufficient reason for contemporary
and later Christians to concern themselves with his views. If Cyril of Alexandria
and Theodorus of Mopsuestia went after Julian from different angles, that tells
us nothing about any reaction, on the part of either writer, to the emperor’s allegorizing. In fact, in a passage that both Cyril and Theodorus cite (Masarrachia
frg. 20), Julian makes quite plain that he considers biblical texts not susceptible
to the allegorizing he applies to pagan ones. They are simply too silly: he cites
Psalms 77 [78], 25 on man’s eating angels’ bread.
Thome’s inconclusive argument is largely developed through the presentation of numerous and lengthy quotations from pertinent texts in German translation. It seems as if he realized that the availability of this material will be the
principal reason for anyone, at least in Germany, to read his book. Translations
from Greek, Latin, and Syriac are, he says ( p. 14), made accessible to a German
reader for the first time. He repeats the claim on page 166. Thome has made a
full dossier of texts and discussed them intelligently, but his German translations cannot compensate for the absence of a convincing argument.
G.W. BOWERSOCK
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

On the Communion of Damasus and Meletius: Fourth-Century Synodal Formulae in the Codex Veronensis LX (with critical edition and translation). By Lester L. Field, Jr. [Studies and Texts 145.] (Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 2004. Pp. xii, 304. $69.95.)
This study begins by presenting a critical edition and translation of the 130
lines (in this edition) of Latin text with the rubric Exemplum synodi habitae
Romae episcoporum XCIII ex rescripto imperiali. This contains not only the
letter Confidimus quidem ( JK 232), but also the only surviving excerpts from
three other early Roman decretals—Ea gratia fratres, Illud sane miramur, and
Non nobis quidquam (none listed in Jaffe/Kaltenbrunner). Field then gives a
thorough codicological, text-critical, and historical examination of this dossier
in order to provide new insight on the historical situation surrounding the texts
themselves as well as the situation that produced them. Field concludes by supporting in large measure the scholarly consensus on the dating and production
of the Exemplum synodi: that Confidimus quidem was issued c.371; that the

BOOK REVIEWS

133

other three papal letters were issued sometime during the following five years;
that c.376 they were excerpted and added to Confidimus to produce the Exemplum; and that finally the other additions as well as the subscriptions which
follow in Verona LX were added at a synod of Antioch in 379. However, the author gives a much more nuanced and convincing Sitz im Leben for the documents than any previous study.
Most readers will find chapters four and five the most beneficial. As Field investigates the history of the text, he meticulously reconstructs the late fourthcentury interactions of the Roman bishops with the great Eastern sees. In
the process, Field gives a convincing explanation of the vexing problem of
the relationship between the Tome of Damasus (which he dates to 382)
and the related Per ipsum filium ( JK 235, c.375–378). However, his account
of the Tome’s fifth-century history (as well as various other discussions
in the book relating to early papal correspondence) fails to give due weight
to the disruption of the papal archives in the early fifth century ( probably in the
sack of 410). It is this disruption that caused the loss of so many early documents, and which has made the surviving fragments, such as those in the
Verona LX dossier, so valuable.
The major drawback of this monograph is Field’s own prose—in turn overly
dense,obtuse,cryptic,convoluted,and idiosyncratic.The cogent ancient citations
are translated in such a wooden style as to be at times unintelligible. Even a person familiar with the documents and issues involved will find himself re-reading
passages again and again before (usually) understanding what is being said. This
may significantly limit the book’s usefulness to scholars who are non-native
speakers of English and will certainly turn away all but the most serious undergraduate seeking a foothold in the fascinating worlds of late fourth-century papal
history, the schism of Antioch, or the early collections of canons. However,
those who tenaciously persevere will find a treasure trove of worthwhile information and insights. Future studies, not just of Verona LX, but of any aspect of
the Antiochene schism or Damasus’ relationship with Basil and the East, will
have to take this work seriously.
GLEN L.THOMPSON
Wisconsin Lutheran College

Medieval
Spiritual Seeing: Picturing God’s Invisibility in Medieval Art. By Herbert L.
Kessler. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2000. Pp. xv, 265.)
This fascinating book is largely composed of eight essays in which the author
in general discusses the possibility of picturing divinity during the Middle Ages
and the continuity of Jewish thought in Christian theology. The first chapter reviews the arguments concerning the permissibility of images of God, and the

134

BOOK REVIEWS

book concludes with the positive assessment of the relations between art and
doctrine. The basic problem, as Herbert Kessler sees it, is whether and by what
artistic means the divine grace and truth revealed by Christ’s Incarnation can
be represented in art.The chapters are delicately interwoven, and the abundant
visual and literary documentation allows the reader to follow step by step the
ever more conscious self-identification of Christian thought on images.
In the opening chapters Professor Kessler proves that the new language of
Christian images signified not only the invention of an iconography based on archetypal models, but also the redemption of the incapacity of the Jews to view
God. The enemies of iconoclasm refuted with subtle arguments the objections
to images, objections understood as undermining the reality of the Incarnation.
On the other hand they interpreted images as refuting not only Jewish law, but
also Jewish literalism.
This line of argument is continued in the third chapter. According to Cyril of
Alexandria and John Chrysostom the Old Testament is only the first draft which
lays out the fundamental sacred ideas, while the communion with Christ provides the precise and perfect painting. The New Testament, in other words,
completes the original sketch.The author deftly plays one argument against the
other to illustrate the increasing rigor employed by Christian apologists in the
development of image theory, by which they were convinced positively to surpass the Jews and negatively to demonstrate Jewish ignorance and blindness.
Even the techniques of artistic representation were eventually transformed
by theological considerations. Theodore of Studios compares the creative
process with the Incarnation itself. He notes that the original icon of the Holy
Face of Edessa was achieved not by copying but by the imprinting of Christ’s
face on a cloth.According to Nicephoros the task of art was not to illustrate the
external characteristics of the Saviour, but the essential aspects of his Incarnation. Art was now to visualize the invisible and to materialize the immaterial.
The Christian apologists refuted intellectually the iconoclastic proscription
of pictures; they justified the use of color and elevated the creative process to
the spiritual plane.The argumentation of the iconodules proceeded further and
was manifested theologically in art works as well as in the statements of the socalled Eighth Council: Whoever does not venerate the depicted face of Christ
will not be able to recognize him at his Second Coming. The veneration of images becomes a demanding spiritual task and at the same time denies to the
Jews any capability of divine cognition.
The image also acquired increasing importance in religious practice, for images resolve the tension between human materiality and invisible divinity and
provide different approaches to hidden truth. In spite of all the objections, the
triumph of images in 843 could not be prevented. Kessler illustrates again and
again the tissue of fine theological argument which justified artistic expression
and pressed at the same time to proceed ahead. His analyses of single works of
art clarify the alterations in exemplary manner.

BOOK REVIEWS

135

Carolingian art resumed the debate about words and images. In earlier chapters it is made clear that Christian interpretations of the relation between the
two had variously constituted the bases for image theories. The distinctions between words and images culminated now in the hypothesis that words were
only words while pictures also represented their spiritual interpretation and
transformation. Images surpass words at several levels of intention.
In the final chapter Kessler shows how Christian art acquired the freedom of
biblical interpretation. Abbot Suger’s project of St. Denis concretized the theological discussions of the twelfth century which attributed fresh importance to
image theory. Images came to be considered as interpreters of history, transcending the visible insofar as they indicate the real significance of the event
portrayed.Thus images not only fulfill the Old Testament, but assist the spiritual
understanding and interpretation of the sacred text.
The profound motivation of the requirement of images is the conviction that
permeates the whole book and leads finally to the conclusion that art makes doctrine visible and theology come alive. With these words the author ends his work.
Kessler’s presentation is curiously adequate to the art he helps us to understand: both proceed by the subtle repetition and intensification of certain central themes. In this sense it may be likened to a discursive meditation leading us
deeper and deeper into traditional Christian thought and its belief in the necessity of images. The ideal reader would require a patience similar to that
demonstrated by the author in the accumulation of the quantity of visual and
verbal examples necessary to sustain his argument and also of a similar knowledge of the Old Testament and the Christian Middle Ages. Less learned readers
would profit from a final résumé containing a more detailed presentation of the
admirable work than what is provided by the much-condensed preface.
YVONNE DOHNA
Rome, Italy

Early Medieval Bible Illumination and the Ashburnham Pentateuch. By
Dorothy Verkerk. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2004. Pp. x, 262;
36 black-and-white illustrations. $75.00.)
It is important to recognize what the book is not, and what it is. The title suggests two major topics, and is misleading about both. This is not a general study
of early medieval illumination in any broad sense, placing the Ashburnham Pentateuch into that much larger story. This is also not a monograph on the famous
Old Testament book that for roughly one thousand years was treasured and
studied in Tours, whence it was stolen by the infamous Guglielmo Libri, or
about its illustrations. Although Verkerk reproduces all eighteen of the large
miniatures contained in the book, the scale is very small; all are in black and

136

BOOK REVIEWS

white only, and the quality of the reproductions is, I am sorry to say, very disappointing. The best reproductions, and the only in color, are on the dust jacket,
which of course will be removed in libraries.Verkerk’s book is not a good place
to see the miniatures, as one might expect from a monographic publication, nor
to find a description and discussion of all of them, for although all are illustrated, most are never discussed at all. Similarly, although many aspects of the
book are considered, including texts and palaeography, these topics are treated
very summarily; there is no usable description of the volume.
This book might more accurately have been titled something like “Essays on
the Ashburnham Pentateuch.” It presents a useful series of concise essays
springing from particular issues presented by some of the miniatures themselves and by previous scholarship. One chapter is devoted to the long-popular
theory that the illustrations reflect Jewish sources, either literary or pictorial.
One chapter gives an overview of the manuscript’s history and contents. Two
chapters attempt to localize the production of the book in Rome, the first arguing that the city was not so impoverished as often understood and was thus
able to provide the resources for such a project, and the second making a specific argument that the Ashburnham Pentateuch has features best explained by
a Roman origin. The last chapter argues that the book and its illustrations envisaged a primarily clerical audience, most likely deacons, who used it in connection with the preparation of other deacons, and ultimately of catechumens.
The two chapters at the heart of the book, offering some of its most effective
material,are devoted to a close reading of a few of the miniatures,the Creation,the
Deluge, the opening of the Ark and Noah’s offering, the Crossing of the Red Sea,
Moses receiving and reading the Law above the Tabernacle, Cain and Abel, and Jacob and Esau.These chapters are full of interesting observations and plausible explanations based on textual and liturgical sources.For example,Verkerk effectively
notes the emphasis on altars in the Noah and Moses scenes,and suggestively links
these with liturgical ceremonies and typological significance. In both images the
altar is equipped with chalices and/or bread,recalling the current Christian liturgy
rather than following the specifications of the Old Testament texts.In both scenes
the men at the altar are dressed in white, an unusual costume within the manuscript as a whole, suggesting typological connections with Christian clergy. In the
Moses miniature, the Levites standing behind him number seven, which Verkerk
connects with the seven deacons established by the apostles in Acts 6, and also
with the seven deacons and diaconates of the church in early medieval Rome. As
Verkerk describes it, the Tabernacle of the Exodus scene does not follow the textual description but instead appears to represent a Christian church, the central
object being not the Ark of the Covenant but a draped Christian altar.In effect the
composition recalls the sixth-century mosaic of Abel and Melchisedec in San Vitale, Ravenna, which provides not only a visual parallel but also a similar anachronistic, and typological, association of Old Testament figures with a Christian altar.
With the Cain and Abel miniature, Verkerk offers a very different kind of interpretation, suggesting that here the design and contents of the miniature de-

BOOK REVIEWS

137

pend not on the biblical text but on some version of the Vita Adae et Evae tradition. The contrast between the plainly-garbed Eve who nurses Abel and the
luxuriously-garbed Eve who plays with Cain is interpreted in light of I Timothy
2, in which Paul enjoins women to dress modestly, and Verkerk goes on to extend the moralizing interpretation to many apparently minor details of costume
and flora. In the Jacob and Esau miniature she gives a persuasive close reading
that offers a meaningful interpretation for the odd choice and arrangement of
the images. The contrast between black goats and white sheep certainly suggests a reference to Matthew 25:32,but the claim that Isaac’s hand gestures contrast the reception of Jacob and Esau seems forced; at least in the photographic
reproductions here, the gestures seem to be the same rather than different. Yet
the contrast between Esau and Jacob set into the right margin, at least partially
outside the frame, is very effectively highlighted.
Verkerk gives an extended discussion of the theory that the Ashburnham
Pentateuch’s illustrations reflect, and in some extreme versions closely reproduce, lost Jewish biblical illustrations or midrashic literature. On the whole
Verkerk finds the theory unpersuasive, influenced by many factors, such as recent scholarship by L.V.Rugers that finds no narrative art at all in the Jewish catacombs of Rome. Although this point is worth making, it seems to me that
Verkerk gives it rather too much weight; funerary art might well have had a different tradition from book art, or for that matter synagogue art, as at Dura Europos. The absence of Jewish figural art in the city of Rome seems of particular
significance for the Ashburnham Pentateuch only if one accepts Verkerk’s view
that the manuscript originated in that city, and even if one does, there are centuries between the catacombs and the production of the book. The virtual assumption in much earlier scholarship that medieval art always copied some lost
source, focusing attention on what we have lost rather than on what we have,
has been attacked by many scholars, whom she joins. What is of greatest value
in Verkerk’s work, in my view, is the attempt to find explanations for many features of the book and its decoration in the functional and cultural context in
and for which it was produced. Seen in this way, the issue of possible lost models, ultimately incapable of being either proven or disproven, is neither very interesting nor very significant.
Finally, the issue of localization. There is simply nothing very like the Ashburnham Pentateuch, whether in its illustrations or its script. Wherever it was
produced, it was likely an unusual project rather than in any sense typical. Verkerk makes a strong attempt to localize the book in Rome, and the suggestion
seems to me eminently plausible, but not more than that. The negative argument that it seems unlike anything we have from Gaul or Spain is not very helpful; it is also not like anything that we have from Rome. The similarities with
books likely to have been produced somewhere in Italy are not to my eyes compelling, and in any event the contrast between “Italian” and “Gaulish” manuscript production between the sixth and eighth century is far too reductive to
be very helpful. The Codex Amiatinus was not, after all, despite its many Ital-

138

BOOK REVIEWS

ianate features and parallels, written in Italy but in Northumbria. We have no
luxuriously decorated or illustrated books from York, or Lyon, or for that matter
Rome; we cannot be certain that any were produced in these important centers, nor can we be confident of their appearance if they once existed.Verkerk’s
frequent use of Roman liturgical and textual sources in her interpretations of
the miniatures is valuable and interesting, but not much of an argument for an
origin in Rome. Roman liturgies were widely emulated or adapted elsewhere;
the manuscripts she perforce uses to ascertain just what Roman liturgy was
during this period are themselves Frankish manuscripts, not Roman. The seven
deacons she identifies in one of the miniatures are an important feature of the
urban church in Rome, but, as she points out, depend upon a scriptural passage
of universal currency. On the point of origin of the book, a healthy agnosticism
still seems in order. Scholarship has probably devoted too much effort to the
question of origins, which often becomes a reductive and schematic exercise,
forcing a definitive choice beyond the limitations of our knowledge. More interesting is the discourse to which Verkerk’s book effectively contributes, a discourse not about where books were made but about for whom they were
made, what they signified, and how they were used.
LAWRENCE NEES
University of Delaware

The Seafaring Saint: Sources and Analogues of the Twelfth-Century Voyage of
Saint Brendan. By Clara Strijbosch. Translated by Thea Summerfield.
(Dublin: Four Courts Press. Distributed by ISBS, Portland, Oregon. 2000. Pp.
x, 325. $65.00.)
The main aim of this book is to examine the relationship between the
twelfth-century story,De reis van Sint Brandaan (“The Voyage of St.Brendan”)
and Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (“The Voyage of the Holy Abbot St.
Brendan”), written some time between the eighth and the tenth centuries. The
author examines corresponding episodes in the two tales to determine if the
Navigatio served as a source of the Reis (henceforth the Voyage) and seeks to
establish whether these correspondences “suggest literal translation, adaptation, or merely a vague kind of derivation” ( p. 4).
The work, which is based on a book published in Dutch in 1995, is divided
into seven chapters, and includes sixteen illustrations, a short preface, seven
short appendices, a bibliography, an index to episodes, and a general index.
The first chapter is mainly concerned with establishing the contents of the
lost twelfth-century original of the Voyage based on the texts of the three extant branches: a Middle Dutch version in verse represented by two redactions;
two Middle High German versions in verse; and a German version in prose,
which is extant in five manuscripts and twenty-two printed editions. Since the

139

BOOK REVIEWS

extant versions often go their own way, the reconstruction of the contents of
the original is a tricky business and does not depend simply on establishing the
relationship between the branches.
The real meat of the work lies in the following chapters. Having reviewed the
episodes in the two tales, Strijbosch concludes that sixteen of the thirty-three
episodes contained in the Voyage are,“to a larger or smaller degree, related to
the Navigatio” ( pp. 59–60), and that in a number of these instances “the possibility of a literal translation or more or less faithful adaptation cannot be ruled
out” ( p. 59).
She proceeds to examine possible influences of later works, such as the
German text Herzog Ernst, concluding that the Voyage and Herzog Ernst may
have used a common Latin source for some episodes ( p. 87). Other episodes
have their origins in works about marvels of the East. Then, the influence of the
Physiologus-Bestiaria tradition, the geographical-ethnological tradition, visionary literature, and “sinful saints” are investigated ( pp. 89–124).
The author concludes that the Voyage is based both on a variety of earlier
texts and sources, including the Navigatio, and on more or less entirely new
material.In the final chapter,innovations which affect the tale’s frame and structure, are discussed. Unlike earlier versions, it is framed as an eyewitness report,
not fiction but historia proper.
The discussion on earlier sources comes down heavily in favor of a protoMáel Dúin tale (equivalent to the second part of the early Irish “The Voyage of
Máel Dúin”) as being the source of a proto-Navigatio which in turn was the
source of the extant Navigatio. The relationship between these texts, and the
relationship between them and other Irish voyage tales (immrama), is a thorny
and difficult one. It seems certain that there were floating stories, both written
and oral, which form the basis of the voyage tales, including the Navigatio.
Strijbosch assumes too readily the priority of Máel Dúin, dismissing theories
which seem to have stronger explanatory adequacy. The possible influence of
the Navigatio on Máel Dúin, for example, does not exclude the prior existence
of floating Máel Dúin-type material which also influenced the form and content of the Navigatio itself.
The appendices are useful, including the two on the Vita Brendani. There is
a good bibliography of primary and secondary sources. (This reviewer’s “Contributions to a study of the Voyages of Saint Brendan and Saint Marlo,” in C. Laurent and H. Davis [eds.], Irlande et Bretagne, vignt siècles d’histoire [Rennes,
1994], pp. 40–55, has been overlooked.)
Overall, this is a valuable and useful contribution to the subject.
SÉAMUS MAC MATHÚNA
University of Ulster
Coleraine, Northern Ireland

140

BOOK REVIEWS

Queenship and Sanctity: The “Lives” of Mathilda and the “Epitaph” of Adelheid. Translated with an introduction and notes by Sean Gilsdorf. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. 2004. Pp. xviii, 221.
$24.95 paperback.)
Although women, not so very long ago, were assumed to be marginalized in
the Middle Ages, recent scholarship has revealed that they can be found all
through the sources if one looks for them. In this volume, Sean Gilsdorf makes
two medieval women much more visible by translating their vitae. Mathilda
and her daughter-in-law Adelheid were both queens of Ottonian Germany, who
lived in the second half of the tenth century. In the late tenth and early eleventh
centuries, two different “lives” of Mathilda were written—the first most likely
by a nun—as well as a briefer “life”(or “epitaph”) of Adelheid. Mathilda’s second
“life” contains many of the events of her later years, which occurred after the
first “life” was written, and has a good deal of overlap with the events in Adelheid’s “epitaph,” so it is appropriate that all these versions appear together. This
volume includes the first English translations of the three texts as well as an extensive introduction.
Unlike most saintly women, Mathilda and Adelheid were not nuns or recluses
but women active in the world. Indeed, the tenth-century author of Mathilda’s
first “life” had to go back four hundred years, to the holy queen Radegund, to
find a good model to use in describing someone who was a queen, a wife, and
a mother, as well as an admirable example of sanctity. Mathilda was the wife of
Henry the Fowler, first in his line to take the German throne, and had at least
five children, while Adelheid married two kings—Lothar of Italy and Otto I of
Germany—and also had at least five children, including a king and a queen. The
two queens’ sanctity was expressed particularly through their support of regular monasticism, especially Cluniac houses; indeed, Adelheid’s “epitaph” was
written by Abbot Odilo of Cluny.Odilo mentioned a few tomb miracles for Adelheid, but the emphasis in the “lives” was on activities which any powerful secular ruler ought to be able to emulate. The “lives” of these queens thus provide
intriguing examples both of powerful medieval women and of a particularly
royal form of sanctity.
This is an exemplary volume, which should certainly make these relatively
overlooked queens much better known. It should immediately find a place in
upper-level courses both on medieval women and on medieval Germany. Helpful maps and family trees assure the reader can keep all the people and places
straight.Although the principal audience is students who do not read Latin, academic historians should also find the volume very useful.The introduction puts
Mathilda and Adelheid into their political and social context as well as discussing issues of textual authorship and dating. The analysis of the role of
queens in a patriarchal society and the shifting politics of their time are scholarly contributions in their own right. The endnotes and bibliography are thorough and up-to-date. The appendix includes a detailed discussion of the

BOOK REVIEWS

141

evidence for Mathilda’s ancestry, a discussion that, while brief, raises important
issues about family consciousness.In his translation,Gilsdorf has managed to retain some of the flavor of the original medieval Latin, including the alliteration,
while still producing a text that is easy and enjoyable to read. Notes identify the
biblical and classical authors from whom the biographers of the queens often
borrowed phrases. The series of translated texts from Catholic University Press
has so far brought many important works to greater prominence—of which
this is one of the more impressive efforts—and one certainly hopes the series
will continue.
CONSTANCE B. BOUCHARD
University of Akron

Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Life of the Mind. By John R. Sommerfeldt. (Mahwah, New Jersey: Newman Press/Paulist Press. 2004. Pp. xviii, 197. $19.95
paperback.)
Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Spirituality of Relationship. By John R. Sommerfeldt. (Mahwah, New Jersey: Newman Press/Paulist Press. 2004. Pp. xvi,
178. $19.95 paperback.)
John R. Sommerfeldt, Professor of History at the University of Dallas, is a foremost authority on the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux and Aelred of Rievaulx.
In the first of these books Sommerfeldt concentrates on Bernard’s views on
how humans come to acquire knowledge, a subject which greatly interested
the abbot of Clairvaux.
Sommerfeldt considers four ways of knowing, with the initial chapter in the
book being a general discussion of the role of epistemology in Bernard’s
thought, called the “life of the mind.”The first path to truth is that of faith or the
mystical way, by far the most important for Bernard. Charismatic knowledge
need not be limited to monks, for it is a gift of the Holy Spirit. But the normal
means to truth for monks is contemplation, explored at considerable length in
Bernard’s sermons, especially those on the Song of Songs.
The second road to knowledge is that of the seven liberal arts or humanism,
which Bernard deems more appropriate for clerics than for monks. He has, to
be sure, reservations about classical studies, but he believes they are useful in
the ministry, particularly for prelates. Closely related to the liberal arts is the
pursuit of philosophy, the third approach to sources of wisdom. While hardly
enthusiastic about the scholastic movement, the abbot acknowledges the utility
of logic for clerics in learning moral principles, the nature of the human condition, and canon law. The fourth kind of knowledge is common-sense consideration and counsel, which are attainable by anyone. It is interesting that Bernard
leaves open the opportunity for occasional prophets who might provide the

142

BOOK REVIEWS

kind of counsel only a holy person can give. Yet at the same time he emphasizes
the need for those in authority to receive sound advice.
Sommerfeldt notes that Bernard was reluctant to arrange faith, understanding, and opinion—the main ways of acquiring knowledge—according to specific groups of people. His use of contemplation and meditation cannot be
easily categorized in set hierarchical patterns. As might be expected of a Cistercian, Bernard’s literary methods are more rhetorical, with multiple-layered
meanings, than logical. He does not reject philosophical studies—at least for
clerics—as long as the motive for learning is God-driven. Bernard’s insistence
on the pursuit of virtue finds a parallel in his life as a self-styled “chimaera,”
referring to his own active life of writing, travel, and negotiations. As a selfappointed prophet, he justifies his extra-monastic forays into disputes by alluding to his loving concern for the Church and for all Christians, especially for
those in positions of authority.
The final chapter deals with the conflict between Bernard and Abelard. The
author acknowledges that Bernard’s motives were complex, and that Abelard’s
pride led to his theological errors, as might be expected from a monk such as
Bernard, who tended to moralize. I would have liked more consideration of
some of the recent scholarly assessments of the controversy, as well as the critical editions of Abelard’s theological writings.
This masterful study brings together a great number of Bernardine motifs,
which are integrated with the central theme of the ways of acquiring knowledge. Sommerfeldt’s command of the corpus of Bernard is truly impressive,
with a knack for selecting the relevant passages to illustrate each section. This
major work is a valuable contribution to our understanding of how Bernard’s
theories of knowledge underlay his responses to contemporary disputes. Sommerfeldt has produced an original gem which historians of medieval thought
will welcome. It is highly recommended.

On the Spirituality of Relationship complements the above work on epistemology, for it analyzes Bernard of Clairvaux’s notion of the three orders of society. While much has been written on the three orders in twelfth-century
thought in general and Bernard in particular, Sommerfeldt’s study is the most
thorough in any language. When monastic authors employed metaphors to express the “orders” of the Church or society they were usually trying to promote
a larger role for monks in the life of the Church.At other times, the monastic authors were reformers who were dismayed by just such an expansion of activities in the world. Monks searched for clarity in their own place in society,
especially when their activities conflicted with those of clerics and laymen.
They wanted more precise definitions of their functions, during a century
when the nature of the vita monastica was being scrutinized.

BOOK REVIEWS

143

In the twelfth century there were numerous literary images of the functions of
the main social groupings. One of the best known was those who fight, those
who work, and those who pray. The last community was the most ambiguous,
since it comprised a myriad of various kinds of clerics and monastics. One of the
most common of the tripartite models of the Church was that of the Old Testament figures of Noah, Daniel, and Job. (Anthropologists tell us that humans have
a penchant for groups of threes.) For Bernard these stood for prelates,monks,and
laity. Sommerfeldt carefully traces the uses of these metaphors in Bernard’s writings as they depict social duties, and how they relate to each other.The virtues of
the clerics are duly analyzed, as are the diverse responsibilities of the laity.
The most original chapter (eight) of the volume assesses the relationship
among the three orders. Sommerfeldt shows that the hierarchy of the orders
contains nuances, which do not easily correspond to social rankings. The three
orders have more to do with the virtues of those who comprise each order. The
Spirituality of Relationship elaborates on some of the issues raised in the first
book. These two very fine volumes make a perfect match.
THOMAS RENNA
Saginaw Valley State University

Adrian IV the English Pope (1154–1159): Studies and Texts. Edited by Brenda
Bolton and Anne J. Duggan. [Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval
West.] (Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Co. 2002. Pp. xv, 343.
$84.95.)
The occasion for this volume was the nine-hundredth anniversary of the
birth, c. 1100, at Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, of Nicholas Breakspear, who was
to become Pope Adrian IV (1154–1159),“the English pope” (a historical anomaly less striking perhaps to contemporaries in light of the existence of a Polish
pope). This event was celebrated in a conference at St. Albans in the summer of
2000 devoted to “the world and legacy of the only Englishman to sit on the papal throne” ( p. ix). But Adrian IV is not simply the proceedings of that conference. In addition to the papers originally presented at St. Albans five others
were specially written for this book. Adrian’s predecessor, Eugene III, reigned
for more than eight years and his successor, Alexander III, for twenty-two. In
their preface, the editors wrote that “since the pontificate [of Adrian IV] has
been largely neglected in recent historical scholarship,” not only have they produced this collection of essays but they have added an array of Latin sources
concerning Pope Adrian, with English translations.
The volume opens with an elegant study by Christopher Brooke,“Adrian IV
and John of Salisbury.” Christoph Egger, in an essay titled “The Canon Regular:

144

BOOK REVIEWS

Saint-Ruf in context,” focuses on the house of canons near Avignon that the
young Nicholas Breakspear joined at an unknown date (but probably before
1140), and over which he later presided as abbot. Two papers—Damian J.
Smith, “The Abbot-Crusader: Nicholas Breakspear in Catalonia,” and Anders
Bergquist,“The Papal Legate: Nicholas Breakspear’s Scandinavian Mission”—are
devoted to Nicholas’ ecclesiastical career before he became pope. Susan E.
Twyman,“Summus Pontifex. The Ritual and Ceremonies of the Papal Court,”
discusses the liturgical environment surrounding Adrian’s pontificate. The
volume’s editors contribute two papers apiece. Brenda Bolton’s article titled
“St. Alban’s Loyal Son” investigates the relationship between Pope Adrian and
his birthplace, which he showered with papal privileges. In a second study,
“Nova familia beati Petri: Adrian IV and the Patrimony,” she deals with
Adrian’s relationship with the assemblage of lands centered on Rome over
which the pope exercised and/or claimed various rights (adding [p. 179] an
appendix giving a valuable “Summary Itinerary” of the pontificate). Anne Duggan, “Totius christianitatis caput: The Pope and the Princes,” discusses the
volatile political world with which Pope Adrian had to contend in the 1150’s;
and in the final essay,“Servus servorum Dei,” she puts at readers’ disposal her
considerable knowledge of Adrian’s chancery personnel and papal decretals
(including an appendix which lists papal decretals transmitted in canon law
sources).
The “Sources and Documents” which form the second part of this book are a
small treasury. The first and longer section contains narrative sources, and the
second offers a selection of Adrian’s papal privileges and charters. Historians
and students of the medieval papacy already possess valuable texts in English
translation, e.g., the Register of Pope Gregory VII, and a lengthy selection from
the correspondence of Innocent III. But for the great majority of medieval
popes nothing is available in translation. The more than fifty pages of texts
which are translated here, from and concerning Pope Adrian IV, are a welcome
addition. The medieval authors included are Cardinal Boso (an intimate of
Adrian IV who wrote the pope’s Vita, which is given here in its entirety), Otto
of Freising, William of Newburg, Godfrey of Viterbo, Gerald of Wales, Matthew
Paris, Bernard Gui, and Bartolomeo Platina. It would be useful if the editors at
some point make this collection of primary sources generally available to students. The perspective about Adrian offered therein is a valuable contribution
toward seeing him per se and not merely in light of the events of the long reign
of his successor.
Adrian IV the English Pope concludes with an index. But note certainly
should be made of the splendid frontispiece (courtesy of Professor Susan Boynton) from Paris, BNF, lat. 5411, fol. 253r. From the Chronicon Casauriense, fol.
253 includes a transcription of a papal privilege of Adrian for the monks of S.
Clemente a Casuria, accompanied by a large ink drawing of the pope vested in
pontifical robes conveying a blessing (see Italia pontificia 4.303, no. 13 [ JL

BOOK REVIEWS

145

10557]). That drawing also is reproduced on the front cover of the book—a
volume which should encourage an appraisal of Adrian IV in his own right.
ROBERT SOMERVILLE
Columbia University

The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, Volume I:
Text edited by Marianne Ailes and Malcolm Barber.The History of the Holy
War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte; Volume II: Translation by
Marianne Ailes with notes by Malcolm Barber. (Rochester, New York: Boydell Press. 2003. Pp. xvii, 211; xix, 214. $125.00 the set.)
Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte is one of the most important primary
sources for the Third Crusade (1189–1192). It recounts the events of the crusade from the point of view of the Anglo-Norman contingent. Its hero is King
Richard the Lionheart—Ambroise being one of the earliest authors to give him
this title (line 2306 and vol. 2, p. 65). This is an exciting tale of war, victory, and
defeat, but although told in the same style as the epic chansons de geste it is a
serious and accurate historical source. It is also one of the earliest works of history in French, holding an important place in the development of vernacular
historiography. Scholars and students of the crusades, medieval warfare, and the
reign of Richard the Lionheart will be indebted to Marianne Ailes and Malcolm
Barber for this modern edition of Ambroise’s work, with its readable translation
and thorough introduction and notes.
This work is in two volumes.The first contains a short introduction describing
the manuscript and editorial principles, a new edition of the text, and an index.
The second contains an historical introduction considering the author and date
of the text and describing the crusade and other contemporary accounts (Christian and Muslim) with maps and a chronology of the crusade,a translation of Ambroise’s text with detailed explanatory notes, and a bibliography and index.
The importance of this edition is the greater because there is at present no
book-length scholarly study of the Third Crusade.Students studying the crusade
must refer to modern biographies of individuals such as Malcolm Lyons and
David Jackson’s study of Saladin or John Gillingham’s studies of Richard the Lionheart, to various short studies of aspects of the crusade such as David Jacoby’s study of Conrad of Montferrat, to short accounts of the crusade in wider
studies of crusades such as Sidney Painter’s account of the Third Crusade in
Kenneth M. Setton’s A History of the Crusades, and to translations of the primary sources. Recent translations have included my translation of the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta Regis Ricardi (1997), itself closely related to
Ambroise’s Estoire, and D. S. Richards’ translation of the work of Baha’ al-Din ibn

146

BOOK REVIEWS

Shaddad (2001),but Ambroise’s work stands alone in its immediacy,its narrative
strength, and its careful use of technical military and naval terms.
Ambroise himself is a mysterious figure.Ailes and Barber note that references
in the text point to a Norman origin, and make the plausible suggestion that he
was the same clerk Ambroise who sang at the coronation of King John and his
queen Isabella in 1199 (vol. 2, p. 2).The fact that he writes as an eyewitness and
his narrative skill may too easily mislead the reader into thinking that Ambroise’s account tells us all that we need to know about the Third Crusade. In
fact, his account on its own is misleading. He tells us little about the crusade before the arrival of King Richard in the East in June, 1191. The role of Conrad of
Montferrat in saving Tyre and the roles of the Italians and the Germans are almost overlooked. It is not clear from Ambroise’s work why King Richard regarded Conrad as such a dangerous rival nor why Conrad acted as he did in
opposition to Richard. Ambroise does not emphasize Richard’s family connection with the ruling family of the kingdom of Jerusalem, so that we may believe
that Richard’s prominence in the crusade was due solely to his piety and military skill, and not that the crusade was also Richard’s family concern. Ambroise
gives his audience only a brief glimpse of the political rivalries in the kingdom
of Jerusalem and of Saladin’s other commitments and problems within the Muslim army. So although his account is an essential source for the Third Crusade it
is best used in conjunction with other primary sources, and readers should refer to Ailes and Barber’s introduction to the translation for an overview of the
whole crusade.
Ambroise’s work survives in only one manuscript, although the discovery in
1988 of a single leaf fragment of another manuscript confirms that at least one
other manuscript existed. The first published edition of Ambroise’s work appeared in 1897, edited by Gaston Paris, an eminent scholar of Old French epic
literature. Where Paris believed that lines were missing from the text, especially
where he found a sequence of three rhyming lines rather than two or four, he
inserted a line of dots which he counted as a line. For this new edition the editors have not followed this practice, noting that Ambroise could well have intended three sequential rhyming lines (vol. 1, p. 16, note). As a result the line
numbering differs between the two editions:Paris’s edition has a total of 12,352
lines, while the new edition has 12,313 lines. A difference of thirty-nine lines
overall is not material, but scholars will need to specify in references which edition they are using. There are also some small differences between the readings
in the two editions. The editors note that they have made fewer corrections to
the text than Paris did, but—perhaps because Paris made a great many changes
that they consider inappropriate—do not usually point out where Paris made a
change that they have not adopted.
The translation reads smoothly and clearly and is generally very accurate.
Scholars and students must remember, however, that a translation is an aid to
understanding, not a replacement for the original text. So line 1853,“Sil nel velt

BOOK REVIEWS

147

pas del tot clamer quite”(literally,“as he did not wish to let him off completely”)
becomes in the translation (vol. 2, p. 57) “he did not wish him to go scot-free,”
which captures the immediacy of the original while introducing a national
stereotype that is not in the original. Occasionally there is a slight awkwardness
in translation: in describing beautiful decorations,“Com si ço fust ovre de fee”
(line 2158) becomes “as if it were the work of the fairy” (vol. 2, p. 62); rather
than, perhaps,“fairy-work.” But these are minor points; overall the translation is
excellent.
Ailes and Barber have made a significant contribution to scholarship, in producing an edition of this important text that meets modern standards and an accessible, fully referenced translation. The only drawback is the price, which is
beyond student pockets. The two-volume edition suggests the possibility of a
paperback edition of volume 2—the historical introduction and translation—
marketed for student use. Such an edition would also be welcomed by the wide
readership outside academia with an interest in medieval warfare and the crusades.
HELEN NICHOLSON
Cardiff University
Wales

God and the Goddesses:Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages. By Barbara Newman. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2003. Pp. xv,
446. $42.50.)
In God and the Goddesses, Barbara Newman addresses the intrusion of female polytheism in a male monotheism. Newman insists that the issue at stake
is not the status of women in medieval Church and society, but the status of
femininity in “religious imagination” ( p. 38).
Newman starts with five examples of medieval goddesses: Saint Francis’s
Lady Poverty, Mechthild of Magdeburg’s Lady Love, Henri Suso’s Eternal Wisdom, William Langland’s Lady Church, and Christine de Pizan’s female Trinity of
Reason, Right, and Justice. Thus Newman underlines “the scope and pervasiveness of the goddess phenomenon in medieval writings” ( p. 25). She divides the
numerous medieval feminine personifications (vices, virtues, arts, etc.) into
“mere rhetorical tropes” and “Realistic or Platonic personification.” The goddesses belong to the latter group and are defined as “epiphanies or emanations
of a superior reality” ( p. 33–35). This I can admit, but I am not convinced by
Newman’s linking of medieval allegory to philosophical realism ( p. 30). Between “humanity” as a reality transcending each human individual and Lady Nature as God’s daughter, the connection is far from obvious. The rest of the
chapter lays out the four main functions Newman attributes to medieval god-

148

BOOK REVIEWS

desses:allowing safer discussions of loaded theological questions;mediating between various religious experiences; dramatizing God’s contradictory aspects;
expressing “gender-specific psychological and cultural needs” ( p. 39).
Chapter 2 introduces Natura as goddess of the cosmos. In Bernard Silvestris’s
Cosmographia and Alan of Lille’s De Planctu Naturae and Anticlaudianus
Natura plays a central and contradictory role: powerful and submissive, visible
and mysterious, virginal and sexy. Bernard views Natura as a mediator between
a Neo-Platonist cosmos and the Christian Creator ( pp. 59–60) while Alan connects Natura to Christ and salvation ( p. 66); both use Natura to define a “distinct
realm” under her “dominion” ( p. 89).
In Chapter 3, Natura appears as the “goddess of the normative.” In the anonymous Latin poem Altercatio Ganymedis et Helene Nature and Reason judge between heterosexual and homosexual love. In Jean de Meuns’s part of the
Roman de la Rose, Nature is opposed to Reason and depicted as a wrong guide
for sexual norms. Jean’s Nature is certainly an ambiguous goddess presented
ironically, but I am not sure that she is “play[ing] the role of a deluded beguine”
and must be seen primarily as a satirical figure ( p. 108). In Chaucer’s Parlement
of Fowles, Nature is entangled in social and sexual ambiguities whereas Christine de Pizan reconciles Nature with Reason. In Heldris of Cornwall’s Roman
de Silence, Nature and Nurture debate over a transgendered heroine who
trumps both. All these texts use Nature to discuss “frankly” social, sexual, and
ethical norms in a “semi-autonomous realm of discourse” ( p. 137).
Chapter 4 presents the case of “Love,” a more complicated goddess because
Amor,Amour,Minne,Caritas,Cupiditas,Eros,Venus never cohered in a unified,
consistently feminine representation. Religious discourses about love were certainly influenced by courtly love, but Newman overlooks the fact that Fin’Amor
never became an equivalent of Frau Minne. Chrétien de Troyes’s Amors is not “a
female personage” (p. 151): it is hardly a personage at all and its gender varies
(rather feminine in Yvain, rather masculine in Cliges, undetermined in Erec et
Enide and Lancelot). In Romance vernaculars, Love floated between trope, allegory,and concept.This is probably why Dante had to almost deify Beatrice to propose a Christian,female substitute to the Ovidian God of Love and to courtly Love
(pp. 181–189). The goddess Love appears in full gear in northern Latinity and
Germanic vernaculars.In Hildegard of Bingen,Bernard of Clairvaux,Hugh of Saint
Victor,and Richard of Saint Victor,Caritas represents in turn God “in female guise”
and an “omnipotent goddess” capable to rule over God (p. 148). Mechthild of
Magdeburg, Lamprecht of Regensburg, and Hadewijch of Brabant borrowed Frau
Minne from the minnesingers to express their understanding of God’s love.
Between 1250 and 1400, a curious iconographic tradition appeared in the
Rhineland showing Christ crucified by the Virtues and pierced or stabbed by Caritas (pp. 159–169).After the fifteenth century,“medieval experiment in love”was
rejected as blending dangerously the secular and the divine and giving too much
power to Frau Minne, Caritas, or Beatrice (p. 189).

BOOK REVIEWS

149

In chapter 5 Newman turns to Divine Wisdom,“the matriarch of medieval
goddesses,” who originates in the Old Testament sapiential books ( p. 190).
Sapientia was first associated with Christ but she won visibility in Marian
liturgy ( pp. 198–9). Hildegard of Bingen links Sapientia with Mary and Ecclesia
but submits them to the authority of the Father and the Son ( pp. 205–6). In his
Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit addressed to nuns and beguines,Henry Suso presents himself as a feminine soul desiring to wed Christ ( p. 206). In Horologium
Sapientiae, a Latin adaptation of the Büchlein addressed to a male audience,
Wisdom becomes the bride in order to avoid homoeroticism ( p. 207). Newman
does a remarkable analysis of the subtle play on gender occurring in the
Horologium ( pp. 208–210). The iconography of Dame Sapience in its French
versions confirms that male readers of devotional books imagined the imitation
of Christ as courtship and marriage and therefore needed a bride as a substitute
of Christ. Julian of Norwich uses Wisdom to develop a “maternal theology” in
which God and the soul are mutually pregnant with each other ( p. 231). Compared to the success of the Horologium, the obscurity of Julian’s Revelation of
Love demonstrates that all forms of feminization of the divine were not attuned
to late medieval faithful. The chapter ends with a foray in alchemical treatises
and their recycling of Mary as Eternal, Alchemical Wisdom. Despite their obvious heterodoxy, these books were not condemned for heresy and provided one
new iconography, the Coronation of the Virgin by the Trinity ( p. 243).
The last goddess Newman studies is the most central to Christian faith. Nature, Love, Wisdom could be related to God—or not. Mary was the mother of
God. Newman begins her sixth chapter with comparing Oedipus and Christ
and their respective family romances ( pp. 245–6).As late medieval iconography
testifies, Mary grew in stature and status. She played the roles of intercessor,
queen, handmaid, and “chamber” of the Holy Trinity ( pp. 272–3). Despite her
quasi-divine status, the Virgin was seen as a model to be imitated ( pp. 271–2).
Mechthild of Magdeburg, Birgitta of Sweden, and Margery Kempe’s writings
demonstrate the “lability of female roles” ( p. 273) that identification with Mary
brought to mysticism. Newman deals particularly well with the issue of incest
that lurks unavoidably when Mary is presented altogether as Christ’s mother,
bride, and daughter ( pp. 279–282). The intrusion of Mary in the Trinity “as its
honorary female member” ( p. 247) clashed with more orthodox views of the
Trinity. Jean Gerson reacted in promoting Saint Joseph and the Holy Family, in
which Mary figures as “a model of wifely meekness” ( p. 284). Eventually the
utopian and unrepressed model of “Marian Trinity” was replaced by “a normative model of hierarchy” ( p. 290).
In her last chapter, Newman addresses the paradoxical presence of goddesses in Christian monotheism from three angles. First, she examines the sort
of discourse to which the goddesses belong, and proposes to add “imaginative
theology” to the existing categories scholars use to describe medieval theology
( p. 297). Second, she discusses why a monotheist church and a patriarchal society tolerated “Christian goddesses” ( p. 305). Newman answers that church-

150

BOOK REVIEWS

men did not look for heresy “in books and beliefs” but in public speeches and
actions ( p. 306). As long as “imaginative theology” remained in the imagination
of people, the Church could bear it. As long as women did not claim men’s
roles, goddesses could partake in the divine. Third, Newman considers Christianity as “a very special sort of monotheism” ( p. 321), exclusive in its affirmation of God’s oneness and inclusive in its need for mediation that could work
for men and women.
Despite my disagreements on Neo-Platonism, Jean de Meun, and Fin’Amor,
and the fact I find the term “goddess” still arguable when applied to the diverse
figures Newman has brought together, I found her book provocative, thoughtful, and well written. Newman brings to light aspects of medieval imagination
(secular and religious) that need further investigation. I can see why medievalists would disagree with her on many points, but I can see her bold move triggering new questions and problems in medieval studies. For this, scholars and
students can only be grateful.
VIRGINIE GREENE
Harvard University

Rome 1300: On the Path of the Pilgrim. By Herbert L. Kessler and Johanna
Zacharias. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 2000. Pp. 288.
$35.00.)
Late in the year 1299 pilgrims imbued with expectations of plenary indulgences began to congregate in Rome. As the Church had never marked the advent of a new century with an indulgence, Boniface VIII had no provisions in
place for granting one. However, as the new year wore on and the pilgrims’
numbers continued to swell, on February 22, 1300 (the feast of St. Peter’s
Chair), Boniface responded to popular demand with a papal bull decreeing the
first Roman Jubilee. The new celebration offered a full indulgence to all those
Christian faithful who came to Rome to worship at the basilicas of the city’s patron saints, Saint Peter’s and Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls. Having no Christian
precedent for such an event, Boniface and his theologians drew on a Jewish tradition described in the Old Testament (Lev. 25:10–12) in which a Jubilee celebration, a sacred year, was declared every fifty years so that people could return
to their ancestral lands in order to allow fields to fallow, to emancipate their
slaves, to make restitution, and to forgive their enemies. Boniface VIII borrowed
the word and the concept for his new celebration but modified the time-frame:
the Christian Jubilee would occur every one-hundred years.
The Jubliee of 1300 was a phenomenal success: the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani tells us that 200,000 people flocked to Rome to pray at the tombs
of Saints Peter and Paul; the poet Dante Alighieri was probably among them. By

BOOK REVIEWS

151

1350 the Jubilee cycle was shortened to the original fifty years of the Jewish
feast. Later still, the cycle was halved so that the Jubilee would occur every
twenty-five years, the calendar on which the celebration is still observed. The
year 2000 marked the first millennial Jubilee and was the occasion for the publication of this handsome text, Rome 1300, a vademecum for the historicallyminded modern pilgrim.Herbert Kessler and Johanna Zacharias have endeavored
to recreate Rome as it was in 1300 through description and analysis of contemporary topography, monuments, and ritual ceremonies. In an effort to aid the understanding of the modern pilgrim,the authors have conjured a medieval female
pilgrim in whose footsteps we readers walk and through whose eyes we discern
the traces of Rome’s medieval monuments and religious life. So as not to disturb
the textual invocation of Rome circa 1300, Kessler and Zacharias have made the
editorial decision to discuss only the medieval art and architecture in place by
the late thirteenth century,saving measured discussion of the later history of the
sites for the informative photo captions accompanying the 225 illustrations,
many of them in lustrous color plates. It is an admirable enterprise. Much still
remains of medieval Rome’s paintings, sculptures, frescoes, mosaics, metalwork,
icons, relics, and architecture, but it is all too often concealed or obscured by the
work of subsequent centuries indifferent and even hostile to the style and aesthetic choices of the Middle Ages. To conceptually strip away centuries of celebrated accretions in order to see Rome’s medieval monuments in relation to one
another and within their own context is a formidable achievement. The results
are worth the effort: the topography and monuments of the Christian capital
come into sharper focus, a setting that in turn facilitates the reconstruction of
the city’s unique religious life as it unfolded within the holy places that came to
be synonymous with Rome’s urban geography.
Over the course of six chapters, Kessler and Zacharias recreate that unique
religious life by constructing two narrative journeys for their pilgrim, each of
which serves to demarcate and describe discrete sections of Rome’s sacred
space. The first follows the pilgrim’s footsteps as she enters Rome from the
southeast through the Porta Maggiore, making her way along the Aqua Claudia
toward the papal precinct of St. John Lateran. There, in a rather desolate and
uninhabited neighborhood, the pilgrim encounters a jumble of buildings of
different epochs at the heart of which stands the basilica of St. John and the
Constantinian baptistry. The precinct also contains a papal palace that has very
recently been enhanced by a benediction loggia which faces north out into the
Lateran piazza. This addition is the work of Boniface VIII, the reigning pontiff,
who has had it decorated with a monumental fresco that commemorates his ascension to the papal throne and his symbolic “possession” of the Latern complex in 1295. It is a statement of the plenitude of papal power but certainly not
the only one present in the piazza. In addition there is a collection of “trophies”
which also seeks to propound this thesis. Kessler and Zacharias explain: both
the Lex Vespasiani tablet and the bronze she-wolf sculpture, a personification
of Rome herself, are to be identified with the pope’s juridical authority over

152

BOOK REVIEWS

Christendom. So is the magnificent late antique equestrian statue at the center
of the piazza, believed to be Constantine, the first Christian emperor, who, according to the Donation of Constantine, handed over sovereignty of the Western Roman empire to the papacy before decamping for Byzantium. Nowadays
the busy piazza is stripped bare of all these potent symbols of papal power.
Boniface VIII’s benediction loggia long ago fell victim to Domenico Fontana’s
sixteenth-century renovation of the papal palace, as did the great fresco which
survives only in a small fragment inside the right aisle of the basilica itself. More
than a century earlier, Michaelangelo’s designs for the newly refurbished
Campidoglio had called for the transferral of the equestrian statue to the Capitoline, where most of the other papal trophies soon followed. Kessler’s and
Zacharias’“reading” of the medieval Campus Lateranensis reminds us forcefully
that the papal precinct at the turn of the fourteenth century was a very different place from what it is now. In 1300 the piazza confidently trumpeted the
powers of the papal monarchy, unaware that the current occupant of the
palace, Boniface VIII, would be its last though most ardent exponent.
But the pilgrim has no time to ponder the vicissitudes of papal ideology
as Kessler and Zacharias have timed her arrival in the piazza to coincide with
the magnificent papal procession that takes place throughout the night of
August 14–15 to commemorate the feast of the Assumption. Chapters 2–5 track
this resplendent procession, which begins in the papal chapel of the Sancta
Sanctorum and follows the progress of an ancient icon of Christ, the Acheropita, as it was borne through the streets of Rome by members of the Confraternity of the Savior. Their destination is the basilica of Sta. Maria Maggiore,
where on the feast which celebrates her assumption into heaven, the Christ of
the Acheropita will greet and welcome to his side the city’s most revered icon
of Mary, the Regina caeli. Although there is a much more direct route from St.
John Lateran to Sta.Maria Maggiore,the processional route bears the icon down
the Via dei SS. Quattro Coronati, to Via Labicana, past the Colosseum and
through the Arch of Titus into the Roman Forum, the heart of ancient Rome.
There, the Acheropita encounters his mother in the form of another ancient
icon of the Madonna and child, this one housed in the ninth-century church of
Sta. Maria Nova, where the procession has paused to watch as the pope opens
the jewel-encrusted frame protecting the icon to wash its feet in remembrance
of Christ’s own act of humility recounted in the Gospels. The procession continues through the Forum to the old Roman Curia, consecrated as a church in
the seventh century. Here, at the church of St. Hadrian’s, the Acheropita enters
the church and Mass is celebrated.Then the procession begins wending its way
uphill, through the Forum of Nerva and the Colle Oppio, first to the church of
Sta.Prassede,then,finally,at dawn on August 15,to the basilica of Sta.Maria Maggiore, Rome’s principal church dedicated to the Madonna. It is here that the
Regina caeli, Rome’s venerable icon of mother Mary greets her beloved son in
the form of the Acheropita. The culmination of the feast day is the papal Mass.
The splendid Assumption day procession in which the Acheropita visits the

BOOK REVIEWS

153

Regina caeli has sought to ritually re-enact on earth the divine reunion between Mother and Son in heaven.
Seeing Rome’s sacred sites through the eyes of the pilgrim is an effective narrative device. It allows Kessler and Zacharias to instruct the pilgrim in Christian
iconography in situ, as it were. They also deftly explain form, function, and patronage, always bearing in mind how their particular examples are responding
to the larger context of Roman church decoration. But more than anything, this
narrative device allows the authors to interpret for the pilgrim the monumental frescoes in the Sancta Sanctorum and the mosiacs in San Clemente, SS. Cosmas and Damian, Sta. Prassede, and Sta. Maria Maggiore. It is one of the book’s
great strengths: thanks to their learned guidance, written in crystalline prose,
meanings become clear, borrowings apparent, and the subtle differences which
mark each of the programs of church decoration distinct. Armed with Rome
1300 a modern pilgrim can fully expect to penetrate beyond the glittering surfaces of these sanctuaries to better understand the complex of meanings expressed through fresco technique, sculpture, and glass tessere.
Chapter 6, the final chapter, turns to the raison d’être for the pilgrim’s visit to
Rome in this Jubilee year: the visits to the two apostolic basilicas of St. Peter’s
and St. Paul’s Outside the Walls. As in the earlier chapters, the authors expertly
guide us through the medieval basilicas, a bit easier to do in the case of St. Paul’s
(rebuilt in the nineteenth century according to its fourth-century plan) but
rather challenging in the case of St. Peter’s because most of Old St. Peter’s was
demolished in the sixteenth century to make room for the new basilica. One
must have keen detective skills to reconstruct the grandeur of the medieval
basilica:evidence pointing to its appearance is limited to architectural drawings
to be read in conjunction with fragments of church furnishings, decoration, and
epigraphy—all relics scattered around Rome, deracinated from their former settings. The task is made even more difficult by the fact that the “new” iconic
basilica, encircled by Bernini’s seventeenth-century piazza, has burned itself
into our collective consciousness as the definitive St. Peter’s. Despite these challenges, the authors have managed to evoke an architectural vision of Old St. Peter’s and the splendor of its decorative program. Significantly, it seems that the
old basilica was probably not unlike in form (if not in scale) the church of Sta.
Prassede, examined in an early chapter of the book. Roman churches drew inspiration from other early Roman church plans and decoration and there was
no greater model church in Rome than St. Peter’s itself.
Curiously, although the presentation and analysis of this final chapter is of a
very high order indeed,it is somehow less effective than those preceding it,perhaps because the description of these two major pilgrimage churches is relegated (indeed almost stuffed) into one final chapter. Guided by the measured
rhythms of the Assumption Day procession, the earlier chapters slowly unfold
to share their knowledge at a stately, even leisurely pace. By contrast, this final
chapter on the apostolic basilicas seems tailored more to the needs of the op-

154

BOOK REVIEWS

portunistic twenty-first-century weekend visitors who swoop down on the city,
rush over to the basilicas, make their devotions, collect their indulgence, and
hastily beat it out of town. Perhaps this final chapter should have been split into
two, the first focusing on St. Paul’s Outside the Walls and nearby points of interest, including Trastevere. The second could have maintained St. Peter’s as its
final destination but moved through the abitato, tracing the traditional pilgrim’s progress from the Via dei Banchi Nuovi on over the Ponte Sant’Angelo to
Borgo and the Leonine city. Splitting the chapter would have allowed the authors more time for digression, more time to consider some of the other great
monuments of the medieval period, all certainly present in 1300. For example,
I missed the authors’ discussion of Pietro Cavallini’s work in Trastevere. I would
have liked to hear their discussion comparing his Last Judgment frescoes in the
church of Sta. Cecilia with his apse mosaics of the Life of the Virgin in Sta. Maria
in Trastevere. I wanted to hear their analysis of the way the Trastevere mosaic
program in honor of the Madonna differed from that at Sta. Maria Maggiore. I
also wanted the pilgrim to be aware that Pope Boniface VIII’s sphere of influence reached over even into this part of town, through his cousins the Stefaneschi, one of whom commissioned the Cavallini mosaic and another of whom
was a celebrated patron in his own right, in addition to being a cardinal in Boniface’s court and the source of much of our information about the first Roman
Jubilee. Perhaps what I really wanted was for Kessler and Zacharias to update
Richard Krautheimer’s now classic, Rome: Profile of a City, 312–1308 (Princeton, 1980).
Ultimately, I was left wanting more from Rome 1300—and that is a good
thing.Although the bibliography is a useful tool,notes were conspicuously lacking. I doubt that a few endnotes would have put off a pilgrim’s potential interest in this book. I also wanted photo captions or at least photo credits which
consistently located an object’s current place of residence. How otherwise is
the poor pilgrim to know where most of the objects from the Sancta Sanctorum
are now located? Nonetheless, Yale University Press is to be commended for
producing an attractive book at a reasonable price that will well serve the modern day pilgrim, tourist, student, and scholar in their pilgrimage to seek out the
medieval treasures still on offer in the eternal city.
KATHERINE L. JANSEN
The Catholic University of America

The Lollards. By Richard Rex. [Social History in Perspective.] (New York: Palgrave. 2002. Pp. xv, 188. $65.00 hardback, $21.95 paperback.)
The stated aspiration of this short volume, by the Tudor historian Richard
Rex, is to replace K. B. McFarlane’s fifty-year-old survey of Lollardy, John Wycliffe
and the Beginnings of English Non-Conformity. Unlike McFarlane’s study, it is
not based on original research, but is a synthesis of secondary literature in

BOOK REVIEWS

155

which Rex seeks to demonstrate that Lollardy was an insignificant dissident
movement which had little impact on late medieval English Catholicism. The
first of his five chapters, on the late medieval church, draws heavily on the work
of Eamon Duffy and emphasizes the strength of traditional Catholic devotional
practices among the laity. The second chapter, on John Wyclif, plays down the
radical nature of his theology and is skeptical of his connections to the duke of
Lancaster and the royal government.Although it was highly damaging to Wyclif,
Rex insists that the Peasants’ Revolt had little to do with Lollard teachings, since
“none of the surviving accounts of the peasants’ grievances and demands betrays any dissatisfaction with the religious services offered by the Catholic
Church” ( p. 52).
The third chapter, on the early diffusion of Lollardy, takes account of some recent advances made in the subject, but ignores others. Wyclif’s academic followers receive scant attention, and Rex places little stock in either the gentry’s
patronage of Lollard preachers or its participation in the uprising of 1414. He is
similarly unimpressed by the large corpus of extant Lollard texts, many of
which he suggests belonged to orthodox Catholics, and doubts that Lollard
book production was well organized or that the rise of a literate lay culture was
an important factor in the spread of heretical doctrine. In his later chapters, Rex
argues that after its early, more potent phase, Lollardy fell into decline. It experienced a renewed persecution, rather than a resurgence, at the end of the fifteenth century, merely continuing to exist in areas where it was already
established.An enduring tradition of Lollardy,on the other hand,was virtually irrelevant to the emergence of Protestantism, since the vast majority of Protestants appear to have come from devout Catholic, not Lollard, backgrounds.
It is only on Protestantism, where he is on surer ground, that Rex is at all convincing.Many of his arguments are not borne out by the evidence,and the work
is strewn with inaccuracies, omissions, and half-truths, especially in Chapters 3
and 4. To choose one glaring error: he lists Derbyshire among the counties
which produced no or few returns to the Lollard commissions in 1414 ( p. 86),
when, on the contrary, it yielded the most. His geographical analysis flounders
elsewhere as well. Evidence damaging to his arguments is swept under the carpet or dismissed with implausible, even ludicrous, explanations. This is an intensely personal view of Lollardy, which few (if any) historians of Lollardy
would endorse; it is certainly not the balanced synthesis one would expect in a
general survey. Let the reader beware.
MAUREEN JURKOWSKI
University College London

Sanctifying Signs: Making Christian Tradition in Late Medieval England. By
David Aers. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 2004.
Pp. xiii, 281. $55.00 cloth; $25.00 paper.)

156

BOOK REVIEWS

In Sanctifying Signs, David Aers continues his incisive examination of late
medieval religious beliefs and practices and their representations in and development by late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century English textuality. The
book’s six chapters are effectively framed by an introduction (Chap. 1: “The
Sacrament of the Altar in the Making of Orthodox Christianity or ‘Traditional
Religion’”) and conclusion (Chap. 6:“Home, Homelessness, and Sanctity: Conflicting Models”) that compellingly support what Aers has argued elsewhere:
Late medieval Christianities were multiple in both word and deed, a spectrum
of beliefs and practices that cannot be homogenized into one set of beliefs,
whether an abstract “orthodoxy” in competition with “heresy” or a nostalgically
unitary “traditional religion” of the type so powerfully traced by Eamon Duffy’s
The Stripping of the Altars. Although wide-ranging, these enveloping chapters
pay particular attention to Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus
Christ, the popular vernacular retelling of Christ’s life wielded by Archbishop
Arundel as a weapon against Wycliffites that, in its “domestication of Jesus” ( p.
172), also departed from Gospel accounts.
Analysis focuses on the sacrament of the altar and the diverse rhetoric and
debates concerning the eucharistic sign that would lead the institutional
church to “the committed persecution and burning to death of Wycliffite Christians . . .” ( p. 27). Lucid chapters on Wyclif’s De Eucharistia (Chap. 3) and on
Walter Brut’s trial and William Thorpe’s Testimony (Chap. 4) thus form the
book’s central core. Wycliffite thought is neither romanticized nor is its complexity simplified, a refreshing change from its popularized treatment as “rebellion” in some recent literary studies. Instead Aers shows that “the linguistic,
theological, and political homogeneity of Wycliffites has been seriously exaggerated by enemies and friends, past and present” ( p. 68).
Aers has long been interested in William Langland, so it is not surprising that
the two chapters he devotes to Piers Plowman comprise nearly half the book.
They envelop the core chapters, the first (Chap. 2) examining this sophisticated
poem’s “profound and coherent theology of the sacrament of the altar, a theology at the heart of its ethics and ecclesiology”( p. 51), the second (Chap. 5) tracing how an alternative sanctifying sign—of poverty, as set forth by the
mendicants—is poetically rejected. Langland shows not only “that Christian
perfection consists not in poverty but in following Christ”( p. 147), but also that
“the very commitment to living and wearing the fraternal sign of poverty makes
people vulnerable to the gifts of Antichrist . . .” ( p. 152).
In both scope and depth this well-written inquiry will interest many medievalists studying late medieval theology and social and religious history. It
should be thoughtfully considered by literary scholars, not only for its fresh
reading of Piers Plowman, but also because it exemplifies the critical rewards
of an approach that Aers acknowledges “may not be congenial to the ideological predispositions of many colleagues . . . ,” one that “demands that we engage

BOOK REVIEWS

157

with writers like Langland, Brut, or Love in a manner that takes their theological and ecclesiological terms utterly seriously” ( p. ix).
RICHARD K. EMMERSON
Medieval Academy of America

Les suppliques de la Pénitencerie Apostolique pour les Diocèses de Cambrai,
Liège, Thérouanne et Tournai (1410–1411). Edited by Monique MaillardLuypaert. [Analecta Vaticano-Belgica, Première Série, Volume 34.] (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers for the Institut historique belge de
Rome. 2003. Pp. 203.)
The origins of the Apostolic Penitentiary are to be found in the practice of reserving the absolution of certain grave sins to the pope.The pope delegated his
powers in this area to cardinals or priests in the papal curia, who heard confessions and granted absolutions. In the thirteenth century and later, the priests
were called “minor penitentiaries,”“minor”to distinguish them from the head of
the office, the cardinal penitentiary. This office also issued letters granting dispensations and a wide variety of other spiritual favors. It was in this respect an
administrative bureau, akin to the papal chancery. The pre-Reformation records
of the Papal Penitentiary consist mainly of a series of registers containing
copies of petitions submitted to the head of the Penitentiary and signed by him.
They have been available for research only since 1983.The earliest register is an
isolated one containing petitions from the pontificates of the conciliar popes
Alexander V and John XXIII; the next register, of Eugenius IV, does not begin until 1438.
This is the first attempt to publish a body of petitions from Register 1, and it
deserves to be welcomed. Monique Maillard-Luypaert has searched the register
for petitions emanating from the four dioceses that make up what is now Belgium, and she has found 156 of them. The majority are for dispensations to
clerks of illegitimate birth wishing to be ordained or to receive benefices. It is
striking that of the 287 such petitions in the original register, as many as 120 are
from these four dioceses ( p. 39). Among other matters dealt with by the petitions are the commutation of pilgrimage vows,transfer from one religious order
to another,and absolution from the crime of violence or perjury.The editor provides a full introduction which describes the different categories of petitions,
and there are several indexes. The petitions are printed in extenso, but unfortunately there are a rather large number of errors of transcription. In particular
the editor has not always succeeded in extending the numerous abbreviations
in the manuscript correctly: thus, we find “faciendi” for “facientes” (no. 2 l. 11
and passim),“dispensatione” for “dispensare” (no. 8 l. 13, no. 92 l .31),“dispensare” for “dispensari” (no. 13 l. 17, etc.),“conferendi” for “conferendum” (no. 21 l.

158

BOOK REVIEWS

12),“imminet” for “immineret” (no. 22 l. 5, etc.),“per” for “quod” (no. 24 l. 9),“Iohanne”for “Iohanni”(no. 26 l. 1),“ipsum”for “ipse”(no. 32 l. 8),“curatum”for “curam” (no. 34 l. 8, no. 41 l. 5), “valeas” for “valeat” (no. 38 l. 12, no. 52 l. 13),
“dispensatum” for “dispensare” (no. 44 l. 18, no. 47 l. 16),“habeat” for “haberet”
(no. 62 l. 14),“defectum” for “defecto” (no. 68 l. 19),“obtentum et obtinendum”
for “obtenta et obtinenda” (no. 73 l.22, etc.),“rectori” for “rectore” (no. 101 l. 2),
“habeatur” for “habeat” (no. 110 l. 24), “confessionis” for “confessionales” (no.
129 l. 1, and passim),“affectus” for “confractus” (no. 131 l. 3),“procuratoris” for
“procuratores” (no. 137 l. 8),“ordinem” for “ordinarium” (no. 141 l. 4, cf. no. 147
l. 9), and “summum ordinationi” for “suum ordinarium” (no. 156 l. 9). Occasionally words have been omitted (whether by the scribe or by the editor is in most
cases unclear to me); for instance, “facientes” after “gratiam” (no. 6 l. 7), “ampliorem” after “sibi” (no. 16 l. 7, no. 22 l. 7),“fuit” after “misericorditer” (no. 28
l. 5),“cuius” after “dispensatum” (no. 33 l. 5),“apostolica” after “auctoritate” (no.
45 l. 15),“obstantibus” after “non” (no. 53 l. 18),“vel” after “dimissi” (no. 70 l. 16),
“vigore” after “dispensationis” (no. 84 l. 15, no. 93 l. 6), “vel collegiate” after
“cathedrali” (no. 101 l. 19, a marginal addition),“dignemini” after “dispensare”
(no. 101 l. 29),“promoveri” after “ordines” (no. 103 l. 4) and “dispensare” after
“ipso” (no. 110 l. 32). It is curious to find the title of the cardinal bishop of Tusculum described as “cette dénomination familière,” especially when it is correctly identified in the index ( pp. 63 n. 117, 169, 178).
PATRICK ZUTSHI
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

Dai margini la memoria. Johannes Hinderbach (1418–1486). By Daniela
Rando. [Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento. Monografie,
37.] (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino. 2003. Pp. 575. €33.00 paperback.)
This book is best understood from its ending and thus our comprehension of
Daniela Rando’s monograph follows a path similar to the movement that is indicated in the title of the book. It is only near the ending that the methodical innovation that Rando, a historian from Trento, has developed shows its full
impact.This becomes obvious in the last chapter of the book in particular,which
portrays its protagonist, Johannes Hinderbach, not only as a persecutor of the
Jews, but makes his motivations clear. By reading and interpreting thousands of
marginal notes (margini) that the Bishop of Trento left in the books and manuscripts of his library, she manages to come close to Hinderbach’s personality.
With her “discovery” and interpretation of the marginal notes, Rando works
out the meaning of a new kind of source among the so-called ego-documents
(“testi in cui un ‘io’ consapevolmente o inconsapevolmente si svela o si
nasconde” [p. 10]). This is most welcome since it is known that we have comparatively few documents from the Middle Ages that give an insight into the

BOOK REVIEWS

159

mentality and character of the people of that time. Hinderbach did not write
confessiones, nor did he leave an elaborate autobiography, but since his student
days he had been confiding his views and thoughts to the margins of his parchments and papers:“il suo io divenne testo, un foglio scritto” ( p. 496).
The book falls into two parts. The first part ( pp. 19–250) employs a rather
conventional method and describes the external circumstances of Hinderbach’s life with little emphasis on the marginal notes. Hinderbach was born in
1418, the last year of the Council of Constance, in the Hessian town of
Rauschenberg. But we are not only informed about the well-known stages of
Hinderbach’s career: his studies in Vienna and Padua, his employment—after
having obtained the degree of utriusque iuris doctor—as “erudite counselor”
at the court of King Frederick III together with Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who
later became Pope Pius II, and Hinderbach’s solemn move into Trento as metropolitan in 1466. We also get a vivid impression of life in the fifteenth century:
student life, Konziliarismus, the royal court, the trading in benefices.
In the second, more important part of the book, Rando resorts to the marginal notes and thus leads the reader to Hinderbach’s “Dimensione interiore”
( pp.253–491):“È questo l’oggetto centrale e l’approdo finale della ricerca:la coscienza e il sé che si affidano alla scrittura e alla memoria, che si fanno scrittura
e memoria” ( p. 15). As a starting point, she examines his library and reading
technique: marginal notes as a mnemonic device. With these notes, Rando enables us to listen to a “dialogo ermeneutico” ( p. 258) between the spirit of Hinderbach as a reader and the absent voices that the written text evokes.“Et unde
hoc scis, bone vir, aut ubi id reperisti?” ( p. 259), asks Hinderbach when reading
Sigismund Meisterlin’s Chronografia Augustensium in a “dialogo interiore”
( p. 267).
For Rando, the identity of the past is established by the procedure of remembrance. It is only in the process of remembering that the past can be construed:“Centrale allora, è la relazione ‘dinamica’ fra passato e memoria, e anche
quella fra memoria e la cosiddetta ‘identità’” ( p. 265). The marginal notes are
sediments of memory, and this is why they reveal, when being interpreted in
the right way, the “costruzione del sé.” The more authentic the marginal notes,
the more convincing the reconstruction of the past will be.
Hinderbach wrote them presumably first of all for himself. Many comments,
though, are marked with his signature and can thus be clearly attributed to him
even by non-graphologists. In this context it would have been worth examining
the question as to what the notes reveal about Hinderbach’s personality. He obviously had possible readers in mind. Can the notes be interpreted as symbols
that refer to the author’s self in an unadulterated way, or are they not literary
messages to a learned society and posterity? The latter is certainly true for the
extensive “necrologio anticipato” ( p. 286), which has been preserved in different versions from Hinderbach’s quill. This is how Hinderbach wanted to be remembered one day.

160

BOOK REVIEWS

The additions in Hinderbach’s calendar allow more reliable interpretations
when it comes to the remembrance of his relatives, friends, and predecessors in
office. Even apart from these texts there is ample evidence that the Reichsfürst
placed himself into an artificial genealogical tree constituted by the former metropolitans when he was appointed to Trento’s cathedra. This genealogy would
soon replace the one of his family:“Hinderbach si definisce in relazione con la
famiglia, con la corte e l’università, ma la sua ‘identità’ assesta infine nella carica
vescovile” ( p. 293).
With her subtle interpretation of the notes,the author reconstructs the image
that Johannes Hinderbach had in mind of a good bishop and thus of himself.
The pious man ( p. 367) was concerned about prayer, liturgy, and relics rather
than about sermons and visitations. Even the celibate’s fears of women become
palpable, the prince bishop’s anxieties about the Turks and the shepherd’s raging against the Jews in his parish. Here Daniela Rando’s study is a fine contribution to the history of mentality.
UWE ISRAEL
Deutsches Historisches Institut Rom
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Early Modern European
Inquisitorial Inquiries: Brief Lives of Secret Jews & Other Heretics. Edited and
translated by Richard L.Kagan and Abigail Dyer.(Baltimore:The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2004. Pp. xiv, 199. $48.00 hardcover; $19.95 paperback.)
This appears to be a minor work by a major—and prolific—talent. Richard
Kagan is a master of many Spanish archives, including those of the Holy Office.
Assisted by a junior scholar (whose exact role is never explained), Kagan has assembled a half-dozen quasi-autobiographical texts, mostly discursos de su vida,
all elicited under varying levels of coercion by the Spanish Inquisition and delivered with even greater variations in candor.These six narratives are here presented in English translations, accompanied by solid commentary, notes, and
useful maps.
Kagan’s reasons for selecting exactly these particular inquisitorial “autobiographies” seem idiosyncratic. He presents them in simple chronological order,
from the early sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth. However, two kinds of
clusters emerge. Although they range geographically from Madrid to Mexico
City, four of these cases were heard at the tribunal of Toledo, with one each at
Cuenca and Mexico City. As the book’s subtitle suggests, three prisoners had
Jewish ancestors. Another was an “old” Morisco from New Castile, whose ancestors had become Christian before 1500. Another was a soldier of impeccable “Old Christian” ancestry who developed a gift for politically-disruptive

BOOK REVIEWS

161

prophecy and had to be silenced. The oddest prisoner was born in Valencia to
a Moslem slave and a Christian father, but her troubles with the Holy Office
owed nothing to this religious miscegenation. Instead, she was a clever and ambitious hermaphrodite; briefly and unhappily married to a man, she later passed
as a man,becoming a licensed surgeon and ultimately marrying a young woman
in a village near Toledo. Secular justice arrested her for sodomy in 1587, but the
Inquisition took the case, charging her with “disrespect for the marriage sacrament” and ultimately punishing her for bigamy (of which she was probably
guilty). Including such a case immediately dates this collection to the age of
same-sex marriages.
What type of behavior did these defendants display? Kagan’s examples suggest that inquisitorial “life-history” or discurso de su vida did not encourage
much more than straightforwardly self-serving narratives, sometimes chronologically incoherent,usually feigning some degree of contrition and always with
the specific purpose of reducing one’s eventual punishment to a minimum (significantly, none of these defendants was executed). All Kagan’s examples were
native Spaniards who fully accepted the legitimacy of the institution which investigated them; all of them understood orthodox Spanish Catholic devotional
practices very well. Kagan regrets ( p. 9 n. 10) that he found no useful discurso
from anyone charged with Protestant sympathies (in inquisitorial language,
Luteranismo). A few rich examples do exist (see for example my Frontiers of
Heresy, p. 250 n. 48), but such defendants were never native Spaniards. In the
wake of this effort, perhaps someone will now produce a new version of “Fiction in the Archives” by studying discursos de su vida from people whom the
Inquisition burned.
WILLIAM MONTER
Northwestern University (Emeritus)

The Beginnings of English Protestantism. Edited by Peter Marshall and Alec
Ryrie. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2002. Pp. xi, 242. $55.00
hardback; $20.00 paperback.)
For generations the first English Protestants were regarded as the harbingers
of post-medieval enlightenment and the founders of English national identity.
Then about thirty years ago they began to be stigmatized as a revolutionary and
destructive minority who first undermined and then destroyed a perfectly viable church, and permanently damaged the spiritual life of the country. This reemergence of a traditional Catholic view in turn prompted a radical rethinking
of the whole religious history of sixteenth-century England. Now scholars do
not see the Reformation in terms of Protestant/Catholic confrontation, but of a
long and subtle process of transformation in which many factors played a part.
The Reformers did not even adopt the name “Protestant” until the reign of Ed-

162

BOOK REVIEWS

ward VI, and Peter Marshall here carefully refers to them as “evangelicals,” with
all the doctrinal ambiguity which that implies.It was politics which determined
the form of the English Reformation, but not its content. Whatever else he may
have been, Henry VIII was not a Protestant.
This collection, however, is not really concerned with politics, and not very
much with the church at an institutional level, but rather with a variety of
groups and individuals who for different reasons found themselves in conflict
with the established orthodoxy of the time. Some, like the friars considered by
Richard Rex, were well educated, and their views sprang partly from the continental theology of the time, and partly from what might be described as an
indigenous skepticism about certain traditional practices. Others, like the
Freewillers examined by Tom Freeman, were almost totally uneducated (a fact
of which they made a conscious virtue), and their views were equally at odds
with those of the Catholic Church and those of established Protestantism. In
fact, in spite of the efforts of John Foxe, the unity of English Protestantism was
more apparent than real, more imposed than spontaneous. Evangelical conversion was a highly individual experience, and expressed itself in eccentric ways,
like those of Clement Armstrong described by Ethan Shagan, who contrived to
mix a totalitarian view of the Royal Supremacy with a theology which was
mainly Anabaptist. Dissent is a scarlet thread which runs through the whole of
this story, from the “known men” of the fifteenth century to the Brownists and
the Family of Love in the reign of Elizabeth. Women, as Susan Wabuda points
out, were often leaders in this essentially domestic revolution, and exercised an
influence which the leaders of the official Reformation were reluctant to acknowledge—although their Catholic opponents made much of it. In a sense
women were privileged by their lack of public status, and were often able to
sustain positions which their menfolk, more exposed to the pressures of visible
conformity, were forced to abandon or dissimulate.
Before 1547 it is extremely difficult, and not very useful, to try to classify various types of religious allegiance. To what extent was Thomas Bilney a
Lutheran, for example? The ground was also shifting, and the views for which
John Lambert was burned, with Cranmer’s consent, were those subsequently
held by the Archbishop himself—a point which his opponents did not fail to
make. At the same time, it should not be maintained that the official faith of the
Edwardian and Elizabethan church was merely a formal construct,a political device to paper over the innumerable cracks and fissures of what was by then becoming known as “Protestantism.” Men like Foxe and Day (considered here by
John King) held a strong faith which they considered to be uniform and orthodox. Also, as Andrew Pettegree points out, it tended to be the orthodox who
controlled the press, not merely those responsible for official censorship, but
those also who were producing the actual books. This was partly a function of
education. Printers were literate, and it was predominantly among the illiterate
that the more eccentric views grew and flourished. The “Reformation” is a blanket term for a rich history of intellectual and cultural diversity to which the tra-

BOOK REVIEWS

163

ditional formulae of interpretation—including that of the revisionists—have
done scant justice.
We are now far more inclined than our predecessors to view history “from
the bottom up,” and this collection, which does not pretend to be a history in
the ordinary sense, is a very good example. The editors have a bit of a struggle
to maintain coherence in what is not really a coherent story. The early Protestants were a tiny minority, but what revolutionary group has not been? They
were accompanied from the very beginning by a much larger number of fellow
travelers who sympathized with some part of their position, and these included
men in powerful positions whose motivation was not always above suspicion.
One very important thing emerges from this scholarly and well presented volume: the idea that the late medieval church was a robust and healthy institution
challenged only by the political self-interest of the Tudors, is a myth, like all the
other myths which have been generated by this seminal and still controversial
period.
DAVID LOADES
University of Sheffield

Pirro Ligorio:The Renaissance Artist, Architect, and Antiquarian. By David R.
Coffin. (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2004. Pp.
xv, 226. $55.00.)
The present volume is the most authoritative exploration of the life and work
of one of the Renaissance great figures, the Neapolitan artist and antiquarian
Pirro Ligorio. References to this multifaceted artist have often appeared in a variety of bibliographical material from Giovanni Baglione’s brief biographical account of Ligorio in his Vitae (1642) to a 1960 publication by Coffin, Villa d’Este
at Tivoli. The volume at hand has its origins in a seminar on Renaissance and
Renaissances given at Princeton in the mid-1940’s by that luminary Erwin
Panofski, who obviously inspired Coffin to pursue the study of Ligorio’s classical and humanistic background.
Central to Ligorio’s artistic thesis is the need to seek the ideal model for contemporary society in classical antiquity, particularly Roman antiquity. Thus, imperfect or fragmentary classical remains as well as fragmentary inscriptions
must be restored, and then studied and imitated. Nevertheless, in spite of his
penchant for imitation, Ligorio did not eschew innovation, as is evidenced by
the form of and information contained in the second encyclopedia written alphabetically by him at Ferrara, now found at the Archivio di Stato at Turin,
which sets forth an organizing principle that would be used in years to come.
Chapter 1 of this volume deals with Ligorio’s early years in Rome, caught in
the midst of political and social problems but at the same time enjoying the first

164

BOOK REVIEWS

benefits of the creative milieu found in and sponsored by the newly elected
pontiff, Paul III, the former Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, and more specifically
by his grandson, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. It is here and during this pontificate that we discover Ligorio’s artistic flair, as seen in his Victory drawing, in his
Dance of Salome and his Map of Rome, as well as several engravings and
sketches, all of which serve as testament to his genius. Chapter 2 picks up on
the events of the previous chapter and delves into the particulars of Ligorio’s
new papal service under Pope Paul IV, a service marked by increased popularity and appreciation of Ligorio as architect and archaeologist.
The record of papal employ that Coffin presents is abundant and scrupulous,
and it is from his meticulous and well documented material that we derive a superb portrait of Ligorio as man and artist. Particular focus is given here to Ligorio’s elaborate architectural designs of the Vatican Palace and several works at
Tivoli, while presenting also Ligorio’s self admitting “hardships and accidents”
that befell him in the many years of papal service. These problems notwithstanding, Ligorio presses on in his quest for continued ecclesiastical patronage,
and indeed we see him flourish in the role of personal archaeologist of Ippolito
II d’Este, Cardinal of Ferrara, in his triumphant entry into Tivoli, a land, as Coffin
reminds us, littered with the remains of antiquity including such villas as that of
the emperor Hadrian and those of such illustrious Romans as Quintilian Varro
and Gaius Cassius, not to mention famed temples such as that of Hercules and
of the Sybil. In short, a propitious and inspiring land for the enterprising and
ever-curious Ligorio, whose activities are splendidly covered by Coffin in Chapter 3 titled “The Villa d’Este at Tivoli.”
The last chapter of this book deals with “Ligorio in Ferrara,” beginning with
the artist’s service, in 1568, of Alfonso II d’Este, duke of Ferrara. It is here that
we see some of Ligorio’s most precise architectural designs such as his plans of
earthquake-resistant houses, libraries and museums, roof trusses and ironwork,
vault and ceiling projects as well as his drawing of Diana and Endymion, now
in the Louvre museum.
The present review does not do justice to the beautifully written, amply documented, and inspiring volume given us by David Coffin, with whom we can
only concur that the career of Pirro Ligorio “reveals the man’s extraordinary diversity of interests and capabilities,” making him a truly uomo universale, perhaps not of the intellectual dimensions of an Alberti or Leonardo da Vinci, but
certainly, as Coffin suggests, a “universal man” in his originality and pragmatism.
BRUNO M. DAMIANI
The Catholic University of America

Silent Music:The Life, Work, and Thought of St. John of the Cross. By R. A. Herrera. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
2004. Pp. viii, 166. $16.00 paperback.)

BOOK REVIEWS

165

In the four hundred years since his death, St. John of the Cross has passed the
boundaries of Spain and the Catholic Church to become a universal figure. This
is strange because instead of unbelief he preaches unyielding faith and instead
of talk, silence. R. A. Herrera with this in mind thinks it may be of some interest
to view St. John of the Cross and his work. Finite humankind seems to be
trapped between two infinities: God and nothingness. For St. John of the Cross
creation, by manifesting God’s attributes, provides a stimulus for the soul to
abandon it and enter into God’s reality. Sickness is the natural condition of the
Christian since everyone is subject to the ravages of original sin. This is not
more than the very beginning of the voyage to the summit of Mount Carmel.
Herrera takes up this study of St. John of the Cross with an introduction on
mysticism. Because discrimination is required to distinguish between the genuine and the spurious article, he considers briefly mysticism in the various religions and philosophies. He then goes on to consider, since no life can be
understood in a vacuum, the world into which John of the Cross was born and
through which he passed almost unnoticed. In Herrera’s view neither the person nor the works of St. John of the Cross appeal to a contemporary audience.
Despite this, Herrera thinks it is possible to discern there a phenomenology of
the spirit as well as an inchoate philosophy of humanity, creation, and God, all
under guidance of a ruthless logic. On the one pole creatures, on the other the
Creator, on the one Nothing, on the other the All. This is the perspective from
which Herrera attempts to deciper St. John of the Cross’s three major commentaries on his three major poems: The Dark Night; The Spiritual Canticle;
and The Living Flame of Love.
KIERAN KAVANAUGH, O.C.D.
Institute of Carmelite Studies

The Anointment of Dionisio: Prophecy and Politics in Renaissance Italy. By
Marion Leathers Kuntz. (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University
Press. 2001. Pp. xviii, 446. $55.00.)
In February of 1563, a certain Dionisio Gallo, rector of the Collège de Lisieux
in Paris, experienced what he later described as an anointment by the Virgin
Mary, an anointment that occurred on the outside of his body and on the inside,
from “the top of my head to the tip of my toes” ( p. 8). He seems to have frequented the circle of the King, Charles IX, perhaps having even served as one of
his tutors. Yet Dionisio, after his anointment, became a fervent believer in reform, and he came to consider that the French monarchical apparatus, including
Catherine de’ Medici, was too lukewarm to carry out a desired reunification of a
fractured Christendom. His public voicing of these opinions did not play well in
Paris, and he was sent back to his home city of Gisors. Thus began a series of
peregrinations which took him to Savoyard Turin, the Rome of Pius V, the Florence of Cosimo I, Este Ferrara, and, finally, to la Serenissima, where he wound

166

BOOK REVIEWS

up imprisoned and tried by the Venetian inquisition; there, on August 12, 1567,
he was sentenced as “guilty of public assemblies, contrary to the command of
the Holy Office” ( p. 176). His crimes, however, were attributed to a “humoral imbalance,”and so he was let off relatively lightly,banished from Venice and its possessions. Marion Leathers Kuntz has expertly reconstructed this fascinating and
hitherto unstudied story with patient archival research, historiographical
breadth, and fine comparative readings of Dionisio’s surviving works. Various
themes come to the fore.
The first is Dionisio’s style of prophecy, which Kuntz fleshes out from a number of different perspectives. Dionisio seems to have recapitulated a number of
different available prophetic tropes: from the Joachite tradition, he propounded
an apocalyptic perspective; from the Old Testament tradition, he appeared, not
as a hair-shirted extremist, but as a learned, serious, and leader-like person who
was able to gain access to important political figures wherever he went. Unlike
his contemporary Nostradamus, Dionisio was a prophet of the present, not of
the future. This present-oriented tendency meant that he was intensely aware
of the use of symbols and of the importance of associating himself with locallyimportant political ideas. In Venice, for example, he preached from within the
cortile of the Palazzo Ducale, thus associating himself symbolically with a Venetian propensity toward an idealistically understood “justice.” In Rome, he
walked through the streets bearing a seven-foot cross, before presenting Pius V
with a letter in St. Peter’s basilica, a letter which Pius reportedly kept on his
nightstand for a day or two thereafter. In Turin, he supported the idea held by
Emanuele Filiberto of the importance of an Italian league to defeat heresy—a
league that would be led by Emanuele.In Florence,Dionisio played on Cosimo’s
competitiveness with Emanuele to continue to urge the formation of a (secularly led) Italian league, before Dionisio had to leave after angering the papal
nuncio in Florence.
In his various works and in the testimony from the inquisitorial trial, Dionisio
propounded a consistent set of reform ideas. These ideas centered on the reform of the clergy, the extirpation of heresy, charity and consolation toward the
less fortunate (including the idea that one-third of the Church’s wealth should
be given back to the poor), and the leading of Jews and Turks toward Christ.
Through it all, he maintained that the clergy and the Roman Curia must be reformed first; this reform would then spread, by its own power and shining example, outward to the rest of society and naturally bring heretics and “infidels”
into the fold. Significantly, he stressed that if the Church could not carry out this
reform itself (and he clearly believed it could not), then secular rulers were obligated to take the lead and compel the Church to reform. According to Kuntz,
this lack of satisfaction with the currently-constituted Church indicates a dissatisfaction with the only recently ended Council of Trent.
There are many other things to learn from this fine study. For this reader, particularly interesting was Kuntz’s depiction of the language of a self-defined

BOOK REVIEWS

167

prophet. His inquisitorial trial, as Kuntz notes, seems to be much less an inquisition and much more a conversation: Dionisio repeatedly, and to the frequent
exasperation of the inquisitors, refused to give straight answers to their questions, or turned the questions back on the inquisitors, or tried (albeit unsuccessfully) to use a “divide and conquer” strategy to set the secular Venetian
representatives against the religious. What we see is a finely tuned, dialogical
ambiguity—inherited from his humanist training—which, in the end, got away
from Dionisio. Fortunately for him, he was let off. Fortunately for us, Marion
Leathers Kuntz has opened up a world in which we see the continuing possibility of prophecy well into the age of Trent.
CHRISTOPHER S. CELENZA
Michigan State University

John Foxe and His World. Edited by Christopher Highley and John N. King [St
Andrews Studies in Reformation History.] (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate
Publishing. 2002. Pp. xix, 297. $99.95.)
Scholarly investigation of what Christopher Highley here calls ( p. 187) “the
vast collaboratively produced text we now refer to as Foxe’s Acts and Monuments” is proceeding apace, fuelled by the tantalizing prospect of a forthcoming fully searchable electronic edition collating the various versions produced
in Foxe’s lifetime. This volume of essays grows out of an interdisciplinary colloquium held at Ohio State University in spring 1999, and betrays evidence of
its conference origins. The editors’ claim ( p. xvi) that the chapters collectively
create “a composite portrait of the world inhabited by John Foxe” is an optimistic one. Rather, they represent a series of thematically linked sketches of the
intellectual and religious landscape. Yet the editors are to be congratulated for
creating order out of what might have been a mere mélange of Foxe-flavored
morsels. The collection is book-ended by fore- and afterwords from the volume’s dedicatees, Patrick Collinson and David Loades, who respectively consider the reception history of the Acts and Monuments during and after Foxe’s
lifetime. In between, fifteen essays are grouped into five thematic clusters: historiographical issues, history of the book, visual culture, Roman Catholicism,
women and gender. These are tackled by a mixed team of historians and literary critics, established scholars and graduate students. The interdisciplinarity in
general works well, and it is pleasing to report that the essays by Ph.D. candidates easily stand comparison with those of their elders. Inevitably, some pieces
are more substantial than others, though all have worthwhile things to say.
Highlights in the first sections include Benedict Scott Robinson’s discussion of
“John Foxe and the Anglo-Saxons,” showing how the burgeoning interest in
Saxon history raised the alarming possibility that the first truly English church
was a papal construction, rather than the pure primitivism of the Britons. It was
Foxe’s Catholic critic Richard Verstegan who first argued (in 1605) that the

168

BOOK REVIEWS

English should look for their origins among the Saxons. Equally illuminating is
David Scott Kastan’s study of “Little Foxes,”the abridgements by Timothy Bright
and others which may have been in the form in which most readers actually encountered Foxe’s text. In the poet John Taylor’s novelty 64mo edition in verse,
one of the largest books ever written in English became a tiny fashion accessory, a “fetish of the faith” ( p. 128). Several of the essays draw on the volume’s
generous provision of thirty-nine illustrations to address questions around the
visual impact of Foxe’s work. Andrew Pettegree provides important contextual
assessment, locating the Acts and Monuments in “a narrow window of opportunity”( p. 144) between the English print industry’s attainment of sufficient sophistication to take on the project, and the growing influence of Calvinist
iconophobia. An attempt to problematize our reading of such “iconophobia”
comes in an interestingly speculative piece by Lori Anne Ferrell, examining the
geometric figures and “ocular catechism” to be found in William Perkins’
Golden Chaine. Ferrell identifies here a new Protestant aesthetic in which
Word itself was pictorialized, and admonishes us ( p. 179) to be “more open to
the aesthetic pleasures afforded by such figurative designs.” Among the several
essays addressing gender issues, Sarah Wall provides a case-study in rigorous
textual criticism, comparing Bale’s and Foxe’s accounts of the Henrician martyr
Anne Askew, and finding (against received wisdom) that far from letting Askew
speak for herself, Foxe actively intervened in the narrative for stylistic and theological effect. Readers of this journal may be particularly interested in the
three essays dealing with Catholic martyrology. Scott Pilarz examines the letters, poems, paintings, and plays produced in Jesuit circles after the death of
Campion, and their role in energizing the English mission. Richard Williams
shows how a vogue for illustrated martyrology functioned to inflame foreign
“public opinion” against the Elizabethan regime. Christopher Highley analyzes
the Theatrum Crudelitatum Haereticorum of Richard Verstegan (a recurrent
presence in this volume), and finds an interesting contrast with the Acts and
Monuments. Whereas Foxe’s set-pieces celebrate an achieved victory over the
godless in the past, Verstegan’s martyrs are brutalized victims to be pitied and
avenged in the present. Such explicitly comparative approaches represent the
best of what this volume has to offer, and the way forward for Foxe studies as a
whole.
PETER MARSHALL
University of Warwick

From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in
Paris. By Barbara B. Diefendorf. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Pp. xii, 340.)
The era of the “Mystical Invasion,” that time of extraordinary religious fervor
in early seventeenth-century France, has been described often enough.The end

BOOK REVIEWS

169

of the religious wars, the establishment of a strong monarchy, the inflowing of
influence from the rest of Catholic Europe, the recovery of the economy—
these tell us how a religious revival was able to take place. But they do not help
us to comprehend it in all its intensity. Why did people turn in such numbers to
prayer, penitence, and self-denial? Why did so many of them rush into religious
life?
Barbara Diefendorf argues that the Catholic Reformation in France was
shaped by the traumatic experience of the religious wars, when the possibility
of losing the Church altogether became frighteningly real.To the faithful, the offenses caused to God during those years required expiation. A group of men
and women, small in numbers but socially influential, responded by adopting
lives of prayer and heroic asceticism. The authenticity of their faith made them
role models for others, and thus “the devout life” spread contagiously.
The locus of Diefendorf’s study is Paris. Her principal subjects are Parisian
dévotes—women, many of them wealthy, almost all of them members of high
society, influential in their own right but also because of whom they knew.
These women combined an exemplary prayer life with good works among the
poor, the sick, and the ignorant. More significantly, they gave their piety a lasting
institutional form in the many religious houses that they founded or assisted.
Not only did they provide funds for these communities; they secured privileges
for them, they supervised the construction of their buildings, they made suggestions as to their rules, and, sometimes, they chose and formed their first
entrants.
Many of the religious congregations adopted by the dévotes had originated
elsewhere.Their establishment in Paris was frequently a calculated move: it was
here at the center, rather than in the provinces, that they could gain patronage,
funding, and stability. They often paid for these advantages with modifications
to their original lifestyle. Where they had practised poverty in poor surroundings, they now had to practise it in grand, even opulent, buildings. Communities
that had been kept small by design became large communities. Their clausura
was penetrated by the visits of high-ranking ladies. Sometimes their practices
were adjusted so as to be more congenial to the young women now flocking
through their doors. In many different ways, they accepted the advice of their
aristocratic patrons.
Thus retouched, the congregations would later spread out across the country. So it can be seen that the grandes dames of Paris played an active part in
the regeneration of religious life in France,with a drive and creativity forged out
of the chaos of the sixteenth-century wars. The new generation, driven now by
different concerns, continued the creativity, but directed it toward a displaced
and poverty-racked society.
That word “creativity” is a good one to end on. Throughout the book,
Diefendorf argues for the enormously positive role of women during the formative years of the Catholic Reformation. She makes her case eloquently and

170

BOOK REVIEWS

well. Without their collaboration, that Reformation would have been a much
different thing.
ELIZABETH RAPLEY
University of Ottawa

Le Gallicanisme de Sorbonne: Chroniques de la Faculté de Théologie de Paris
(1657–1688). By Jacques M. Gres-Gayer. [Bibliothèque d’histoire moderne
et contemporaine, Vol. 11.] (Paris: Honoré Champion Editeur. 2002. Pp.
579.)
The Faculty of Theology of the Sorbonne was for a long time assumed to be
Gallican in its ecclesiology, both by adherents and adversaries of that French
view of the Church. Robert Bellarmine thought this when he termed “Parisians”
those in France who would not accept papal primacy as absolute monarchy,
while Bossuet in defending the Gallican Articles of 1682 described himself as
diligently upholding the pristine theology of the schola parisiensis. That there
were always some at the Sorbonne who adhered to the ultramontane view of
papal supremacy has long been known, but now Jacques Gres-Gayer has
demonstrated in massive and meticulous detail the diversity of ecclesiologies
there. He shows that along with the majority that was consistently Gallican
there was quite a sizable minority of the Rome-oriented view, and moreover
that there were several variants within each of the two main camps.
He does this by combing through virtually a ton of records of the Faculté de
Théologie (which term refers to all those who had received doctorates in theology at the Sorbonne, especially those who continued to participate in proceedings and debates at the school). The records that he examines include the
theses written by those receiving doctorates and the records of many significant controversies during the years 1657 to 1688. Some of the latter were the
debates and decisions on the Six Articles of 1663, the censures of a pro-papal
book by Jacques Vernant and a book on casuistry by Amedeus Guimenius, debates on the French hierarchy’s Gallican Declaration of 1682, and the censure
of a statement by the bishops of Hungary, condemning the latter declaration. In
all these cases Gres-Gayer offers abundant detailed information on the debates,
statements of the hundreds of French theologians, all named, who participated,
and the votes on the issues. In each case, a solid majority voted for the Gallican
position.
But in both this majority camp and in the large Rome-leaning minority there
were, in Gres-Gayer’s analysis, several attitudes and currents. He identifies four
in each, ranging from those really committed in principle to that ecclesiological
view to those who had more pragmatic reasons for their votes, again with precise names and numbers of all these groupings. In his principal summation of
the totals of the majority and minority parties, based on their decisions in the

BOOK REVIEWS

171

controversies studied, the Gallicans number 210 and the romains 158. One of
the most significant of his conclusions emerges in his analysis of the discussions
on the four Gallican Articles of 1682. He says that even though the Gallican majority of the faculty really saw their ideas re-affirmed in the articles, they were
not enthusiastic about having them imposed on themselves or others in an authoritarian way by the hierarchy and the king. They saw this ecclesiology as a
vital tradition of France that they wanted to preserve, not as the official doctrine of their Faculty or of the state. This work includes an extraordinary array
of precise listings and tables of the positions taken by all of the several hundred
doctors of the Sorbonne who participated in the numerous debates dealt with
in the study. It will certainly stand as the definitive work on the ecclesiology of
the Sorbonne in the seventeenth century.
RICHARD F. COSTIGAN, S.J.
Loyola University of Chicago

L’eresia dei perfetti: Inquisizione romana ed esperienze mistiche nel Seicento
italiano. By Adelisa Malena.[Temi e testi, 47:“Tribunali della fede.”] (Rome:
Edizioni di storia e letteratura. 2003. Pp. xviii, 318. €39.00 paperback.)
Adelisa Malena has provided a fine study of mystics who were investigated
for heresy in late-seventeenth-century Italy, based primarily on research in the
Vatican’s central archives of the Roman Inquisition or Holy Office. Inquisitions
tried numerous charismatic mystics, most of them women, who purportedly
had divine visions and prophesied. From the 1680’s on, people who demonstrated such abilities, which might be suggestive of mystical perfection, were
generally suspected of Quietism, the heresy associated with Miguel de Molinos.
A Spanish cleric condemned as a heretic in 1687, Molinos preached that the human soul must be entirely passive; spiritual union with God was possible only
through contemplation and the complete annihilation of the will. Malena takes
issue with recent literature that distinguishes between cases of “pretense of holiness” and “Quietism,” claiming that both fall under the broader rubric of “mysticism,” which strove for spiritual union with the divine.
Typical of those tried by the Holy Office was Francesca Fabbroni, a Benedictine nun in Pisa who was posthumously condemned of pretense of sanctity.
Shortly after taking the veil as a teenager, Fabbroni allegedly began having frequent ecstatic religious experiences. Fabbroni, who, like many other female
mystics, received encouragement from her confessor, was eventually credited
with the ability to prophesy, heal the ailing, communicate with the deceased,
and penetrate and change the souls of others. She purportedly claimed that,
having surrendered her free will to God, she no longer had the temptation or
even the ability to sin. In 1689, eight years after her death from natural causes,

172

BOOK REVIEWS

Fabbroni’s remains and a portrait of her were burned by order of the Inquisition
in a public square in Florence.
Through the records of both the Inquisition and the Index of Prohibited
Books, Malena also examines actions taken against mystical publications that
church authorities deemed dangerous. Interestingly, among these treatises were
two written by an inquisitor. Tommaso Menghini, Inquisitor of Ferrara, composed an important guide to the rules of the Holy Office for the vicars under his
supervision. In the late 1680’s, however, two other treatises he had written
aroused suspicions in Rome. In these writings, he called for the total abandonment of the human will to God. When praying, Menghini wrote, one must not
even reflect on what words were spoken to God; one addressed God with the
sole aim of totally “losing oneself” in Him. Such language resembled Quietism,
and in April, 1688, the Holy Congregation (or supreme court) of the Inquisition
banned the two treatises and ordered Menghini removed from his position of
inquisitor.
Malena persuasively shows that it is impossible to distinguish acceptable
from “heretical” forms of mysticism, observing, for example, that Molinos was
expressing ideas that were quite similar to those of earlier mystics whom
Catholic authorities considered orthodox. She could have discussed at greater
length why mystics were subject to so much scrutiny in the late seventeenth
century. She briefly mentions the Church’s fears of Protestantism. To be sure,
the Inquisition was founded in 1542 with the express goal of combating Protestant “heresies.” And since the doctrine of free will was anathema to Lutheran
and Reformed theologians, Malena correctly notes that the mystics’ denial of
free will could provoke suspicions of Protestantism. Be that as it may, Protestantism had basically been squelched in Italy already by the 1580’s, and so many
of the mystics’ other claims—most obviously, the assertion that they were incapable of sinning—were utterly abhorrent to all magisterial Protestants, a fact
that could not have been lost on Inquisition authorities.Perhaps inquisitors simply chose to combat non-conformists one at a time. Having vanquished the
Protestants and made significant success in fighting various forms of “superstitions” and magic, the most common cases heard by the Holy Office throughout
seventeenth-century Italy,inquisitors of the late 1600’s probably felt further emboldened to pursue mystics, who implicitly or explicitly downplayed the importance of the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church.
In spite of this rather minor reservation, this book is an impressive piece of
erudition and an important contribution to the growing literature on the Inquisition in Counter-Reformation Italy.
JEFFREY R.WATT
University of Mississippi

BOOK REVIEWS

173

Das Ende der doppelten Schutzherrschaft: Der Heilige Stuhl und die Juden
am Übergang zur Moderne (1775–1870). By Thomas Brechenmacher.
[“Päpste und Papsttum,” Band 32.] (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann. 2004. Pp.
viii, 513; 5 plates.)
This is a learned book, especially in the Vatican Archives, but also from the
Holy Office, which was the principal authority concerned, and the ministry of
the interior from the archives of the city of Rome. Its subject is the situation
within the Papal States of the Jewish population, which had lived there since
the Middle Ages and from Pope Gregory XIII in the Counter-Reformation was
ordered into ghettos. Here are a mass of illuminating legal cases. Someone
bought property outside the ghetto; could he keep it or rent it out? To travel
within Italy one needed a visa; was that really necessary over a short distance?
A well-to-do Jewish family employed in the market a nurse or a midwife who in
the circumstances was very likely to be a Christian and quite likely to become
a beloved member of the Jewish family. Was it permissible for a Christian to
work in a Jewish family? Could a Jewish child attend a Christian school? Was it
possible for a Jew traveling outside the ghetto to take lodging with a Christian?
The strength of this book, apart from its information, is its ability to portray
the sense of responsibility in the organs of papal government. They did not realize it,but they were in an impossible situation.It was not that a minority in the
State lay under legal disadvantages, for minorities were under disadvantage all
over Europe. Protestants, who were a substantial minority in France, were not
legally tolerated there till 1787. Roman Catholics suffered various forms of disadvantage over Protestant Europe. But the papal government had accepted that
it had a duty toward its Jews, the duty of protection. It simultaneously believed
that the State which it ruled was specially a religious State, with an element of
sacredness about its being. The more sacred it felt to be, the more likely to misgovern those not of its own religion.The force of this feeling depended both on
circumstances and on personages.
On circumstances: the revolution in France produced French conquest in
Italy and applied doctrines like liberty and equality in the various Italian States.
In the northern Papal States, the Legations, there were soon no ghettos and in
theory no disabilities for Jewish citizens. The Jewish authorities tried to live
with this new atmosphere, and in 1807 a great Sanhedrin in Paris praised the
new Pope’s policy. During the five years 1809–1814, with more French occupation in Italy, there was nominally more emancipation, but the problem was not
solved because these years were too few to persuade the general public to accept Jews as equal members of society.
Then Cardinal Consalvi returned to Rome from the Congress of Vienna in
1814 and Pope Pius VII returned from exile in 1815 and over Europe there was
return and reaction.This Pope was no rigid reactionary, but popes and their ser-

174

BOOK REVIEWS

vants were wrapt in tradition. It was more the circumstances than the persons
which brought back ghetto and Jewish disadvantage.
Two popes of the nineteenth century helped to sully the reputation of the Papacy in liberal Europe.Neither was Gregory XVI (1831–1846),who won the name
of a political reactionary because he needed to cope with liberal revolutions in his
northern States. He treated the Jews with moderation and sense and had regular
meetings with representatives of the Roman Jews, who thought about him as “tolerant enough.”The northern revolution abolished the ghettos and though the revolutions failed those ghettos were never revived with locked and guarded gates.
The Bishop of Imola, the future Pope Pius IX, tried to revive the locked ghetto at
Lugo, and failed, both through the protests of the Jews who lived there, and from
the disagreement of his own vicar and from the refusal of the local lay authority.In
Ancona the bishop Nembrini was wholly and openly in favor of the Jews.
But where popes themselves were determined to act on doctrinal or “sacred”
grounds rather than those of reasonable government, they could hurt the reputation of the Papacy as an institution. There were two in this period, Leo XII
(Della Genga,Pope from 1823 to 1829),and Pius IX though only in his later years
after 1851. Our author will not allow that Leo XII was a fanatic who did all he
could to lower his Jews. He accepts that he was the last pope in the long line
who organized policy about the Jews from his own initiative. French influence
had made it a secular State; then after the wars Metternich from Vienna was determined to keep the Papal States in being for he foresaw (and rightly) much
wider political unsettlement if it collapsed and therefore wanted a government
that was more prudent than sacred, and had the force that the northern
provinces could only be held for the pope with Austrian troops. But Leo XII had
a sense of deep responsibility to make his State sacred and especially the city.
Rome must be made again the religious center of the world. And the Holy Year
of 1825 must be the symbol of this sacredness. He did not understand that despite restorations all over Europe he could not go back to the Papal States of the
mid-eighteenth century. As cardinal-vicar of Rome in 1823 he reintroduced the
compulsory attendance of Jews at sermons by the friars, and made more precise
the limits of the ghetto. But after he became pope it was impossible to choose
none but zelanti as officers of his congregations.Even his plans for the Holy Year
ran up against the financiers and those concerned about public order in the city.
In 1824 the Holy Office sent to the Pope the records of a census of Jews—
how many were permanently or temporarily living outside the ghetto, what
was the relation between them and the Christian population, whether there
were especial complaints against the Jews; and confirmed that the Jews in the
Papal States lived in freedom and were out of any special control and lived
among and with the Christians so that hardly a shadow of difference was left. It
only remained to make them fully equal and admit them to public office. It was
clear that bishops and inquisitors doubted whether it could be right to reinforce the old edicts about the status of the Jews.

BOOK REVIEWS

175

The Pope intervened. In September, 1825, orders went out—that the walls of
the ghetto be again shut at night and guarded by Christian sentries; repair the
walls if they were in disrepair, and repair them at the expense of the Jews. Such
a decree had the usual trouble—authorities dragging their feet, Jews taking little notice.A police report of 1827 showed that there were in Rome more shops
run by Jews than there were two years before.
Yet Leo was not an anti-Semite. His concern was a holy city and any persons
not of the religion should be hidden away within reservations. So for the first
time he allowed them to buy property inside their area. But the officers of the
Inquisition were still trying to stop Jewish families employing Christian girls as
maids or nurses, and bishops were pointing out what suffering this would bring
to Jewish families. No one knew how many Christian nurses actually were employed; or how many of them left the ghetto pregnant; or whether there were
some who were not really employed but actually served as prostitutes; or how
many Christian nursemaids were in fact in danger of falling away from Christian
faith. Were these fears largely imaginary? The order not to allow Christian servants in Jewish households was still disobeyed silently. The last attempt by the
Curia at a ‘remedy’ came as late as 1852 when it was agreed that the ruling of
Pope Leo should be dropped, and Christian nurses and maids were allowed
‘provisionally’ and in special cases and with leave of the church authorities;
nurses not to be younger than 25 nor male servants younger than 55 and not to
stay overnight in the ghetto.
In 1827 Pope Leo reintroduced the travel visa within the Papal States. The
universal protests of the Jews were often supported by the bishops. Leo died in
1829 and immediately there was a change of policy.
The second Pope to do harm in this area is unexpected, the last Pope to rule
the Papal States and their Jewish minority: Pius IX; unexpected because in his
earliest years as pope his liberal treatment of the Jews was famous.After the revolution in Rome and the reaction he was a different person, in the sense that he
thought any concession to ‘the world’ to be wrong; and although the old severities were obsolete and he hardly tried to revive them, and he needed the Rothschild Bank to save his State from bankruptcy, he had the ill fortune of the case
of Edgar Mortara, the little child whom papal police took from his Jewish parents on the ground that he had been baptized by a young Christian nursemaid
and so must be brought up Christian. Once Pope Pius could have treated it with
more common sense and more compassion. Now he was not capable of conceding and did more harm to the papal cause than was done by any other act
of a pope during that century. But the Mortara case is so notorious and so repeatedly worked over by propagandists and historians, that it is one area where
exceptionally this very helpful book is not able to add much to our knowledge.
OWEN CHADWICK
University of Cambridge

176

BOOK REVIEWS

Late Modern European
Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects.By John Henry Cardinal Newman. With an Introduction by James Tolhurst and Notes by the late Gerard
Tracey, completed by James Tolhurst. [The Works of Cardinal John Henry
Newman, Birmingham Oratory, Millennium Edition, Volume VII.] (Notre
Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 2004. Pp. xlix, 490. $40.00.)
After the astonishing success of his Apologia pro vita sua (1864), which effectively restored his reputation among the English public, both Protestant and
Catholic, John Henry Newman (1801–1890) went on to publish two major
works: An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870) and A Letter Addressed
to the Duke of Norfolk (1875); he also re-published many of his earlier writings
that had gone out of print but whose re-appearance was surprisingly well received.For these volumes of re-prints,“he dusted down his earlier pieces for the
two volume Essays Critical and Historical [1871], his three volume Historical
Sketches [1872–1873] and his Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects
[1872]” ( p. ix).
Discussions and Arguments is a “rather haphazard”collection of a half-dozen
items: (I) “How to Accomplish It” reproduces a two-part article that was
originally published as “Home Thoughts Abroad.—No. II.” in the British Magazine (1836); (II) a set of four sermons that became Tract 83: Advent sermons
on Antichrist (1835), but was retitled here as “The Patristical Ideal of Antichrist”; (III) a series of eight lectures that became Tract 85, Part I: Lectures on
the scripture proof of the doctrines of the Church (1837), retitled here as “Holy
Scripture in its Relation to the Catholic Creed”; (IV ) a set of seven letters to The
Times (1841) originally published in pamphlet-form as “The Tamworth reading
room”; (V ) a set of eight letters on the Crimean War (1854–56)—“Who’s to
blame?”—originally published in an Irish newspaper, The Catholic Standard
(1855); and (VI) a lengthy book review, originally published in The Month
(1866),about Sir Robert Seeley’s Ecce Homo and retitled here as “An Internal Argument for Christianity.” Admittedly a disparate set of bed-fellows under the
same cover; however,“The publishers knew that his works would sell, such was
his reputation, and Newman was easily persuaded to dig out his old literary
pieces” ( p. x).
The forty-page Introduction by James Tolhurst is not only well documented,
but whets readers’ appetites for the varied menu to follow. However, one question of curiosity remains: in republishing Tract 85, Part I, one wonders why
Newman never mentioned a Tract 85, Part II? Was this because he had planned
a second set of lectures, but never gave them? Or did his projections for Part II
become sidetracked as he was confronted with the need to defend the Church
of England as a via media between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism?
In any case, the extensive “Editor’s Notes” ( pp. 399–490), expertly prepared
by the late Gerard Tracey (1954–2003) and James Tolhurst, furnish more an-

BOOK REVIEWS

177

swers than most readers will have questions: biblical, classical, patristic, and
scholastic quotations are diligently identified; heresies long dead and theological issues still debated are succinctly explained; Anglican prelates, British politicians, and sundry other historical personalities—ancient, medieval, and
modern—both well known and remarkably obscure, are meticulously identified; historical data relating to current events in Newman’s day and even geographical details of places that he visited are provided. While Newmanists will
be grateful for the many cross-references to other works of Newman, an index
would have been an added plus.
On the whole, readers will welcome warmly the publication of this attractive
volume that facilitates the enjoyment of these lesser known and often neglected
writings of Newman.
JOHN T. FORD
The Catholic University of America

The Letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel and Maude D. Petre:The Modernist
Movement in England. Edited with Introduction by James J. Kelly. [Annua
Nuntia Lovaniensia,Vol. XLIV.] Leuven: Peeters. 2003. Pp. xxxiii, 196. Paperback.)
For roughly half a century serious scholars pursuing the truth about the Roman Catholic Modernist crisis or about the life and thought of Baron Friedrich
von Hügel have had access to von Hügel’s manuscript letters to Maude Dominica Petre and the one complete remaining letter of Petre to von Hügel, first
in the British Museum and now in the new British Library. These letters are a
priceless source for following the development of von Hügel’s ideas on mysticism, for understanding his sense of what the Modernist movement was all
about and what his role in it really was, and for just gaining a sense of the man
himself.Consequently,to have a critical edition of these letters in print,and thus
readily accessible, should be a boon both to scholars and to educated individuals interested in religious history.
Unfortunately, James Kelly’s edition of these letters is not such a critical
work, and it will be a disappointment to scholars and intelligent readers alike.
For scholars a definitive establishment of the actual text is crucial and the absolute first requirement for a printed edition of manuscript material. Anyone
who knows von Hügel’s handwriting knows how difficult it can be at times to
transcribe accurately. But such accurate transcription is the sine qua non for
printed critical texts. In Kelly’s text over and over one finds proper names from
the letters mangled: Vistue for Bishop Virtue, Laotze for Professor Lotze,
Newham for Newnham College, Magle for Sydney Mayle, Hilton for the Pembroke estate at Wilton, and so on and on. If the editor really understood the

178

BOOK REVIEWS

given letter’s context, if he were widely read in von Hügeliana and relevant related materials, these mistakes could not have occurred. Moreover, in several
places the editor leaves a blank where he claims a word in a letter is illegible.
Others, however, using the same manuscripts have been able to read the supposedly illegible word, as for instance nimbleness on page 18. And other words
are just mistakenly transcribed, as for instance on page 137 help becomes keep,
and on page 157 telling becomes taking.
The unsatisfactoriness of this printed edition of the letters for the intelligent
reader who is not a scholar is simply overwhelming. Almost every one of these
letters has to do with huge personal and ecclesiastical problems in the lives of
Maude Petre and von Hügel, and of Catholics generally. Most of the letters discuss these things without any clarification that would help an outsider of nearly
a century later understand what is being written about. Here the editor could
have, should have, supplied helpful notes to shed light on the letters’ meanings.
For instance, von Hügel’s discussion of Edmund Bishop might have used
Bishop’s manuscript letters to the Baron for a note of explanation. Articles in
The Times and The Tablet are mentioned frequently with the assumption that
Petre and von Hügel had both read the articles, but no note explains what the
articles were about or why they were important. Again, a note might have explained what was meant by “off to Wilton for 12 days Christmasing,”and why in
1903 von Hügel cryptically asks Petre to “pray for us all at Wilton.”Or again,why
in 1906 “Loisy’s troubles” had “been specially painful” for von Hügel. On almost
every page brief informative notes could have made these letters fascinating for
the non-specialist reader. The impression given here is that the editor himself
does not know what the letters are talking about.
Kelly’s Introduction adds nothing new to the reader’s knowledge of von
Hügel or of Modernism, and his interpretations are heavily influenced (despite
disclaimers) by Maude Petre’s prejudices and the interpretations of several
more recent writers. Also, several small factual mistakes in the Introduction
should be noted: von Hügel’s mother was a Roman Catholic convert at the time
of his birth,not a Presbyterian;Maude Petre was a member of a secular institute,
not a women’s religious order; von Hügel’s major opus was The Mystical Element of Religion, not The Mystical Element in Religion. The difference in the
prepositions in the book’s title is very significant for understanding von Hügel’s
intent. Kelly’s Irish sensibilities seem unable to appreciate von Hügel’s Germanic personality, but that does not excuse his condescending remarks about
the Baron.
LAWRENCE BARMANN
Saint Louis, Missouri

BOOK REVIEWS

179

Edith Stein. By Sarah Borden. [Outstanding Christian Thinkers.] (New York:
Continuum. 2003. Pp. x, 155. $23.95 paperback.)
Sarah Borden has created in Edith Stein a welcome volume about Edith Stein
(St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, 1891–1942) containing highly readable introductions to her life, to her spiritual message, but especially to her philosophy. Clear and well-written, Edith Stein goes where other introductory books
about Stein do not, as they so often fail to satisfy the public’s desire to plumb
the intellectual world and contributions of the distinguished assistant of Edmund Husserl who turned from collaboration with him to instructing others as
a Catholic laywoman and later on as a Carmelite nun.
The author uses her knowledge of German both to deftly analyze Stein’s writings and to use current scholarly commentaries. She is conversant, too, with the
ongoing translations of Stein in the series “The Collected Works of Edith Stein”
(nine volumes by 2004), as well as the growing number of studies that have ensued upon the beatification in mid-1987.
Borden defended a doctoral dissertation at Fordham University on the notion
of individual and universal form in Stein’s magnum opus Finite and Eternal Being. Her broad familiarity with the sometimes daunting expositions of the phenomenologist “Fräulein Doktor” makes reading Edith Stein all the easier. She
lays out Stein’s treatment of notions like “Phenomenology and the Person”;
about structures and issues both “Social and Political”; about “Woman and
Women’s Education”; about “Christian Philosophy”; and about “Metaphysics and
Epistemology,”in as many chapters,without rendering them more abstruse than
they can sometimes appear to those unfamiliar with phenomenology.
For persons interested in Stein the convert, and more lately, the Catholic
saint, Borden gives two chapters on “Spiritual Writings” and “Edith Stein since
her Death: the Jewish-Catholic Dialogue.” Borden’s usual scholarly vigilance
lapses on page 136, where she transcribes a doctored version of Edith Stein’s
“Will and Testament.” For whatever reason, a German author, whose biography
of Stein is still in print in English translation, decided to excise a “hard saying”
penned by the Carmelite in that moving document from her place of exile in
Holland. The correct reading should stand as follows, with the restored words
in italics:“May the Lord accept my life and death for his honor and glory, for the
intentions of the Sacred hearts of Jesus and Mary, for the needs of holy
Church . . . in reparation for the unbelief of the Jewish people, that the Lord
may be received by his own and his Kingdom come in glory, for the deliverance
of Germany and peace throughout the world, and finally, for all my relatives living and dead and all whom God has given me: may none of them be lost.” One
is obliged, out of respect for a key author like Stein, to “exegete” such statements, and not drop them from their original formulations.
The endnotes supplied by Borden are helpful (fifteen per chapter on average). An “Index” is accompanied at the end of the volume by a concise “Select

180

BOOK REVIEWS

Bibliography.” (Look for information on page 148 about her extensive online
bibliography of Stein’s writings, with annual updates.) These helpful features
joined to Borden’s analysis of Edith Stein’s philosophical positions open the
door for the reader to discover important features of Stein’s thought. One expects the book to appear on reading lists of university courses in philosophy.
Sarah Borden has devised a handy tool and effective introduction of that kind.
JOHN SULLIVAN, O.C.D.
Institute of Carmelite Studies

Resisting the Third Reich.The Catholic Clergy in Hitler’s Berlin.By Kevin P.Spicer.
(De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press. 2004. Pp. xii, 254. $36.00.)
In 1933 the majority of German Catholics greeted the Nazis’ rise to power
with enthusiasm. Hitler promised a new beginning, the restoration of Germany’s
place in world affairs, a bulwark against Communism, and strong leadership. All
served to outweigh the reservations expressed by some of the bishops. The
groundswell was enough to bring almost universal approval when Hitler offered
to sign a Concordat with the Vatican in July, 1933. These warm expressions of
support for the new regime by bishops and clergy, however, became a liability
when Nazi policy increasingly launched anti-Catholic and anticlerical campaigns
designed to undermine the Concordat’s intentions. At the local level, the priests
were often confronted with an undeclared war. How they dealt with the situation is the subject of Kevin Spicer’s well-researched investigation.
Forty years ago Guenter Lewy published the first English-language survey of
the Catholic Church and the Third Reich, which was highly critical in tone.
More recently, other American church historians have chastised the German
Catholic leaders for not acting more forcefully to protest or resist the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Spicer, however, avoids any kind of wishful thinking about
what might have happened if only, but rather examines the actual conduct of
the Catholic milieu and explores the dilemmas confronting its clergy as the political situation became ever more confrontational.
He has chosen for his case study the diocese of Berlin.This can hardly be considered representative, since Catholics were a small minority in the nation’s
capital, where the spirit of Bismarck still reigned. Nevertheless, Spicer shows
that the range of responses by the Berlin clergy to the Nazi onslaught was
matched in other parts of the country. A very few priests gave openly fervent
support to the Nazi regime, eagerly demonstrating their loyalty to the Führer,
down to the very end. Spicer’s chapter on these “brown priests” breaks new
ground. On the other side, only a few were clear-sighted enough to recognize
the pernicious character of the Nazis’ ideology and practices. The most notable
example was that of Monsignor Bernhard Lichtenberg, whose combative will-

BOOK REVIEWS

181

ingness to challenge the Nazi state far outstripped that of the rest of the clergy
in his diocese. Spicer devotes a whole chapter to his unique witness. The majority of the clergy, however, adopted a stance of passive withdrawal from politics, and a concentration on their pastoral duties in their parishes. Spicer makes
use of the term Resistenz, as outlined by the noted German historian Martin
Broszat, to describe this attempt by the clergy to protect the local Catholic milieu and their prized ministerial freedom.
Spicer sees the outrageous murder of a leading Catholic layman in Berlin,
Erich Klausener, on the occasion of the so-called Röhm putsch in June, 1934, as
the turning point which cured most clergy of their illusions about the Nazi
regime. The bishops became more circumspect. But, as others have already
shown, their divided counsels prevented any more cohesive or open opposition. However, from 1935 onwards, Berlin had as its bishop, Konrad Preysing,
who had no doubts about the incompatibility of National Socialism and Catholicism. Nevertheless, he too shared his colleagues’ inherent nationalism and hesitancy to question governmental authority. He too sought to avoid any direct
clash with the state.
Only when the Nazis’ encroachments on Catholic sacramental duties and doctrines became so constant and threatening were the bishops and clergy ready to
take up more active forms of resistance. But the circle of obligation was limited
to their own supporters.As Spicer shows in his chapter on Jews and the diocese
of Berlin, the majority of Catholics did not feel obliged to make forceful protests
on behalf of Jews or other victims of Nazi repression. Provost Lichtenberg was
the exception, and paid the price of imprisonment by the Gestapo for his outspoken witness for the Jews. As a result, the Church’s leaders were even less
ready to provide encouragement to act on behalf of this persecuted minority.
Spicer’s narrative necessarily blends events in Berlin with the national picture of swelling Nazi propaganda and intimidation, and the increasing smell of
fear among the clergy.In 1943 four of the Berlin diocese’s priests in Stettin were
arrested and executed. Bishop Preysing, despite his adversarial stance, was deterred from open defiance. Spicer gives details of the Gestapo’s harassment of
nearly one-third of the parochial clergy of the diocese, many of whom had been
denounced by parishioners.His description of their dilemmas in seeking to protect the Church’s sacramental witness, especially in wartime, is well done. Some
comparisons with the similar predicament of Berlin’s Protestant clergy would
have been helpful at this point, drawing perhaps on the new study edited by
Erich Schuppan, Bekenntnis in Not.
In conclusion, Spicer claims that, at a time of political extremism and ideological radicalism, the clergy’s acts of Resistenz provided an alternative space
for Catholics to challenge Nazism’s all-pervasive momentum. Only a few priests
were called to face martyrdom, when they died heroically. But, for the majority,
their faithful pastoral ministry, he suggests, was an effective, if unspectacular,

182

BOOK REVIEWS

witness against Nazi heresies and totalitarian ambitions. Given the paucity of
English-language studies of German Catholicism, Spicer’s balanced account of
this regional church at this particularly traumatic time is much to be welcomed.
JOHN S. CONWAY
University of British Columbia

A m e ric a n
Religious Pioneers: Building the Faith in the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
Edited by Dorothy Dawes and Charles Nolan. (Chelsa, Michigan: Sheridan
Books. 2004. Pp. xxvi, 398. $30.00.)
Archivists Dorothy Dawes and Charles Nolan have made a valuable contribution to Southern Catholic history in their co-edited work Religious Pioneers. A
collaborative effort of the religious community archivists of the Archdiocese of
New Orleans, Pioneers chronicles, through biographical essays, over two-dozen
Catholic religious orders’ and congregations’ efforts to establish, develop, and
maintain the faith in Louisiana.
Organized chronologically into four sections, Pioneers begins with the
founding of New Orleans through the antebellum period (1718–1860), followed by Civil War, Reconstruction and Yellow Fever (1861–1888), then focuses on late nineteenth/early twentieth-century developments (1888–1916),
and concludes with the modern twentieth century and the Second Vatican
Council (1917–1997). Dawes and Nolan could have just as easily arranged their
material into four broad categories: educators, caregivers, visionaries, and spiritual models, for their work highlights these major areas.
The strength of this work is the contextualization of each religious order’s or
congregation’s apostolic work in Catholic New Orleans through biographical
sketches. This approach to Catholic social history gives the reader an understanding of the people, the times, and the contribution made to Catholic education, health care, and pastoral work. One cannot but be impressed by the grit,
determination, and will power these religious women and men exemplified in
spreading and maintaining the faith. No mere secular or temporal motivation
impelled the Ursulines to brave the Atlantic to labor in the newly-established
city on the Mississippi in the eighteenth century, the Sisters of Mercy to minister at their own peril to yellow-fever patients in the mid-nineteenth century, or
the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament to educate African Americans in the Jim
Crow era of the twentieth century.
Nolan and Virginia Meacham Gould’s portrait of Henriette Delille is particularly
compelling. Delille, a “free person of color,” that is, a descendant of a EuropeanAfrican liaison, founded a religious congregation of women, the Sisters of the
Holy Family, in New Orleans before the Civil War. This was only the second time
black women in the United States had established a religious community. The

BOOK REVIEWS

183

account of Delille and her congregation raises important issues of race, gender,
and class, thus providing a direction for further consideration of these topics.
Mary H. Muldrey’s essay on Mary Austin Carroll, R.S.M.,“The Irish Channel
Nun,”frames her story in the context of the socio-economic, ethnic, gender, and
racial dynamics of Catholic New Orleans in the nineteenth century and the implications of these for the twentieth century. As Muldrey notes, the crowded
Irish Channel neighborhood had three national churches within blocks, if not
yards, of each other. In time, religious structures changed as New Orleans
Catholics eventually reconciled their ethnic differences. The Church’s role in
resolving these conflicts calls for additional study.
The essays on Catholic educators are truly social histories. Behind the brick
and mortar of such venerable New Orleans educational institutions as Brother
Martin High School, Mt. Carmel Academy, Xavier University, and Cabrini High
School, one finds determined, organized, and astute religious men and women
whose business acumen and religious zeal rivaled those of any corporate enterprise. By educating thousands of Catholics and non-Catholics, black and
white, over the past three centuries, these schools have made a vital and lasting
contribution to the city and the region.
This volume is an incentive for researchers to dig more deeply into the vast
archival resources, hitherto largely unexploited, available on the history of Roman Catholicism in the American South,a topic still neglected in comparison to
the attention devoted to other regions. Perhaps Dawes’s and Nolan’s next volume will focus on the Catholic laymen and laywomen these religious pioneers
served so selflessly.
R. BENTLEY ANDERSON, S.J.
Saint Louis University

The Origins of Women’s Activism: New York and Boston, 1794–1840. By Anne
M. Boylan. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 2002. Pp.
xv, 343. $49.95 clothbound; $19.95 paperback.)
Few historians have attempted to incorporate Catholics into the story of
women’s emergence into public life in nineteenth-century America. As Maureen Fitzgerald has observed concerning the Progressive Era, Protestantism often functions as an unmarked category in women’s history because religion is
not analyzed as a source of difference, just as whiteness disappears when the
impact of race is only considered for non-whites.Anne Boylan invites historians
to redress this problem by including groups founded by Catholic laywomen in
her long-awaited study of the country’s first women’s organizations, The Origins of Women’s Activism: New York and Boston, 1794–1840. Boylan’s goal is
to help explain how the “republican mother”described by historians of the revolutionary period became the “true woman” of the 1830’s and after. She points

184

BOOK REVIEWS

to “the new arenas of collective action” that women opened by forming associations as ideal venues in which to analyze this transition. Lavishly documented,
with over 100 pages of appendices, tables, and notes, the book is based on the
surviving records of seventy groups and the life histories of over 1000 founders
and leaders in New York City and Boston.
Important revelations emerge from this comprehensive study. While the earliest women’s groups probably understood their charitable activities as religiously inspired, their goals became much more explicitly religious during
the Second Great Awakening, when women, like men, were inspired by individual conversion experiences to initiate collective projects for the transformation of society along evangelical lines. Women’s organizing itself turns
out to be far less controversial than it appeared to be to historians who took
abolitionists as their example of early organization women. Earlier groups with
less controversial goals, Boylan makes clear, aroused little suspicion from the
clergy and few charges of departing from their “sphere.” Women in groups
could do things legally prohibited to their members, especially married members, as individuals.
Boylan moves us in the direction of a religiously plural women’s history. Elizabeth Seton is the subject of one of the “Portraits of Organizers”that make some
of the most compelling reading in the book. Still, much remains to be done.The
study, for example, notes that members of religious orders performed the bulk
of charitable labor among Catholics, and interprets this as indicating a lack
among laywomen rather than the presence of a distinctive gender system including roles not available to Protestant women. Nuns, not laywomen, Boylan
notes,“gained the kind of experience acquired from creating a permanent institution, raising endowment funds, attaining corporate status, and behaving as
legal entities” ( p. 119). Her book indicates the challenge historians of women
will face in transcending Protestant frameworks embedded in the writing of
U.S. history. Finally, the story she tells is one in which evangelical ascendance,
as well as the reproduction of class and race, are the primary explanatory
themes. One hopes that others will walk through the door she has opened by
the inclusion of Catholics to begin to write women’s history in which discussions of gender include the impact of distinctive Catholic values, practices, and
institutions.
ANN BRAUDE
The Divinity School
Harvard University

He Spared Himself in Nothing: Essays on the Life and Thought of St. John
Nepomucene Neumann, C.Ss.R. Edited by Joseph F. Chorpenning, O.S.F.S.
(Philadelphia: St. Joseph’s University Press. 2003. Pp. xx, 220. $35.00.)

BOOK REVIEWS

185

Celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of St. John Nepomucene Neumann’s
canonization, and the sesquicentennial of his episcopal ordination as Fourth
Bishop of Philadelphia, St. Joseph’s University Press has provided a series of essays on Neumann’s life, ministry, and thought.The work aims both to foster a renewed understanding and appreciation of the saintly bishop and, at the same
time, to stimulate further research and interest in St. John Neumann. Some of
the essays presented here were earlier published in scholarly journals at the
time of Neumann’s beatification in 1963.An additional number of newly crafted
works have been included to both inform and deepen the reader’s experience
of Bishop Neumann’s early growth and development, in addition to providing a
tableau of his priestly and rather brief episcopacy.
At the outset a precis of Neumann’s life and writings is provided. Here one
sees the young John Neumann exposed to the influences of a devout Catholic
family in his native Bohemia. Like his fellow citizens, young John seems to have
been deeply impressed with the life and times of St. John Nepomuk, patron of
Bohemia. Neumann certainly looks up to St. Nepomuk, and the latter may have
won the day in steering John Neumann away from a career in medicine.
Seminary preparation for John’s chosen career was marked by an atmosphere of two opposing ecclesiologies and theologies. Although Neumann was
able to steer clear of the facets of Josephinism, some of his teachers were not,
and this became a significant challenge for Neumann. At the same time, he
seems to have run afoul of the seminary dean. While it may have been a personality conflict as well as theological differences, it was a cause for disappointment. Moreover, this and other seminary relationships demonstrate
Neumann’s humanity. Well aware of his human reactions, a delicate conscience
played a role in his self-condemnatory regret. Rounding out seminary concerns
were the call by German bishops for optional celibacy and a mounting conflict
over papal infallibility.
At the end of Neumann’s seminary studies, local bishops had too many candidates for ordination. So, we find Neumann ordained in New York and serving
in a small country parish, much to his delight. Later he joined the Redemptorists, seeking a community life style. He was noticed by some in the American
hierarchy and was eventually appointed Bishop of Philadelphia.
John Neumann’s formative years were spent in times not unlike the Church
in the third millennium, although, to a seemingly lesser extent, the challenges
for our times have been met with the same kind of personal asceticism which
Neumann developed from his familiarity with the spiritual treasure of his day,
much of which is currently in vogue. The overarching simplicity of Neumann’s
personal prayer and active ministry proved to be the very foundation of his
saintly life. And such was proclaimed at Vatican Council II.
We see his methodology, if you will, in Neumann’s willingness to meet both
children and adults where they were. As noted in Linck’s essay on the Forty

186

BOOK REVIEWS

Hours devotion, Neumann’s determination was not only to bring his people
what he was convinced they needed, but also to be in their midst with his
priests in a Eucharistic step toward eternal salvation. At the same time, Neumann’s Marian devotion was comparable to his contemporaries’ insofar as it influenced his spirituality and pastoral leadership.
On balance, He Spared Himself in Nothing, a collection of essays, has some
rough sailing. Reading too much into Neumann’s devotion to St. Joseph as regards St.Theresa is a concern.Moreover,that Neumann invoked St. Joseph in his
final hours could have been supported from sources closer to his demise. Also,
there is much repetition throughout, and the St. John Nepomuk essay is overdone. These items aside, the work lends itself to further understanding of St.
John Neumann. Priestly duties must be rooted in personal spirituality, simplicity
of operation, gentleness, love and acceptance of people, prayer and detachment. An enduring message for today, yesterday, and tomorrow, we have been
shown the way for saintly priest-administrators.
THOMAS J. DONAGHY
Archdiocese of Baltimore

The Navajo as Seen by the Franciscans, 1898–1921: A Sourcebook. Edited by
Howard M. Bahr. [Native American Resources Series, No. 4.] (Lanham,
Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2004. Pp. xxxviii, 606. $60.00.)
Howard Bahr’s The Navajo as Seen by the Franciscans, 1898–1921, is an invaluable sourcebook for the extraordinary confluence between the Dine and
the early Franciscans, especially three of these friars, Fathers Anselm Weber,
Leopold Ostermann, and Berard Haile, all priests of the Franciscan Province of
Cincinnati, Ohio. Father Anselm, the Superior of the Mission at St. Michaels, Arizona, from 1900 till his death in 1921, was largely responsible for adding over
1.5 million acres to the Navajo Reservation, writing countless letters to Congressmen and visiting Washington to lobby for additional lands for the Dine. Father Leopold was one of the key contributors to An Ethnologic Dictionary of
the Navaho Language and an important person in building rapport with the
Dine; and Father Berard, who lived among the Dine for over half a century and
was an extraordinary linguist, did much to provide a written Navajo language
and to record traditional Navajo chants and rituals. The writings of these three
friars, together with those of Father Marcellus Troester, who arrived in 1906,
and Father Emanuel Trockur, who came to the Reservation in 1917 and became
the historian of the Franciscan missionaries, are represented in this book of
magazine articles and personal writings. The writings of Fathers Anslem,
Leopold,and Berard constitute most of the primary sources in Bahr’s book,with
the historical writings of Father Emanuel constituting the chief secondary
sources. Many of these writings are difficult to access, and their being assem-

BOOK REVIEWS

187

bled in one book is a great contribution to the study of the Franciscan view of
the Navajo during the pivotal years, 1898–1921.
This book is the first of a projected two-volume collection of Franciscan portrayals of life among the Navajos, this volume spanning the first and most extraordinary phase of the Franciscan presence among the Dine. It is divided into six
parts: (1) Beginnings, (2) Indian Policy, (3) Early Ministry, 1901–1910, (4) Navajo
Land,(5) Among the People,1911–1920,and (6) Navajo Customs and Character.
Because Bahr lets the Franciscans themselves tell their own stories and articulate their own viewpoints,the book is an invaluable window into the early Franciscans’ understanding of the Dine. His headnote to each piece of writing is
short and to the point and helps the reader contextualize the text that follows.
This reader found these articles, together with the bibliography, the notes on
the contributors, and the appendix of Franciscan Friars of the St. John the Baptist
Province who served the Navajo Missions from 1898 to 1921, not only a fascinating study of the Dine and their world, but of the personality and different viewpoints of the early friars. The lens through which they viewed these (to them)
strange people was that of an immigrant German Franciscan Province founded
mainly to minister to the German-speaking people of Cincinnati. Some of the articles they wrote at the beginning were for the Province’s own German-language
magazine, Der Sendbote, and are here represented in translation; others are over
a century old and contain the attitudes of missionaries of that time going among
a people as different from the Germans of Cincinnati as were the Chinese to the
same Province’s missionaries in China. And yet, because of their openness, their
growing love of the Dine, and especially of their determination to learn the
Navajo language, these early missionaries became sympathetic and wise ethnographers of the Navajo people and their language and customs. The dates of the
various writings themselves reveal how the friars grew in their empathy with and
understanding of the Dine. Bahr’s book, with its brilliant introduction detailing
the friars’ contribution to the mutually enriching Franciscan/Navajo confluence,
is an illuminating account of the sensitivity of the early Franciscans to the Navajo.
MURRAY L. BODO, O.F.M.
Cincinnati, Ohio

Prophet of the Christian Social Manifesto: Joseph Husslein, S.J.: His Life, Work,
& Social Thought. By Stephen A. Werner. [Marquette Studies in Theology,
No. 24.] (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. 2001. Pp. 187. $20.00 paperback.)
Joseph Husslein, S.J. (1873–1952), was a prolific writer on Catholic social
thought, an editor of the Jesuit journal, America, author of devotional works,
creator and editor of “A University in Print” (see ante LXXXVII [October, 2001],
688–705), and founder of the School of Social Sciences at Saint Louis University.

188

BOOK REVIEWS

This slim volume sketches Husslein’s life and then devotes most of the text to
an exploration of his social thought. Werner clusters Husslein’s writing by
themes including socialism, capitalism, an alternative to capitalism that he
called democratic industry, and cooperatives. Given the brevity of this publication, Werner devotes a painful amount of space to Husslein’s “A Catholic Social
Platform” that was adopted by the Catholic Social Guild in Great Britain. He
cites all of its sixty social principles, sometimes with and too often without significant commentary or interpretation.
Husslein’s publications on Catholic social thought were eclipsed by the work
of other writers—including such men as John A. Ryan and Peter E. Dietz. There
were many reasons for this, not the least of which was the contrast between the
practical, action-oriented approach of the latter and the more theoretical and
sometimes naïve Husslein. Nevertheless, Husslein’s contributions warrant exploration and this book by Stephen A.Werner is a welcome addition to the literature.
Virtually everything that Husslein wrote drew upon Pope Leo XIII’s profoundly influential encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891). He believed that only
the Church’s teachings held the key to the problems afflicting working men. He
was enamored of the medieval guilds of workers and craftsmen and saw in
them a potential model for America. But as Werner noted, Husslein did not differentiate between the often-romanticized view of the guilds and the reality of
the workers’ lives, commenting,“For Husslein, the true social order lay in the
past not in a kingdom of God yet to be established on earth.” Husslein’s influence was largely nullified by his failure to offer ideas that connected with the
prevailing circumstances on the often-tumultuous American social and labor
scene.
The strength and the weakness of this publication are the same. Werner
quotes so extensively from Husslein that the result is extremely choppy. On the
other hand, few individuals today read Husslein’s original text. Thus the inclusion of so much of it provides a significant sense of his writing and thinking. It
would have been improved with less of Husslein and more of Werner, and it
would also have been helpful if the author had compared Husslein’s thought
with that of other scholars of the time. Inclusion of a list of abbreviations for
Husslein’s works would also have been helpful.
Scholars interested in exploring Catholic social thought in the early decades
of the twentieth century will find an excellent bibliography as well as an exhaustive list of Husslein’s publications.
NANCY K. MASON
Alexandria, Virginia

The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing. By E. Michael
Jones. (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press. 2004. Pp. x, 668. $40.00.)

BOOK REVIEWS

189

This is one of the worst books I have ever read, at least of the academic variety. It would probably be more accurate to say of the purportedly academic variety, since Jones’s book rests on what looks to be a remarkably thin evidentiary
base. Whole chapters unfold with footnotes to only three or four secondary
sources. Certain astonishing assertions aren’t footnoted at all. I’ve never seen an
allegedly scholarly book quite like it.
Jones’s sparse footnotes are particularly worthy of comment, given his
provocative thesis. The collapse of countless ethnic neighborhoods in the urban North in the 1950’s and ’60’s, Jones argues, was the result of a plot by a liberal internationalist elite—one composed mostly of mainline Protestants but
including assimilationist Jews, all of whom shared a virulent anti-Catholicism.
The principal weapons employed by this elite were public housing, urban renewal, freeway building, and somewhat later, busing for purposes of school integration. Jones doesn’t mean “plot” in a metaphorical sense. He apparently has
in mind a sitting-around-the-boardroom kind of plot, although its exact workings are never explained. He is mightily contemptuous of those many academics—fools like me, in other words—who see in the post-1945 collapse of
America’s industrial cities a tragedy caused in part by misguided good intentions but more fundamentally by changes in the nation’s economy and a forced
reckoning with our national legacy of slavery and racial oppression.
Jones’s liberal elite achieved power in 1941—a direct result of their having
maneuvered the United States into World War II.(Not surprisingly, Jones cleaves
to conspiratorial views on Pearl Harbor.) They proceeded to encourage the
migration of black Southerners to the industrial cities of the North, partly to
sustain war production and thus the successful prosecution of the elite’s internationalist goals, and partly—or so it is suggested—to undermine the strength
of ethnically-dominated trade unions. (Since nothing happens in Jones’s world
without a powerful someone’s intending it to, his “elite” must necessarily include some very strange bedfellows. Social democrats labor hand-in-glove with
corporate big-wigs.) With large numbers of blacks now resident in suddenly
overcrowded cities, the elite was able to initiate the first stages of what Jones
calls a plan to “ethnically cleanse” those cities of white ethnic Catholics. Defense-related housing projects were the entering wedge, followed after the war
by more ambitious plans for “slum clearance” and urban renewal. In virtually
every instance, the elite used blacks as a “battering ram”—Jones’s words—
against white ethnic strongholds.“Slum clearance” projects typically displaced
large numbers of poor black residents,who were then encouraged to move into
nearby white ethnic neighborhoods—no matter that they brought with them a
legacy of indolence and criminality. Certain ethnic neighborhoods were assaulted even more directly, by means of urban freeway building and massive
public housing projects. The intended results were soon achieved: white ethnics moved in droves to the rapidly expanding suburbs, where they turned into
deracinated conformists and mindless materialists—ideal consumers, in short,
from the perspective of advanced capitalism.

190

BOOK REVIEWS

Since white ethnics were the subjects of consciously-orchestrated ethnic
cleansing, Jones regards their sometimes violent resistance to neighborhood integration as morally justified,even admirable.Liberal Catholic interracialists,who
condemned the violence—often enough, I concede, from the fastness of allwhite suburbs—were nothing less than “. . . the WASP-subsidized fifth column
within the Catholic Church” ( p. 533). The bishops stand no higher in Jones’s
opinion, since none of them was willing to publicly champion the preservation
of all-white urban neighborhoods. When it comes to non-Catholics, Jones is even
freer with his condemnatory judgments. African-Americans are repeatedly depicted as lustful and violent. Episcopalians can’t think—they can “only approve
or disapprove,based on commonly shared ethnic prejudice”( p.183).“Arrogance
and mendacity” are “ethnic characteristics which [derive] ultimately from the
Quaker religion” ( p. 77). Reading this book rouses many of the same despairing
emotions as reading dispatches a few years back from embattled Sarajevo.
For all the moral shoddiness of Jones’s argument,he is right to see the collapse
of the nation’s industrial cities as a tragedy and right to be angered by it. But
anger doesn’t have to cripple one’s analytic faculties. Jones says almost nothing
about the economic forces that underwrote the post–1945 urban collapse. Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, even New York—cities like these lost hundreds of
thousands of industrial jobs in the decades after World War II. Had southern
blacks never moved to Detroit, its ethnic East Side would still have imploded—
albeit more slowly, gently, and probably less totally than was actually the case.
Young people would inevitably have left those neighborhoods, simply because
the factories that anchored them closed up in the 1950’s and ’60’s—due not to
a plot against the ethnics but mostly because of increasingly decentralized auto
production and the advent of technology that made multi-story industrial plants
obsolete. White ethnics could at least follow the factories, many of which initially re-located to the exurban Midwest. Most blacks could not. They remained
concentrated in decaying city neighborhoods, suffering disproportionately from
long-term unemployment,deprived not only of a living wage but of the structure
and discipline that regular work imparts. If white ethnics were victims of a
changing economy, blacks suffered too—and much more severely.
American cities have always been characterized by rapid change. The earliest
immigrant neighborhoods were eventually swallowed up by expanding downtowns and factory zones, as were the mansions that once lined fashionable
stretches of New York’s Fifth Avenue and Washington’s K Street. The 1930’s and
’40’s were an unnaturally static period in American urban history, when depression and war inhibited the usually brisk process of neighborhood change. (This
is precisely where Jones begins his story, which skews his narrative in a predictable way.) What made postwar change so especially wrenching was the concomitant collapse of the central city, which had ceased in a good many cases to
be an economic magnet. However ill-judged the decisions of urban planners in
these years, they were nearly always motivated by a passionate desire to resuscitate the urban core. Their failures—indeed, their arrogance—should not be ex-

BOOK REVIEWS

191

cused. But as we call for greater humility in our policy-makers and a greater attentiveness to the complexities of life in a pluralist society, we scholars are
obliged to strive for the same virtues.In his own idiosyncratic way, Jones is a mirror image of the arrogant elites that his unnecessarily long book excoriates.
LESLIE W.TENTLER
The Catholic University of America

A Catholic in the White House? Religion, Politics, and John F. Kennedy’s Presidential Campaign. By Thomas J. Carty. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
2004. Pp. viii, 215. $39.95 hardcover.)
The author, Thomas J. Carty, assistant professor of history at Springfield College, has provided a timely study of the question of religion and U.S. presidential politics. Focusing on the 1960 campaign and the variety of responses to
John Kennedy’s brand of Catholicism, Carty provides scholarly context for understanding many of the cultural, political, and religious issues of the period, including historical U.S. anti-Catholicism and the impact of the Cold War on the
same. In addition, and just as significantly, his work points to the questions and
prejudices that remain in the current American context,despite the widespread
popular perception that Kennedy’s election finally resolved the “Catholic issue.”
Systematically presented in seven chapters and an epilogue, the book is
based on Professor Carty’s doctoral dissertation, presented at the University of
Connecticut, and as such, it suggests the still-growing interest in “Catholic studies” within the secular academy. The strength of the work lies in its detailed research and exploration of the political history involved rather than in a deeper
analysis of the theological questions. But much of that work was laid out by
Donald Pelotte in his study of John Courtney Murray and his theological project
(New York: Paulist Press, 1975), to which Carty duly refers in his notes.The first
chapter offers a broad summary of the history of the “Catholic issue”in U.S. politics up to the period of Al Smith’s 1928 presidential campaign and might prove
especially useful to undergraduates and others who are beginning their study of
the topic.
In the second chapter Carty focuses on the political careers of the nationallyknown Catholics Al Smith, Jim Farley, Joseph Kennedy, and Joseph McCarthy as
a prelude for understanding the religious issues of the 1960 campaign.The next
three chapters are effective in their analysis of the major differing perspectives
and opinions with regard to Kennedy’s religion and candidacy. Conservative
Protestant opposition, including that of Billy Graham, Norman Vincent Peale,
Martin Luther King, Sr., and Harry S. Truman is studied first, allowing Carty to
show the sometimes surprisingly rapid, though not universal, evolution of
thought and public position within these circles. This is followed by a focus on
the changing perspectives of American liberals, many of whom originally op-

192

BOOK REVIEWS

posed the possibility of a Catholic candidate but came to endorse Kennedy, and
how the Kennedy campaign used those endorsements. Here Carty is at his best,
using extensive archival research to support his narrative and to describe new
political coalitions. There are several surprises, including the irony of Nixon’s
consistent refusal to use the “religious issue” or to tolerate any hint of antiCatholicism from within his campaign, while Kennedy’s supporters simultaneously decried any reference to religion during the campaign while also
appealing to it among specific groups, and at the same time suggesting that the
Republicans were bigots.
The book includes twelve pages of bibliography, thus providing scholars and
interested readers alike with nearly all relevant published materials, including
doctoral dissertations, to date. The index and a section of helpful illustrations
and photos are also to be commended. As each chapter might well stand on its
own there is occasional tedious repetition and some overlap, especially in the
introduction of persons. The editor might have served the author better in this
and in the occasional misspellings that are encountered. There are also some
unfortunate errors of fact, including the identification of “New York Auxiliary
Bishop Francis Spellman” and F.D.R. as “assistant secretary of war in World War
I” (both on page 39).
The epilogue provides insightful commentary on the questions raised by
Catholic candidacy and issues in presidential elections since 1960 (though, curiously, omitting any reference to the 2000 campaign), thus inviting further
study and commentary. This book is highly recommended for scholars and students of presidential politics and of the influence of Catholicism in American
life. The 1960 campaign demonstrates how, within the American political and
cultural context, Catholic faith raises significant questions for national reflection and debate, while at the same time it can also be used simply as a foil for
other political agendas and personal careers by those at both ends of the political spectrum.
JAMES F. GARNEAU
Diocese of Raleigh

Canadian
Archbishop A.-A.Taché of St.Boniface:The “Good Fight”and the Illusive Vision.
By Raymond J.A. Huel. (Edmonton,Alberta:The University of Alberta Press,
Western Canadian Publishers. 2003. Pp. xxv, 439. Paperback.)
For years, specialists of nineteenth-century Canadian Church history have deplored the lack of a reliable, critical, and unbiased biography of one of the major figures of Western Canadian history: Alexandre-Antonin Taché, first bishop,
then archbishop of St. Boniface (1853–1894), in what is now the province of
Manitoba. Raymond J.A. Huel’s recently published study on Taché and his “good

BOOK REVIEWS

193

fight” should in more ways than one satisfy these same specialists and put an
end to their long wait.
With the exception of Jean Hamelin’s 1990 insightful article in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, most of the material published on Bishop Taché,
including Dom Benoit’s voluminous biography of 1904, is outdated and marred
by its obvious hagiographic bent.Professor emeritus of history at the University
of Lethbridge (Alberta), general editor of the “Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate in the Canadian North West”Series, author of numerous books and articles on the history of the Western Provinces and the pioneering role the
Oblates played in that part of Canada from 1845 on, Raymond Huel was well
prepared and most qualified to succeed where so many others had failed.
The goals he set for himself tell it all.“In the final analysis,” he writes in his introduction,“a biography of Alexandre-Antonin Taché is more than the story of
an individual. It is the history of the Catholic Church in Quebec and the Canadian North West and of the Oblate establishment in that latter region. [ . . . ] It
is a story of cultural confrontation and conflict involving First Nations, French
and English, Catholic and Protestant,” but also “Métis and French Canadians,
[ . . . ] Irish Catholics and French Catholics” ( p. xxv). If one adds to that the
complexities and uncertainties of frontier politics, the contentious nature of
settlement in vast areas up to then occupied by the Métis or criss-crossed by a
variety of Indian tribes, the rapid transformation of the territories over which
during his long years of episcopate Bishop Taché had jurisdiction, one can easily understand why so few historians up to now have dared give the bishop of
St. Boniface the long, careful and critical look he deserved. If only for that reason, Professor Huel’s study warrants our gratitude and admiration. But he has
done much more than that,for,as John S.Moir,well-known Canadian church historian, concludes after having read Raymond Huel’s book, “this volume is a
model of biography at its best.”
It is difficult not to agree with this assessment, and for a variety of reasons.
First, Professor Huel, making good use of the sources at his disposal, supplies us
with a much more nuanced, true-to-life, and therefore believable portrait of
Taché than the one accredited up to now by his hagiographers.The contrast between the public figure: distant, authoritarian, and combative and the private
one: sensitive, caring, and loving, as revealed by his correspondence with his
mother,but at the same time,a certain charisma that endeared him permanently
to a variety of people, including some with whom he disagreed or whom at
times he had treated harshly: all these and many other features highlighted by
Professor Huel point to a complex personality that he does not hesitate to call
“enigmatic” ( p. 333). One would tend to agree with this portrait of Bishop
Taché, but I would suggest that his authoritarian side had probably less to do
with his psychological make-up than with the fact that he hailed from a prominent Quebec family, was highly regarded by his Oblate as well as ecclesiastical
superiors, and, for these very reasons, was made in 1850, at the very early age of

194

BOOK REVIEWS

27, the coadjutor of Bishop Provencher, vicar apostolic of the North West,
whom he succeeded upon the latter’s death in 1853. What an ordeal it must
have been for this young, boyish-looking bishop, as revealed by a photograph
taken the year of his consecration ( p. 33), to have to deal with collaborators
older and more seasoned than he was, but also with problems that with the
years were to prove more and more complex and vexing, problems that even
more experienced men would have had a hard time coping with.
Professor Huel spends the major part of his book addressing these very problems: internal ones like Taché’s relations with his fellow Oblates as well as with
the clergy, the religious, and the laity under his jurisdiction or the day-to-day
government of a diocese whose make-up and needs were rapidly changing; external ones such as his dealings with the civil authorities at the local, regional,
and national level, with his Quebec counterparts, later, his Western ones, with
Rome, with the French Canadian nationalists in Quebec and elsewhere, but,
above all, his involvement, at times direct involvement in a whole series of
events, debates, and projects he felt warranted and, in some cases, required his
attention if not his willful intervention. Events such as the Red River insurrection, the establishment of the Province of Manitoba in 1870, the creation of the
ecclesiastical province of St. Boniface in 1871, the Louis Riel affair; projects as
varied as the setting up of industrial schools for the Métis and Indians of his diocese, the development of the college established by his predecessor in St. Boniface, the recruitment of Catholic and, preferably, French-speaking immigrants
from Quebec and elsewhere in view of ensuring a strong French Catholic presence and, hopefully, providing Quebec with a “sister province” in the West;
events and projects which would in turn give rise to numerous and, at times,
fiery debates or confrontations involving if not directly, at least indirectly, the
Bishop of St. Boniface. All these and other instances, well described and analyzed by Professor Huel, serve to reveal Taché’s qualities and failings, strengths
and weaknesses, but also the insurmountable nature of many of the obstacles
that stood in the way of his dreams and ambitions.
Raymond Huel speaks of an “illusive vision”that in many ways put the Bishop
of St. Boniface at odds with the political, economic, and demographic realities
he was faced with.He remained,he says,too much of a Quebecer to understand
the vastly different nature of the society that was taking shape in the Canadian
North West, especially in Manitoba, too much of a patrician to see through the
double-talk and the empty promises of politicians whose “ultimate behaviour
was dictated by political expediency and the need to survive” ( p. 319), and too
much an idealist to accept the compromises that, in certain cases, might have
better served his cause. (He did accept in 1874 a compromise on the Manitoba
School question, but only because this compromise had been imposed by the
pope.) On all these counts,Professor Huel is probably right.But the question remains: was Taché, above all, a victim of his upbringing and temperament or, a
victim of circumstances beyond his control? Raymond Huel prudently avoids

BOOK REVIEWS

195

answering this question, but he does seem to give precedence to personal failings over circumstances.
If most of Bishop Taché’s setbacks were of a political nature or, at least, politically connected, his most notable achievements were, on the contrary, of a religious nature,as befitted his role as bishop and,later,archbishop of St.Boniface,
though an evident lack of interpersonal skills was to make some of the goals he
had set for himself in this regard more painful and more difficult to attain than
need have been. Professor Huel shows quite convincingly that Taché, though
not a great leader in the charismatic sense of the word, was an outstanding administrator and builder which enabled him to answer the changing needs of a
Catholic population that comprised Indians, Métis, and later settlers of various
origins. His dream of a French Catholic province in Western Canada did not deter him from trying to satisfy as best as he could the demands of the other communities of his diocese. In other words, he knew where his priorities stood.
Alexandre-Antonin Taché was one of the first Canadians to join the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate some three years after their coming to Canada
at the request of Bishop Bourget of Montreal. This single fact explains to a large
extent the chain of events that followed and that was to make him one of the
major figures both of the Canadian Church and of the Canadian North West in
the second half of the nineteenth century. A “noble figure,” concludes Professor
Huel, but, at the same time, a “heroic and tragic” one ( p. 317), above all because
of the many and, at times, unexpected challenges he was faced with or the nature of the battles he had to wage for which, in some cases, he was ill-prepared,
in others, the odds were obviously stacked against him. We cannot but agree
with the author on all these counts.
“Raymond Huel,”writes John S. Moir,“has given us the definitive biography of
A.-A. Taché.” I will not dare go as far, but Professor Huel’s work is certainly and,
by far, the best and most reliable account produced up to now of the Bishop of
St. Boniface’s life and times. It is to be recommended to all those interested,
both in the Canadian Church history and the history of the Canadian North
West.
PIERRE HURTUBISE, O.M.I.
St. Paul University
Ottawa

Latin American
Iglesia, Justicia y Sociedad en la Nueva España. La Audiencia del Arzobispado de México, 1528–1668. By Jorge E. Traslosheros. (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa México and Universidad Iberoamericana. 2004. Pp. xvi, 219.
Paperback.)

196

BOOK REVIEWS

While most historians and lay readers are acquainted with the Inquisition,
few know well the tribunals of the episcopal churches. Known as audiencias,
they were part of each bishopric and were the bishops’ working tools in their
effort to exercise their roles as arbiters of personal faith and social customs.The
audiencia of the Archbishopric of Mexico, capital of the viceroyalty of New
Spain, receives full attention from Jorge Traslosheros in the period between its
inception and mid-seventeenth century, when it reached full possession of its
jurisdiction. Like other audiencias, the one presiding the vast central area of
New Spain reviewed legal cases on chantries, wills, and pious deeds. It exercised justice as applied to the clergy, and reviewed all contested cases related to
personal sins, divorce, and contested marriages. Under its charge were also
cases of transgression against the faith by the indigenous people who, officially,
were not under the Inquisition’s purview. The audiencias were not controlled
by the Council of the Indies or the Inquisition, although they complemented
the work of the latter.
According to Traslosheros the philosophical and religious frame supporting
the existence of these tribunals was the emergence of a missionary monarchy
in Spain in the sixteenth-century whose goal was to establish a confessional society oriented toward eternal salvation. Bishops and archbishops were entrusted with the task of overseeing the moral and religious life of that society.
The audiencias were one of three tools at the bishops’ disposal to exercise their
task, with sacramental confession and the episcopal visitations to their dioceses
being the other two. Traslosheros argues that without fully understanding the
essence of law and justice in the period under review we could fail to understand the reasons behind the audiencias’ procedures and verdicts. Perhaps the
most important feature of the concept of law in those days was its corporative
character.Each sector of society received punishment differently,and the aim of
the executor of justice was to set an example for the individual as well as for the
rest of society that could, in the long run, facilitate the reconciliation of the person’s soul to the Church’s doctrine.
In New Spain the early ecclesiastic tribunals were weak until the last decades
of the sixteenth century, given the powerful opposition to their jurisdiction by
the regular orders.However,after the Third Mexican Council (1585),and thanks
to the forceful intervention of Archbishop Moya de Contreras, the ecclesiastic
audiencia began to gain in power and coherence, to reach its zenith in the seventeenth century. Traslosheros devotes special attention to explaining the
structure of the tribunal and its functions and uses numerous cases, civil and religious, to illustrate how it worked on the defense of its episcopal jurisdiction
through active jurisprudence and the legal philosophy behind it. The most fascinating cases are those concerning sins of the flesh and the regulation of marriage life, but the examples on how the Church punished its own members are
just as important. Also of great interest is the chapter on the jurisdiction of the
tribunal over the Indians. The tribunal reviewed litigations between them and
their pastors, their personal moral behavior, and cases of internal church disci-

BOOK REVIEWS

197

pline if it involved Indians. Any transgression against the faith by the Indians,
however, was reviewed by the bishop or archbishop himself.
Fully supported by archival research, this work provides many important
views of daily life in the mid-colonial period, as well as giving a meticulous and
precise explanation of the tenets of ecclesiastical justice and its philosophy. It
also helps one to understand the fine tuning regulating civil and ecclesiastic tribunals. The author argues that with few exceptions, there was no real conflict
between church and state in New Spain (other opinions notwithstanding) because the Spanish monarch had the temporal and spiritual jurisdiction under
his authority, and the ecclesiastical tribunals were able to resolve all issues of
competency throughout time with a minimum of friction. This is a pithy work
with many nuances that go beyond this review. It should become standard reference for those interested in understanding the complex relationship tying together ecclesiastical justice, the priesthood, and the people.
ASUNCIÓN LAVRIN
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona

Chinese
The Spirit and the Flesh in Shandong, 1650–1785. By David E. Mungello. (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. 2001. Pp. xiv, 210. $70.00 clothbound; $26.95 paperback.)
Catholicism first reached China in the Mongol period, when Franciscan missionaries traveled through Central Asia to the court of the Khans. The early
Catholic communities established by friars, however, had all but disappeared by
the mid-Ming period (late fourteenth century). It was only in the late sixteenth
century, with the arrival of the Jesuits in Macao, that missionary work resumed
in earnest.The story of Matteo Ricci, S.J., and his confrères in the following generations has been told many times, and research on the encounter of Christianity and European knowledge as brought to China by the Jesuits, particularly
within the upper echelons of Chinese society (literati and the imperial court),
continues in full swing.
It is only in recent years, however, that scholars in the English-speaking world
have started to pay increasing attention to the diffusion of Christianity in rural
and “popular” contexts during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focusing more on devotion and ritual than on science and fine arts, and examining
also the work of orders and congregations other than the Jesuits, such as the
Franciscans, Dominicans, Propaganda Fide, and the Missions Étrangères de Paris

198

BOOK REVIEWS

(on these missions, we already have a rich, although mostly dated, literature in
European languages other than English).
David Mungello’s latest monograph is a pioneering effort in this direction.
Through a number of books and articles published over the years, Mungello has
explored the transmission of Chinese thought and culture to Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as the “inculturation” of Christianity
in China. In these earlier works, he has shown predilection for intellectual history,such as in his book on the native converted literatus Zhang Xingyao (1994),
where he dissected Zhang’s writings to prove how the new Christian creed was
interpreted within prevailing Confucian intellectual context. Conversely, in The
Spirit and the Flesh, Mungello directs his attention to the daily life of the Franciscan Christian communities in the northern Chinese province of Shandong between 1650 and 1785. He chronicles through the biographical experiences of
Spanish and Italian Franciscans, belonging both to the Spanish Province of San
Gregorio Magno and to Propaganda Fide, the difficult beginnings, the hard-won
developments, and the eventual demise of the Shandong mission. On the one
hand, the life of the mission was hampered by quarrels over the acceptance of
Chinese rituality and over the contested missionary jurisdictions of Spain, Portugal, and the Papacy. On the other hand, Chinese government prohibitions of
Christianity (starting in 1723) and waves of anti-Christian campaigns at the
provincial level led to the extinction of the Franciscan presence at the end of the
eighteenth century.
Mungello’s main sources are the original reports published in the series Sinica
Franciscana (1929–1997), and some manuscripts from the Propaganda Fide
Archives in Rome and the National Library of Naples.The unequal documentary
coverage of the Franciscan letters, as well as the hybrid chronological-thematic
organization of The Spirit and the Flesh, yield a narrative that feels at times uneven, with numerous subsections opened by detailed biographical notes on
personalities, especially missionaries. What emerges is a complex picture of ecclesiastical politics and religious controversy—the dominant themes—while
other themes,such as the very interesting discussion of the writings of the Christian literatus Shang Huqing (chap. 3,“The Attempt to Blend Confucianism and
Christianity”), or the local dynamics of “heterodox” religion in Shandong (in
chap. 5) play a less prominent role. Precisely these two areas could have been
given further space, offering a more integrated picture of the intellectual milieu
of Christian literati to which Shang Huqing belonged (see a reference at p. 47 to
mutual influences among late Ming—early Qing Christian literati),and providing
a richer contextual local history of Shandong’s society and religion in late imperial times.
The chief contribution of this work is to open up for examination by a larger
public the little-known Franciscan sources on Christianity in China, and to offer
insights into exciting themes for future research, such as popular religiosity, rit-

BOOK REVIEWS

199

ual, material culture, and even gender studies (as shown by the last chapter on
sexual scandals and liaisons between some missionaries and local Christian
women).
EUGENIO MENEGON
Boston University

BRIEF NOTICES

Cunningham, Lawrence S. Francis of Assisi: Performing the Gospel Life. (Grand
Rapids, Michigan: W.E. Erdmans Publishing Company. 2004. Pp. xii, 160.
$14.00 paperback.)
The life of Saint Francis of Assisi has been interpreted by a succession of biographers, beginning with Thomas of Celano’s Vita prima, which was written
to celebrate the canonization on July 16, 1228. Subsequent biographers have
produced vitae which reflect their own understanding and evaluation; this has
bedeviled much of Franciscan historiography. The same process has infected
external debate about the saint and his message. Professor Cunningham corrects what he regards as defective portraits of the saint and his mission. He presents a stimulating account of one of the most attractive figures in the history
of Christendom; there are fresh insights in each of the eight chapters. The first
chapter dwells on the pivotal function of Francis’s ecclesiology. While the
saint’s respectful disposition toward Guido II, bishop of Assisi, and Innocent III
foxes some modern biographers, the two prelates were perceived as the custodians of the spiritual heritage and authority of the martyred bishops of Assisi
and Rome,Saints Rufino and Peter.These convictions led Francis to regard these
two bishops as the highest sources of ecclesiastical authority at local and international levels. While Francis’s thought and conduct were innovative, his ecclesiology was conservative, and it was marked by a profound reverence for a
sacred office. One expression of this lies behind his deep respect for priests, regardless of their personal failings. Cunningham firmly locates Francis within the
movements of renewal in the Church during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The apex of the reforming measures implemented by Innocent III was
the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Francis’s scattered writings reflect the policies pursued by this pope. The friars were to carry the conciliar decrees into
virtually every diocese and parish of the western Church from the 1220’s. One
of the strengths of this attractive monograph is the clear ecclesiology invoked
by Cunningham, who argues that the saint cannot be properly viewed outside
this perspective. This study is one of the best and most perceptive portraits of
the saint in recent years. MICHAEL ROBSON, O.F.M.CONV. (St Edmund’s College,
Cambridge)

200

BRIEF NOTICES

201

Lapomarda, Vincent A. The Catholic Church in the Land of the Holy Cross:A
History of the Diocese of Portland, Maine. (Strasbourg: Editions du Signe.
2003. Pp. 160.)
During the past quarter-century scholars have found many ways to approach
the daunting task of diocesan history: scholarly landmarks by Leslie Tentler (Detroit) and Thomas Spalding (Baltimore); a people’s history by David O’Brien
(Syracuse); groundbreaking collections edited by Robert Sullivan and James
O’Toole (Boston) and Steven Avella (Milwaukee) that pointed in the direction
of future studies; and numerous works centered on a single bishop or archbishop. Vincent A. Lapomarda’s history of the Diocese of Portland, Maine, The
Catholic Church in the Land of the Holy Cross, represents still another model.
It is a compact, extensively illustrated work by a professional historian intended
to commemorate multiple anniversaries: the Diocese of Portland’s 150th in
2003 and four hundred years since the founding of the first Catholic community in what is now the state of Maine.
Ten of Lapomarda’s twelve chapter titles indicate a central focus on the episcopacy—Portland’s bishops have included luminaries such as James Augustine
Healy (1875–1900), the nation’s first African-American bishop, and William H.
O’Connell (1901–1906), future Archbishop of Boston—however, in Lapomarda’s succinct, yet detailed narrative, bishops and pastors share center stage
with the laity and women religious.At the heart of the history of Catholicism in
Maine, past and present, are complex, ever-changing patterns of interaction between ethnic communities, and Lapomarda examines this aspect of the narrative deftly in all twelve chapters and in three useful appendices on the historic
sites, parishes, and Catholic schools of Maine. Lapomarda has served historians
and Maine’s Catholics very well. His history will be useful to both of these constituencies for decades to come. DEBRA CAMPBELL (Colby College)

NOTES AND COMMENTS

C o n f e r e n c e s , C o n g r e s s e s , a n d M e e ti n g s
A conference in honor of Christopher Kauffman will be held at the University
of Notre Dame on April 8 and 9, 2005, under the title,“The Future of American
Catholic History.” Full information may be obtained from the Cushwa Center for
the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, Notre
Dame, Indiana 46556; telephone: 574-631-5441; e-mail: cushwa.1@nd.edu.
At the fiftieth International Congress of Medieval Studies,which will be held at
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, in May, 2005, the American Cusanus Society will sponsor two sessions: (1) Nicholas of Cusa I: Rhetoric and Theology:
Cases of Gerson and Cusanus, and (2) Cusanus Research as Critical Scholarship
and Politics: The Legacy of Raymond Klibansky on the Occasion of His 100th
Birthday. The Morimichi Watanabe Lecture will be delivered by Otto Gründler.
Further information may be obtained from Peter Casarella in care of the School of
Theology and Religious Studies, Caldwell Hall, The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. 20064; telephone: 202-319-6517; e-mail: casarelp@cua.edu.
The seventy-second annual meeting of the Canadian Catholic Historical Association will be held at the University of Western Ontario in London on June 1 and
2, 2005. Proposals for individual papers and entire sessions are solicited; they
should be submitted before January 31 by e-mail to any of the following members
of the program committee (who are also the president-general, president, and
vice-president respectively of the Association): John Fitzgerald, jfitz@mun.ca;
Linda Wicks, lwicks@csj-to.ca; or Richard Lebrun, lebrun@cc.umanitoba.ca.
Another conference on “Consecrated Women: Towards a History of Women
Religious of Britain and Ireland” will be held in Cambridge, England, on September 16–17, 2005. The organizers will welcome proposals of both individual
papers and panels and will accept them until February 28. They especially solicit proposals on the following themes: Material culture in the convent: art and
artifacts, buildings and gardens; consecrated women as missionaries; methodology: oral history; and the authorial voice of women religious. Proposals should
be submitted to Caroline Bowden in care of Royal Holloway College, University
of London,Egham,Surrey TW20 0EX,England,or to Susan O’Brien in care of the
Margaret Beaufort Institute, Grange Road, Cambridge CB3 9DX, England; e-mail
so277@cam.ac.uk.

202

NOTES AND COMMENTS

203

The thirty-second annual Saint Louis Conference on Manuscript Studies will
take place on October 14–15, 2005. Inquiries should be addressed to the Vatican Film Library at the Pius XII Memorial Library, Saint Louis University, 3650
Lindell Boulevard, St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3302; telephone: 314-977-3090;
e-mail: vfl@slu.edu; URL: http://www.slu.edu/libraries/vfl.
Census of I
nquisition Documents
On November 9, 2004, Bishop Angelo Amato, secretary of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith, Maurizio Fallace, director general of the Archives
of the Italian Ministry for Cultural Goods and Activities, and Andrea Del Col, director of the Center for Research on the Inquisition of the University of Trieste,
signed an accord of collaboration to carry out a census of the archives and Inquisition documentation in Italy. The project concerns not only the documentation regarding the Roman Inquisition, preserved in ecclesiastical, state, and
private archives, as well as in Italian and foreign libraries, but also the documentation of the Spanish Inquisition on Italian territory and that of the secular
authorities that instituted trials for heresy, witchcraft, and other crimes against
the faith. This vast undertaking, never before attempted, will help to respond to
the new orientations of international research on the control of religious ideas
in medieval and modern Europe and will make more readily available a great
wealth of documentation that is little known and is dispersed throughout multiple depositories. According to the official press release,“the census, carried
out according to the certain criteria established by common agreement and
with the most advanced technological instruments, will not only seek to safeguard this cultural patrimony, unique in its nature, but will also facilitate knowledge in many fields of research, from the history of religious and scientific
doctrines, to that of popular cultures, of ‘spontaneous holiness,’ of censorship,
in addition to the systems of social control between the medieval age and modern times.The accord will, therefore, consolidate and amplify collaboration that
has taken place for some time and is being conducted for the service of a better development of man and civil coexistence, in exploring the values of Christianity and Western civilization.”
Papal Letter
On November 1, 2004, Pope John Paul II wrote a letter to Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, Archbishop of Florence, on the occasion of the approaching celebrations of the centenary of the birth of Giorgio La Pira, late mayor of Florence,
whom he called “an exemplary lay person.” The Holy Father said that La Pira
“was gifted with great intellectual and moral strength,” and he noted “the spiritual legacy that he left to the Church of Florence and the entire ecclesial community.” He continued: “His spirituality was, so to speak, ‘immanent’ to daily
activity; from Eucharistic communion to meditation, to his cultural commit-

204

NOTES AND COMMENTS

ment, to social and political action, there was continuity in all he did. . . . Faithful to the Magisterium of the Church, . . . he understood public office as serving the common good.” The cause for La Pira’s beatification has been
introduced.
Periodical Literature
“Jesuitas: 400 años en Colombia” is the theme of the issue of Revista Javeriana for October, 2004 (Volume 140, Number 709). Following an editorial by
the editor,Vicente Durán, S.J.,“400 años de historia y una misma identidad”( pp.
4–6) are the articles: Gabriel Ignacio Rodríguez, S.J.,“Jesuitas: 400 años de presencia en Colombia” ( pp. 8–10); Horacio Botero Giraldo, S.I.,“Jesuitas: 400 años
en Colombia” ( pp. 16–23); Alberto Gutiérrez, S.J.,“El record de expulsions” ( pp.
26–31); José del Ray Fajardo, S.J.,“Los jesuitas en las raíces de la colombianidad”
( pp. 32–41); Mauricio Archila Neira, “Los jesuitas y la cuestión social” ( pp.
42–51); Tulio Aristizábal, S.J.,“Jesuitas artistas y sus colegas en Colombia” ( pp.
52–63); and Carl Henrik Langebaek,“Jesuitas y pasado indígena en Colombia”
( pp. 64–77).
The second fascicle of Studia Monastica (which is published by the Abbey
of Montserrat) for 2003 (Volume 45) is devoted to the memory of “El Abad Dom
Gabriel M. Brasó, OSB (1912–1978),” who was coadjutor abbot of Montserrat
and then abbot president of the Benedictine Congregation of Subiaco. The following are the main articles here published: Giuseppe Tamburrino, O.S.B.,“P.
Gabriel M. Brasó, abate presidente della Congregazione benedettina sublacense” ( pp. 285–310); Denis Huerre, O.S.B., “Dom Marie-Gabriel Brasó et les
monastères africains de la Congrégation de Subiaco” ( pp. 311–318); Alfredo
Simón, O.S.B., “El abad Brasó y la renovación monástica postconciliar” ( pp.
319–338); Pere Tena,“El testimony spiritual de l’abat Brasó” ( pp. 343–357); Cebriá M. Pifarré,“Sobre el ideal monástico del P. Gabriel M. Brasó” ( pp. 359–379);
Bartomeu M. Ubach, “L’oecuménisme et l’ «humble service des moines»” ( pp.
381–408); and Salvador Plans,“El abad Gabriel Brasó y los oblates benedictions
de Montserrat” ( pp. 409–419).
The theme of the U.S. Catholic Historian for spring, 2004 (Volume 22, Number 2), is “Urbanism and American Religion.”The following articles are published:
Carlo Rotella,“ ‘As if to say “Jeez”’: Blight and Ecstasy in the Old Neighborhood”
( pp.1–11); Jeanne Halgren Kilde,“Urbanization and Transformations in Religious
Mission and Architecture” ( pp. 13–32); Beryl Satter,“ ‘Our greatest moments of
glory have been fighting the institutions we love the most’: The Rise and Fall of
Chicago’s Interreligious Council on Urban Affairs, 1958–1969” ( pp. 33–44);
James M.O’Toole,“The O’Connell Century:From Triumph to Tragedy in Catholic
Boston”( pp.45–49); Jon Butler,“Religion in New York City:Faith That Could Not
Be” ( pp. 51–61); Thomas J. Shelley, “Keeping the Immigrant Church Catholic:
Some Reflections on Dr. Jon Butler’s Lecture”( pp. 63–79); Edward Schmitt,“A Vocation for Neighborliness: Anna McGarry’s Quest for Community in Philadel-

NOTES AND COMMENTS

205

phia” ( pp. 81–97); William Issell, “ ‘The Catholic Internationale’: Mayor Joseph
Alioto’s Urban Liberalism and San Francisco Catholicism”( pp. 99–120); and Kenneth J. Heineman,“Iron City Trinity: The Triumph and the Trials of Catholic Social Activism in Pittsburgh, 1932–1972” ( pp. 121–145)
Personal Notices
Dennis Castillo has been promoted to the rank of full professor in Christ the
King Seminary, East Aurora, New York, where he teaches in the Department of
Historical Studies.
Francis Oakley of Williams College has been declared the winner of the Sixteen Century Society’s “Roland H. Bainton Prize in History and Theology”for his
book The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church,
1300–1870. The prize is given for “the best book in early modern history published in English in the previous year.” Professor Oakley has also been elected
chairman of the board of the National Humanities Center, Research Triangle,
North Carolina.
Charles O’Brien has published Noble Blood (Seven House, 2004), an historical mystery novel set in Versailles, 1787. Like the two novels that preceded it,
this one includes a subtext on religious experience and the Abbé de l’Épée’s
work among the deaf.
Jaroslav Pelikan of Yale University has been awarded, along with Paul Ricoeur, the second John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Each of them will receive one-half of the
one-million-dollar purse.In announcing the award, James H.Billington,Librarian
of Congress, said:“Jaroslav Pelikan is an historian who deals with the whole of
the Christian tradition from the ancient Near East to the present. He began his
deep scholarship on Luther, having been brought up in a Lutheran household,
and he has moved over time to consider the whole history of church doctrine,
both through the Western Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox
Church. He is concerned with the history and practice of worship in its doctrinal and creedal forms over two millennia.”

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
0
1
2

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS

Mary. Miri Rubin. History Workshop Journal, No. 58 (Autumn, 2004), 1–16.
Su alcuni nuovi orientamenti nella storiografia del papato, della curia, del governo pontificio. Giacomo Martina, S.I. Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 41
(2003), 231–252.
The Armenian Catholic Church: A Study in History and Ecclesiology. John
Whooley. Heythrop Journal, 45 (Oct., 2004), 416–434.
Unternehmen Traditionsbildung: Die Grabmäler der rheinischen Erzbischöfe
(976–1768) zwischen Memoria, Repräsentation und Geschichtskonstruktion. Stefan Heinz, Barbara Rothbrust, Wolfgang Schmid. Francia, 31 (1,
2004), 165–180.
“We are All One in the Eyes of the Lord”: Christopher Hill and the Historical
Meanings of Radical Religion. Penelope J. Corfield. History Workshop Journal, No. 58, (Autumn, 2004), 110–127.
Servite Bibliography 1993–2000. Conrad M. Borntrager, O.S.M. Studi Storici
dell’Ordine dei Servi di Maria, LIII (2003), 57–402.
ANCIENT

Orthodoxy and Heresy in Second-Century Rome. Einar Thomassen. Harvard
Theological Review, 97 ( July, 2004), 241–256.
Sextus Julius Africanus and the Roman Near East in the Third Century. William
Adler. Journal of Theological Studies, 55 (Oct., 2004), 520–550.
Geschichte und Glaube bei Origenes und Augustinus. Basil Studer. Cristianesimo nella Storia, XXV ( Jan., 2004), 1–24.
“A Suitable Abode for Christ”: The Church Building as Symbol of Ascetic Renunciation in Early Monasticism. Caroline T. Schroeder. Church History, 73
(Sept., 2004), 472–521.
Girolamo e la polemica antiapollinarista. Mieczysl´aw Celestyn Paczkowski,
O.F.M. Antonianum, LXXIX ( July–Sept., 2004), 473–503.

206

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

207

La cosiddetta «guerra giusta» nel De civitate Dei di Agostino. Elena Cavalcanti.
Cristianesimo nella Storia, XXV ( Jan., 2004), 25–57.
La figura del vescovo tra la fine del mondo antico e l’avvento dei nuovi popoli
europei. Ugo Dovere. Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 41 (2003), 25–49.
Lorenzo di Siponto: un vescovo del VI secolo tra agiografia e storia. Ada Campione. Vetera Christianorum, 41 (1, 2004), 61–82.
The Widening Debate on the Origin of Saint Benedict’s Biography. Francis
Clark. Downside Review, 122 ( July, 2004), 169–184.
MED I EVAL

The Cult of St Mary at Beodericisworth and then in Bury St Edmunds Abbey to
c. 1150. Antonio Gransden. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 55 (Oct.,
2004), 627–653.
Sant’Eusanio e i vescovi della diocesi di Forcona (in Abruzzo) dagli inizi al 1257.
Mario Maritano. Salesianum, LXVI (Apr.–June, 2004), 199–244.
Die merowingische Herkunft der Vita Sadalbergae. Hans Hummer. Deutsches
Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 59 (2, 2003), 459–548.
Bede’s Ecclesial Vision for England. Brendan McGroarty. Downside Review, 122
( July, 2004), 211–234.
Fondazioni monastiche femminili pregregoriane in Piemonte. Giampietro Casiraghi. Bollettino Storico-Bibliografico Subalpino, CII (1, 2004), 5–53.
I vescovi di Pisa dall’età carolingia all’inizio del XIII secolo. Maria Luisa Ceccarelli Lemut.Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia,LVIII ( Jan.–June,2004),
3–28.
Le roi Josias dans l’ecclésiologie politique du haut Moyen Âge. Isabelle Rosé.
Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome, 115 (2, 2003), 638–709.
Les vies latines de saint Clément, premier évêque de Metz. Mireille Chazan.
Francia, 31 (1, 2004), 15–43.
Rome: Capital of Anglo-Saxon England. Nicholas Howe. Journal of Medieval
and Early Modern Studies, 34 (Winter, 2004), 147–172.
The Competition for Saints in Medieval Zurich. Joan A. Holladay. Gesta, XLIII (1,
2004), 41–59.
Senses and sensibility in Byzantium. Liz James. Art History, 27 (Sept., 2004),
522–537.

208

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Sur un acte prétendu faux de Bérenger Ier, roi d’Italie, pour Saint-Martin de
Tours. Philippe Baccou. Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome, 115 (2,
2003), 711–725.
Jurisprudence in the Service of Pastoral Care: The Decretum of Burchard of
Worms. Greta Austin. Speculum, 79 (Oct., 2004), 929–959.
Persönlichkeitsdarstellung und mittelalterliche Morallehre. Das Leben Erzbischof
Adalberts in der Beschreibung Adams von Bremen. Eva Schlotheuber.
Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 59 (2, 2003), 495–548.
La mémoire d’un duc dans un écrin de pierre: le tombeau de Guy Geoffroy à
Saint-Jean-de-Montierneuf de Poitiers. Cécile Treffort. Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale, 47 ( July–Sept., 2004), 249–270.
Privilèges et lettres des papes addressés à l’abbaye d’Anchin (fin XIe–fin XVe
siècle). Jean-Pierre Gerzaguet.Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome,115
(2, 2003), 755–895.
Legitimation weltlicher Herrschaft von Geistlichen in Abendland. Werner Goez.
Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 121, Kanonistische
Abteilung 90 (2004), 192–206.
Les historiens de la croisade: guerre sainte, justice et paix. Henri Bresc.
Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome, 115 (2, 2003), 727–753.
Adtendite a Falsis Prophetis: Abælard’s Earliest Known Anti-Cistercian Diatribe.
Chrysogonus Waddell. Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 39 (4, 2004), 371–398.
Colonnette Production and the Advent of the Gothic Aesthetic. Vibeke Olson.
Gesta, XLIII (1, 2004), 17–29.
Légitimation royale et discours sur croisade en Castille aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles.
Ana Rodríguez López. Journal des Savants, ( Jan.–June, 2004), 129–163.
Bücherverschlingung als kulturelle Praxis? Magisch-wunderbare Kommunikation in der spanischen Hagiographie des Hochmittelalters. Wolfram Drews.
Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 86 (1, 2004), 123–161.
Attorno all’ «economia della salvezza». Note su restituzione d’usura, pratica pastorale ed esercizio della carità in una vicenda senese del primo Duecento.
Michele Pellegrini. Cristianesimo nella Storia, XXV ( Jan., 2004), 59–102.
An Anonymous Sermon against the Hagarenes,the Bogomils,and the Jews.Marc
De Groote. Harvard Theological Review, 97 ( July, 2004), 329–351.
Vestigia constitutionum praenarbonensium. Cesare Cenci, O.F.M. Archivum
Franciscanum Historicum, 97 ( Jan.–June, 2004), 61–98.
Tommaso de Celano e la testimonianza dei Compagni di S. Francesco. Felice Accrocca. Miscellanea Francescana, 104 ( Jan.–June, 2004), 261–270.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

209

Der Heilige Ivo Hélory—war er ein Franziskaner? Annette Rieck. Zeitschrift der
Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 121, Kanonistische Abteilung 90
(2004), 228–247.
Über die akademische Ausbildung Ivos von Hélory. Henas Hattenbauer.
Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 121, Kanonistische
Abteilung 90 (2004), 248–268.
Die Verehrung des hl. Ivo Hélory in den Rheinlanden, insbesondere an der alten
Universität Köln. Manfred Baldus. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für
Rechtsgeschichte, 121, Kanonistische Abteilung 90 (2004), 269–285.
Der Heilige Ivo von Hélory als Patron der Juristenfakultät in Trier und anderswo.
Peter Krause. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 121,
Kanonistische Abteilung 90 (2004), 286–341.
Robert Grosseteste: His Memory among the Greyfriars, his Cult in Lincoln
Cathedral,and the Petition for his Canonisation.Michael Robson,O.F.M.Cap.
Miscellanea Francescana, 104 ( Jan.–June, 2004), 306–323.
Vescovi minoriti nei territori della Campania medievale.Gennaro Bove,O.F.M.Cap.
Miscellanea Francescana, 104 ( Jan.–June, 2004), 271–291.
Die Dekretalensammlung Papst Nikolaus’ III. (1280). Martin Bertram. Zeitschrift
der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 121, Kanonistische Abteilung
90 (2004), 60–75.
Le Liber Sextus de Boniface VIII et les extravagantes des papes précédents.
Michèle Bégou-Davia. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte,
121, Kanonistische Abteilung 90 (2004), 77–191.
Vovens religionem non vovet habitum: Accademiche dislalie sul tema del saio
che non fa il monaco, a margine della vertenza tra Secolari e Mendicanti
sull’inizio del sec. XIV. Prospero Tommaso Stella. Salesianum, LXVI
(Apr.–June, 2004), 245–271.
The Franciscans and the True Cross: The Decoration of the Cappella Maggiore
of Santa Croce in Florence. Nancy M. Thompson. Gesta, XLIII (1, 2004),
61–79.
Andrea Sapiti, un procuratore trecentesco, fra la Curia avignonese, Firenze e
l’Inghilterra. Barbara Bombi. Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome, 115
(2, 2003), 897–929.
Heavenly Allies at the Chora. Robert S. Nelson. Gesta, XLIII (1, 2004), 31–40.
Estimating arable output using Durham Priory tithe receipts, 1341–1450. Ben
Dodds. Economic History Review, LVII (May, 2004), 245–285.
Prolegomena zur Frage des Kronkardinalats. Péter Tusor. Archivum Historiae
Pontificiae, 41 (2003), 51–71.

210

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

A Observância Franciscana na Península Ibérica (sécs. XIV–XVI). Henrique
Pinto Rema. Itinerarium, XLIX ( Jan.–Aug. 2003), 61–96.
Place, Space, and Situation: Public and Private in the Making of Marriage in LateMedieval London. Shannon McSheffrey. Speculum, 79 (Oct., 2004), 960–990.
Der Papstneffe Pietro Riario als Antichrist—Zeitkritisches in einem apokalyptischen Epos des 15. Jh.? Wolfgang Strobl. Archivum Historiae Pontificiae,
41 (2003), 73–81.
Documenta Vaticana ad Fransciscales spectantia. Ann. 1385–1492 (Pars VIII).
Cesare Cenci, O.F.M. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 97 ( Jan.–June,
2004), 133–157.
Nuovi processi a sostenitori del Savonarola nell’aprile 1498. Dario Zuliani.
Archivio Storico Italiano, CLX (2, 2002), 321–352.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY

A list of the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchs between 16th and 18th Century. Iskandar Bcheiry. Parole de l’Orient, 29 (2004), 211–261.
La risposta confraternale alle emergenze sanitarie e sociali della prima metà del
Cinquecento romano: le confraternite del Divino Amore e di S. Girolamo
della Carità. Mario Fois, S.I. Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 41 (2003),
83–107.
Isabel la Católica y América en el V centenario de su muerte. Félix Carmona
Moreno. La Ciudad de Dios, CCXVII (May.–Aug., 2004), 379–422.
Episcopal Tombs in Early Modern England. Peter Sherlock. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 55 (Oct., 2004), 654–680.
Les rapports du pouvoir spirituel et du pouvoir temporel chez Vitoria. Maurice
Barbier. Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, LXVI (2, 2004),
297–310.
A Cistercian Monk as Editor of the Carmen of the Croatian Humanist Marcus
Marulus (died 1524): The German Humanist Henricus Urbanus, O. Cist.
(died 1538). Franz Posset. Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 39 (4, 2004),
399–419.
Thomas Cromwell and William Marshall’s Protestant books. William Underwood. Historical Journal, 47 (Sept., 2004), 517–539.
The Evolution of the Lutheran Pastors’ Manual in the Sixteenth Century. Amy
Nelson Burnett. Church History, 73 (Sept., 2004), 536–565.
The Presence and Participation of Laypeople in the Congrégations of the Company of Pastors in Geneva. Erik A. de Boer. Sixteenth Century Journal,
XXXV (Fall, 2004), 651–670.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

211

“Our Lord God’s Chancery” in Magdeburg and Its Fight against the Interim.
Thomas Kaufmann. Church History, 73 (Sept. 2004), 566–582.
Storia religiosa e storia dell’arte.I casi di Iacopo Pontormo e Lorenzo Lotto.Massimo Firpo. Belfagor, LIX (Sept., 2004), 571–590.
The Bresse Clergy Assembly and Tithe Grants, 1560–80. Matthew Vester. Sixteenth Century Journal, XXXV (Fall, 2004), 771–794.
Change in Continuity:Post-Tridentine Rural and Township Parish Life in the Cracow Diocese. Waldemar Kowalski. Sixteenth Century Journal, XXXV (Fall,
2004), 689–715.
La Mesa de Felipe II. Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras. Ciudad de Dios, CCXVII
(May–Aug., 2004), 527–549.
Les Icones de Théodore de Bèze (1580) entre mémoire et propagande.
Christophe Chazalon. Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, LXVI
(2, 2004), 359–376.
The Character of an Antipuritan. Christopher Haigh. Sixteenth Century Journal, XXXV (Fall, 2004), 671–688.
¿Es justo castigar a los herejes? Enseñanza de Pedro de Aragón (1584). Ignacio
Jericó Bermejo. Ciudad de Dios, CCXVII (May–Aug., 2004), 473–513.
The English Inquisition: constitutional conflict and ecclesiastical law in the
1590s. Ethan H. Shagan. Historical Journal, 47 (Sept., 2004), 541–565.
Intorno all’idea di ‘giustizia misericordiosa’: Bruno e gli ‘eretici italiani.’ Diego
Pirillo. Rinascimento, XLII (2002), 443–462.
«An cardinales etiam non requisiti teneantur ex natura officii sui Papae consilia
ministrare»: appunti sulla crisi del Sacro Collegio durante il pontificato di
Gregorio XIV. Maria Teresa Fattori. Cristianesimo nella Storia, XXV ( Jan.,
2004), 103–131.
Diplomazia pontificia e censura ecclesiastica durante il regno di Enrico IV. Gigliola Fragnito. Rinascimento, XLII (2002), 143–167.
Persevering in the Faith: Catholic Worship and Communal Identity in the Wake
of the Edict of Nantes. Katharine J. Lualdi. Sixteenth Century Journal,
XXXV (Fall, 2004), 717–734.
Il «processo dei nobili». Eresia e cultura dotta nella Savona di fine Cinquecento.
Daniela Piemontino. Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, XXXVII
(2003), 259–290.

212

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

La juridiction contentieuse du nonce de Flandre (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles). Bart
Wauters. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 121,
Kanonistische Abteilung 90 (2004), 430–455.
Officina sarpiana. Scritture del Sarpi in materia di Gesuiti. Luigi Lazzerini.
Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia, LVIII ( Jan.–June, 2004), 29–80.
Bishops in the kirk: William Cowper of Galloway and the puritan episcopacy of
Scotland. Margo Todd. Scottish Journal of Theology, 57 (3, 2004), 300–312.
L’architecture d’une Église maronite selon le Patriarche Douaïhy. P. Charbel Abdallah. Parole de l’Orient, 29 (2004), 61–82.
Gestos y símbolos universitarios. Estudio comparativo documental e histórico,
de dos títulos de Doctorado «utriusque iuris» concedidos por las Universidades de Roma (1618) y Bolonia (1665). Fernando de Lasala, S.I. Archivum
Historiae Pontificiae, 41 (2003), 109–128.
Mediating Confessions in Central Europe: The Ecumenical Activity of Valerian
Magni, 1586–1661. Howard Louthan. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 55
(Oct., 2004), 681–699.
Träger der Konfessionalisierung und spiritueller Habitus. Beobachtungen zur
Kapuzinermission in den Drei Bünden im 17. Jahrhundert. Andreas Wendland. Wissenschaft und Weisheit, 67 (1, 2004), 71–95.
St. Giles’ church and Charles I’s coronation visit to Scotland. Dougal Shaw. Historical Research, 77 (Nov., 2004), 481–502.
Religious Enthusiasm, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Disenchantment of the
World. Andrew Keitt. Journal of the History of Ideas, 65 (Apr., 2004),
231–250.
Conflicting Loyalties, Conflicted Rebels: Political and Religious Allegiance
among the Confederate Catholics of Ireland. Tadhg ÓhAnnracháin. English
Historical Review, CXIX (Sept., 2004), 851–872.
Observer, vénérer, servir: Une polémique jésuite autour du Tribunal des mathématiques de Pékin. Antonella Romano. Annales, 59 ( July–Aug., 2004),
729–756.
Seventeenth-Century Anticlericalism, Dissent, and Pietism. Jonathan Strom.
Lutheran Quarterly, XVIII (Autumn, 2004), 275–295.
Un «faux frère»: le Soeut de Tillières et les réfugiés huguenots aux Provinces
Unies, 1685–1688. Brian E. Strayer and Walter C. Utt. Bulletin de la Société
de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, 150 ( July–Aug.–Sept., 2004),
507–515.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

213

Hidden from history? Piecing together the working lives of ministers’ wives and
daughters 1700–1750. Elizabeth C. Sanderson. Records of the Scottish
Church History Society, XXXIV (2004), 28–47.
Knowledge and Piety: Michael Moore’s Career at the University of Paris and Collège de France, 1701–20. Liam Chambers. Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 17
(2002), 9–25.
Friedrich der Große und die evangelische Kirche in Schlesien. Hans-Wolfgang
Bergerhausen. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 121,
Kanonistische Abteilung 90 (2004), 456–493.
‘Sheep in the Jaws of So Many Ravenous Wolves’: The Slave Trade and Anglican
Missionary Activity at Cape Coast Castle, 1752–1816. Ty M. Reese. Journal
of Religion in Africa, 34 (3, 2004), 348–372.

NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES

Filoebraismo cattolico in Piemonte e in Lombardia dalla Rivoluzione francese al
caso Dreyfus. Pietro Stella. Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia, LVIII
( Jan.–June, 2004), 81–105.
Presbyterian historians and the Scottish invention of British liberty. Neil
Forsyth. Records of the Scottish Church History Society, XXXIV (2004),
91–110.
The United Secession Church in Glasgow 1820–1847. R. M. Smith. Records of
the Scottish Church History Society, XXXIV (2004), 48–90.
Regulating Old Believer Marriage: Ritual, Legality, and Conversion in Nicholas I’s
Russia. Irina Paert. Slavic Review, 63 (Fall, 2004), 555–576.
Ruins into Relics: The Monument to Saint Vladimir on the Excavations of Chersonesos, 1827–57. Mara Kozelsky. Russian Review, 63 (Oct., 2004),
655–672.
‘To unite their strength with ours’: women and missionary work in Aotearoa/
New Zealand 1827–45. Tanya Fitzgerald. Journal of Pacific History, XXXIX
(Sept., 2004), 147–161.
Beyond Hegel’s End of Art: Schadow’s Mignon and the Religious Project of Late
Romanticism. Cordula Grewe. Modern Intellectual History, 1 (Aug., 2004),
185–217.
The Interface of Christianity and Conservation in Colonial Malawi,c.1850–1930.
Wapulumuka O. Mulwafu. Journal of Religion in Africa, 34 (3, 2004),
298–319.

214

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Zur Entwicklung der Fuldaer und der Österreichischen Bischofskonferenzen
von ihren Anfängen bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges. Erwin Gatz.
Römische Quartalschrift, 99 (1–2, 2004), 103–116.
El beato Pío IX restaurador del episcopado español en 1857. Vicente Cárcel
Ortí. Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 41 (2003), 145–193.
Evangelical Religion and Victorian Women: The Belfast Female Mission,
1859–1903. J. N. Ian Dickson. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 55 (Oct.,
2004), 700–725.
‘Sekukuni, Listen!, Banna!, And to the Children of Frederick and Great and our
Kaiser Wilhelm’: Documents in the Social and Religious History of the
Transvaal, 1860–1890. Kirsten Rüther. Journal of Religion in Africa, (3,
2004), 207–234.
Scottish Missionaries and African Healers: Perceptions and Relations in the Livingstonia Mission, 1875–1930. Markku Hokkanen. Journal of Religion in
Africa, 34 (3, 2004), 320–347.
Les archives et l’histoire du catholicisme contemporain en Allemagne. Catherine Maurer. Francia, 30 (3, 2003), 157–164.
Il padre Angelo De Santi S.J. Laborioso tessitore della riforma della Musica Sacra
agli inizi del secolo XX. Franco Baggiani. Ecclesia Orans, XXI (May–Aug.,
2004), 183–201.
Politica e missione: Tripoli e Bengasi, Misurata e Derna (1904–1945). Daniela
Fabrizio. Nuova Rivista Storica, LXXXVIII (May–Aug., 2004), 425–504.
San Luigi Orione, un protagonista del Novecento. Piersandro Vanzan. La Civiltà
Cattolica, 155, III ( July 17, 2004), 116–129.
Catholics and the Campaign for Women’s Suffrage in England. Elaine Clark.
Church History, 73 (Sept., 2004), 635–665.
The Caldey Conversions Ninety Years On. Aelred Baker, O.S.B. American Benedictine Review, 55 (Sept., 2004), 308–322.
“Hammer Blows”: Work, the Workplace, and the Culture of Masculinity among
Catholic Workers in the Weimar Republic. Raymond C. Sun. Central European History, 37 (2, 2004), 245–271.
Wer vertrieb Günther Dehn (1882–1970) aus Halle? Friedmann Stengel.
Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 114 (3, 2003), 384–403.
Yves Congar (1904–1995): une passion pour l’unité. Note sur ses intuitions et
son herméneutique oecuménique, à l’occasion du centenaire de sa naissance. H. Legrand, O.P. Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 126 (Oct.–Dec.,
2004), 529–554.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

215

Évolution religieuse et émancipation dans l’occasion du bicentenaire de sa naissance. M.R. Renard. Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 126 (Oct.–Dec., 2004),
567–576.
The Bishop of Carpentaria and the Torres Strait pearlers’ strike of 1936. David
Wetherell. Journal of Pacific History, XXXIX (Sept., 2004), 185–202.
Gli Ebrei negli istituti religiosi a Roma (1943–1944). Dall’arrivo alla partenza.
Grazia Loparco. Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia, LVIII ( Jan.–June,
2004), 107–210.
Zur Geschichte der katholischen Kirche in Italien seit dem Ende des Zweiten
Weltkrieges. Maurilio Guasco. Römische Quartalschrift, 99 (1–2, 2004),
1–81.
“Er ist ein Feind dieses Staates!” Martin Niemöllers Aktivitäten in den Anfangsjahren der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Martin Greschat. Zeitschrift für
Kirchengeschichte, 114 (3, 2003), 333–356.
The Manly-Roman Connection 1954–2004: Evolution of Roman Degrees. Margaret Press. Australasian Catholic Record, 81 (Oct., 2004), 457–464.
Der 13. August 1961 und die Kirchen. Michael Höhle. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 114 (3, 2003), 364–383.
La Transición democrática de la Iglesia española: del nacionalcatolicismo a la
lucha por la democracia. Laura Serranto Blanco. Cristianesimo nella Storia, XXV ( Jan., 2004), 133–165.

AMERICAN

A question of Plain Dealing: Josiah Cotton, Native Christians, and the Quest for
Security in Eighteenth-Century Plymouth County. Douglas L. Winiarski.
New England Quarterly, LXXVII (Sept., 2004), 368–413.
The Dialectic of Liberty: Law and Religion in Anglo-American Culture. Robert A.
Ferguson. Modern Intellectual History, 1 (Apr., 2004), 27–54.
The Elusive Common Good: Religion and Civil Society in Massachusetts,
1780–1833. Johann N.Neem.Journal of the Early Republic,24 (Fall,2004),
381–417.
North Carolina Lutherans and the Tests of Time, 1803–2003. Raymond M. Bost,
Robert M. Calhoon, Carl F. W. Ficken, Jr., Gary R. Freeze, and Susan W.
McArver. Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 77 (Fall, 2004),
138–153.
The Work Ethic of the Plain Folk: Labor and Religion in the Old South. Carl R.
Osthaus. Journal of Southern History, LXX (Nov., 2004), 745–782.

216

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Memoirs of Ernst Moritz Buerger: Part Four. Edgar Joachim Buerger (Trans.).
Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 77 (Summer, 2004), 70–79; Part
Five (Fall, 2004), 130–137.
Visions of Self, Success, and Society among Young Men in Antebellum Boston.
Heather D. Curtis. Church History, 73 (Sept., 2004), 613–634.
Boundlessness, Consolidation, and Discontinuity between Generations: Catholic
Seminary Studies in Antebellum America. Philip Gleason. Church History,
73 (Sept., 2004), 583–612.
A Midwestern Pioneer Clergy Family. Cheryl Ratz Gross. Concordia Historical
Institute Quarterly, 77 (Summer, 2004), 80–111.
Cross Purposes: Publishing Practices and Social Priorities of NineteenthCentury U.S. Missionary Women. Janet M. Cramer. Journalism History, 30
(Fall, 2004), 123–130.
New Home in the New World: Margarete Lenk and the German Immigrant Experience. Anabel Aliaga-Buchenau. Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 77 (Fall, 2004), 154–170.
Negotiating Chicago’s Public Culture: Guardian Angel Mission and Settlement
House, 1898–1920. Deborah Ann Stock. Journal of Illinois History, 7
(Summer, 2004), 107–124.
The Metamorphosis of Bishop C. H. Mason: Origins of Black Pentecostals in Tennessee. Elton H. Weaver, III. Tennessee Historical Quarterly, LXII (Summer,
2004), 86–101.
Prelates, Protest, and Public Opinion: Catholic Opposition to Desegregation,
1947–1955. R. Bentley Anderson. Journal of Church and State, 46 (Summer, 2004), 617–644.

LATIN AMERICAN

Witches, Idolators, and Franciscans: An American Translation of European Radical Demonology (Logroño, 1529-Hueytlalpan, 1553). Fabián Alejandro
Campagne. History of Religions, 44 (Aug., 2004), 1–35.
Algunos textos pontificios sobre el bautismo de los indios. Fernando Soto-Hay,
S.J. AnáMnesis, XIV ( Jan.–June, 2004), 1–17.
Los Agustinos Recoletos en la historia de Colombia. Antonio Cacua Prada. Boletín de Historia y Antigüedades, XCI ( July–Sept., 2004), 549–567.
“. . . de Bulla lacticiniorum . . . nulla est necessitas in his Regnis. . . .”Ein Beitrag
zum Gewohnheitsrecht im Derecho Canónico Indiano. Thomas Duve.
Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 121, Kanonistische
Abteilung 90 (2004), 406–429.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

217

Juan Ignacio Molina’s Elegy, “De peste variolarum,” and the Chilean Smallpox
Plague of 1761: A Personal Account. Charles E. Ronan, S.J. Colonial Latin
American Historical Review, 12 (Winter, 2003), 59–83.
Los sermons patrióticos y el nuevo orden en Colombia, 1819–1820. Margarita
Garrido. Boletín de Historia y Antigüedades, XCI ( July–Sept., 2004),
461–483.
La Iglesia y la «americanización» del Caribe (1899–1920). Cristóbal Robles
Muñoz. Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 41 (2003), 195–229.
From Symbols of the Sacred to Symbols of Subversion to Simply Obscure: Maryknoll Women Religious in Guatemala, 1953 to 1967. Susan Fitzpatrick
Behrens. The Americas, 61 (Oct., 2004), 189–216.
Civic Foreign Policy:Human Rights,Faith-Based Groups and U.S.–Salvadoran Relations in the 1970s. Svenja Blanke. The Americas, 61 (Oct., 2004),
217–244.

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

Bailey, Michael D. Battling Demons:Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in the Late
Middle Ages. [The Magic in History Series.] (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2002. Pp. xii, 200. $65.00 hardback; $22.50 paperback.)
Beyer, Jürgen, Albrecht Burkardt, Fred van Lieburg and Marc Wingens (Eds.).
Confessional Sanctity (c. 1500-c. 1800). [Veröffentlichungen des Instituts
für Europäische Geschichte Mainz, Abteilung für abendländische Religionsgeschichte, Beiheft 51.] (Mainz am Rhein:Verlag Philipp von Zabern. 2003.
Pp. xiv, 386. €39,90.) Contents: I. Models of Traditional Sanctity until the
Beginning of the Early Modern Period: Peter Dinzelbacher,“Heiligkeitsmodelle zwischen Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit” ( pp. 1–23); II. Saintly Models:Dominique Julia,“Le culte des saints dans le Mémorial de Pierre Favre”
( pp. 25–48); Isabelle Poutrin, “Des «livres extatiques» venus d’Espagne.
Thérèse d’Avila et Jeanne de la Croix , modèles de sainteté feminine” ( pp.
49–63); Nicole Grochowina, “‘Het Offer des Herren’. Das Martyrium als
Heiligenideal niederdeutscher Täufer um 1570” ( pp. 65–80); Marc Venard,
“Les martyrs catholiques des affrontements religieux du XVIe siècle,
d’après l’Histoire catholique du Père Hilarion de Coste (1625)”
( pp. 81–91); Peter Burschel, “Male Death—Female Death. On the Anthropology of Martyrdom in the Early Modern Period” ( pp. 93–112);
Marie-Élisabeth Henneau,“Saintes femmes en terre liégeoise. Lecture de biographies spirituelles inédites des XVIIe et XVIII e siècles” ( pp. 113–131);
Pierre-Antoine Fabre, “Les voies d’une canonisation, Écriture, portrait
et récit de vie dans l’invention flamande de saint Ignace de Loyola”
( pp.133–148); Jacques Le Brun,“La sainteté à l’époque classique et le problème de l’autorisation” ( pp. 149–162); Gary K. Waite,“Anabaptist Anticlericalism and the Laicization of Sainthood. Anabaptist Saints and Sanctity in
the Netherlands” ( pp. 163–180); Fred van Lieburg, “Sanctifying Pillars of
Pietism and Methodism. Guardian Angels or Heavenly Helpers in International Story-Telling” ( pp. 181–195); III. Saintly Living: Leendert F. Groenendijk, “The Sanctification of the Household and the Reformation of
Manners in English Puritanism and in Dutch Pietism during the Seventeenth Century” ( pp. 197–218); Daniel Lindmark, “De fide historica.
Societas Suecana Pro Fide et Chistianismo and the Religious Exemplary
Biography in Sweden, 1771–1780” ( pp. 219–241); IV. Living Saints: Waltraud Pulz, “Körperlose Leiber—Spiritualisierung des Fleisches? ‘Heilige

218

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

219

Anorexie’ im 16. und frühen 17. Jahrhundert” ( pp. 243–257); Sarah Ferber,
“Possession Sanctified. The Case of Marie des Vallées” ( pp. 259–270); Albrecht Burkardt, “Die Visionen der Sophia Agnes von Langenberg” ( pp.
271–290); Marc Wingens,“A ‘Holy Nun’ in a Protestant Country: Maria Margaretha van Valckenisse (1605–1658)”( pp. 291–302); Charles M.A. Caspers
and Marcel A. M. E. Gielis, “Anna Maria Eeltiens of Tilburg Unmasked in
Antwerp as a Feign Saint (1735/36). Changing Views of Holiness, Miracles
and the Power of the Devil”( pp.303–318);Trevor Johnson,“‘Victoria a Deo
missa?’ Living Saints on the Battlefields of the Central European Counter
Reformation” ( pp. 319–335); Jürgen Beyer, “Ein Husumer Gebetsheiler
(1680/81) als Trumpfkarte in der konfessionellen Polemik” ( pp. 337–356);
Ülo Valk, “Tallima Paap as a Popular Prophet of the Eighteenth Century.
Looking beyond his Teachings” ( pp. 357–371); V. Conclusions: Willem Frijhoff,“Confessional Sanctity. Concluding Reflections and Questions for the
Future” ( pp. 373–386).
Bordeyne, Philippe. L’Homme et son angoisse: La théologie morale de
«Gaudium et spes».(Paris:Les Éditions du Cerf.2004.Pp.vii,410. €39,00 paperback.)
Boulding, Maria, O.S.B. (trans. and notes); Boniface Ramsey (Ed.). Expositions of
the Psalms (Enarrationes in Psalmos), 121–150,Vol.III/20.[The Works of
Saint Augustine.] (Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press. 2004. Pp. 539. $49.00
hardback; $29.95 paperback.)
Carey, Patrick W. (Ed.). American Catholic Religious Thought: The Shaping of
a Theological & Social Tradition. (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.
2004. Pp. 486. $37.00 paperback.) Originally published in 1987 and now
revised and enlarged. This second edition contains additional texts for
John England and John A. Ryan, two more texts on American Catholic
views of slavery, one from John Montgomery Cooper (on American
Catholic progressivism), and one from John Stanislaus Zybara (on NeoScholasticism).
Cohen, Thomas V. Love and Death in Renaissance Italy. (Chicago and London:
The University of Chicago Press. 2004. Pp. x, 306. $27.50.)
Constable, Giles, Giorgio Cracco, Hagen Keller, Diego Quaglioni (Eds.). Il secolo
XII: la «renovatio» dell’Europa cristiana. (Bologna: Società editrice il
Mulino. 2003. Pp. 564. €31,00 paperback.) Among the articles published in
this volume are “Impero e papato nel XII secolo” by Franz J. Felten ( pp.
89–129);“Comunità cristiana e poteri ecclesiali” by Giovanni Vitolo ( pp.
131–142);“Monaci, chierici e laici intorno al Vangelo. Il Dio lontano e il Dio
vicino nel secolo XII” by Claudio Leonardi ( pp. 367–379);“Teologie a confronto. Il Concilio di Sens” by Pietro Zerbi ( pp. 381–392); “Gli spazi dell’
Anticristo” by Gian Luca Potestà ( pp. 393–421); and “L’affermazione della
Vergine Maria nell’iconografia dell’arte cristiana del XII secolo” by Daniel
Russo ( pp. 529–564).

220

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

Davies, Oliver. The Creativity of God: World, Eucharist, Reason. [Cambridge
Studies in Christian Doctrine.] (New York: Cambridge University Press.
2004. Pp. xi, 210. $75.00 clothbound; $27.99 paperback.)
Day, Dorothy, with Francis J. Sicius. Peter Maurin: Apostle to the World. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books. 2004. Pp. 187. $20.00 paperback.)
Ditewig, William T. 101 Questions and Answers on Deacons. (New York and
Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press. 2004. Pp. xiv, 118. $12.95 paperback.)
Dutcher-Walls, Patricia. Jezebel: Portraits of a Queen. [Interfaces.] (Collegeville,
Minn.: Liturgical Press. 2004. Pp. xviii, 158. $14.95 paperback.)
Everett, Holly. Roadside Crosses in Contemporary Memorial Culture. (Denton:
University of North Texas Press. 2002. Pp. viii, 145. $22.95.)
Finn, Thomas Macy (Trans. and Commentary). Quodvultdeus of Carthage: The
Creedal Homilies. Conversion in Fifth-Century North Africa. [Ancient
Christian Writers, No. 60.] (New York: Newman Press. 2004. Pp. x, 137.
$22.95.)
Green, Maia. Priests, Witches and Power: Popular Christianity after Mission in
Southern Tanzania. [Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology.] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2003. Pp. xiii, 180. $55.00.)
Harrington, Daniel J., S.J. What Are They Saying About Mark? (New York and
Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press. 2004. Pp. vi, 94. $12.95 paperback.)
Hartin, Patrick J. James of Jerusalem: Heir to Jesus of Nazareth. [Interfaces.]
(Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press. 2004. Pp. xxii,170. $14.95 paperback.)
Hederman, Mark Patrick. Love Impatient, Love Unkind: Eros Human and Divine.(New York:The Crossroad Publishing Company.2004.Pp.157.$16.95
paperback.)
Holifield, E. Brooks. Era of Persuasion: American Thought and Culture,
1521–1680. [American Thought and Culture.] (Lanham, Md.: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2004. Pp. xvi, 224. $75.00 hardback; $26.95 paperback.) Originally published by Twayne Publishers, Boston, 1989, and
reviewed by William K. B. Stoever ante, LXXVI (April, 1990), 404–405.
Hutchison, William R. Religious Pluralism in America: The Contentious History of a Founding Ideal. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
2004. Pp. xi, 276. $18.00 paperback.) Originally published in 2003 and reviewed by Charles H. Lippy ante, XC (April, 2004), 347–349.
Keshishian,Bishop Aram.The Christian Witness at the Crossroads in the Middle
East. Antelias—Lebanon: Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia. 2004. Pp. 161.
Paperback.) First published in Beirut in 1981.
Kremp, Werner (Ed.).Katholizismus im atlantischen Raum.[Atlantische Texte,
Band 22.] (Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. 2004. Pp. ix,159.

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

221

€18,50 paperback.) This volume contains papers presented at a conference organized by the Atlantische Akademie Rheinland-Pfalz and held on
December 5–7, 2003, viz., Gerald P. Fogarty, S.J.,“Amerikanische Religionsfreiheit und Spannungen mit dem Heiligen Stuhl”(pp.1–20);Victor Conzemius,
“Tocqueville und der Katholizismus in Amerika. Eine liberalkatholische Vision?” ( pp. 21–38); Michael Zöller,“Religion als Wettbewerb. Eine Entwicklung der amerikanischen religiösen Kultur” ( pp. 39–48); Frank Adloff,“Der
US-amerikanische Katholizismus: Autonomie, Integration und die Kritik an
den protestantischen Grundlagen der Nation” (pp. 49–62); Michael Hochgeschwender,“Ultramontaner Katholizismus und amerikanische Demokratie
1830–1860” ( pp. 63–86); Antonius Liedhegener,“Politischer Katholizismus
nach dem Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil. Strukturen und Entwicklungslinien in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und den USA im Vergleich” ( pp.
87–116); Frank Beyersdorf,“The Best of Men? Catholicism and Irish-Americans in Boston during World War I” ( pp. 117–134); Gerald P. Fogarty, S.J.,
“Reflexionen eines Historikers über die gegenwärtige Krise der Kirche in
USA” ( pp. 135–142); and Ferdinand Oertel,“Ein ‘American Way of Catholicism’? Steht die Weltkirche vor einer amerikanischen Epoche?” ( pp.
143–159).

Leemans, Johan (Ed.). Corpus Christianorum: 1953–2003. Xenium Natalicium. Fifty Years of Scholarly Editing. (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.
2003. Pp. 373. Paperback.)
Mullen, J. Patrick. Dining with Pharisees. [Interfaces.] (Collegeville, Minn.:
Liturgical Press. 2004. Pp. xiv, 145 $14.95 paperback.)
Nardoni, Enrique. Rise Up, O Judge: A Study of Justice in the Biblical World.
Trans. Seán Charles Martin. (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers. 2004.
Pp. xxiv, 343. $29.95 paperback.)
Newheart, Michael Willett. “My Name is Legion”: The Story and Soul of the
Gerasene Demoniac. [Interfaces.] (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press.
2004. Pp. xxiv, 125. $14.95 paperback.)
Oakes, Edward T., S.J., and David Moss (Eds.). The Cambridge Companion to
Hans Urs von Balthasar. [The Cambridge Companions to Religion.]
(Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers 2004. Pp. xviii, 282. $70.00 clothbound; $25.99 paperback.)
Pagliarulo, Celeste, S.N.D. de N.“Harry Downie and the Restoration of Mission
San Carlos Borromeo, 1931–1967.” (Mission Hills, Calif.: Saint Francis Historical Society. 2004. Pp. 46. Paperback.)
Pope, Stephen J. (Ed.). Common Calling: The Laity and Governance of the
Catholic Church. (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. 2004.
Pp. viii, 272. $26.95 paperback.) Part I:“Historical Perspectives,” contains
brief essays by Pheme Perkins, Francis A. Sullivan, S.J., Francine Cardman,
Michael J. Buckley, S.J., and R. Scott Appleby.

222

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

Relton, Robert S., C.S.C. (Ed.) with Robert Hall and Kyle Markham. Monsignor
Romero: A Bishop for the Third Millennium. [Helen Kellogg Institute for
International Studies.] (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.
2004. Pp. vii, 128. $22.50.) A collection of speeches in honor of the assassinated archbishop of San Salvador (1917–1980) given by distinguished
visitors to the University of Notre Dame.
Schneiders, Sandra M. Beyond Patching: Faith and Feminism in the Catholic
Church. Revised edition. (New York and Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press. 2004.
Pp. xxiv, 136. $14.95 paperback.) First published in 1991.
Smith, J. Warren. Passion and Paradise: Human and Divine Emotion in the
Thought of Gregory of Nyssa. (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company. 2004. Pp. x, 291. $39.95 paperback.)
Tackett, Timothy. When the King Took Flight. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 2004. Pp. xv, 270. $15.95 paperback.) Originally published
in 2003.
Tobin,Thomas H., S.J. Paul’s Rhetoric in its Contexts:The Argument of Romans.
(Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers. 2004. Pp. xxii, 469. $24.95 paperback.)