The Catholic Historical
Review
VOL. XCII

JULY, 2006

No. 3

THE BAUTAIN CIRCLE AND CATHOLIC-JEWISH
RELATIONS IN MODERN FRANCE
BY

THOMAS KSELMAN*

Strasbourg in the 1820’s was the site for the formation of a circle of
religious seekers who gathered around the philosopher LouisEugène-Marie Bautain. This group, which included Jews as well as
Catholics, encouraged for a time the Jewish members to practice
their religion and serve their community, “to become good Jews” in
the words of Bautain. Although the Jewish members, including
Théodore Ratisbonne, the founder of the Congregation of Our Lady
of Sion, ultimately were baptized and ordained as Catholic priests,
the exchanges in the circle, as recorded in Bautain’s Philosophie du
christianisme (1835), suggest the potential for a more tolerant attitude on the part of Catholics, one that respected the religious value
of Judaism and the religious liberty of Jews.
In the 1820’s and 1830’s the philosopher Louis-Eugène-Marie
Bautain gained prominence in Strasbourg, and in the Catholic world
more generally, as the result of his innovative and controversial efforts
to reconcile faith and reason. Among scholars Bautain is less well
known than other French religious thinkers from the period, such as
Chateaubriand and Lammenais, but he has nonetheless attracted some
attention. No less a figure than Cardinal Paul Poupard, the president of
the Pontifical Council of Culture, wrote his doctoral dissertation on
*Dr. Kselman is a professor of history in the University of Notre Dame. He read this
paper as his presidential address at a luncheon held in the headquarters of the Union
League of Philadelphia on January 7, 2006, during the eighty-sixth annual meeting of the
American Catholic Historical Association.

177

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Bautain, a work published in 1961 that is still the essential starting
point for any study of his life and ideas.1 Most Newman scholars would
probably quarrel with those who describe Bautain as “a French
Newman,” but this judgment suggests nonetheless the intellectual
weight of Bautain.2
Bautain’s ideas are a telling commentary on the state of Catholic
theology in the nineteenth century, but they can also be used as the
starting point for an inquiry into confessional boundaries and religious
tolerance when these issues were being renegotiated in the wake of the
French Revolution. By situating Bautain’s ideas within the circle of passionate followers who surrounded him we can begin to see both the
possibilities and limits newly available to individuals as they explored
religious differences and identities.3 I am particularly interested in the
close friendship that formed between Bautain and a number of young
Jewish men in Strasbourg during the 1820’s, for although the Bautain
circle resembles in many ways other small groups of religious seekers
that sprang up throughout Europe in this period, it was also the basis
for an exchange across religious boundaries that was unusual, if not
unique. I do not want to over-dramatize the importance of this JewishCatholic dialogue, but it is a significant moment nonetheless, for it
shows how far such religious conversations in the Romantic era could
go, but also the limits that constrained and finally ended them.4
1
Paul Poupard, L’abbé Louis Bautain: Un essai de philosophie chrétienne au XIXe
siècle (Paris, 1961). For a recent collection of papers on the theological and philosophical significance of Bautain, see Jean-Luc Hiebel and Luc Perrin (eds.), Louis Bautain:
L’abbé-philosophe de Strasbourg (1796-1867) (Strasbourg, 1999). Older studies of
Bautain include R. M. Horton, The Philosophy of the Abbé Bautain (New York, 1926),
and E. De Regny, L’abbé Bautain: sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris, 1884). Gerald McCool, S.J.,
Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism (New York, 1989), pp. 46-54, places Bautain in the
context of nineteenth-century Catholic philosophy
2
Bernard Reardon, Liberalism and Tradition: Aspects of Catholic Thought in
Nineteenth-Century France (New York, 1975), p. 116.
3
I explore some of these themes in a Parisian context in Thomas Kselman,“Turbulent
Souls in Modern France: Jewish Conversion and the Terquem Affair,” Historical
Reflections/Reflexions Historiques, 32 (2006), 83-104.
4
Historians are only just beginning to explore the world of inter-confessional relations in the nineteenth century. See, for example, Abigail Green,“Rethinking Sir Moses
Montefiore: Religion, Nationhood, and International Philanthropy in the Nineteenth
Century,” American Historical Review, 110 (2005), 630-658. According to Green (p.
634),“The interplay between the different religions as subcultures, capable of deploying
publicly shared language, symbols, and figures . . . remains to be explored.” For a similar
perspective emphasizing the importance of the history of relations between religious
groups, see Helmut Walser Smith and Chris Clark,“The Fate of Nathan,” in Protestants,

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179

Let me begin, then, with the history of the formation of the circle in
Strasbourg during the 1820’s, which will provide a setting for a brief
consideration of Bautain’s major work, the Philosophie du christianisme, which was published in 1835. I will be looking at this text less for
what it says about the relationship between faith and reason, than for
what it says about the relationship between Catholics and Jews. I conclude by comparing Bautain and his friends with some other similar circles that flourished in Europe at the time,which will throw into sharper
relief the nature of the religious experiments of the Strasbourg circle.
Strasbourg and Bautain
The essential context for the Bautain circle was the religiously
diverse province of Alsace, and more particularly its capital of
Strasbourg. Despite Louis XIV’s efforts to encourage Catholic proselytism in the seventeenth century, after the region had been absorbed
into France, Protestants constituted an important minority in Alsace.
Religious life in Alsace was governed by the Treaty of Westphalia
(1648), which guaranteed Protestants the right to public worship,
which continued even after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in
1685. By the early nineteenth century Protestants, most of whom were
Lutherans, made up approximately one-third of a population that was
somewhere between five and six hundred thousand. Catholics made
up most of the other two-thirds of the population, but Alsace was also
home to about 25,000 Jews, at least half of the entire French Jewish
population, and by far the largest single concentration in the country.5
The city of Strasbourg mirrored the split between Catholics and
Protestants in Alsace, but Jews were latecomers to the city, for they had
not been free to live there until the emancipation decree of the French
revolution in 1791. From that point on, the Jewish population of
Strasbourg grew rapidly, from sixty-eight in 1784 to about 1,500 in
1810.6 The vast majority of Alsatian Jews continued to live scattered

Catholics and Jews in Germany, 1800-1914, eds. Helmut Walser Smith and Chris Clark
(New York, 2001), pp. 3-29. For France,Antoine Compagnon discusses a number of interesting cross-confessional exchanges in Connaissez-vous Brunetière? Enquête sur un
antidreyfusard et ses amis (Paris, 1997). Pierre Pierrard, Juifs et catholiques français:
d’Edouard Drumont à Jacob Kaplan (1886-1994) (Paris, 1997), does not consider the
early or middle years of the nineteenth century, and focuses on anti-Semitism.
5
Paul Leuillot, L’Alsace au début du XIXe siècle,Vol. III: Religions et Culture (Paris,
1960), pp. 157-158; Paula Hyman, The Emancipation of the Jews of Alsace (New Haven,
1991), p. 12.
6
Leuillot, L’Alsace au début, vol. III, pp. 233-234.

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THE BAUTAIN CIRCLE AND CATHOLIC-JEWISH RELATIONS

throughout the countryside in over a hundred villages, where most of
them survived at a subsistence level by engaging in petty commerce
and money-lending.7 The urban population included a small number of
affluent Jews involved mostly in banking and commerce, a group that
sought both assimilation into the French community, and social and
moral progress for their fellow Jews, a program they identified with
the concept of “regeneration.”8
Relations between these three communities were tense, and after
the Restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1815 Protestants were
particularly nervous about proselytism.There was little open violence
between Catholics and Protestants in Alsace, as there was in Nîmes in
1815, but rumors about the possibility of another St. Bartholomew Day
massacre, with Catholics slaughtering Protestants as in 1572, continued to circulate in the early 1820’s.9 Relations between Christians and
Jews were also tense, fueled by accusations of usury as well as traditional religious resentment. The mob attacks on Jews that spread
throughout southern and central Germany in 1819, known as the HepHep riots, did not reach Alsace, but their proximity and intensity made
local officials extremely nervous, fearing a “deadly storm” in the words
of one Justice of the Peace.10
Religious pluralism and confessional tension define the religious
atmosphere Louis Bautain found when he arrived in Strasbourg in
1816. Bautain was a philosophical prodigy, a recent graduate of the
École Normale, the prestigious institution created by the First Republic
in 1794 to fill the university system of France with the brightest and
7

Hyman, Emancipation, pp. 30-49.
Ibid., pp. 124-125; for the concept of “regeneration” see Jay R. Berkovitz, The
Shaping of Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century France (Detroit, 1989), pp. 128-149;
Alyssa Sepinwall, The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution: The Making of
Modern Universalism (Berkeley, California, 2005), pp. 56-77; Michael Graetz, The Jews
in Nineteenth-Century France (Stanford, 1996), pp. 70-78.
9
Leuillot, L’Alsace au début, vol. III, pp. 175-176. For confessional relations in Nîmes
and the surrounding area, see James Deming, Religion and Identity in Modern France:
The Modernization of the Protestant Community in Languedoc, 1815-1848 (Lanham
Maryland, 1999); Gwynne Lewis, “The White Terror of 1815 in the Department of the
Gard: Counter-Revolution, Continuity and the Individual,” Past and Present, 58 (1973),
108-135.
10
Leuillot, L’Alsace au début, vol. III, pp. 243-244; Amos Elon, The Pity of It All: A
Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933 (New York, 2002), pp. 101-104; David
Vidal, A People Apart: A Political History of the Jews in Europe, 1789-1939 (New York,
1999), pp. 212-215.
8

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181

the best.11 Only twenty years old at the time, Bautain was charged with
teaching philosophy at the Collège Royale. Within a year he was also
appointed to the faculty at the University of Strasbourg. In the period
from 1816 to 1820 Bautain was a close associate of Victor Cousin, the
foremost French philosopher of the day, who taught him at the École
Normale. Cousin is associated with philosophical eclecticism, which
sought to overcome fundamental arguments between empiricists and
idealists by affirming the partial truths of these competing systems.
This fluidity and indecisiveness have led to some severe judgments,
such as Poupard’s comment that Cousin “exercised over the ideas of
his time an influence out of proportion with the mediocrity of his
thought.”12
Whatever the value of Poupard’s critique of Cousin’s philosophy, he
is certainly right to notice its appeal. The young men of the École
Normale, including Bautain, were drawn to Cousin because they saw
him as the leader of a new generation which was defining itself in the
aftermath of the revolutionary and Napoleonic upheavals. This
Romantic “generation of 1820”was critical of the rationalism and materialism of the eighteenth century and self-consciously ambitious,
hoping to rebuild the spiritual foundations of Europe.13 For Cousin and
Bautain this agenda was political and social as well as intellectual.
Without a renewed philosophical synthesis that could reconcile opponents and define some basic truths that could draw universal acceptance, Europe was liable to fall again into catastrophic political and
social disorder. It is difficult to overestimate the shadow cast by the
revolutionary era over the Restoration, and one of its effects was to
generate in young people (and some old ones as well) a desire for a
new philosophy that would guide them in creating a new world on the
ruins of the old.

11
For Bautain’s early years see Poupard, L’abbé Louis Bautain (1961), pp. 61-83; Felix
Ponteil, “L’Affaire Bautain: La renaissance catholique à Strasbourg,” Revue Historique,
154 (1930), 225-287, particulary 225-226.
12
Poupard, L’abbé Louis Bautain (1961), p. 68. For Cousin’s career and influence, see
Alan Spitzer, The Generation of 1820 (Princeton, 1987), pp. 71-96; Jan Goldstein, The
Post-Revolutionary Self: Politics and Psyche in France (Cambridge, 2005); Jerrold Seigel,
The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Thought since the
Seventeenth Century (New York, 2005), pp. 472-479.
13
Spitzer, The French Generation of 1820; Paul Bénichou, Le Temps des prophètes:
Doctrines de l’âge romantique (Paris, 1997); Darrin McMahon, Enemies of the
Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity
(New York, 2001); Frank Manuel, The Prophets of Paris (New York, 1965).

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THE BAUTAIN CIRCLE AND CATHOLIC-JEWISH RELATIONS

This youthful optimism tinged with arrogance helps define the
character of Bautain when he arrived at Strasbourg in 1816.There he
quickly became a celebrity, drawing crowds to his lectures, and
courted by the local elite.A friend later described the youthful Bautain
as possessing “distinguished features, worthy of being engraved on a
medal, a piercing look full of power, with a remarkable character of
resolve and will, something at once imposing and appealing, a vibrant
voice, expressing all the accents of the soul, which he knew how to
play like an exquisite instrument, he knew everything about how to
take an audience and master it.”14
At Strasbourg Bautain became the local spokesman for and symbol of
the romantic generation that felt itself charged with the reconstruction
of Europe. Bautain’s sense of his power and position was enhanced by a
visit to Germany in the summer of 1818, when he accompanied Cousin
and met with Schelling and Hegel, who was apparently very impressed
by the young French philosopher. Bautain was playing on a European as
well as a local stage, and was well on his way to becoming a central
figure in French philosophy. We get a sense of Bautain’s convictions
about the significance of the historical moment, and of his portentous
style, in the speech he gave to the students and faculty of the University
of Strasbourg at the opening ceremony of the school year in 1818:“[W]e
live in a prophetic age. Everything is begun, nothing has yet been done;
we are caught in the middle of the crisis. . . .Young men, get ready. . . .You
must fulfill with glory the task assigned our generation, and . . . fulfill all
our duties as men, as Frenchmen, and as citizens of the world.”15
Bautain’s speech, delivered when he was just twenty-two years old,
reveals a young man full of ambition and confidence, a leader capable
of capturing the public mood and shaping the opinions of those who
mattered. But just a few months later, in March of 1819, Bautain was
forced to suspend his teaching at the University, suffering from a physical collapse and severe depression. In later years he explained this
breakdown as a religious crisis based on a realization that his confidence in reason was misplaced, and that his philosophical quest was
doomed to fail. The doctors gave up on Bautain, who was in despair
about his future and contemplating suicide when he traveled to Baden
in 1820, for a water cure.16
14

Poupard, L’abbé Louis Bautain (1961), pp. 84-85.
Ibid., p. 82.
16
For a selection of texts from Bautain in which he describes this crisis see Paul
Poupard, L’abbé Louis Bautain (Paris, 1964), pp. 61-66.
15

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183

At Baden Bautain met Mademoiselle Louise Humann, a single
woman, fifty-four years old, who was known for both her piety and
intelligence. Mlle Humann was from a distinguished Catholic family;
one brother was the bishop of Mainz, another later served as Minister
of Finances under Louis-Philippe.17 At Baden Mlle Humann impressed
Bautain with her knowledge of German idealism, which she discussed
with her young friend. But Bautain was particularly struck by the calm
certainty of her religious faith. Bautain had been born and raised as a
Catholic, but his philosophical training under Cousin had led him to
see Christianity as symbolizing an absolute truth that rational knowledge could grasp more clearly and directly. Mlle Humann apparently let
Bautain speak at length of his own ideas, and then quietly responded,
explaining her thoughts without arguing or debating with him. Mlle
Humann was also a mystic, whose language was shot through with
Neo-Platonism, and under her guidance Bautain developed a conviction that the search for truth had to start with the heart instead of the
head, the characteristic Romantic choice of emotion over reason.18
This basic insight was the starting point for the second stage of
Bautain’s career, when he converted back to the Catholicism of his
youth, and developed his “philosophy of Christianity.”
The Bautain Circle
Humann and Bautain were the first two links in the circle that gathered at Mlle Humann’s home on All-Saints’ Street in the 1820’s and early
1830’s.Although its origins are obscure, the circle can be observed operating in May, 1823, when Bautain began teaching a private course in
moral philosophy at Mlle Humann’s house for four students, two Jews, an
Orthodox Christian, and an Irish Catholic.19 The latter two, whose names
17

Mme Paul Fliche, Mlle Louise Humann (1766-1836) (Paris, 1921); Poupard, L’abbé
Bautain (1961), pp. 86-97; Dominique Gros,“Louis Bautain, Mlle Humann, et Théodore
Ratisbonne,” in Louis Bautain: L’abbé-philosophe, pp. 171-180.
18
Poupard, L’abbé Bautain (1961), pp. 86-97.
19
Théodore Ratisbonne, Memoirs, translated by Sister Marian Dolan (n.p., n.d.). I am
grateful to Sister Mary Boys for providing me with this text, and others as well. The
Memoirs provide some details about the circle, including the role of Mlle Humann,
which were left out of Ratisbonne’s autobiographical essay,“Adéodat,” which was published in the Preface to Bautain’s major work, Philosophie du christianisme:
Correspondance religieuse, 2 vols. (Paris, 1835), pp. xxxi-lxii. His account also appeared
in C.-F. Chevé, Dictionnaire des conversions (Paris, 1852), pp. 111-113. Bautain was
teaching in private, having been suspended from the University because public officials
suspected him of liberal sympathies.This accusation was perhaps justified, for although
Bautain seems never to have involved himself directly in the partisan politics of his day,

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THE BAUTAIN CIRCLE AND CATHOLIC-JEWISH RELATIONS

are unknown,soon disappeared from the scene,but the Jewish members,
Théodore Ratisbonne and Jules Lewel, were key figures in Bautain’s
entourage for the next fifteen years.Lewel had attended some of Bautain’s
lectures at the University in 1822, and it was through his invitation that
Ratisbonne joined the circle.20 Within a few months Ratisbonne drew in
Isidore Goschler, a childhood friend who had taken Bautain’s philosophy
course at the Collège Royal.21 All three were from the small and affluent
Jewish milieu,and were law students at the University.Ratisbonne,Lewel,
and Goschler had a great deal in common with Bautain, their “Master” as
they called him. In their memoirs published as a Preface to Bautain’s
Philosophie du christianisme in 1835, they describe themselves as introspective young men inclined to philosophical reflection, struggling
against spiritual despair, and prone to frequent bouts of tears. Over the
next several years they studied with Bautain,and became attached as well
to Mlle Humann, whom they described as “Mama.” Others joined the
circle over the years, including Henri de Bonnechose, later the CardinalArchbishop of Rouen, and Auguste Gratry, who reconstituted the
Oratorians in France. All of these initiates, including the three Jewish
members, were eventually ordained as Catholic priests, and were associated with the Congregation of Saint-Louis founded by Bautain. Bautain
himself was ordained in 1828, and had a long, complicated, and distinguished career that led him to Paris, where he was a professor of moral
philosophy at the Sorbonne and a vicar-general.22

he acknowledged that even after his conversion he looked at the Bourbon Restoration
as doomed to fail because it “was trying to re-establish the past, battling openly with the
ideas and needs of the present, and with the aspirations and hopes for the future.” See
Poupard, L’abbé Bautain (1961), pp. 109-110. Théodore’s younger brother, Alphonse,
also converted to Catholicism, following a claimed apparition of the Virgin Mary in Rome
in 1842. Subsequently the two brothers worked together in the Congregation of Our
Lady of Sion, dedicated to the conversion of Jews. Following the Second Vatican Council
the Congregation redefined its mission so that it is now devoted to fostering better relations between Catholics and Jews. See Mary C. Boys, “The Sisters of Sion: From a
Conversionist Stance to a Dialogical Way of Life,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 31
(1994), 27-48.
20
Ratisbonne,“Adéodat,” p. xxxix. For Lewel’s autobiographical account of the Bautain
circle, see “Julien,” in Bautain, Philosophie du christianisme, vol. I, pp. xcvii-cxviii.
21
Isidore Goschler,“Eudore,” in Bautain, Philosophie du christianisme, vol. I, pp. lxiiixcxvi. Goschler’s account was reprinted in Dictionnaire des conversions, pp. 692-710.
Lewel’s narrative of his conversion can be found in Bautain, Philosophie du christianisme, vol. I, pp. xcxvii-cxviii, and Dictionnaire des conversions, pp. 856-867.
22
Poupard, L’abbé Bautain (1961), pp. 112-120; Jacques-Olivier Boudon, “Louis
Bautain, Vicaire général de Paris,” in Hiebel and Perrin (eds.), Louis Bautain, L’abbé
philosophe, pp. 171-180.

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185

The Bautain circle was a seedbed for important figures in the history of the French church, but what interests me in particular are the
friendships formed among Bautain, Ratisbonne, Lewel, and Goschler in
the 1820’s, which were a crucial context for the formulation of
Bautain’s ideas about the religious status of Judaism. Bautain’s insistence, derived in part from Mlle Humann, that theology avoid argument and debate was a response to the pluralistic and sometimes conflicted religious environment of Strasbourg. Bautain vehemently
opposed a theological style that claimed that Catholicism could be
established on the basis of reason, based on his own profound disappointment with philosophical inquiry.As described by Bonnechose, in
Bautain’s method, “you will find no controversy, discussion, debate,
arguments that cancel each other out, leaving you anxious and perplexed.”23 Instead, Bautain began with simple truths appropriate to his
audience, winning their confidence without coercion or even persuasion. In the case of his Jewish disciples, Bautain apparently began with
the Old Testament. According to Theodore Ratisbonne, from the time
of their first meeting in 1823, he and his friends were struck by a teaching based “on the books that are sacred for the Jews. Starting from this
ancient source, you found everything that has been believed and
revered by the distinguished men of every century.”24
Bautain also appealed to the social and moral aspirations of his students, who under his guidance threw themselves into an intense campaign of education and charity directed at their community.25
Théodore Ratisbonne and Isidore Goschler became leaders in the
Jewish community, teaching in the new school established by the
Consistory, and directing the “Society for the Encouragement of Work,”
which placed Jewish children in apprenticeships, where they would
learn trades that would wean them from the petty commerce and
money-lending that provoked so much antagonism. Between 1823 and
1827 the Jewish members of the Bautain circle occupied a curious and
unique position, for they had assumed leadership roles in the Jewish
community at the same time as they were moving increasingly towards
a full acceptance of Christianity. Ratisbonne described the process as
23
Henri de Bonnechose,“Introduction,”in Bautain, Philosophie du christianisme, vol.
I, p. v. Bautain’s explanation is found in his 1822 letter, published in Poupard, L’abbé
Bautain (1964), pp. 69-76.
24
Bautain, Philosophie du christianisme, vol. I, p. 6
25
Thomas Kselman, “Social Reform and Religious Conversion in French Judaism,”
Proceedings of the Western Society for French History: Selected Papers of the 2000
Annual Meeting,Vol. 28 (Boulder, Colorado, 2002), pp. 10-18.

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one in which Christianity “entered the depths of my heart without my
mind being aware of it.”26 For Goschler, the contrast between the
public acceptance of Judaism and a private Christianity was exhilarating, generating “a feeling of independence and superiority that a
Christian perhaps ought not to avow, but which sustained a young man
floating still between the world and the Church.”27 By 1827, however,
Ratisbonne, Goschler, and Lewel found themselves unable to continue
the double life they had been leading, and all of them were baptized in
the early months of 1827. Ratisbonne was baptized in secret by Mlle
Humann, without even Bautain’s knowledge, and at first struggled to
keep his Catholic identity hidden. But the public address he delivered
a few weeks later to the Society for the Encouragement of Work was
harshly critical of the Jewish nation, which suffered from a degraded
condition because “she had sinned against the Lord, killed her
prophets, and turned away from the light that came to enlighten her.”28
Following this speech, suspicions grew, and by the end of the year, all
three had publicly acknowledged their Catholicism.
The public abjuration of Ratisbonne, Goschler, and Lewel marked
the end of a particular period in the history of the Bautain circle,
which nonetheless continued to exist until the death of Mlle Humann
in 1836. Over the next few years the circle assumed a prominent role
as first of all Bautain and then his disciples embraced a religious vocation and became Catholic priests. For several years members of the
circle were treated with great consideration by the local Bishop, Le
Pappe de Trévern, who gave them control of the minor seminary of
Strasbourg in 1830. In 1832 ten members of the circle, all of them now
priests, including all of the Jewish participants, took a vow of union in
the presence of Mlle Humann, which later became the basis for
Bautain’s Congregation of the priests of Saint Louis. Many of the local
clergy, however, resented the rapidly growing influence of Bautain and
his colleagues.The fact that their conversion had been mediated by an
appeal to the heart rather than to reason made them theologically suspect, and there is evidence as well that some older clergy felt that the
Jewish converts in particular could not be trusted. According to
Ratisbonne,“many of my colleagues were unable to forgive me for my
origins and the religion of my father, and yet these origins were those
26

Bautain, Philosophie du christianisme, vol. I, p. xli.
Ibid. p. lxix.
28
Assemblée générale des sociétaires tenue à l’Hotel de Ville, le mardi 12 juin 1827
(Strasbourg, 1827), p. 13.
27

BY THOMAS KSELMAN

187

of the Apostiles, the first disciples, and all of the early Church.”29 In
1834 Bishop Le Pappe de Trévern issued an official warning against the
teachings of Bautain, and removed him and his followers from the seminary. Over the next few years they engaged in a long series of negotiations with church authorities, which led to a number of retractions.
For someone who claimed not to like arguments, Bautain turned out
to be quite an effective polemicist. For my purposes, the theological
and ecclesiastical controversy of the 1830’s is interesting because it
yielded a document that casts considerable light on the relationships
between Catholics and Jews in the Bautain circle.
Christians and Jews in the Philosophie du christianisme
Bautain’s Philosophie du christianisme, published in 1835, was his
most controversial and significant work, in which he laid out in two
extensive volumes his ideas about the relationship between faith and
reason. Poupard and others have probed the theological and philosophical meanings in this text, but scholars have generally avoided
commenting on the form of this work, which was presented as a series
of letters exchanged between Bautain and his three Jewish disciples,
written in the 1820’s, as they wavered between their Jewish and
Christian identities. Moreover, scholars have almost entirely ignored
the three lengthy memoirs by Ratisbonne, Goschler, and Lewel, published as a preface to the first volume of the “Philosophy.”From my perspective, the form of Bautain’s volume, which amounts to a dialogue
between Catholics and Jews, deserves not only to be noticed but to be
emphasized.The content in these exchanges is equally noteworthy, for
Bautain and his Jewish correspondents present the relationship
between Catholics and Jews in ways that suggest at times a more openhearted and tolerant atmosphere than was typical of the period and of
the subsequent history of these religious communities.
I have mentioned already that Bautain began his instruction with an
affirmation of the value of the Old Testament. In doing so, he was working within an eighteenth-century tradition in which Catholic apologists defended Sacred Scripture, both the Old and New Testaments,
against the mocking criticisms of Voltaire and other philosophes.30
Much more surprising was Bautain’s call on his Jewish disciples to
29

Bautain, Philosophie du christianisme, vol. I, p. lix.
Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews (New York, 1968), pp.
252-258.
30

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THE BAUTAIN CIRCLE AND CATHOLIC-JEWISH RELATIONS

“become good Israelites, the truth will do the rest.” Ratisbonne
described this phrase as entering “like a shaft of fire in my soul, it
pierced me like a sword.”31 According to Goschler, at the end of his first
year in the circle, he approached Bautain, seeking religious guidance.
“His advice [he wrote], appropriate to my state at the time, led me to
observe the mosaic customs that I had completely neglected; not a
pharisaic observation of the letter and the rituals of the Synagogue, but
to a serious and frank practice of the law of justice, a principal of the
law of love. I became . . . an object of surprise and edification for the
Synagogue. I assisted with piety at its solemnities. . . I passed long hours
in prayer, conversing in my heart with the God of my fathers, and calling to my aid the promised redeemer.”32
As a result of Bautain’s advice, then, three young Jewish men who
had been religiously indifferent, and were pursuing spiritual enlightenment, took up Jewish religious practice, including an intense prayer
life, as well as committing themselves wholeheartedly to the service of
their community.As their studies continued, however, Ratisbonne and
his friends were troubled by internal conflicts they faced, torn
between their respect for the opinion of other young people, many of
whom were irreligious, their sense of solidarity with their Jewish families and community, and their emerging Christian identity.“Would it be
possible,” Ratisbonne asks Bautain, “to be a Christian on the inside, a
Jew in our family, and a deist on the outside, in the midst of society?”33
Bautain’s answer to this question, in the Second Letter of the
“Philosophy,” suggests both the extent and the limits of his openness
to Jewish religious life. The “Master” unequivocally rejected any concession to a deistic public opinion:
Oh my friends! Don’t you know that between a true Israelite and a deist there
is the same difference as between a civilized man and an ignorant and savage
child? The god of the deist is . . . a being of reason, an abstraction, a spiritual
idol,a chimera of the philosophes of our day! And that is what you would substitute for the God of Israel and Moses, a living God who created man in his
image, who animated his spirit, who conserves him by his providence? . . . O
my friends, believe me, reject a dissimulation that would degrade you, in your
own eyes, and in the eyes of all men of virtue. . . . Hebrews by birth, know
how to become yourselves with nobility before the pagans.”34

31

Bautain, Philosophie du christianisme, vol. I, p. 7.
Ibid, p. lxviii.
33
Ibid., p. 9.
34
Bautain, Philosophie du christianisme, vol. I, pp. 20-21.

32

BY THOMAS KSELMAN

189

Bautain’s response is a fascinating text that boldly defends Jewish
scripture and religious practice in an age when Christians elsewhere
in Europe were mobilizing for a campaign of proselytism and conversion. In England the London Society for Promoting Christianity among
the Jews, created in 1809, was enormously successful in gaining financial and moral support from influential evangelicals, such as William
Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury, even while it failed miserably in its
attempt at conversion.35 The London group was the model for the
Berlin Society for the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews in
1822, which won the support of King Frederick William III, as well as
a substantial number of Prussia’s conservative elite.36 In France the
Charter under which the Catholic Bourbons governed the nation
affirmed religious liberty, but also declared Catholicism the official religion. Leading conservative theorists, such as Joseph de Maistre
defended the idea of a Christian state in which “there was no room for
the Jew or Judaism.”37 In the Papal State Pius VII took the advice of the
zelanti and reinstituted the Jewish ghetto in Rome.38 Placed in this
context, Bautain’s appeal to his disciples to “become good Jews,” and
his encouragement in their religious and charitable participation in the
Jewish community seems exceptionally tolerant.
Bautain, however, balanced his positive assessment with much
harsher language in which he repeated many of the anti-Judaic arguments inherited from the Christian tradition. These ideas emerged in
response to questions about the status of the Jews raised by
Ratisbonne and Lewel, but once the door was open, Bautain argued
forcefully for the supercessionist view which saw Christianity as the
necessary fulfillment of Judaism.39 Moreover, Bautain criticized both
35
Todd Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 1714-1830 (Ann Arbor, Michigan,
1999), pp. 71-73; Barbara Tuchman, Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the
Bronze Age to Balfour (New York, 1984), pp. 183-189.
36
Christopher Clark, “Missionary Politics: Protestant Missions to the Jews in
Nineteenth-Century Prussia,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 38 (1993), 33-50; idem, The
Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia, 1728-1941
(New York, 1995); idem, “The ‘Christian’ State and the ‘Jewish Citizen’ in NineteenthCentury Prussia,”in Protestants, Catholics, and Jews in Germany, pp. 67-93. For the conversionist impulse in Catholic Bavaria, see Jeanne Favret-Saada, Le christianisme et ses
juifs, 1800-2000 (Paris, 2004), pp. 63-87.
37
Julie Kalman, “The Unyielding Wall: Jews and Catholics in Restoration and July
Monarchy France,” French Historical Studies, 26 (2003), 661-686, quote on 666.
38
David Kertzer, The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of
Modern Anti-Semitism (New York, 2001), pp. 31-37.
39
For example: “Christianity is the development, the perfection of mosaic Judaism,
just as a building rests on its base.” Bautain, Philosophie du christianisme, vol. I, p. 42.

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THE BAUTAIN CIRCLE AND CATHOLIC-JEWISH RELATIONS

ancient and contemporary Jews for refusing to accept the Messiah, a
failure due to the same pride that led them to reject their own
prophets. But even as he pursued these and other traditional polemical themes, Bautain continued to urge his disciples to continue their
work for the regeneration of their people. In the sixth letter of the
“Philosophy” Bautain criticized the hypocrisy of the French, who
claimed to have freed the Jews in their Revolution, but continued to
treat them with disdain, and to prevent them from taking the place in
society merited by their accomplishments.40
Confronted with what appeared to be a mixed message, Ratisbonne
raised the question explicitly: Why, if Christianity was the perfected
form of Judaism, did Bautain continue to advise him and his friends to
“be good Israelites”? “Is it a lack of confidence in our capacity or our
courage? Is it prudence in the face of worldly interests? Or is it perhaps
through a wise foresight that you repeat this phrase, that you engage
us in reading and studying our sacred books?”41 In his response,
Bautain defended his advice, claiming it was “the spontaneous expression of a lively and sincere desire to see you as virtuous men, living
with decency in the world, practicing justice, loving God and your
neighbor, since that is the essence of your law.”42 Bautain was convinced that his insistence that his Jewish disciples pursue the truth
would lead them eventually to Christianity, but that any attempt to
push them toward this position would be ineffective, and a violation
of their religious liberty.
By the standard of his day, Bautain was perhaps tolerant, but I would
characterize his position as a form of “tolerant intolerance.”Amos Elon
has described the early nineteenth century as a period when “tolerance was seeping through the cracks” in European society, a phrase
that would seem to describe what was going on in the Bautain circle.43
On the one hand, Bautain appears duplicitous; he seems at times to be
teasing his disciples, calling on them to pursue the truth, which would
necessarily culminate in Christianity, while holding them off, urging
them to move slowly, and to keep working from within their Jewish
community. His disciples appear disingenuous as well, preaching to
and teaching their fellow Jews without acknowledging their secret
and complicated attachment to Christianity. On the other hand,
40

Ibid., pp. 69-70.
Ibid., p. 28.
42
Ibid., p. 40.
43
Elon, The Pity of It All, p. 65.

41

BY THOMAS KSELMAN

191

Bautain insisted on the possibility that an authentic moral and religious
life could be pursued within the Jewish community, despite its obvious
shortcomings. Ratisbonne captured the poignant situation that he and
his friends faced as they struggled to reconcile their conflicting religious identities:
The Jew today exists as a singular anomaly, as a family of pariahs in the
middle of the Christian nations! I see this situation; I feel it with pain: I
would give my life to pull my brothers out of it. . . and I am unable to live
with them. . . . I wouldn’t dare to separate myself from the ruins of
Jerusalem, and I flee the Synagogue. . . ; I hold to my nation through the
most tender ties of affection, and I am ashamed to belong to it. . . !”44

Ratisbonne’s anguish about his Jewish identity was not unique, and
was shared by many others who confronted the opportunities and
limits faced by Jews in an age when legal emancipation, civil rights,
and religious liberty were increasingly available, but imperfectly realized. Rahel Levin, the famous Jewish salonnière of Berlin, wrote that “it
was disgusting to be a Jew,” and eventually converted to Protestantsm.
But on her deathbed she acknowledged that “the thing which all my
life seemed to me the greatest shame, which was the misery and misfortune of my life—having been born a Jewess—this I should have on
no account missed.”45 The emergence of such a sharply articulated selfconsciousness was based on a series of contacts between gentiles and
Jews that began in the late eighteenth century, and produced a new set
of possibilities for Jewish participation in European culture. The
Bautain circle was therefore not entirely unique, and can be compared
in many ways with others that were forming in Europe in this period.
But a brief examination of these other circles can also suggest some of
its distinctive features.
Cross-Confessional Experiments in Restoration Europe
The group that formed around Moses Mendelssohn and Gotthold
Lessing in Berlin in the 1750’s is certainly the most famous example of
friendly relations between Jews and Gentiles, occurring at a time when
such contacts were “difficult and in some eyes unthinkable.”46

44

Bautain, Philosophie du christianisme, vol. I, pp. 8-9.
Elon, The Pity of It All, pp. 80, 89.
46
Ibid., p. 35. For the German Jewish community in this period in general, see David
Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry,1780-1840 (New York, 1987).
Mendelssohn was the model for the title character in Lessing’s famous play defending
45

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THE BAUTAIN CIRCLE AND CATHOLIC-JEWISH RELATIONS

Mendelssohn had been educated as a Talmudic scholar, but had also
taught himself German, Latin, Greek, French, and English, and by the
middle of the 1750’s he had begun publishing a number of works that
made him a major figure in the Enlightenment. His friendship with
Lessing, a major literary figure in the eighteenth century, was based on
conversations in which they shared their enthusiasm for the rationalist and cosmopolitan ideas of the Enlightenment. As Jacob Katz has
noted, in Mendelssohn’s Berlin circle,“Jews and non-Jews alike discovered that they could meet on common human ground, such a relationship involving no attempt to deny or obscure their different religious affiliations.”47 But Mendelssohn remained an observant Jew, and
insisted that his religious belief and practice could be reconciled with
his commitment to reason. Moreover, Menelssohn sought to avoid religious controversy, and proposed that one of Judaism’s most appealing
features was its tolerance, its refusal to take a conversionist posture in
the face of religious differences. When the Swiss theologian Johann
Lavater challenged Mendelssohn to convert, he responded with great
reluctance, convinced that discussions of religious differences were
damaging and fruitless.“My religion, my philosophy, and my position in
society give me every reason to avoid religious controversies and to
speak in my publications only of those truths that must be equally
important to all religions.”48 Bautain avoided overt proselytism in the
early meetings of his circle, but the conversations he had with
Théodore Ratisbonne and the other Jewish members nonetheless
engaged religious traditions and texts, and grappled with the religious
differences that the Mendelssohn circle sought to avoid.
In the generation that followed Mendelssohn Jews and Christians
continued to meet in Berlin, where salons hosted by wealthy and assimilated Jewish women became prominent in the social life of the
Prussian capital. But here as well serious engagement with religious
questions seems rare, as those who gathered were “concerned almost

religious tolerance, Nathan the Wise, which was published in 1779. For a recent edition
with a useful introduction discussing the relationship, see Gotthold Lessing, Nathan the
Wise, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Ronald Schechter (New York, 2004).
47
Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in
Medieval and Modern Times (New York, 1961), p. 169. For Mendelssohn, see Elon The
Pity of It All, pp. 33-64; David Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious
Enlightenment (Berkeley, California, 1996).
48
Moses Mendelssohn, “Reply to Lavater,” in Ritchie Robertson (ed.), The GermanJewish Dialogue: An Anthology of Literary Texts, 1749-1993 (New York, 1999), pp. 3645, quote from p. 40.

BY THOMAS KSELMAN

193

exclusively with promoting the arts and the Romantic cult of friendship.”49 Insofar as religious identity did become an issue, it was frequently resolved by an acceptance of a rationalistic Protestantism as the
best expression of universal principles derived from natural religion.
When the son of Moses Mendelssohn,Abraham, wrote to his daughter
in 1820 in order to explain why he had raised her as a Christian, he
admitted to agnosticism on the question of God’s existence, but
affirmed,“[T]here exists in me and in you and in all human beings an
everlasting inclination towards all that is good,true,and right,and a conscience which warns and guides us when we go astray. I know it, I
believe it, I live in this faith, and this is my religion.”50 Conversions in
this milieu were common, but the historians who have studied the
Jewish community of Berlin have concluded that most of these were
the result of a practical desire for professional advancement (in the case
of males) and for intermarriage (in the case of females).51
Jews and Christians also came together in intimate circles in Paris,
where the Saint-Simonian movement provided a forum for exchanges
across religious boundaries.52 In fact, the association of a number of
young and affluent Jews, Olinde Rodrigues, Emile and Isaac Péreire,
and Léon Halévy, with Saint-Simon began in May, 1823, precisely when
Ratisbonne and Lewel began meeting with Bautain at Mlle Humann’s
in Strasbourg. Henri de Bonnechose, one of the members of the
Bautain circle, noticed the similarity in the two groups, for both were
motivated by a “devotional tendency,” a desire to discover a religious
system that would be an integral part of a reformed social order.53 But
49

Elon, The Pity of It All, pp. 65-100, quote from p. 69.
Abraham Mendelssohn, “Why I Have Raised You as a Christian,” in Paul MendesFlohr and Jehuda Reinharz (eds.), The Jew in the Modern World, 2nd ed. (New York,
1995), pp. 257-258.
51
Deborah Hertz,“Seductive Conversion in Berlin, 1770-1809,” in Jewish Apostasy in
the Modern World,, ed. Todd Endelman (New York, 1987), pp. 48-82; Deborah Hertz,
Jewish High Society in Old Regime Berlin (New Haven, 1988); Steven Lowenstein, The
Berlin Jewish Community, 1770-1830: Enlightenment, Family and Crisis (New York,
1994); Jacob Katz,“Religion as a Uniting and Dividing Force in Modern Jewish History,”
in The Role of Religion in Modern Jewish History, ed. Jacob Katz (Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1975), pp. 1-22; Elon, The Pity of It All, p. 85.
52
Perrine Simon-Nahum, La cité investie: La “Science de judaïsme” français et la
République (Paris, 1991), pp. 25-39.
53
Bautain, Philosophie du christianisme, vol. I, p. xv. Michael Graetz, The Jews in
Nineteenth-Century France, p. 113, emphasizes the innovative dimension of SaintSimonianism, which provided “a framework of sociability within which Jews and
Christians associated with each other . . . because sovereign individuals deciding their
actions chose to do so.”
50

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THE BAUTAIN CIRCLE AND CATHOLIC-JEWISH RELATIONS

the Saint-Simonians in the end rejected both Judaism and Christianity
in favor of a sect organized around Prosper Enfantin that amounted to
a new religion very far from anything being discussed in the Bautain
circle.
Similarities can also be found that link the Bautain circle with
groups that formed at the highest level of European society, most
famously in the case of the Russian Tsar Alexander I. Castlereagh
ridiculed the Holy Alliance Alexander sought in 1815 as a “piece of
sublime mysticism and nonsense,” and most historians would probably agree with this assessment, insofar as it had virtually no impact on
the actions of European states.54 But the religious spirit that informed
the Tsar’s diplomacy grew from a series of meetings that involved the
Protestant revivalist Jung-Stilling, the mystic Julie de Krudener, and
others. Roksandra Sturdza, the Empress Elisvata’s maid of honor,
served as the intermediary between the tsar, Jung-Stilling, and
Krudener, after meeting them at Baden in the winter of 1814, the
same city where Bautain and Humann became linked a few years
later.55 As with the Bautain circle, these meetings were marked by
intense religious passion and a conviction that a form of mysticism
could overcome the differences between Christians.56 However
impractical it was, the Holy Alliance represented a religious mood that
also informed the Bautain circle: a desire for religious unity, mystical
enthusiasm, and an apocalyptic sense of history. But the “mental world
of the Holy Alliance,” as described by Alexander Martin, remained a
Christian enclave; it could accommodate Russian Orthodoxy,
Protestantism, and Catholicism, but not Jews.57

54

Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815-1830 (New York,
1991), p. 112. For a more positive assessment of the Holy Alliance, see Paul Schroeder,
The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848 (New York, 1996), pp. 558-559.
55
Mme de Krudener traveled through Alsace in 1816-1817, drawing crowds and
making local officials nervous with her prophecies; Mlle Humann and Bautain would
certainly have been familiar with her ideas and her work in the region.
56
Jacques Fabry, Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740-1817): Esotérisme chrétien et
prophétisme apocalyptique (Bern, 2003), pp. 109-110, 135-140; Alexander Martin,
Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries: Russian Conservative Thought and Politics in
the Reign of Alexander I (DeKalb, Illinois, 1997), pp. 149-158.
57
Martin, Romantics, pp. 143-168. In France confessional relations between Catholics
and Protestants during this period took place in the “Société de la Morale chrétienne,”
founded in 1822, but no Jews seem to have participated in this group. See Ellen Astrid
Koehler, “Modeling the Civic Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century France: Ecumenical
Sociability and the Société de la Morale chrétienne.” Paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Western Society for French History, 2003.

BY THOMAS KSELMAN

195

Conclusion
The Bautain circle was part of a more general romantic religious
revival that swept through Europe in the early nineteenth century, a
response to spiritual dissatisfaction with Enlightenment rationalism,
and to the political chaos brought on by the French Revolution. This
revival included a number of exchanges across religious boundaries,
perhaps reflecting the fact that Europe after the Congress of Vienna
included multi-confessional states that made religious homogeneity
within individual states an even more difficult, if not impossible goal.
During this period the “Jewish question” became an explicit object of
concern, as states struggled over the issue of emancipation, the granting of civil, political, and religious rights to Jews.
The Bautain circle fits into this larger historical context, representing one of many fascinating attempts to renegotiate the relationships
between religious communities in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But it also merits attention as a distinctive moment in
the history of religious toleration. Based on a mystic sense that transcends religious differences and a moral standard that emphasizes
charitable service to others, the participants in the Bautain circle took
a step, hesitant but real, toward a position that accepts religious pluralism and affirms the authentic religiosity of people of different faiths,
including Jews. I accept the point of Perez Zagorin, who believes that
peaceful coexistence between hostile religions can only emerge from
such a position,“a genuine belief in and commitment to toleration as
something inherently good and valuable.”58 Political expediency plays
an important role in the history of toleration, as communities and their
leaders sought ways to accommodate religious differences so as to
avoid disorder in the public sphere. But absent a deeper commitment,
practically negotiated arrangements are liable to break down, a point
that can be made for sixteenth-century Germany, a number of contemporary trouble spots, such as the Middle East and the Balkans, and
of course, for modern Europe, where the history of the relationship
between Christians and Jews has been troubled and violent.
Bautain’s call on the members of his circle to “become good Jews”
was accompanied by a great deal of anti-Judaic baggage. But it nonetheless had an enormous emotional impact on the small group of Jews
58

Perez Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Princeton,
2003), pp. 12-13.

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THE BAUTAIN CIRCLE AND CATHOLIC-JEWISH RELATIONS

who heard it. We know of this primarily through memoirs and correspondence published more than ten years after the circle met, a gap
that makes me wonder about the atmosphere in Mlle Humann’s house
in 1823.What was it like at these early meetings of the Bautain circle?
Was Bautain’s Christianity, including his attitudes toward Jews, already
fixed in the ways that it appears in the publication of 1835? Was his
advice a kind of tactical maneuver, as it sometimes appears to be in the
published correspondence, or was it a sincerely intended affirmation
of Jewish life? The evidence doesn’t allow us to make a clear judgment
on this question, and perhaps it is better to avoid thinking in such
polarized categories. Bautain’s relationship with his Jewish friends was
confused and ambivalent, but in the questions that these men posed to
each other, and the answers they struggled with, we can nonetheless
glimpse in the early nineteenth century new possibilities emerging for
conversations across religious boundaries.

ARCHIEPISCOPAL INQUISITIONS IN THE
MIDDLE RHINE:
URBAN ANTICLERICALISM AND WALDENSIANISM
IN LATE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY MAINZ
BY
JENNIFER KOLPACOFF DEANE*

In the autumn of 1390, archiepiscopal inquisitors launched a
sudden and unprecedented campaign against Waldensian heretics
in the middle-Rhineland city of Mainz. By the end of 1393, at least
thirty-nine men and women, both laity and clergy, had been burned
at the stake in what would be one of the bloodiest and most complex inquisitions of late-medieval Germany. Based on analysis of
hitherto overlooked or unknown source material, this article sets
forth the context, course, and significance of the Mainz prosecutions,
and challenges the standard interpretation that fourteenth-century
Waldensianism was a rural phenomenon of little interest to
German bishops.
In February of 1390, an unlikely new archbishop was elected to the
see of Mainz. In the wake of papal schism, interdict, and violent anticlerical uprisings in the middle Rhineland, the unassuming scholastic
of the Mainz cathedral chapter Conrad von Weinsberg was unanimously elected over a wealthy rival from the Nassau dynasty. Within
months of his ascending the archiepiscopal throne, and despite a lack
of wealth or family clout, Archbishop Conrad II effected a striking
change in archiepiscopal focus. In dramatic contrast to his predecessor, whose primary goals had been dynastic territorial expansion and
the promotion of family interests, the new archbishop set out to eradicate local heresy and anticlericalism. For the first time in the city’s history, in September of 1390, inquisitors prosecuted a community of
Waldensians in Mainz.1 The group consisted of both men and women,
*Dr. Deane is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, Morris. She
would like to thank Robert E. Lerner for generously directing her attention to the
Waldensians in Mainz and the manuscript material discussed here, as well as for his tireless guidance during the research process.Trenchant observations and suggestions from
Richard Kieckhefer, Michael Bailey, and the anonymous reader were also much appreciated by her.
1
The city of Mainz had become a free city by the mid-thirteenth century, but as
part of the archdiocese of Mainz, remained subject to the ecclesiastical authority

197

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ARCHIEPISCOPAL INQUISITIONS IN THE MIDDLE RHINE

and is described in a chronicle source as having had their own house,
called Spiegelberg, in which they met to share and practice their
heresy. Within three years, at least thirty-nine men and women were
burned at the stake for heresy, making this one of the bloodiest and
most complex inquisitions of late-medieval Germany.2
Yet despite its significance, the story of the Mainz persecutions has
never been told.3 Based on analysis of hitherto unknown or overlooked sources, this article sets forth the context, course, and significance of the Mainz prosecutions, and concludes with a consideration
of the archbishop. The ecclesiastical province of Mainz included the suffragan sees of
Straßburg, Augsburg, Constance, Chur, Eichstätt, Halberstadt, Würzburg, Hildesheim,
Paderborn, Speyer,Verdun,Worms and Bamberg. On the legal relationship between city
and clergy in Mainz, see Dieter Demandt, Stadtherrschaft und Stadtfreiheit im
Spannungsfeld von Geistlichkeit und Bürgerschaft in Mainz, 11.–15. Jahrhundert
(Wiesbaden, 1977).
2
The documented burnings took place in the town of Bingen, approximately twentyfive miles down the Rhine from the city of Mainz. Belonging to the prince-archbishop of
Mainz since the thirteenth century, Bingen was a small but strategically important toll
and trade center for Mainz through the high and late Middle Ages. See Alois Gerlich (ed.),
“Die Anfänge der Stadt Bingen” in Mittelrhein und Hessen: Nachgelassene Studien von
Heinrich Büttner (Stuttgart, 1989), pp. 51-60. Also Friedhelm Jürgensmeier and Regina
Elisabeth Schwerdtfeger, Kirche auf dem Weg: Das Bistum Mainz (Strasbourg, 1991).
3
The modern historiography of the Mainz inquisitions spans a century, but is
nonetheless surprisingly thin. Herman Haupt led the way to discussion of late-medieval
German Waldensianism in his “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sekte vom freien Geiste und
des Beghardentums,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 7 (1885), 503-576 (here 574),
and “Waldenserthum und Inquisition im Südöstlichen Deutschland bis zur Mitte des 14.
Jahrhunderts,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 1 (1889), 285-330, and
3 (1890), 337-411. The first overview of the heresy in Germany to mention Mainz was
Henry Charles Lea’s A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, vol. 2 (New York,
1888), pp. 396-400. Fifteen years later, Franz Falk published a cursory study of the inquisitions, but cited only chronicle and printed sources in his “Waldensertum in Mainz zu
Ende des 14. Jahrhunderts,” Der Katholik: Zeitschrift für katholische Wissenschaft und
kirchliches Leben, 28 (1903), 263-265. Over seventy years thereafter, Gustav Hamman
briefly discussed the inquisitions in his “Mittelalterliche Waldenser in Hessen:
Nachrichten und Spuren,” Jahrbuch der hessischen Kirchengeschichtlichen
Vereinigung, 27 (1976), 93-128, although he too was unaware of several crucial manuscript sources, and his account is not entirely reliable. In 1979, Richard Kieckhefer published his valuable The Repression of Heresy in Medieval Germany (Philadelphia,
1979), noting the Mainz proceedings in his discussion of anti-Waldensian measures in
late fourteenth-century Germany. Malcolm Lambert’s third edition of Medieval Heresy
(Oxford, 2002) relies heavily upon Kieckhefer in its analysis of late-medieval Germany
heresy, but makes no direct reference to the Mainz campaigns. Euan Cameron’s important study Waldenses: Rejection of Holy Church in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2000)
notes only that a campaign occurred in Mainz in 1390, with reference to a nineteenthcentury printed source.

BY JENNIFER KOLPACOFF DEANE

199

of three key arguments. First, the eruption of persecution in 1390 was
in response to a specific set of local and regional pressures, spiritual
anxieties, and civic tensions which had escalated during the previous
decade, and pushed the problem of Waldensian anticlericalism to the
forefront of the ecclesiastical agenda in Mainz. Second, the inquisitions
in Mainz appear to have been initiated and orchestrated by archiepiscopal authorities, and thus problematize the standard interpretation
that late fourteenth-century German bishops were unconcerned with
the heresy.4 The additional involvement in the Mainz prosecutions of a
papal inquisitor, bishop, dean, altar chaplain, and faculty from the
University of Heidelberg depicts a far more complex and diverse affiliation of inquisitorial authorities and motivations than occurred elsewhere in Germany at this time. And third, the long-standing presence
of an urban community of Waldensians in the middle-Rhineland, one
with links to others throughout western Germany, challenges conceptions of the heresy as a phenomenon limited to scattered and primarily rural populations in the northeast and south.
While scholars since the late nineteenth century have made occasional mention of the inquisitions, there has been no sustained analysis of the events or their significance.The story of the Waldensians in
Mainz has long been obfuscated by a perceived lack of relevant
sources, but a diverse array of materials does exist which, when pieced
together, serve to clarify the course of the persecutions and their historical context. In sum, nine individual sources, ranging from inquisitorial and archiepiscopal documents to anti-heretical tracts and urban
chronicles, bear witness to the presence and prosecution of middleRhineland Waldensians in the late fourteenth century.5
4
See, for example, Lambert, Medieval Heresy, p. 177. In 1979, however, Richard
Kieckhefer, Repression, pp. 55-57, noted that episcopal inquisitors proceeded against
Waldensians not only in Mainz, but also Regensburg, Eichstätt, Bern and Freiburg. On the
heresy and its persecution in Freiburg, see Kathrin Utz Tremp, “Der Freiburger
Waldenserprozess von 1399 und seine Bernische Vorgeschichte,” Freiburger
Geschichtstblätter, 68 (1991), 57-85; and Quellen zur Geschichte der Waldenser von
Freiburg im Üchtland (1399-1439), Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Quellen zur
Geitesgeschichte des Mittelalters, Band 18 (Hannover, 2000).
5
For a more sustained analysis of the authorship, transmission, and contents of the
dossier of source evidence, see Jennifer Kolpacoff,“Papal Schism,Archiepiscopal Politics
and Waldensian Persecution (1378-1396): The Ecclesio-political Landscape of Late
Fourteenth-Century Mainz,” Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University (2000), pp. 155-210
(henceforth cited as Kolpacoff,“Waldensian Persecution”). An abbreviated version is in
Jennifer Kolpacoff, “Die Verfolgung von waldensischen Häretikern in Mainz (13901393),” Mainzer Zeitschrift, 98 (2003), 11-19.

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ARCHIEPISCOPAL INQUISITIONS IN THE MIDDLE RHINE

The modern evidence trail began with Herman Haupt’s discovery of
a crucial manuscript in Mainz in 1885, although an error in the citation
long obscured its actual location.6 Haupt’s manuscript, now identifiable
as MS Stadtbibliothek Mainz I 151, contains two lists describing the
errors of different groups of Waldensians, copied contemporaneously
but in different hands. Among the most illuminating sources for the
inquisitions between 1390 and 1393, the first error list begins with the
heading “Articles of the Waldensian heretics in Mainz” and states that “in
the year of Our Lord 1390 around the festival of St. Michael, these articles of heretics, namely Waldensians, were discovered.” No names or
details about the accused are provided, but seventeen standard heretical tenets are enumerated.7 Although the date of the composition of the
Mainz error list is uncertain, it seems to have been copied soon after the
events described, which occurred on September 29, 1390.8
The second source from the Mainz manuscript (fol. 205r) describes
“the articles of the heretics Falken and his companions, burned in
Bingen in the year 1393.”9 Listing ten standard Waldensian tenets
(including the denial of transubstantiation, Purgatory, prayers for the
dead, and indulgences), the document states that the condemned were
two laymen, Conrad Falken and Peter of Kirn, and a priest named
Nicholas. It concludes with a brief account of the three unfortunate
men’s condemnation and execution on March 10th of that year.10 The
6
Haupt,“Beiträge,” p. 509.The original manuscript number was 247, but it is incorrectly
cited by Haupt as 24. The manuscript was later renumbered 151, and is catalogued in
Gerhard List (ed.), Die Handschriften der Stadtbibliothek Mainz, vol. 2 (Wiesbaden,
1998). Robert E. Lerner provides a thoughtful analysis of the manuscript in “New Evidence
for the Condemnation of Meister Eckhart,” Speculum, vol. 72, no. 2 (1997), 347-66.
7
Transcriptions of the sources are in Kolpacoff,“Waldensian Persecution,” pp. 283-302.
8
Another copy of the list can be found in Vienna CVP 4217 (fol. 288v), which is differentiated only by minor spelling variations and the absence of a few scribal errors
found in the Mainz document. Catalogued in Tabulae codicum manu scriptorum
praeter graecos et orientales in Bibliotheca Palatina Vindobonensi asservatorum, IIIIV (Graz,1965), pp. 204-206. An earlier description, which also provides the incipit and
explicit, is in Michael Denis (ed.), Codices manuscripti theologici bibliothecae palatinae Vindobonensis Latini aliarumque Occidentis linguarum, vol. 1 (Vienna, 17931802), pp.1286-1287.
9
Haupt edited this document in Der waldensische Ursprung des Codex Teplensis
und der Vorlutherischen deutschen Bibeldrucke gegen die Angriffe von Franz
Jostes (Würzburg, 1886), pp.36-37.
10
While Giovanni Gonnet and Amadeo Molnár mistakenly report that Nicholas’ last
name was Falken, this text clearly identifies him as Peter of Kirn’s brother.Their source
was Haupt’s edited version of the document in Ursprung, p. 36. See Gonnet and Molnár,
Les Vaudois au Moyen Age (Turin, 1974), pp. 167, 171 n. 207.

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201

fate of Falken and his companions is also the subject of a third source,
a copy of a trial record in MS Fritzlar Dombibliothek 4 (fol. 182v).11
This short text reads “These are the articles of heretics who were
burned in Bingen, namely Falken and his companions,” and lists nine of
the ten tenets reported in the Mainz error list. One is not a copy of the
other, however, since the order and content of the tenets diverge considerably: for example, the Bingen trial record refers to the Waldensian
belief that the pope is not able to canonize saints, a tenet that does not
appear in the Mainz list.Yet both texts agree upon the outcome, since
the trial record closes with the statement that the three men were
condemned to the flames after refusing to abjure their heresy.
A protocol in the MS Landesbibliothek Darmstadt 430 (fols. 297v298v) is our fourth source, one that contains valuable and overlooked
documentation of inquisitorial activity in the late fourteenth-century
middle Rhineland.12 Reporting the examination of a layman called
Henne Russeneyden from Ludersdorff (Leutesdorf bei Neuwied) in the
archdiocese of Trier, the protocol not only describes inquisitorial proceedings which took place at the University of Heidelberg in
1392/1392, but also indicates that Henne was acquainted with Conrad
Falken and Peter of Kirn who were being examined in Heidelberg
simultaneously. According to the document, the panel of inquisitors
included Nicholas Böckeler, the Dominican papal inquisitor for the
ecclesiastical province of Mainz, and the University of Heidelberg theologian Conrad of Soltau and canon lawyer John de Noet.13 As discussed in more detail below, the protocol tells of Henne
Russeneyden’s daring (yet unsuccessful) attempt to defend the three
Waldensian brethren, and of his own eventual recantation, sentencing
and lifelong incarceration.
The source material for Waldensian persecution in late fourteenthcentury Mainz, however, is not limited to inquisitorial documentation.
Indeed, the best-known source for the subject at hand is a local chron11
Catalogued in Gerhard List (ed.), Die Handschriften der Dombibliothek Fritzlar
(Wiesbaden, 1984), pp. 6-10.
12
The manuscript is not yet included in the Darmstadt Landesbibliothek catalogue,
but a typewritten description by H. Knaus (1958) is available from the library. On the
manuscript, see Michael Tönsing, Johannes Malkaw aus Preussen (ca. 1360-1416): Ein
Kleriker im Spannungsfeld von Kanzel, Ketzerprozess und Kirchenspaltung
(Warendorf, 2004).
13
Manuscript analysis suggests that the documents were copied roughly contemporaneously with the events described. Regarding the probability that John de Noet was
its compiler and owner, see Kolpacoff,“Waldensian Persecution,” pp. 178-184.

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ARCHIEPISCOPAL INQUISITIONS IN THE MIDDLE RHINE

icle of Mainz, the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Latin Chronicon
Moguntinum, most likely penned by a vicar of the Mainz cathedral
chapter named Johannes Kungstein (d. 1404/5).14 In a single paragraph, the chronicle (fifth in our list of relevant sources) recounts the
discovery, examination, and punishment of an unidentified number of
people adhering to eighteen heretical tenets.15 Accused of denying
sacerdotal powers, the value of prayers to the Virgin, and a list of other
tenets which the chronicler wearily describes as “too long to tell,” this
group is clearly that whose beliefs are described in the Mainz error list
of 1390.16 Yet the chronicle offers some intriguing details not provided
elsewhere, such as the Waldensian house Spiegelberg where they held
their meetings, and the statement that “many were infected with the
heresy in the city of Mainz and in surrounding areas.” According to
Kungstein, this group was examined by a panel of inquisitors, and
while some of the accused fled, eighteen remained and had blue penitential crosses sewn to their clothing.17
This same community of Waldensians is referred to in another contemporary chronicle, the vernacular Limburger Chronik.18 First compiled by the cleric and notary Tilemann Elhen von Wolfhagen (c. 13471420), the chronicle’s contents span the decades between roughly
1336 and 1398. In a short account misdated to 1388/1389, the chronicler reports “[a]t this time a heresy was discovered in Mainz which had
secretly been there for a hundred years or longer”and lists several standard Waldensian tenets.19 Although the statement that the heresy had
existed in Mainz for over a century is unique, the chronicle text other14
On the chronicle’s authorship, see Winfried Dotzauer,“Das Sogenannte Chronicon
Moguntinum, eine Quelle zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit,” Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 25 (1973), 9-31. See also Paul Scheffer-Boichorst, “Der Vicar
Johann Kungstein, ein Geschichtsschreiber des 14. Jahrhunderts,” Mitteilungen des
Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 13 (1892), 152-155.
15
Karl Hegel, Chronicon Moguntinum (Hannover, 1885), p. 63.
16
The Mainz chronicler mistakenly includes the account of Waldensian inquisitions
with material dated to 1389 (rather than 1390).
17
“In crastino Clementis iudicati sunt per inquisitorem heretice pravitatis et multos
alios magistros et multos peritos Sacre Scripture, et imposite sunt eis cruces glauci coloris et assute in humeris, quas per multos dies portare iussi sunt; tumulati vero et
defuncti exhumati sunt. Fuit numerus illorum in Maguncia qui remanserunt et penitenciam assumpserunt 18, exceptis aliis qui fugam dederunt, quorum multi adhuc latent.”
Hegel, Chronicon Moguntinum, p. 63.
18
Arthur Wyß (ed.), Die Limburger Chronik des Tilemann Elhen von Wolfhagen,
Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Deutsche Chroniken und andere Geschichtsbücher
des Mittelalters (Munich,1980), p. 81.
19
Ibid.

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203

wise reiterates the information contained in the manuscript materials
discussed above.20 In his capacity as local Stadtschreiber, Tilemann
was interested in regional ecclesio-political developments, but his primary geographical focus was Limburg and the cities of lower Hesse;
his relative distance from Mainz helps to account for the brief and summary tone of the entry regarding the persecutions.
In contrast, our seventh piece of evidence comes from the pen of a
cleric who was not only interested, but actively involved, in the Mainz
persecutions.A canon of St. Peter and altar chaplain of the Mainz cathedral, John Wasmod von Homburg was one of three men commissioned
in 1392 by Archbishop Conrad to pursue local heretics. In 1398, he
wrote the polemical Tractatus contra hereticos Beckhardos,
Lolhardos et Swesteriones, in which he describes indisputably
Waldensian tenets and asserts that similar errors were held by “heretics
in Bingen condemned in the year of our lord 1392 and handed over to
secular jurisdiction.”21 This portion of the text precedes a long tirade
against beguines and beghards, however, and seems an almost casual
aside drawn from his own experience, intended to underscore the
long-standing threat of heresy in the region.Wasmod seems to be referring to past history: while the Waldensians represented a threat earlier
in the decade, by the mid-1390s beguines and beghards had become
the heresy en vogue in the middle-Rhineland.22
Early-modern histories of Mainz provide the final two pieces of evidence regarding the local prosecution of Waldensians. In 1604, the
Jesuit scholar Nicholas Serarius (1558-1609) published the Rerum
Moguntiacarum libri quinque which contains a one-page summary
of the events of the reign of Conrad II von Weinsberg. In it, Serarius
notes that Waldensianism had crept into Mainz and upon an unspecified date, thirty-six “disgraced citizens” were taken to Bingen and
20
The contents and structure of the Limburg text do not indicate a directly derivative relationship between the chronicle entry and any of the other known sources.
Analysis of the materials suggests that Tilemann saw an inquisitorial document which
included a list of heretical tenets (such as the Mainz error list), and added to it his own
observation about the community’s existence for over a hundred years. See Kolpacoff,
“Waldensian Persecution,” pp. 193-99.
21
A. Schmidt (ed.),“Tractatus contra hereticos beckhardos, Lulhardos et swestriones
des Wasmud von Homburg,” Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 14 (1962),
336-86, at 338.
22
On beguines and beghards in Mainz, see Eva Gertrud Neumann, Rheinisches
Beginen- und Begardenwesen; ein Mainzer Beitrag zur religiösen Bewegung am
Rhein (Meisenheim am Glan, 1960).

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ARCHIEPISCOPAL INQUISITIONS IN THE MIDDLE RHINE

burned.23 The text is brief, unembellished by editorial comments or
identification of sources, and inaccurate in its reporting of Conrad von
Weinsberg’s reign (given here as 1388-1395). Serarius’ text alone states
that the number of men and women executed in Bingen was thirty-six,
and that they were citizens or “cives” or Mainz; it is unclear in the latter
whether he meant that they lived in Mainz or that they were citizens
in the technical sense. However, the adjectives “infames” suggests that
they were people of some standing whose lapse into heretodoxy
indeed constituted a local and personal disgrace.
A century after Serarius, another local scholar named Valentin
Ferdinand Gudenus (1679-1758) provided our ninth and final piece of
evidence: a copy of an inquisitorial commission issued by Archbishop
Conrad in 1392. Gudenus published the commission in his Codex
Diplomaticus, a collection of regional ecclesiastical and political documents.24 Revealing Conrad’s stern commitment to the extirpation of
heresy in his lands, it commissions three men to cooperate with the
papal inquisitor in prosecuting a group of heretics in the city and diocese of Mainz: Bishop Frederick of Toul (in the archdiocese of Trier),25
the dean of the collegiate church of St. Stephan in Mainz Nicholas of
Sauwelnheim, and, of course, John Wasmod.26 Although the commission does not name the papal inquisitor, he must have been Nicholas
Böckeler, who was appointed papal inquisitor for the ecclesiastical
province of Mainz by the Dominican general on April 10, 1390.27
Moreover, the document provides three particularly intriguing details,
which will be addressed further below: first, that both clergy and laity
23
“Irrepsit Moguntiam hisce temporibus Waldensium haeresis, adeo ut ea infames 36.
cives Bingam abducti, & ibidem igne plexi sint,” in: Nicolaus Serarius, Moguntiacarum
rerum ab initio usque ad Reverendissimum et Illustrissimum hodiernum
Archiepiscopum ac Electorem D. Joannem Schwichardum, vol. 1 (Mainz: Apud
Bathasarum Lippium, 1604), p. 867.
24
Valentin Ferdinand von Gudenus, Codex diplomaticus anecdotorum res
Moguntinas illustrantium, 5 vols. (Göttingen, Frankfurt, and Leipzig, 1743-1768), vol. 3,
pp. 598-600.
25
The Augustinian Hermit and apostolic penitentiary Frederick von Mühlhausen was
appointed bishop of Toul in January of 1391 by the Roman pope Boniface IX. Frederick
was intended to replace the previous bishop, one Johann who supported the Avignonese
pope Clement VII and had held the see since March of 1385. In March of 1399, however,
Frederick was transferred to the titular see of Acre in Syria. Konrad Eubel, Hierarchia
Catholica Medii Aevi , 2nd ed. (Münster, 1913), I, pp. 68, 503 n.9, and 554.
26
Gudenus, Codex diplomaticus, pp. 598-599; see below n. 62.
27
On Böckeler’s appointment, see Benedict Maria Reichert, “Zur Geschichte der
deutschen Dominikaner am Ausgange des 14. Jahrhunderts,” Römische Quartalschrift
für christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte, 14 (1900), 79-101, at 83.

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205

were active in the heresy; second, that by 1392 it was spread throughout and beyond the city; and third, that some of the men and women
were already imprisoned when Conrad wrote the commission.28
With Gudenus’ eighteenth-century edition of the archbishop’s
inquisitorial commission there came an end to the publication or discovery of source materials pertaining to the Waldensian proceedings,
until Herman Haupt’s study in the late nineteenth century. Viewed in
sum, these nine, largely overlooked pieces of evidence lock into place
a foundation of information about a substantial urban Waldensian community in Mainz which came under sudden attack in 1390. However,
even the best studies of late-medieval heresy and inquisitions in
Germany have provided at most a cursory reference either to the existence of urban Rhineland Waldensians or their persecution in Mainz. In
particular, scholarly emphasis upon rural Waldensians has tended to
obscure the significance, size, and longevity of urban heretical communities in Germany, particularly in the Rhineland. The omission is striking, considering that Germany in the late fourteenth century has long
been noted for a final wave of anti-Waldensian inquisitorial activity. As
Richard Kieckhefer has put it, this was “one of the most important
repressive endeavors of fourteenth-century Europe, and surely one of
the most vigorous antiheretical campaigns of all medieval Germany.”29
Yet scholars have categorized this eruption of anti-heretical activity
as the near-exclusive work of three itinerant inquisitors, and concentrated on their persecutions in the rural regions of Pomerania and
Brandenburg to the north, and Upper Austria to the south.30 Although
28
Gudenus, Codex Diplomaticus, vol. 3, pp. 598-600. The sources are unfortunately
silent about the ratio of men and women among the community, and provide no names
or further details about female Waldensians.
29
Kieckhefer, Repression, p. 55.
30
On the fourteenth-century inquisitorial campaigns in the German-speaking northeast and south, see Cameron, Waldenses; Kieckhefer, Repression; Dietrich Kurze, Quellen
zur Ketzergeschichte Brandenburg und Pommerns, Veröffentlichungen der
Historischen Kommission zu Berlin 45, Quellenwerke 6 (Berlin and New York, 1975);
Kurze,“Zur Ketzergeschichte der Mark Brandenburg und Pommerns vornehmlich im 14
Jahrhundert,” Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands, XVI-XVII
(1968), 50-94; Herman Haupt, “Waldenserthum und Inquisition im südöstlichen
Deutschland bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für
Geschichtswissenschaft, 3 (1890), 337-411. On a treatise by inquisitor Peter Zwicker, see
Peter Biller,“Les Vaudois dans les territoires de langue allemande vers la fin du xiv siècle:
le regard d’un inquisiteur,” Heresis, 13/14 (1998), 199-234. On the extensive fourteenthcentury campaigns in Bohemia, see Alexander Patschovsky (ed.), Quellen zur böhmischen Inquisition im 14. Jahrhundert, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Quellen zur

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ARCHIEPISCOPAL INQUISITIONS IN THE MIDDLE RHINE

the two most zealous inquisitors, Peter Zwicker and Martin of Amberg,
began their famous series of campaigns in 1391 in Erfurt, no one has
yet explored the relationship between the first sudden persecution in
the urban middle-Rhineland in 1390 and the immediately ensuing
chain of German campaigns through the end of the century.Thus the
community in Mainz is referred to in even the finest recent study of
the medieval Waldensians, along with other urban heretical groups, as
“short-lived and somewhat isolated,” and the general quality of the
inquisitions in late fourteenth-century Germany as relatively “merciful
and sympathetic.”31 While Euan Cameron is certainly correct to draw
attention to the comparatively mild and conversion-centered approach
of the itinerant inquisitors, the campaigns in Mainz were orchestrated
by a different set of authorities and thus evade simple categorization
as part of the wave of itinerant late fourteenth-century persecutions.
Distinct in leadership, purpose, and consequence from the later and
primarily rural campaigns, the Mainz campaigns took place at the
hands of a variety of inquisitors operating in the urban realm and primarily under archiepiscopal jurisdiction. Most important, they concluded not with conversion but execution.
Interestingly, Cameron’s chapter on Waldensianism in Germany
before 1390 relates dramatic and relevant events in the region a century
and a half earlier. During the early 1230’s, the preacher Conrad of
Marburg (c.1180-1233) became the first papal inquisitor appointed to
Germany and conducted ferocious and undisciplined campaigns against
accused heretics in the Rhineland.Archbishop of Mainz Sigfried III von
Eppenstein tried unsuccessfully to rein him in, and, after Conrad’s grisly
murder shortly thereafter, pardoned many of those falsely accused of
heresy.The new evidence from Mainz thus brings the subject neatly fullcircle, in that by 1390 the situation had reversed itself, because truly
heretical communities were by this time deeply rooted in the Rhineland,
and the Archbishop of Mainz himself was spearheading the campaign.
Now that the relevant sources have been collected and examined, the
story that emerges proves a valuable contribution to our understanding
of both late-medieval Waldensianism and persecution in Germany.
Waldensianism is a difficult heresy to categorize effectively, in large
part due to its extensive geographical spread and chronological dura-

Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 11 (Weimar, 1979). For a more general overview, see
the classic G. Gonnet and A. Molnár, Les Vaudois au Moyen Age (Turin, 1974).
31
Cameron, Waldenses, pp. 124-125.

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207

tion. One of the best efforts to construct a framework is Lutz Kaelber’s
sociological study of the ideological underpinnings of medieval religion,
in which he identifies three distinct stages in the history of the heresy’s
development between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries.32 Basing his
analysis upon both spiritual and social conditions, Kaelber distinguishes
between the following: early Waldensianism, a charismatic urban and
Gospel-based movement which allowed the participation of female
preachers;second,Waldensianism in Italy,France and the eastern parts of
the German Empire after the 1240’s and 1250’s; and third, Austrian
Waldensianism, which experienced less effective persecution than the
others (despite its comparable rejection of orthodoxy), and was organized into egalitarian schools or “textual communities”through which the
group’s evangelical message radiated to members and supporters.33
Kaelber’s analysis of the faith of thirteenth and fourteenth-century
German Waldensians, however, focuses specifically upon material from
the primarily rural eastern regions and does not consider evidence from
the large and dynamic urban Waldensian communities in the Rhineland.
Although his findings are accurate and important for the other regions,
the study provides no hint that the heresy existed, much less prospered,
in thickly-populated urban areas. The stringently prosecuted urban
Mainz community with its domus Spiegelberg does not fall neatly into
any of the three categories, and thus suggests the need for a more inclusive, nuanced, and representative model of medieval Waldensianism.
The historiographical novelty of the Mainz Waldensians brings us
back to the question of the context and course of their persecution.
Why did such fierce inquisitions suddenly occur during the first few
years of the 1390’s, and what happened? The late fourteenth century
was a troubled time in Germany, and for the middle Rhineland in particular. By the beginning of 1390, the devastation of urban warfare,
internecine feuds, anticlerical uprisings, and interdict had taken a profound toll on Mainz and the neighboring cities in the ecclesiastical
province such as Worms and Speyer. Anticlerical tension had long
been an element of the urban atmosphere, due largely to lay resentment of ecclesiastical privileges and exemptions.34 This was particu32
Lutz Kaelber, Schools of Asceticism: Ideology and Organization in Medieval
Religious Communities (University Park, PA, 1998).
33
Ibid, pp. 133ff.
34
On clerical privileges and exemptions in Mainz, see Karl Hegel,
“Verfassungsgeschichte der Stadt Mainz,” in Chroniken der mittelrheinischen Städte,
vol. 18 (Leipzig, 1882), pp. 124-134. See also Demandt, Stadtherrschaft.

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ARCHIEPISCOPAL INQUISITIONS IN THE MIDDLE RHINE

larly the case in the Rhineland cities whose struggle for independence
from ecclesiastical control during the thirteenth century had created
lingering antagonism between the secular and ecclesiastical spheres.35
In 1382, hostilities escalated when the cities of Worms and Mainz
demanded that the clergy relinquish its advantageous privilege in the
lucrative wine trade; in response, the clergy formed defensive ecclesiastical unions and immediately placed the cities under interdict.36 Violence
soon erupted: during the summer of 1384, clerics in Worms were so
abused that they abandoned the city and their possessions.37 In Mainz,
moreover, members of the now-organized urban leagues began to intimidate the clergy to the extent that none dared to perform divine services;
and over the following year,a majority of the canons of Mainz abandoned
the city.38 The subsequent five years witnessed a complex tangling of
urban anticlericalism, city leagues, and territorial politics, as local lords
and bishops, the German emperor, and even the pope himself joined the
fray.39 Despite a fragile peace among lords, clergy, and city leagues in
1389, prospects were bleak: the papal schism continued unresolved, the
weak king had failed to bolster his waning authority in Germany, and
plague, famine, and storms struck the beleaguered Rhineland at the end
of the year, hitting Mainz and Bingen with particular force.40
The election of Archbishop Conrad occurred in the midst of all
these troubles. Yet how did a canon of the local cathedral chapter
35
An anticlerical uprising in Mainz in the late 1320’s, for example, had resulted in the
near destruction of several cloisters. Friedrich Merzbacher, “Bischof und Stadt in der
Mainzer Geschichte,” Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 14 (1962), 31-43,
at 38. See also Hegel, “Verfassungsgeschichte,” p. 125; and Hegel, Chronicon Moguntinum, p. 2.
36
It is unclear exactly when the interdict was imposed. Hegel, “Verfassungsgeschichte,” p. 127.
37
“Cives Wormatienses maximam violenciam intulerunt clero et inter cetera mala
absecarunt eis in curiis et dominibus eorum omnen structuram preeminentem super
plateas et angulos platearum.Tunc clerus recessit a civitate, relinquens vanas omnes suas
possessiones.” Hegel, Chronicon Moguntinum, p. 64.
38
Ibid., pp. 53-54.
39
In early 1386, for example, a royal representative ordered the citizens of Worms to
pay the exorbitant sum of 100,000 gold marks to the clergy. Heinrich Boos,
Urkundenbuch der Stadt Worms: Quellen zur Geschichte der Stadt Worms, vol. 2
(Berlin, 1886-1893), pp. 568-570. A few months later, Pope Urban VI ordered the archbishops of Trier and Cologne to impose an interdict on the city of Worms to protect the
clergy there. Johann Schannat, Historia Episcopatus Wormatiensis, vol. 1 (Frankfurt am
Main, 1734), p. 197.
40
Hegel, Chronicon Moguntinum, p. 63.

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209

without money or family connections manage to win election at this
difficult time as the Archbishop of Mainz—to become one of the seven
imperial electors and most powerful men in the empire? The answer
lies in an alliance with another elector, the count Palatine of the Rhine,
and in an ecclesio-political relationship that bore implications for the
history both of Mainz and of the Waldensians and their persecution.
Although Archbishop Conrad’s reign has been consistently neglected
in the scholarship, his years in office provide an intriguing glimpse
into the spectrum of ecclesio-political rule and anti-heretical activity in
late-medieval Germany.41
An unusual candidate for the lofty see, Conrad von Weinsberg’s origins and ambitions stood in stark contrast to those of his predecessor,
Adolf von Nassau. An aggressive prince, former bishop of Speyer, and
member of the wealthy Nassau dynasty, Adolf had since 1373 singlemindedly used the see for dynastic territorial aggrandizement and
family interests.Adept at strategy and political manipulation, for example, Adolf had shrewdly leveraged the Great Schism to his advantage
by temporarily aligning himself with the French papacy.42 It helped
him win the see of Mainz, but also earned him the enduring hostility
of Roman supporters throughout the empire. A hallmark of his reign
had been tension with the count Palatine of the Rhine, Rupert I (1356–
1390), a member of the rival Wittelsbach dynasty and staunch supporter of the Roman obedience.As a result, feverish activity occurred
at the Palatinate court in Heidelberg immediately upon Adolf’s death
on February 6, 1390. Even the death of Rupert I and the succession of
his nephew, Rupert II (1390–1398), effected no change or delay in the
archiepiscopal election. Before the archbishop was even in his grave,
the Wittelsbachs were in contact with the Mainz cathedral chapter,
trying to influence the outcome of the election.

41
On Conrad’s career, see Alois Gerlich,“Konrad von Weinsberg: Kurfürst des Reiches
und Erzbischof von Mainz (1390-1396),” Jahrbuch für das Bistum Mainz, 8 (1958-60),
179-204. On the town of and region surrounding Weinsberg, see the brief but useful
overview in Hermann Heimpel, Drei Inquisitions-Verfahren aus dem Jahr 1425
(Göttingen, 1969), pp. 133-138.
42
Fritz Vigener, “Kaiser Karl IV und der Mainzer Bistumsstreit (1373-1378),”
Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst, Ergänzungsheft [Trier], 14 (1908),
18 ff. On Adolf’s career, George Wilhelm Sante,“Gerlach Graf von Nassau, Erzbischof von
Mainz 1346 bis 1371,” Nassauische Lebensbilder, I (1940), 33-49. On the effect of the
Great Schism in Mainz, see F. Bliemetzrieder,“Das abendländische Schisma in der Mainzer
Erzdiözese,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 30
(1909), 502-510.

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ARCHIEPISCOPAL INQUISITIONS IN THE MIDDLE RHINE

Two opposing parties faced off within the chapter. A pro-Nassau faction strove to maintain the dynastic tradition that had largely defined
Mainz ecclesio-politics for nearly a half century, and thus supported
Adolf’s brother, the canon John von Nassau.43 But the Wittelsbachs
proved victorious, for only five days after Adolf’s burial, Conrad von
Weinsberg received a contractual promise from the new count Palatine
Rupert II that he would secure the scholastic’s election as archbishop.44
And indeed, on February 27, the twenty-eight canons of the cathedral
chapter unanimously elected Conrad to the see of Mainz.45
The count Palatine’s reasons for securing Conrad’s election
undoubtedly stemmed in part from the unresolved hostility between
the Wittelsbach and Nassau families, but also from Rupert’s need for a
loyal supporter of the Roman obedience as head of the Mainz see.An
aggressive rival to Rupert I among the circle of Rhineland electors,
Adolf had for years been an unpredictable and unmanageable force for
the Palatinate court in Heidelberg.46 Conrad, on the other hand, must
have appeared to Rupert II as the ideal Mainz elector. Of ministerial
rather than princely origins, Conrad had been a canon in the cathedral
since 1364, and its scholastic (a relatively minor office) since 1381.The
Heidelberg court was correct in its estimation of Conrad, for the new
archbishop was to remain a loyal ally of both Rupert II and the Roman
obedience throughout the six years of his reign.Yet the interest of the
Wittelsbach counts Palatine in Conrad von Weinsberg was not limited
to papal and archiepiscopal politics. Most important is that the
Wittelsbachs of the Palatine also held a deep commitment to lay orthodoxy, and therein lay one of the primary reasons that the family estab43
The first Nassau archbishop, Gerlach von Nassau, was elected in 1346. John had
been provost in Fritzlar and canon in Würzburg, and then received a benefice to the
Mainz chapter in 1385. Michael Hollmann, Das Mainzer Domkapitel im späten
Mittelalter (1307-1476) (Mainz, 1990), p. 418. On the split in the chapter, see also the
brief chronicle reference in Hegel, Chronicon Moguntinum, p. 64. John would be
elected to the see after Conrad’s death in 1396, as in Anton Brück,“Vorgeschichte und
Erhebung des Mainzer Erzbischofs Johann II. von Nassau,” Archiv für mittelrheinische
Kirchengeschichte, 1 (1949), 65-88.
44
A. Koch and J.Wille, Regesten der Pfalzgrafen am Rhein, vol. 1 (Innsbruck, 1894),
p. 310, #5181.
45
The readiness of the court in Heidelberg to guarantee the total costs of the diplomatic delegation to the Roman curia for Conrad’s confirmation probably also influenced
their sudden unanimity. The leader of the Mainz legation was the canon Dietmar of
Walen, who later reported that he received 1,000 Gulden from Rupert II for the journey.
Gerlich,“Konrad,” p. 183.
46
On Adolf’s reign, see Friedrich Grünewald, Die Reichspolitik Erzbischof Adolfs I.
von Mainz unter König Wenzel (1379-1390), (Darmstadt, 1924).

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211

lished the University of Heidelberg—to erect a tribunal for antiheretical activity in order to “strengthen the holy Christian faith.”47 Thus both
Conrad and the count Palatine shared an agenda of pro-Roman papal
obedience, support for local orthodoxy, and the monitoring and
repression of heresy in the region.
Archbishop Conrad’s specifically orthodox ecclesiastical focus may
well have been precipitated by the violent anticlericalism that ravaged
Mainz and other middle-Rhineland cities during the 1380’s, all of
which he would have witnessed and endured while in the cathedral
chapter. As above, the urban climate was so hostile to privileged clerics that many were forced to flee in order to protect themselves and
their possessions. In 1384, moreover, the clerical author of the
Chronicon Moguntinum not only tells us that the divine services
ceased in Mainz for many years, but concludes with the damning
observation that the citizens cared little—and even mocked the situation—because they were “swarming in heresy.”48
While the sources provide little insight into the subject of the cessation of services and its implication for local spirituality, it is provocative that the hitherto ignored or only tacitly acknowledged Waldensian
tenets regarding clerical corruption and the validity of lay ministry
found their way into public discourse during these troubled years.The
Waldensians in Mainz could have asked for no riper opportunity to
gain sympathetic ears among their orthodox neighbors than during
the anticlerical 1380’s. Indeed, a contemporary source discussing the
Austrian Waldensians noted their tendency to exploit local anticlericalism in order to attract people to the faith.49 Once Waldensians had
disclosed their beliefs to possible converts within the community, the
secret of their identities and ideas would have been easily disseminated to other, perhaps less sympathetic, individuals.A watchful cleric
such as Conrad von Weinsberg would have been able to learn much
about local heterodoxy during these years.
Thus in February of 1390, Conrad was elected to the see of Mainz—
and the inquisitions began within a matter of months. By late
47
Rupert III would later claim that indeed the primary purpose of the university was
to root out heresy. Gerhard Ritter, Die Heidelberger Universität, ein Stück deutscher
Geschichte (Heidelberg, 1936), pp. 291 and 347-61. See also Kurt-Viktor Selge,
“Heidelberger Ketzerprozesse in der Frühzeit der hussitischen Revolution,” Zeitschrift
für Kirchengeschichte, 82 (1971), 167-202.
48
Hegel, Chronicon Moguntinum, pp. 54-56.
49
Cameron, Waldenses, p. 109.

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ARCHIEPISCOPAL INQUISITIONS IN THE MIDDLE RHINE

September, ecclesiastical authorities rounded up and interrogated a
group of citizens suspected of the Waldensian heresy. Said to have held
beliefs that “ranted entirely against the Catholic faith,”the community of
men and women is also described in a chronicle source as possessing a
house called Spiegelberg in which members met to read and discuss
Scripture and other Christian texts.50 According to the sources, the
authorities involved in this first round of persecutions included the
Dominican papal inquisitor Nicholas Böckeler, and a panel of unidentified “masters and many experts in sacred Scripture.”While the institutional affiliation of the theologians is not indicated, they may have come
from one of the recently founded universities in Heidelberg (1385) or
Cologne (1389). Given Böckeler’s own mendicant status, he may also
have turned for assistance either to the large Dominican studium generale in Cologne or to a member of the Dominican house in Mainz.51
On November 24, after approximately a month of examination, the
inquisitors imposed blue penitential crosses upon the eighteen defendants who recanted. Authorities also exhumed and probably burned
the bodies of dead citizens identified as Waldensians. Others among
the accused either refused to recant or took flight.52 Although the itineraries and destinations of those who fled cannot be determined
exactly, the inquisition probably served to spread Waldensianism further throughout or beyond the region. Some certainly fled to
Straßburg, where, although the papal inquisitor John Arnold had initiated halfhearted proceedings against Waldensians only a short time
prior, another campaign in 1400 would uncover a robust heretical
community.53 Many of those examined during that campaign revealed
that they came from neighboring towns and regions, including the city
50
Hegel, Chronicon Moguntinum, p. 63.“Habuerunt in Maguncia propriam domum
dictam Spiegelberg, in qua habebant conventicula sua.” For an argument that the house
may have been associated with the patrician Spiegel family, see Hamman,
“Mittelalterliche Waldenser,” p. 101. On similar houses possessed by Waldensians in
Straßburg, see Timotheus Wilhelm Röhrich, “Die Winkeler in Strassburg, sammt deren
Verhöracten, um 1400,”Mittheilungen aus der Geschichte der evangelischen Kirche des
Elsasse, I-II (1855), 3-77, at 25.
51
On Dominicans in Mainz, see Thomas Berger, Die Bettelorden in der Erzdiözese
Mainz und in den Diözesen Speyer und Worms im 13. Jahrhundert: Ausbreitung,
Forderung, Funktion (Mainz: Gesellschaft für Mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 1994).
52
Hegel, Chronicon Moguntinum, p. 63.The fact that the sources do not provide the
names or number of those initially examined may suggest that there were too many
people to be easily listed.Waldensians were often arrested and brought to trial in groups
of thirty or more, and sometimes in hundreds at a time. Kieckhefer, Repression, p.57.
53
Röhrich,“Winkeler in Strassburg,” p. 66.

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213

of Mainz, which suggests the operation of a vital heretical network
which offered safe haven to persecuted sisters and brethren in and
beyond the middle Rhineland.54
As many scholars have already cogently suggested, such regional
links between both rural and urban Waldensian communities were
likely maintained through the visits of itinerant “masters,” as their
preachers in Germany were called, who traveled extensively to minister to their hidden flock. Not only did Waldensian masters know where
heretical communities were located and which individuals belonged to
them, but they served as messengers between communities, bringing
news and gossip as well as spiritual ministration from one region to
another.Thus, even those Waldensians who never set foot beyond their
town or village were likely to know where and how to find distant spiritual brethren. Because the heresy lent itself to this interweaving of otherwise hidden and independent communities, the conversion of even
one member to Catholicism could prove damning to many.55
By the late fourteenth century, several Waldensian masters had converted to Catholicism, and some of the secrecy of the communities in
Germany had begun to unravel.56 Waldensians in the Thuringian city
of Erfurt, for example, received an unpleasant surprise when their
community suddenly attracted inquisitorial attention in 1391.57 A
master named Conrad had recently converted, and his subsequent
attempts to win back his former Waldensian flock in Erfurt from their
heresy were not well-received.58 Converted masters were of course
frequently targets of hostility from Waldensians who resented the
danger in which the masters’ “treachery” placed their own lives.59
54

Ibid., 25.
Many cases from the 1390’s illustrate a fraying solidarity among German Waldensian
communities, particularly in the northeast and south. See Kieckhefer, Repression, pp. 5561 and Cameron, Waldenses, pp. 140-141.
56
One of the most important sources for this subject is a list of twenty Waldensian
masters, of which all but one had converted to Catholicism by the end of the century.
Haupt, Ursprung, pp. 35f. See also Döllinger, Beiträge, II, p. 330.As noted by Kieckhefer
(Repression, p. 59), another list of twelve masters also exists, although it is not clear
whether these individuals were converts. See Döllinger, Beiträge, II, p.367; Godfried
Edmund Friess, “Patarener, Begharden und Waldenser in Österreich während des
Mittelalters,” Österreichische Vierteljahresschrift für katholische Theologie, 11 (1872),
209-72. See also Haupt,“Waldenserthum,” pp. 346f.
57
The town of Erfurt belonged to the prince-archbishopric of Mainz.
58
Döllinger, Beiträge, II, p. 330.
59
Several converted Waldensian masters were threatened and at least four among the
twelve cited above were reputedly murdered. Haupt, Ursprung, p. 35.
55

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ARCHIEPISCOPAL INQUISITIONS IN THE MIDDLE RHINE

Conrad, whose years as a Waldensian had doubtless been spent in
nearly constant travel and spiritual ministration, must have divulged
the names and locations of other Waldensian communities as part of
his confession and rehabilitation.
Following this trail of newly-obtained information, the itinerant
inquisitors Peter Zwicker and Martin of Amberg arrived in Erfurt in
1391 and, after interrogating local Waldensians, elicited the necessary
revocations and imposed penitential crosses upon each member of the
community.60 The fact that Waldensians were discovered in Erfurt
again in 1400, however, as in Straßburg, demonstrates the extent to
which inquisitorial measures such as pressured recantations and
penance were ineffective against the profound and lingering spiritual
appeal of the heresy.61
Meanwhile, antiheretical efforts in Mainz continued. In 1392,
Archbishop Conrad took the initiative by issuing a commission calling
for another campaign and designating three men as inquisitors: Bishop
Frederick of Toul, the dean of the collegiate church of St. Stephan
Nicholas of Sauwelnheim, and John Wasmod, an altar chaplain of the
Mainz cathedral.62 The Paris-educated Wasmod would play a particularly active role in local antiheretical measures during the 1390’s, as
discussed further below. In the text of his commission, the archbishop
describes the heretical group as comprising both men and women,
clergy and laity, and settled not only in the city of Mainz but throughout the diocese as well.63 Especially intriguing is the archbishop’s reference to some members of this group as being “held in chains,” which
suggests that the defendants had already been found recalcitrant, and
60
Döllinger, Beiträge, II, p. 330.“[P]ostea tamen A.D. 1391 per D. Martinum de Amberg
et fratrem Petrum Celestinum omnes in Erfordia sunt convicti et conversi, abjurati et
cruce signati.”
61
Kieckhefer, Repression, p. 60.
62
Wasmod is described in the archiepiscopal commission as the “plebano altaris
sancte Crucis,” Gudenus, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 3, p. 599.The office of dompfarrer, or
cathedral pastor/minister, was connected to the Heilig-Kreuz side chapel in the eastern
choir of the Mainz cathedral (Eisenchor). From the end of the fifteenth century, the
benefice was assigned by the archbishop. See Anton Philipp Brück, “Die Mainzer
Dompfarrer des 16. Jahrhunderts,” Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 12
(1960), 148-174. I would like to thank Dr.Wolfgang Dobras of the Stadtarchiv Mainz for
his assistance on the subject.
63
Gudenus, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 3, p. 599:“Ad nostrum quod dolenter referimus,
pervenit auditum quod nonnulli utriusque sexus homines tam clerici quam laici per nostras civitatem et diocesem constituti.”

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215

were detained for further judicial inquiry or sentencing.64 Some were
likely among those arrested in 1390 who refused to abjure their
heresy, or were penitent Waldensians who had relapsed during the
intervening years.
The language of the commission indicates that these Waldensians
were not likely to be released with penitential crosses as had occurred
in 1390. In this document, the deputized inquisitors are authorized to
arrest, incarcerate, interrogate, torture and punish suspects, and to hand
them over to the secular arm for execution. The document concludes
with a specific reference to heretical clergy, evidence that the archbishop was particularly concerned about the apparent lapse (or relapse)
of local clerics into error.65 And indeed, the escalating anti-heretical prosecutions conveyed in the commission came quickly to a head later in the
same year (1392), when thirty-six unnamed Waldensian citizens who
were either relapsed heretics or firm in their refusal to abjure were
taken to the town of Bingen and burned at the stake.66
Yet the authorities in Mainz had not yet finished prosecuting
local Waldensianism. At some point in late 1392 or early 1393, two
laymen from Bingen named Peter of Kirn and Conrad Falken67 were
taken to Heidelberg where they were examined by Nicholas
64

Ibid., p. 599:“detinentur in vinculis.”
Ibid., p. 599, “In super vobis Dno Episcopo predicto potestatem degradandi
Clericos in heresi perdurantes, ac a quibuscunque ordinibus suis, iuris sollemnitatibus
observatis, similiter committimus in his scriptis.”The sources do not indicate how many
of the accused were clergy.
66
Since the middle of the fourteenth century, the archbishop of Mainz had a local residence at Schloss Ehrenfels, which after 1379 belonged to the Mainz cathedral chapter.
Archbishop Conrad made documented visits to Bingen at least five times during the six
years of his reign: July 7, 1390; November 30, 1391; February 14, 1392;April 30, 1393; and
October 17, 1395. Walter Martini, Der Lehnshof der Mainzer Erzbischöfe im späten
Mittelalter, (Ph.D. diss., Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, 1971),Appendix, xiii-xiv.
On the Schloss, see Rudolf Engelhardt, Burg Ehrenfels: Geschichte u. Chronik;Ausschnitt
aus 6 Jahrhunderten d. Geschichte Bingens u. d. Rheingaues aus d. Sicht d. bedeutendsten Zollburg d. Mittelrheins (Bingen am Rhein, 1971).
67
MS Darmstadt Landesbibliothek, 430, fol. 297v.“Conradis Falken et Petri laicorum. . .”
Although laicus was a Waldensian synonym for dominus or master, their names do not
appear in any lists of known masters and it is highly unlikely that inquisitorial notaries
would have adopted the terminology of the accused. Kirn is a small town located on the
Nahe River, approximately 65 kilometers southwest of Mainz. A Peter of Kirn is named
in a document listing men who had sworn to uphold the Public Peace imposed by the
Emperor Wenceslaus in September of 1389. Julius Weizsäcker (ed.), Deutsche
Reichstagsakten unter König Wenzel, vol. 2 (Göttingen, 1867), pp. 185 and 194.
65

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ARCHIEPISCOPAL INQUISITIONS IN THE MIDDLE RHINE

Böckeler and members of the university faculty.68 A statement from
the Bingen trial record informs us that Peter of Kirn had been
brought to the heresy by his brother Nicholas, a priest and schoolteacher in Bingen, who was also arrested and interrogated at this
time.69 The faculty of the university had long welcomed the opportunity to aid regional antiheretical campaigns, and the inquisitor,
canon lawyer, and theologian were in this case joined by two other
masters in questioning the two Waldensians.70 Böckeler’s presence
in Heidelberg may have been coincidental, since he was also
involved in an inquisitorial tribunal against the Rhineland preacher
and agitator, John Malkaw, that was simultaneously taking place at
the university.71
Intriguingly, a fourth Waldensian then voluntarily walked into the
hands of the inquisitors shortly after the arrest of the men from
Bingen. A layman named Henne Russeneyden from the town of
Ludersdorff (in the province of Trier) somehow heard of Conrad’s and
Peter’s detention and went to Heidelberg to secure “their defense and
liberation.”72 Like other Waldensians in late medieval Germany, Henne
was certainly aware of, and in at least indirect contact with, heretical
communities beyond his own. Promptly arrested and examined by the
authorities, however, Henne eventually recanted his heresy. Although
he avoided the death penalty in doing so, he nevertheless paid a severe
price for both his heresy and bravado in coming to Heidelberg to assist
his comrades: his possessions were confiscated and his offspring held
unfit for ecclesiastical or public office for two generations; he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison, fed only on bread and
water; and affixed to the front and back of his clothing were a set of
pale blue crosses.73 In public atonement for his sins, he was also to be
hauled out of prison on Sundays and feast days, forced to stand before
the church, and thus to display his shameful crosses to all as a living
68
The terminus ad quem is March of 1393, when they were burned in Bingen; the
terminus post quem derives from the fact that the protocol of their comrade Henne’s
examination follows that for the trial of John Malkaw in 1392.
69
MS Mainz Stadtbibliothek, I, 151, fol. 205r,“predictos articulos dixit se predictus de
Kirn habere a fratre suo nomine Nycolau sacerdote docenti in Pingwia.”
70
MS Darmstadt Landesbibliothek, 430, fol. 297v.
71
On Böckeler’s role in the trial of John Malkaw, see Tönsing, Johannes Malkaw aus
Preussen.
72
MS Darmstadt Landesbibliothek, 430, fol. 297v. “Pro e(or)undem liberacione ac
defensione cum effectu se interposuit et illius occasione detentus fuit.”
73
MS Darmstadt Landesbibliothek, 430, fol. 298v.

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217

example of the consequences of heresy.74 His comrades were less fortunate. On March 10 of the following year (1393), Conrad Falken and
Nicholas and Peter of Kirn refused to abjure their heresy and were
burned in Bingen.75 With their deaths came a grim end to the persecution of Waldensians in Mainz.
Thus, in the years between 1390 and 1393, tribunals of archiepiscopal, papal, university, and local inquisitors handed over at least thirtynine middle-Rhineland Waldensians to be executed for heresy. Many
others accused had assumed penance after abjuring and an unknowable number either fled the persecution or successfully hid their
beliefs from the authorities. Unfortunately for historians, the unembellished and cursory nature of the sources obscures the impact of the
campaigns upon its witnesses and victims. Whether or not the existence of a local Waldensian community came as a surprise to other citizens, the public prosecution of so many certainly occupied local
thoughts and concerns for weeks at a time. That the contemporary
chronicle from Limburg (in the archdiocese of Trier) also describes the
initial inquisition suggests that the events were newsworthy both in
and beyond the archdiocese.76
Since the evidence at hand offers rich information about inquisitorial practice and procedure in Mainz, it is appropriate now to set forth
some observations and conclusions about the leadership, organization, and motivation of the persecutions. As mentioned above, the
vast majority of inquisitions during the infamous wave of late fourteenth-century anti-Waldensian campaigns occurred under the leadership of itinerant inquisitors—“traveling investigative judges, who
usually took care to obtain episcopal sanction for their actions but
were not specifically invited to carry out their work by local bishops.”77 In Mainz, however, the inquisitorial tribunals involved a diverse
array of papal, archiepiscopal, local, and university authorities, and
thus represent an intriguing variation from the typical itinerant campaigns of the period.

74
Ibid. On the imposition of crosses and other forms of public penance as a vehicle
for social control, see James Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society: Power, Discipline
and Resistance in Languedoc (Ithaca, 1997), pp. 84-86.
75
MS Fritzlar 4, fol. 182v.
76
“Item in diser zit da wart zu Menze eyn ungelaube uffinbaret, der hatte
heymelichen gewertet me dan hondert jar oder lenger.”Wyß, Limburger Chronik, p. 81.
77
Cameron, Waldenses, p. 139.

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ARCHIEPISCOPAL INQUISITIONS IN THE MIDDLE RHINE

Who exactly was responsible for the sudden outburst of antiheretical activity in the fall of 1390? While the involvement of the Dominican
papal inquisitor Nicholas Böckeler might suggest papal leadership, the
evidence points elsewhere. For as Kieckhefer argues,“neither pope nor
emperor seems to have shown any interest at all in the campaign
against Waldensians.”78 In fact, no letters or documents exist to suggest
that the papacy even aware of the Waldensian heresy in Germany. Papal
attention was instead trained on the issue of “heretical” beguines and
beghards for most of the century between the Councils of Vienne
(1311–1312) and Constance (1414–1418).79 The ongoing and often
ambivalent campaign against beguines was revitalized in its last phase
by Pope Boniface IX (1389-1404), particularly in the Rhineland. Thus
while the papal inquisitor appointed for the province of Mainz participated in the prosecution of Waldensians, the campaigns were not
directed by him nor was he operating on specific papal orders.As noted
by Kieckhefer, Böckeler’s primary interest during these years lay not
with the extirpation of Waldensians, but in the trial of John Malkaw, a
popular pro-Roman preacher and Rhineland agitator.80 Given the fact
that the archiepiscopal commission of 1392 reminds local inquisitors to
cooperate with Böckeler (in keeping with the canons of the Council of
Vienne), it is likely that the Dominican was summoned to Mainz in his
official capacity rather than out of his own anti-Waldensian zeal.81
A closer look at the sources clearly indicates that the Mainz inquisitions of 1390-1393 were rooted in the agenda and initiative of
Archbishop Conrad, whose election preceded the first inquisition by a
matter of months. Not only does his commission of 1392 call for
renewed persecution after the first round in 1390, thereby launching
a campaign which identified relapsed heretics and thus led dozens of
citizens to the stake, but his reign was also defined by a consistent
cooperation with the antiheretical count Palatine and University of
Heidelberg faculty. Scholastic in the Mainz cathedral chapter for
decades before his election, he was certainly witness to the anticleri78

Kieckhefer, Repression, p. 56.
On the persecution of beguines in Germany during the fourteenth century, see
Kieckhefer, Repression, pp. 19-51.The latest analysis of beguine status and prosecution
is Elizabeth Makowski’s illuminating study, A Pernicious Sort of Woman: Quasi-Religious
Women and Canon Lawyers in the Later Middle Ages (Washington D.C., 2005).
80
Kieckhefer, Repression, p. 60.
81
Papal inquisitors had been required to work collaboratively with bishops since the
Council of Vienne (1311-1312). See Norman P.Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical
Councils, 2 vols. (Washington, DC , 1990), vol. 1, pp. 380-382.
79

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219

cal uprisings of the 1380s. Moreover, his actions during the first few
years of his archiepiscopate indicate an abiding interest in local ecclesiastical matters which surpassed that of either his predecessor or his
German archiepiscopal peers.
While his predecessor Adolf von Nassau had concerned himself
little with such matters, Conrad became archbishop with the city’s
anticlerical tendencies fresh in his memory. Of the five known dates on
which he was in the city during his first several years in office, three
coincide with the first inquisitorial proceedings in the fall of 1390.82
His fourth visit did not take place until June 16, 1392. In that year, he
not only wrote an inquisitorial commission and held Waldensians captive in prison, as discussed below, but also provided an indulgence for
participation in the city’s first Corpus Christi procession.83 While the
celebration of Corpus Christi functioned on one level as an instructive
performance of social hierarchy and spiritual order, such processional
rituals also bore explosive potential for expressing urban conflict and
tension.84 The timing is compelling, that Conrad initiated such a
potently symbolic and visible display of urban orthodoxy in the same
year that thirty-six citizens were burned for heresy.
To reassert such order and hierarchy further, the new archbishop
also made several specific attempts to safeguard his clergy’s interests in
the city and province. In November of 1393, he issued a letter that criticized nobles and other laypeople who seized the possessions of
deceased clerics.85 Endeavoring in the same year to preserve his diocesan clergy’s spiritual ministries,he sternly warned the mendicant orders
against hearing confessions and providing burial services.86 After 1393,
82
September 8, October 27 and November 15. Martini, Lehnshof, Appendix xiii.The
first date given for a stop in Mainz is March 8, 1390.
83
Bayerisches Staatsarchiv Würzburg, Mainzer Bücher verschiedenen Inhalts, vol. 19,
fol. 78r.
84
Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge,
1991), pp. 260-265.
85
Gudenus, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 3, pp. 600-601. “Adversus Nobiles, Laicosque
alios, frustranea reddere conantes Testamenta Clericorum, dum ex morbo decumbentibus bona ipsorum mobilia palam auferunt.” Urban VI had promulgated an edit in 1383
requiring that such goods be handed over to the Church.
86
Gudenus, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 3, pp. 603-605.“Edictum Archipraesulis Conradi
gravissimum, de arcendo FF. Praedicatores, Minores, Augustinianos & Carmelitas, ab
excipiendis Christi fidelium confessionibus.” Conrad herein refers to Boniface VIII’s bull
Super cathedram (1300), which was intended to determine the pastoral role of the mendicants within the Church, and upon which Conrad draws to criticize the friars in Mainz.

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ARCHIEPISCOPAL INQUISITIONS IN THE MIDDLE RHINE

Conrad finally turned his attention primarily to territorial peacemaking,
apparently satisfied that local religious problems had been adequately
suppressed.Despite his efforts,however,the archbishop was apparently
not perceived as a strong defender of the Church.At Conrad’s death in
1396, the clerical Mainz chronicler described him as a “useless man”
who failed to protect his own, a cutting observation for which the
sources unfortunately provide little explanation.87
Yet Archbishop Conrad did not singlehandedly launch and direct
the Waldensian inquisitions in Mainz, for, as mentioned above, a significant role in the inquisitions was also played by the canon and altar
chaplain John Wasmod. Wasmod first appears on the antiheretical
scene in the archbishop’s commission of 1392, and may have participated in another inquisition in 1395.88 In 1398, he published the
polemical Tractatus contra hereticos Beckhardos, Lolhardos et
Swestriones, in which he describes indisputably Waldensian tenets and
asserts that similar errors were maintained by heretics handed over to
secular jurisdiction in 1392.89 In early 1399 Wasmod was matriculated
as a master at the University of Heidelberg, and by the end of the year
was rector of the prestigious institution.90
While we do not possess direct evidence demonstrating that Wasmod
had taken the leading role in the examination and condemnation of the
Waldensians burned in 1392 and 1393, as suggested by Herman Haupt,91
the indirect evidence points strongly to Wasmod as a key participant in
the events. In contrast to the two other men named in the archiepiscopal commission of 1392, he played a consistently active role in local anti87
Hegel, Chronicon Moguntinum, p. 70. “Anno prenotato, videlicet 96, ipso die 11
Milium Virginum Conradus de Winßberg archiepiscopus Maguntinus in sua ecclesia est
sepultus. Qui potuit comparari Saturno planete—nam illo regnante mundus vix est
cupiens—: nempe ipso vivente semper totus clerus suus cum laicis multipliciter fuit
excoriatus et ab armigeris continue oppressus, nec aliquam fecit ipsis resistenciam, id
est, vilem seu debilem, homo inutilis!”
88
Haupt, “Beiträge,” 547, although he does not identify the “hitherto unpublished
materials.” They may have been related to a trial record from the examination of a
Waldensian named Herman in Straßburg in 1400, which states that Herman had received
penitential punishment from Nicholas Böckeler “five or six years” prior. See Röhrich,
“Winkeler in Strassburg,” p. 66.
89
Schmidt, “Tractatus,” p. 346. For an argument that Wasmod owned MS, I, 151, see
Lerner,“New Evidence,” pp. 354-355.
90
Ritter, Heidelberger Universität, p. 305. Schwab, Quatuor seculorum syllabus rectorum, qui in academia Heidelbergensi magistratum academicum gesserunt (Heidelberg,, 1786), pp. 26 and 29.
91
Haupt,“Beiträge,” p. 547.

BY JENNIFER KOLPACOFF DEANE

221

heretical activity during these years.Moreover,Wasmod’s inclusion in the
commission with the other vicarii is striking, since he held a significantly less prestigious office than his newly-appointed inquisitorial colleagues, the dean of St. Stephan in Mainz (the archbishop’s vicarius in
spiritualibus) and the bishop of Toul (Conrad’s vicarius in pontificialibus). Furthermore,Wasmod’s antiheretical polemic from 1398 demonstrates not only his familiarity with the proceedings but also a continued
interest in heresy which suggests that he actively participated in the
Waldensians’ trial earlier in the decade.
The archbishop, who had spent so many years at the Mainz cathedral, must have known Wasmod before drafting the commission and
had reason to think that he would prove useful. Indeed, the canon may
have actively sought the role from Conrad. Without zealous itinerant
inquisitors armed with information about heretics, the archbishop
needed to have a “man on the ground” with access to the local religious grapevine; it is quite plausible that Wasmod served particularly in
that capacity, perhaps even during the first sudden and swift campaign
of 1390. His promotion to the rectorship of the University of
Heidelberg in 1399 indicates that he had made a distinctly favorable
impression upon the school’s rigorously orthodox faculty. No known
sources refer to other activities or scholarship through which Wasmod
could have effected such an elevation of his status. In sum, although
Böckeler, the Heidelberg faculty, the bishop of Toul, and the dean of St.
Stephan were involved in the Mainz inquisitions, it was Archbishop
Conrad and John Wasmod who displayed the most interest in, and who
ultimately most benefited from, the campaigns.
But what exactly was the heresy of the Mainz Waldensians, and
what do their tenets reveal about the context and catalyst of persecution? Malcolm Lambert has summed up the heart of Waldensianism
as “a cutting away of what were seen to be the excrescences of orthodox belief in purgatory, in images, in pilgrimages, in an insistence on
a moral life; and in the literal observance of the texts of Scripture.”92
92

Lambert, Medieval Heresy, p. 168. For further analysis of the beliefs of the Mainz
Waldensians, see Kolpacoff, “Waldensian Persecutions,” pp. 232-237. Lambert provides
several useful discussions of the origins and development of Waldensianism throughout
his chapters in Medieval Heresy; however, the most sustained consideration of the
beliefs and practices of medieval Waldensians in Germany is Cameron, Waldenses, pp.
96-150. On tenets in northeastern and southeastern Germany in particular, see Kurze,
Quellen, and Martin Schneider, Europäisches Waldensertum im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1981), pp. 95-125.

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ARCHIEPISCOPAL INQUISITIONS IN THE MIDDLE RHINE

The faith of those prosecuted in Mainz was typical of late-medieval
Waldensianism except in one regard: the manuscript sources reveal
an intriguing, specifically anti-papal elaboration on standard
Waldensian tenets. In contrast to the usual Waldensian assertion that
priests do not have the power to bind and loose souls, the three from
Bingen claimed that it is the pope who lacks the power.93 A reference
in this tenet to Pope Sylvester evokes the traditional and revisionist
legend—not unique to the Waldensians—that the pontiff’s acceptance of Constantine’s donation had poisoned the Church, and that an
associate’s rejection of the gift and subsequent persecution marked
the birth of the true Church.94 Another inquisitorial source from
Bingen refers to the further inability of both popes and priests to provide indulgences and canonize saints.95 The latter element may well
have been a response to contemporary ecclesiastical events, referring
to the canonization process for the fiercely pro-Roman St. Bridget of
Sweden (d. 1373) which was first completed by Boniface IX in 1391.96
Canonizations were no exception to the spiritual partisanship of the
Great Schism, as indicated by the fact that the French pope Clement
VII was simultaneously attempting to turn the spiritual fame of the
cardinal Peter von Luxemburg (d. 1387) to advantage. As André
Vauchez writes,“each obedience put most of its efforts into securing
the political support of temporal lords, but it is significant that both
Rome and Avignon were aware of the assistance that could be offered
by mystics or prophets who rallied to their cause or who could raise
their prestige.”97 Thus the current event of canonization seems to
have become not only a topic of discussion, but of disdain, among
Rhineland Waldensians during the 1380’s.
Particularly intriguing is that the sizable Waldensian community and
its school Spiegelberg apparently existed in Mainz for years, virtually
unremarked and without provoking controversy—that is, until it suddenly found itself in 1390 at the crux of an ecclesio-political crisis.
93

MS Mainz Stadtbibliothek, I, 151, fol. 205r.
MS Mainz Stadtbibliothek, I, 151, fol. 205r; MS Fritzlar Dombibliothek, 4, fol. 182v.
The legend was originally associated with the poverty movement of northern Italy and
its claim to representing a purer Church than that which had accepted the Donation of
Constantine. See Lambert, Medieval Heresy, pp. 156-157.
95
MS Fritzlar Dombibliothek, 4, fol. 182v.
96
Her canonization was subsequently completed twice more for good measure, once
by John XXIII in 1415 and again by Martin V in 1419.
97
André Vauchez, The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional
Practices (Notre Dame, 1993), p. 221.
94

BY JENNIFER KOLPACOFF DEANE

223

Whereas before 1390 its members had been routinely overlooked,
ignored, or perhaps regarded as merely symptomatic of a broader
ecclesiastical problem, after that year they became perceived by
authorities as the problem itself.We may recall that Nicholas Böckeler’s
predecessor, the papal inquisitor John Arnold, had initiated halfhearted
measures against Waldensians in Straßburg shortly before 1390. Upon
meeting strong resistance from the accused, however,Arnold resigned
and the community was left alone for nearly a decade.The fact that it
was the Waldensians of Mainz, not Straßburg, who ultimately became
the victims of sudden and sustained persecution in the 1390’s drives
home the conclusion that this was a primarily local response to a
broad set of local, regional, and western European ecclesio-political
pressures. The relative severity and stringency of the executions in
1393 may be explained in part by the fact that the Mainz prosecutions
occurred in two locally-directed stages: a first round of interrogations
in 1390 which ‘discovered’ a community of heretics, followed by a
second round in 1392, which produced relapsed heretics necessarily
subject to harsher penalties.
Why did the Waldensians in Mainz attract inquisitorial attention in
the first place? Although the evidence does not allow for a decisive
explanation for the first sudden persecution in 1390, contemporary
developments in three areas helped to set the stage for prosecution:
first, religious pressures ranging from the mounting spiritual anxiety
over the Great Schism after 1378 to the local implications of observance, obedience, and escalating anticlericalism; second, the internal
degradation of Waldensian communities, of which the telling sign was
the conversion of masters in the final decades of the century who
divulged crucial information to inquisitors such as Peter Zwicker and
Martin of Amberg; and third, as discussed above, the individual decisions and concerns of people such as Archbishop Conrad, Nicholas
Böckeler, and John Wasmod, key figures who acted both within and in
response to the centrifugal social, political, and religious environment
of late fourteenth-century Mainz. Combined pressure from these factors shaped an environment in which the persecution of unorthodoxy
came to be perceived as a necessary, effective answer to a local problem. The utter lack of papal interest in the anti-Waldensian measures
underscores the extent to which the campaigns were a locally conceived and directed program.
The discovery of new material from Mainz, with its evidence of
both urban and school-based Waldensian communities in the middle-

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ARCHIEPISCOPAL INQUISITIONS IN THE MIDDLE RHINE

Rhine region of western Germany suggests the need for a more diverse
categorization of the heresy in its late fourteenth century.The inquisitions in Mainz between 1390 and 1393 not only demonstrate how
local ecclesio-political issues, anxieties, and crises are rewarding paths
into the vexed history of late-medieval Germany, but also shed important new light on the history of fourteenth-century religiosity, heresy,
and persecution. If the German Waldensians are the “Middle Ages’ forgotten heretics,”98 those of the urban middle-Rhineland have waited
longest to be remembered.

98

Robert E. Lerner,“A Case of Religious Counter-Culture: The German Waldensians,”
American Scholar, (Spring, 1986), 234-247, at 234.

THE CHURCH AT NANRANTSOUAK:
SÉBASTIEN RÂLE, S.J.,AND THE WABANAKI OF
MAINE’S KENNEBEC RIVER
BY

WILLIAM A. CLARK, SJ*

French Jesuit Sébastien Râle arrived in Canada in 1689 and was
missioned to the Wabanaki natives of the Kennebec River in what is
now Maine. Râle accompanied the Wabanaki for thirty years, eventually dying with many of them during an English raid on their
principal village, Nanrantsouak (“Norridgewock”). For three centuries, Râle’s reputation, for good and ill, has depended primarily on
perceptions of his role in the geopolitical and religious rivalries of
the Europeans. The initiative of the Wabanaki themselves has usually been ignored.The author references recent scholarship from the
native viewpoint, and original documentary sources, in an attempt
to take the Wabanaki seriously as a local church—a community of
Christians who, through the particular emphases of Râle’s missionary method, came both to embrace Christianity and to make it their
own in significant ways.
By the middle of the seventeenth century the Wabanaki1—the
“People of the Dawn,” occupying the territory from Lake Champlain
eastward into what are now the Maritime Provinces of Canada—were
a nation besieged.The devastation of six bloody wars with the English
settlers along the Maine coast was still a quarter-century into the
future, but a hundred years of increasing European economic pressure
and fifty of direct European settlement on or near Wabanaki lands had
taken their toll. Competing strategies for dealing with the Europeans,
increasing dependence on their trade goods, the resulting rivalries and
social dislocations, the ravages of previously unknown diseases, and
the declining prestige of shamans apparently powerless in the face of
*
Father Clark is an assistant professor of Religious Studies in the College of the Holy
Cross,Worcester, Massachusetts.
1
This is the now-preferred spelling of the native name once commonly rendered, and
still frequently seen, as “Abenaki.”

225

226

THE CHURCH AT NANRANTSOUAK

all this had all contributed to a deep spiritual crisis among the
Wabanaki.2 Since 1611, the Kennebec band, living along the banks of
the river that rises at Moosehead Lake in what is now northern Maine
and empties into the Atlantic near the present town of Bath, had had
at least passing contact with members of the Society of Jesus. The
acquaintance grew into a serious religious encounter after the
Kennebec Wabanaki allied themselves with Algonkian natives of the St.
Lawrence valley in the 1640’s, many of whom had already been
Christianized by Jesuit missionary activity.3 In 1646, the Wabanaki
requested and were visited by their first “permanent” Jesuit missionary,
Gabriel Druillettes, who instructed them through the winter and
returned for nearly a year in 1650.
For the ensuing forty years, there was no resident missionary in the
Kennebec valley.The Wabanaki seem to have nurtured their new-found
faith, to the extent that they retained it, in their ongoing commercial
contact with the French and St. Lawrence natives. During and after the
first English war in 1675 (“King Philip’s War”) many of the Kennebecs
migrated to mission villages built by the Jesuits near Quebec, while
those who remained in Maine were visited by Jesuit travelers such as
the brothers Jacques and Vincent Bigot.4 But in the fall of 1693 or
1694, in the midst of the second English war (“King William’s War”), a
large group of Kennebecs was gathered into a Christian community at
the village of Nanrantsouak in the middle of the Kennebec Valley by a
Jesuit whose name is now permanently associated with the place and
its people, Father Sébastien Râle.5
Râle would spend the next thirty years with these Wabanaki people,
mostly in and around Nanrantsouak. In the course of his mission, he
2
Kenneth M. Morrison, “The Mythological Sources of Abenaki Catholicism: A Case
Study of the Social History of Power,” Religion, 11 (1981), 235-263, and a later version of
similar material in idem, The Solidarity of Kin: Ethnohistory, Religious Studies, and the
Algonkian-French Religious Encounter (Albany, 2002) pp. 79-101, carefully consider
the Wabanaki loss of confidence in their own traditional spiritual leaders.
3
Charles E. Nash, The Indians of the Kennebec ([1892]; reprinted, Hallowell, Maine,
1994), p. 16.
4
Ibid., p. 33. On early missionary activity in the Kennebec Valley, see Antonio Dragon,
S.J., Le Vrai Visage de Sébastien Rale (Montreal, 1975), pp. 29-38.
5
Even Râle himself used several alternate spellings of his name: Rasle, Rasles, Rale,
Rallé, Ralé, and Racle are all found. Except in references to other sources, I retain the
common French variant “Râle” as representing the likely pronunciation. Nanrantsouak
is Râle’s own transcription of a Wabanaki name, rendered by Englishmen as
Norridgewock (or Narridgeway), now used by the town across the river from the site
of the village.

BY WILLIAM A. CLARK, S.J.

227

was to become, in his own mind and those of many Europeans and
Wabanaki, practically identified with his “sauvages.” He would live
with and as one of them, speak their language continually, teach and
counsel them, pray with them, share their hopes, fears, exiles, and dangers, and eventually die with them. Yet, to French governors and
English settlers alike, he would always be a European agent, keeping
the Wabanaki aligned with French interests. His death came in August,
1724, in a raid on the village by an English squadron sent to rid the
Kennebec River valley of the Wabanaki threat to their settlements, and
what they considered its papist fountainhead. By fellow French Jesuits,
he was immediately extolled as a martyr for the faith.6
The story of this remarkable Jesuit and the Wabanaki Christian
community for which he was spiritual leader has been told and retold
over the past three hundred years from a variety of viewpoints and
interests. In its original form, it may still be gleaned from contemporary letters and manuscripts, virtually all of which have been published in some form over the last three centuries.7 From the very
beginning, it has attracted Jesuit and other Catholic writers as illustrative of Catholic missionary holiness and zeal, and of Yankee
Protestant perfidy and cruelty.8 Similarly, the story of Father Râle and
6
The prototype of Râle “hagiography” is the “Letter from Father de la Chasse,
Superior-General of the Missions in New France, to Father ***, of the Same Society,”
October 29, 1724, in Reuben Gold Thwaites (ed.), The Jesuit Relations and Allied
Documents, vol. 67 (Cleveland, 1900), pp. 230-247.
7
Primary sources referred to here include letters by, to, and about Sébastien Râle,
printed in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67 (French and English). Much of this material
is reproduced in Antonio Dragon, Vrai Visage. A set of manuscript copies of letters by
Râle, MS Fr 13.1, Houghton Library, Harvard University, is published in translation in Mary
R. Calvert, “Appendix: The Unpublished Letters of Father Rale,” in Blackrobe on the
Kennebec (Monmouth, Maine, 1991), pp. 229-276.Also of great importance is Sébastien
Rasles, Dictionary of the Abenaki language [1691-1722], MS Fr 13, Houghton Library,
Harvard University, Cambridge, and its published form, John Pickering (ed.), A
Dictionary of the Abnaki Language in North America, Memoirs of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, New Series, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1833). A
contemporary English point of view is found in Elias Nason (ed.), Journal of Several
Visits to the Indians on the Kennebec River by the Rev. Joseph Baxter of Medfield,
Mass., 1717 (Boston, 1867). Substantial translated excerpts of original French, English,
and Wabanaki sources are provided by Colin G. Calloway, ed., Dawnland Encounter:
Indians and Europeans in Northern New England (Hanover, New Hampshire, and
London, 1991).
8
Catholic sources consulted for this paper include Arthur T. Connolly,“Fr. Sébastien
Rasle: The Martyr Missionary of the Abenaquis Indians,” New England Catholic
Historical Society Publications, no. 5 (1906); N.-E. Dionne, “La Mémoire du P. Rasle
Vengée,” in Gabriel Richard: Sulpicien, Curé et Second Fondateur de la Ville de Détroit,

228

THE CHURCH AT NANRANTSOUAK

the Wabanaki has been of great interest to New England historians
seeking to honor their Puritan forebears’ triumph over popery and
savage brutality.9 (Occasionally, the pattern is broken by an English
voice raised in half-hearted protest against over-zealous defenses of
colonial policy toward the “eastern Indians” and in defense of Father
Râle.10) In more recent years, this stale “foi, langue, et patrie” sniping
between French and English writers has given way to an historical
revision that seeks to examine the largely ignored Wabanaki perspective on the events which led to the near-total eradication of that
people from the Kennebec valley. Though original sources from this
point of view are few, and most often read through a three-centuriesthick haze of foreign interpretation, much has been accomplished by
the combination of anthropological insights and the simple device of
approaching old sources with new questions.11
What follows here may seem at first to replicate the Eurocentrism
of earlier studies, since it is fundamentally motivated by Christian
ecclesiological concerns: the meaning of “church”at its most local level
and in its socio-cultural context.Yet, I will remain focused on the actual
functioning of the Wabanaki community rather than on any European
doctrinal basis for it. To this end, I will try to extrapolate the vital
Wabanaki viewpoint from the existing sources and commentaries as
far as possible. The imported word “church” may not seem the best
description of a native community wedged between two warring colo-

(“Galerie Historique,” vol. 6 [Québec, 1911]);“Father Sébastien Rale, S.J.,” Catholic World,
January, 1874, pp. 541-556; and John Gilmary Shea, History of the Catholic Missions
Among the Indian Tribes of the United States, 1529-1854 (New York, 1854).
9
The Yankee perspective is best represented by James Phinney Baxter, The Pioneers
of New France in New England (Albany, New York, 1894; reprint Bowie, Maryland, 1980),
and J.W. Hanson, History of the Old Towns Norridgewock and Canaan (Boston, 1849).
10
John Francis Sprague, Sébastien Ralé: A Maine Tragedy of the Eighteenth Century
(Boston, 1906), defends Râle personally while pointedly distancing himself from
Catholicism. Nash, Indians of Kennebec, seems unable to decide between palliative
compliments and sharp denunciations. Convers Francis, Life of Sébastien Rale:
Missionary to the Indians (Boston, 1845), is the most balanced of the nineteenth-century appraisals of Râle’s life and work.
11
Outstanding examples of this newer work are Morrison, Solidarity of Kin; idem,
“Mythological Sources”; and idem, The Embattled Northeast: The Elusive Ideal of
Alliance in Abenaki-Euramerican Relations (Berkeley, California, 1984); Andrea Bear
Nicholas, “Wabanaki and French Relations: Myth and Reality,” Interculture (Institut
Interculturel de Montreal), 24, no. 1 (Winter, 1991), 12-34; and Françoise Weil, “La
Christianisation des Indiens de la Nouvelle France, XVII-XVIII Siècles,” Hispana Sacra,
40, no. 82 (1988), 747-761.

BY WILLIAM A. CLARK, S.J.

229

nial powers. Yet, the Wabanaki themselves sought out, adopted, and
clung to Christian religious expression (albeit under the duress of
severe cultural crisis).This fact emboldens me first to describe them as
a “church”—a Christian worshiping community—and then afterwards
to question the nature of this particular church and whether I have
called it so legitimately.
I: The Jesuit Mission to the Wabanaki
Newly ordained and a product of a remarkable era of political turmoil and dynamic growth for the Society of Jesus in France, Sébastien
Râle arrived in Canada in 1689, steeped equally in French nationalism,
personal piety, and deep interest in the spiritual foundations of apostolic work.12 The Jesuit mission itself had existed since 1632, when
France had regained Quebec after its temporary occupation by the
English.Very quickly after their arrival, the Jesuits had learned enough
about “les sauvages” (a term with more potential for neutral, or even
positive, connotations in French than in English) to have set their
sights on the conversion of the Montagnais people in the St. Lawrence
Valley, and the Huron of the upper Great Lakes region. Inspired by the
success of the missions in Paraguay and in the East Indies, they at first
hoped to employ a strategy of settled,“civilizing” villages into which to
gather their converts. It was soon realized, however, to the chagrin of
some, that the traditional mobility of these tribes could not be easily
replaced with a more sedentary lifestyle.13 Thereafter, the transformative and Europeanizing model of the villages, and what today might be
called an “inculturation” model of inserting individual Jesuits into the
lives of particular native bands, seemed to struggle with each other for
predominance even within a single mission location. At Râle’s arrival,
there were already two settled villages in the vicinity of Quebec, at
Sillery and at St. Francis on the Chaudière, but Jesuits were also making
long treks into the woods along the rivers of Maine. After a four-year
apprenticeship, at St. Francis and also among the Illinois on the Great
Lakes, Râle himself would become one of the great exemplars of the
insertion approach.

12
See William V. Bangert, S.J., A History of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis, 1986), pp.
199-217, for a discussion of this period in Jesuit history.“Rale’s Life in France, 1652-1689,”
in Calvert,“Appendix,”pp. 1-10, gives a brief chronological account of Râle’s early life and
Jesuit formation up to his departure for Canada.
13
Weil, “Wabanaki and French Relations,” pp. 749-750, quotes Paul LeJeune in the
Relation of 1634 on these strategic calculations.

230

THE CHURCH AT NANRANTSOUAK

Jesuit strategy was, of course, only one factor in determining the
course to be followed in the Christianization of the native peoples.
Economic and political considerations were also key. After 1650, disease, disunity, and ongoing attacks by the Iroquois led to the virtual
destruction of the Hurons and the disruption of other patterns upon
which the French had relied in the essential fur trade.Thereafter, the
Europeans themselves began to take on the trapping and preparation
work for which they had hitherto relied on native hunters.14 The
French population of the St. Lawrence valley began to increase, and a
new interest was taken in the Wabanaki to the south, at least in part for
the assistance they might give in the reorganization of the fur trade.15
Politically and militarily, these same native bands were becoming
increasingly important as a buffer, both against the Iroquois and
against the English, whose presence along the coast from Cape Cod
northward and eastward was increasing steadily.The northward migration of Wabanaki refugees from King Philip’s War in 1675, which necessitated the establishment of the village at St. Francis by 1683, made
available a concentrated Wabanaki population for these purposes.16 In
1689, moreover, with France and England at war in Europe, the Comte
de Frontenac was returned to New France as governor with plans to
pursue hostilities in North America as well. Râle’s recall from the
Illinois mission four years later and reassignment to the Kennebec may
have been urged in part by the governor’s desire to strengthen
Wabanaki presence and French influence in this area in the path of
English settlement.17
This Jesuit co-operation with the aims of government in New
France has been asserted, denied, proven and re-proven in so many different ways that it is hardly profitable to renew the debate. As seventeenth-century Europeans, the Jesuits viewed the natives of New
France as wild men in need of both civilization and Christian faith, and
in this they were in full agreement with the government of their king,
14
Brian Young and John A. Dickinson, A Short History of Quebec: A Socio-Economic
Perspective (Toronto, 1988), p. 28.
15
See Nicholas,“Wabanaki and French Relations,” pp. 18-19 and 28-31, for a sharp critique of this exploitation of the Wabanaki.
16
Both Calvert,“Appendix,” p. 150, and Nash, Indians of Kennebec, p. 35, suggest this
interpretation of the French government’s interest in maintaining mission villages near
the St. Lawrence.
17
Frontenac and Râle set sail together in 1689. Baxter, Pioneers of New France, pp.
14-16, 34, gives a decidedly English and “conspiratorial” account of this coincidence and
of Frontenac’s overall mission.

BY WILLIAM A. CLARK, S.J.

231

even when they differed as to motivations and methods.18 The specter
of English Protestantism advancing up the rivers of Maine toward
Canada would surely have had its convincing effect on the missionaries had there been any residual hesitation. For all these reasons, Jesuits
active in the mission to the Wabanaki in Maine would not have been
indifferent to such pivotal questions as the disposition of the land
called Acadia, from the Kennebec eastward to Cape Breton, which was
a constant point of contention between France and England throughout Râle’s career, despite the “final” attempt to resolve it by cession to
England in the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713.
II: Râle and the Wabanaki—Mutual Acculturation?
Râle’s first employment upon his arrival at Quebec was in learning
the Wabanaki language. In a letter to his brother, he points out that
such learning could only be obtained through a close, sustained association with the Wabanaki themselves:
I spent part of the day in their cabins,hearing them talk.I was obliged to give
the utmost attention, in order to connect what they said, and to conjecture
its meaning; sometimes I caught it exactly, but more often I was deceived,—
because, not being accustomed to the trick of their guttural sounds, I
repeated only half the word, and thereby gave them cause for laughter.19

In the beginning of 1691, Râle began compiling the fruits of these
slow labors into a dictionary of the Wabanaki language, writing on the
first of what became 550 pages,“1691: It is one year since I have been
among the [sauvages]; I begin to put in order in the form of a dictionary the words that I learn.”20
18
Weil,“La Christianisation,” p. 758, notes this belief about the condition of the native
peoples and, p. 751, quotes a letter of Colbert to the Intendant of New France:“. . . those
who have the authority in hand up to now have not worked enough to civilize the
[sauvages] at the same time as they convert them. . . .”
19
“Letter from Father Sébastien Rasles, Missionary of the Society of Jesus in New
France, to Monsieur his Brother,” October 12, 1723, in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67,
p. 143; for Râle’s comment on the necessity of this strategy, see ibid., p. 132. Morrison,
The Embattled Northeast, p. 168, calls the personal contact that resulted from the decision of many to learn native language and live with the tribes the “crucial distinction
between New France and New England.” Morrison offers his own description of Râle’s
linguistic apprenticeship (ibid., pp. 177-178).
20
Râle, Dictionary, p. 1. (Translation of the French dictionary entries is my own.) This
manuscript, written in French and Wabanaki, was taken from Nanrantsouak during an
English attempt to capture Râle in 1722, and was subsequently deposited at Harvard
University’s Houghton Library.

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Because Râle was always in search of the génie of the language, he
did not, despite his own epigraph, limit his dictionary to a mere list of
words, but recorded whole phrases illustrative of their contextual uses
and variations.
A patient perusal of these entries is extraordinarily suggestive of the
sort of life he led among the Wabanaki. One can imagine him observing and participating in scenes of everyday life, catching a turn of
phrase here and there, or carefully inquiring how to express a particular French thought. We can see the missionary here getting to know
the people (“How old are you?”) or learning about the family structure
and relationships of those he was visiting (“I adopt him for my son.”).21
The amount of time he spent with the sick and the dying becomes evident in phrases such as,“Help me to get up”; or in a complete little discourse:“I am not benefiting anymore from the medicine that you gave
me; it did me some good, but the sickness won’t stop coming back”; or
in the devastatingly eloquent illustration of the Wabanaki word for
“both together”:“If we could both die together, Jesus, that would be a
great privilege.”22 By means of the dictionary, we can glimpse the priest
listening to the intimacies of those seeking counsel or confessing their
sins (“I love him with all my heart,” and “I have jealous thoughts”).23
Perhaps at times Râle heard more than his European sensibilities
allowed him to feel entirely comfortable with: in a subsection written
almost entirely in Latin and entitled “verba foeda” (“indecent words”),
he includes all the words for the sexual organs and for a variety of sex
acts as well, using Latin circumlocutions to convey his meaning. One
entry reads simply,“pecco cum ea” (“I sin with her”).24 Throughout the
dictionary, of course, are also the words and phrases he would need to
instruct the Wabanaki in the meaning and practice of their adopted
religion:“prayer,”“rosary,”“you who are in heaven,”“Mary preserved in
her heart the words of her son,”“I fight against the devil,” and the beautifully simple instruction, “Take your hand and touch first your forehead, your stomach, and then your shoulders”—a lesson on making the
sign of the cross.25
The significance of Râle’s language work to the whole conduct of
his mission can hardly be overestimated. As the Wabanaki historian
21

Ibid., pp. 11, 3.
Ibid., pp. 11, 417, B37.
23
Ibid., pp. 13, 293.
24
Ibid., p. 134.
25
Ibid., pp. 414, 101, 113, 117, 119, 149.

22

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233

Andrea Bear Nicholas observes, in an oral culture such as that of the
Wabanaki the language embodies not only a particular means of creative self-expression but even the “unique view of reality, both past and
present” which is the basis of cultural identity.26 Râle’s recorded observations indicate that, despite his inevitable ethnocentrism, he was able
to notice and appreciate a variety of cultural features in those tribes
with whom he spent time, from the quality speech of an Illinois chief
to the tenderness of the Wabanaki toward their children.27 His descriptions of some of the myths and customs of the partly-Christianized
Illinois even seem to have been a bit too accepting for some of his
countrymen: a comparison of certain original letters to an edited compilation of them that appeared in France around the time of his death
suggests that the openness of the young Father Râle to cultural difference was somewhat greater than the norm for his fellow Frenchmen.
For example, in one of the original letters we read:
[The Ottawas] are very superstitious, and great tricksters (jongleurs).They
are divided into three families from which they say they draw their origin,
and in each family there are around 500 people. Some are of the family of
Michabes, which means “Great Hare.”. . .28

The corresponding passage in the version published in France (and
subsequently used as the source for the esteemed Jesuit Relations
English translation) adopts what may have been considered a more
appropriately disapproving tone:
[The Outaouacks] are very superstitious, and much attached to the juggleries of their charlatans.They assume for themselves an origin as senseless
as it is ridiculous.They declare that they have come from three families, and
each family is composed of five hundred persons. Some are of the family of
Michabou, that is to say, of “the Great Hare.”29
26

Nicholas,“Wabanaki and French Relations,” p. 16.
“Rasles to his Brother,” in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67, pp. 162, 138.
28
“Letter of April 15, 1693,” in Calvert,“Appendix,” pp. 244-245 (addressed to a superior in France).
29
“Rasles to His Brother,” in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67, p. 153. As printed in
Thwaites, the letter is drawn from Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, pp. 122-179, and is
dated 1723. Calvert,“Appendix,” p. 4, however, reports that Râle’s only brother died in
1718.The letter as it is here does contain some important unique material, but much of
its content is substantially identical to that of the five manuscript letters (dated much
earlier than 1723) that Calvert translates, except for frequent editorial changes of the
type noted here. It is impossible to tell whether the changes in tone and nuance were
made by Râle himself (preparing, perhaps, from the point of view of a much older man,
a kind of memoir from copies of old letters) or by an editor in France concerned with
the “proper edification” of readers.
27

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In relation to his own lifestyle, Râle’s efforts to come to terms with
native culture seem to have produced a variety of practical results.At
times, he was unable to escape his own sensibilities. At others, he
seems enraptured by the beauty and wisdom of native ways. Another
of his stories illustrates this, as he describes the Wabanaki custom of
eating a sort of stew from a bowl of bark:
When I first arrived here I could not eat any of their food.They kept asking
me,“Why are you not eating?”“Because,” I answered them,“I am not accustomed to eating my meat without bread.”“You will have to get over that,”
they answered,“it should not be difficult for a patriarich” (that is what they
call those who are their teachers—it means “patriarch”) “it should not be
difficult to get over that since you know how to pray perfectly. It cannot be
more difficult for you to surmount that than it is for us to accept and
believe things we cannot see.” So you see, we must not waver.We must live
as they do, in order to win them over to Jesus Christ.30

Clearly, the transition from the France of Louis XIV to the Canadian
woods was not an easy one. Looking past the ups and downs of thirty
years toward the end of his life, however, Râle was able to give this succinct assessment of his success to his nephew:“As for what concerns
me personally I assure you, that I see, that I hear, that I speak, only as a
[sauvage].”31
Having passed through his initial period of linguistic and cultural
training, Râle was recalled from the Illinois and assigned to the
Kennebec mission, arriving at Nanrantsouak in the fall of 1694.32 The
village was located where the Sandy River flows into the Kennebec, in
the present town of Madison, about thirty miles up the river from the
then-abandoned English trading post at Cushnoc (Augusta). Previously,
it does not seem to have been the primary village of the Kennebec
Wabanaki, but the social devastations of war, famine, and emigration
had so drained the Kennebec valley of its native population that Râle
was able to gather in this one place, at least on a seasonal basis, most
of the Wabanaki within reach of his mission.33 (The actual numbers
30

“Letter of August 26, 1690,” in Calvert,“Appendix,”p. 237 (addressed to Râle’s brother).
“Letter from Father Sébastien Rasles, Missionary of the Society of Jesus in New
France, to Monsieur his Nephew,” October 15, 1722, in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67,
p. 93.
32
This date is sometimes given as 1693, due to some ambiguities in Râle’s own reports.
33
Nash, Indians of Kennebec, p. 35, goes so far as to claim that Râle founded the village. Dragon, Vrai Visage pp. 51-52, gives a brief physical description of the village and
makes it clear that its existence long predated Râle’s arrival.
31

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235

fluctuated; in 1714, Râle mentions “more than a hundred families,”
while at the time of his death in 1724, about two hundred persons
were present in Nanrantsouak.34) In this way, out of a kind of necessity,
the earlier concentration strategy of the Jesuits was merged with the
later insertion strategy in the ministry of Sébastien Râle.
Despite being centered on this village, the Kennebec Wabanaki
remained highly mobile, because of the admixture of agriculture and
hunting in their economy. After spring planting at Nanrantsouak, Râle
would annually accompany the community to the coast in the
summer, where they would live on seafood and wild fruit until harvest
time. In the early winter, they would again “live better at the sea than
during the summer” because of the seasonal abundance of water fowl.
Around February, when the men “disperse[d] to hunt beavers and
moose,”Râle would return to the village with the women, children, and
sick. On all these peregrinations, Râle would travel equipped for the
Mass and sacraments, apparently at the insistence of the Wabanaki
themselves.35 In keeping with the practice of going where his villagers
went, he is known to have been present for at least one peace conference between the Wabanaki and the English, and there is some evidence that he may also have accompanied at least one war party.36
Within the village, too, Râle was immersed in the ordinary life of the
Kennebec band. He describes his involvement, apparently more than
ceremonial, in marriage arrangements among members of the village.37
Râle attended tribal councils and believed,“My advice always determines
their decisions.”38 The curious interplay of intimacy and aloofness, of
confident belonging and distant analysis, in Râle’s descriptions of these
activities continues also in the overtly religious sphere.The church, that
is to say the Christian community, into which Râle organized this
Wabanaki band relied heavily on the European order which Râle
brought to his leadership of the sacraments and prayer.A succession of
34
The larger number is mentioned in “Letter of August 17, 1714,” in Calvert,
“Appendix,”p. 265 (addressed to Râle’s brother). The smaller number is given in the
account of Râle’s death in “Letter from Father de la Chasse,”in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations,
vol. 67, p. 235, and is repeated in most of the secondary sources.
35
“Rasles to his Nephew,”in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67, p. 93. Râle gives a fuller
description of this migratory pattern to his brother in the “Letter of August 17, 1714,” in
Calvert,“Appendix,” pp. 263-265.
36
“Rasles to his Brother,” in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67, p. 199, and “Father
Sébastien Rale, S.J.,” Catholic World, p. 554.
37
Râle, Dictionary, p. 334.
38
“Rasles to his Nephew,” in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67, p. 91.

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church buildings were erected and destroyed at Nanrantsouak over the
course of Râle’s career, each one decorated in large part by the missionary himself, who apparently had something of an artistic reputation. Of
the last of these churches, the one that was burned on the day he died,
he writes to his nephew that its furnishings “would be esteemed in our
European churches.”39 In this aesthetically European building, the
prayers and sacraments were held according to a nearly monastic schedule: Mass in the early morning (said, of course, in Latin), followed by catechism and an opportunity for confessions and counseling; vespers at
sunset; frequent pious visits to the outlying chapels that were built on
the paths to the river and the fields. Râle himself withdrew nightly, from
vespers until Mass the following morning, so as to be able to continue
his own regimen of prayer before and after rest.40
Within this imported order, Râle positioned the participation of his
Wabanaki “flock.” He writes that about forty young Wabanaki men
(likely the majority of young men in the village), whom he designates
“minor clergy,” were trained by him and dressed in cassock and surplice as they would be in Europe, for participating in processions and
serving at Mass, the Divine Office, and Benediction. Râle describes the
processions as being attended by “crowds”; one can imagine the entire
village turning out to see the odd spectacle of their sons and brothers
arrayed in European finery.41 For the participation of all the people in
catechism lessons, vespers, and prayers during Mass, Râle prepared
texts in the Wabanaki language. The project of translation was begun
with the help of selected native speakers even before Râle had a clear
grasp of the language:“I repeated to them in a clumsy manner some
passages from the catechism, and they gave them to me again, with all
the nicety of their language.”42
Early in Râle’s career, then, it is possible to see at least some participation of the Wabanaki themselves in shaping the presentation of the
faith to their own people, and most interestingly Râle trusts them.The
39

Ibid., p. 86.
Ibid., pp. 87-93.“Letter of June 15, 1711,” in Calvert,“Appendix,” pp. 257-261, provides details of Masses and processions organized by Râle at the village of St. Francis
Xavier near Quebec, where he and the Kennebecs sojourned from 1705 to 1711 during
war with the English; ibid., p. 261, he implies his intention to re-establish these practices
in Nanrantsouak, to which he is returning.
41
“Rasles to his Nephew,” in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67. p. 86;“Letter of June
15, 1711,” in Calvert,“Appendix,” p. 260.
42
“Rasles to his Brother,” in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67, p. 145.
40

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237

difference that such linguistic assistance could make to the substance
of the teaching being given is illustrated by Râle himself in explaining
the “indescribable force in the style and manner with which they
express themselves”:
If I should ask you why God created you, you would answer me that it was
for the purpose of knowing him, loving him, and serving him, and by this
means to merit eternal glory. If I should put the same question to a
[sauvage], he would answer thus, in the style of his own language: “The
great Spirit has thought of us: ‘Let them know me, let them love me, let
them honor me, and let them obey me; for then I will make them enter my
glorious happiness.’43

The language has a way of claiming the ideas of the faith for the
Wabanaki; God here becomes much more the solicitous spirit of their
native myths than the aloof judge of stern catechism morality.44
Perhaps the Wabanaki church was not an entirely European creature
after all.
A somewhat more shrouded indication of genuine native influence
in the church at Nanrantsouak is the presence of the outlying chapels
mentioned previously. Râle provides few details about these buildings,
but what he says is enough to raise some interesting questions and
possibilities.To begin with, he uses different language to describe their
origin. Having claimed “j’y ai bâti une Église”—“I have built a church
there”—he writes of the chapels “On a bâti deux Chapelles”—“we” or
“they have built,” or “chapels have been built.”45 Who actually erected
these buildings? One Catholic writer, trying to do justice to several
conflicting pieces of evidence, suggests that it was the English
Protestants, during one of the brief intervals of peace.46 Râle’s language leaves open the possibility that it was the Wabanaki themselves
who built them.That possibility is reinforced by the discovery in the
dictionary of several entries under “chapel”: “Where will it be? What
will the length of it be? Where will be the place for saying Mass? The
altar must be in the east, and the door at the west.”47 However the
buildings came to be, Râle provides us with two other tantalizing
43

Ibid.
For discussion of the roles of Gluskap, who ordered the world, and No-chi-gar-neh,
the spirit of the air, in the religious understanding of the Wabanaki, see Morrison,
“Mythological Sources,” p. 241, and idem., Solidarity of Kin, pp. 82-86.
45
“Rasles to his Nephew,” in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67, p. 86.
46
“Fr. Sébastien Rale, S.J.,” Catholic World, p. 550.
47
Râle, Dictionary, p. 101.
44

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THE CHURCH AT NANRANTSOUAK

details of the way in which they were used.The Wabanaki, he writes,
“never pass them without offering prayers therein.” Further,
there is a holy emulation among the women of the Village regarding the
best decoration of the Chapel, of which they have care, when the
Procession is to enter it; all that they have in the way of trinkets, pieces of
silk or chintz, and other things of that sort—all are used for adornment.48

It seems, then, that although the chapels were clearly used for communal celebrations, they were also places where the Wabanaki felt
free to pray in their own way, and places where their own aesthetic
might also come into play. Thinking of the syncretistic tendencies
often seen in other cross-cultural conversion situations, it is not difficult to imagine such chapels as places where the merging of Christian
and native beliefs could be expressed in a somewhat more ample
fashion, even if anything overtly shamanistic would never have
escaped the priest’s scrutiny.49
All in all, it is difficult to make an adequate assessment of the extent
to which Râle was or wanted to be “inculturated,” or the extent to
which this was true of the Christianity he administered to the
Kennebecs. The observation of Jean-Paul Wiest about Jesuits in China
in the same era, that a failure to question themselves led to a failure to
truly understand Chinese culture, clearly applies to Râle and his confreres in some ways.50 They were early proponents of what Wiest calls
the “frontier model” of mission, which, without relying on overt military conquest as the earlier “crusader model” did, nonetheless took for
granted the superiority of Christian religion and European culture, and
sought to extend the boundaries of the Christian world by more apparently spiritual means. On the other hand, it is difficult to believe that
the kind of linguistic and day-to-day familiarity by which Râle lived
with the Wabanaki over a period of thirty years would produce no
adaptation in the missionary’s way of thinking, in pastoral application
if not in doctrinal formulation.
48

“Rasles to his Nephew,” in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67, p. 87.
Morrison,“Mythological Sources,” p. 254, mentions the field chapels among other
evidence that Catholic practice was well-suited to the native Wabanaki sense of the
sacred dimension in all their ordinary activities. Ibid., p. 236, he holds that “Abenaki
Catholicism represents a syncretistic intensification of their ancient religious life,” rather
than a compartmentalization of the two belief systems.
50
Jean-Paul Wiest, “Bringing Christ to the Nations,” Catholic Historical Review 83
(1997), 654-681.
49

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239

Unfortunately, as the story of the Kennebec church would eventually
bear out, this cultural interplay was not being negotiated by the
Wabanaki and their devoted missionary in isolation. The Jesuit’s very
presence in the village was a symbol of the fact that the Wabanaki were
now forced to share their world with both the French and their English
rivals. It was inevitable that their religious alliance with the French
would be expected to carry through in distinctly non-religious ways as
well. Undeniably, letters from the governing authorities in Quebec to
Râle and many other fellow missionaries indicate their deep involvement in the territorial struggles of the time and the ongoing attempt to
sway the Wabanaki toward the French and away from the English.51 This
does not, however, necessarily validate the standard English accusation
that Râle was an agent provocateur. His favoring of the French cause in
Wabanaki deliberations would have been a simple matter of survival for
his mission.The English were not only a rival political power but also
professed a “different religion.” Laying aside considerations of French
nationalism (which surely were present in some form), Râle’s fundamental “given” for his work is that Catholicism is the true religion,
which the Wabanaki have embraced. From within this basic assumption—so unacceptable to the Puritans of old and to the new historians
of today—his writing is entirely solicitous of the welfare of the
Wabanaki. He defends their land rights and encourages their unity as a
tribe. In his eyes, the Catholic religion has become a feature of the
Wabanaki as a nation, just as it is of the French, and so he defends their
right to practice it, which means defending his right to be with them,
despite constant English objections. Discussing Wabanaki resistance to
the constant temptation to abandon trade with distant Quebec for the
convenience of the much nearer English settlements, he writes:
they are hardly indifferent to their own interests, but their faith is infinitely
dearer to them, and they believe that if they detach themselves from
alliance with us, they will soon find themselves without a missionary, without sacraments, without the Sacrifice, almost without any religious service,
and in serious danger of being plunged back into their previous unbelief.52

It may be that there is more of Râle than of the Wabanaki in these
words, and yet they demonstrate very well the dynamic within which
51
Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67, pp. 54-65, presents two such letters from
Canadian authorities which were taken from Nanrantsouak in Râle’s strongbox during
the winter of 1722 by English raiders, and subsequently used as full proof of Râle’s political employment.
52
“Rasles to his Nephew,”Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67, p. 95.

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the Wabanaki expression of Christian faith was caught. Râle led a church
that was born, lived, and died in the midst of a cultural conflagration.
III: Râle, the Wabanaki Church, and European Colonialism
For reasons of both political-military strategy and cultural ethnocentrism, neither of the colonial governments that faced each other across
Wabanaki land was indifferent to the religious expression of the
natives. Both French and English authorities reasoned that successful
defense and growth of their respective enterprises required drawing
the Wabanaki into their own sphere.53 Neither power could tolerate a
non-Christian native people on equal footing with themselves indefinitely, and neither was much more comfortable with the Christianity of
its rival than with the original “paganism” of the Wabanaki. In these fundamental respects, the French and English governors saw the Kennebec
Wabanaki in very similar fashion, though their divergent economic aims
and strategic positions dictated dramatically different tactics.
To the French, the Wabanaki community was a tool made more
useful by the religious alliance. Although, as noted, they surely had
strong notions about the “civilizing” function of the missionaries, the
religious sincerity of priests like Râle was generally of no particular
concern to them, so long as the native people remained disponible to
French strategic interests.54 The English governors, on the other hand,
because they felt they had a stronger claim on Acadia, denied more
overtly than did the French any national identity to the Wabanaki, and
instead considered them English subjects.55 They constantly blamed
the influence of the French Jesuits, particularly Râle, for the Wabanaki’s
lack of docility toward them.The English self-assurance that they were
53

Morrison, The Embattled Northeast, 166.
The long-expounded French reputation for cultural openness toward the native
American peoples is reviewed and defended by Dragon, Vrai Visage pp. 29-51.A sharply
contrasting view, emphasizing an underlying cynicism in much of the French approach
to the Wabanaki, is set forth by Nicholas,“Wabanaki and French Relations,” and is also
well illustrated in this line of a memorandum from Canada to Versailles:“If we do not
agree or do not pretend to agree to their rights over the country which they occupy,
never will we be able to engage them in any war for the defense of this same country
which is the first line of defense of Canada.” National Archives of Canada, MG 18, H27:235, quoted in Cornelius J. Jaenen,“Characteristics of French-Amerindian Contact in
New France,” in Stanley Palmer and Dennis Reinhartz (eds.), Essays on the History of
North American Discovery and Exploration (College Station,Texas, 1988), p. 91.
55
Reference to the Wabanaki as subjects of the English crown occurs formally for the
first time in a treaty of 1693. See Calloway, Dawnland Encounter, p.100.
54

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the rightful owners of much of the land, and the rulers of all of it, rendered the whole affair of Râle and the Wabanaki an internal one from
their point of view. Râle was a spy for France and the papacy, operating in English territory, and the Wabanaki were civil and religious
rebels, both punishable according to the laws of treason.56
Despite his frequent attention to the Wabanaki’s trouble with the
English and to their alliance with the French—matters highly relevant
to everyday life in Nanrantsouak—Sébastien Râle himself seems to have
been rather cool toward the idea that the people with whom he had
lived for so long ought to be appreciated according to European politics. Most often, he writes as if he already knew what in fact turned out
to be the case: that in the long run, the survival of this particular
Christian community of Wabanaki depended on itself, and not on the
protection of any outside alliance. Using one of his favorite images for
his community—troupeau or “flock”—the priest writes to his nephew:
My neophytes, moved by the danger to which I am exposed in their village,
often urge me to retire for a little time to Quebec. But what will become of
the flock, if it be deprived of its Shepherd? Death alone can separate me
from them. . . . Pray to [the Lord Jesus], my dear nephew, that he may
strengthen in me this feeling, which comes only from his mercy, in order
that I may live and die working unceasingly for the salvation of these neglected souls, who were bought with his blood and whom he has deigned
to commit to my care.57

On first encounter in his correspondence, the reference to the
“flock” is apt to strike one as a bit of standard piety, but particularly
since he uses it as a foundation for his refusal to leave Nanrantsouak
even when the danger to his life is palpable, it seems worth taking seriously as an image that may inform us further about the pastor’s understanding of his church.
“Flock” can designate a self-contained and isolated community, and
Râle’s attitude toward the political situation bears out this interpretation. He appears to have no difficulty distinguishing his flock from
anyone else’s, and he does not make an overt identification of French
interests and Wabanaki ones. Indeed, he writes about the possibility of
his falling into the hands of “their” (the Wabanaki’s) enemies; he does
56
Morrison, The Embattled Northeast, p. 166, takes note of this English attitude
toward the Wabanaki.
57
“Rasles to His Nephew,” in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67, p. 119.

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not speak of the enemies of the French.58 This reflects a constant attitude that the problem with the English is less that they are at war with
the French than that they are encroaching on the lands of the
Wabanaki.59 This Wabanaki-first perspective seems to have shaped
Râle’s approach not only to civil politics but also to ecclesiastical politics: nowhere in the letters or the dictionary do we find any references
to the structures of Catholic hierarchy or papacy, nor any attempt to
explain to the Wabanaki the international network of which they had
become a part by virtue of their acceptance of Catholic teaching and
practice. Outside of its links with other native Christian communities
(such as the Montagnais on the St. Lawrence, instrumental in the initial
Kennebec conversions60), Râle himself is the only point of contact
between the church at Nanrantsouak and the larger ecclesial world.
Indeed, through Râle’s eyes the Nanrantsouak church appears
almost completely dependent on him, like sheep on their shepherd, for
spiritual leadership. The Jesuits having begun to replace the native
shamans as far back as the time of Druillettes, nearly fifty years previously, overt use of native myth and ritual was rare. Although surely it
survived in various forms (as witnessed by the possibility of a much
more ample discussion of it now, three hundred years later, by historians such as Morrison and Nicholas), one of the few mentions Râle
makes of native religion occurs in the context of the story of his conversion of a neighboring band whom he had worried (needlessly, as it
turned out) would corrupt his Kennebec neophytes.61 Though he does
give a few details of shamanistic rites in his dictionary, nowhere in his
writing is there even the kind of bemused description of Wabanaki
myth that he provides for the Ottawa whom he had once visited. He
certainly shows no sign of appreciating the deep impact of a native
mythology on the way in which his own Christian teaching and example were understood.62 Indeed, his own spiritual life was sustained on
the very practical, ritual level, and he looked for nothing more in his
58

Ibid.
Morrison, The Embattled Northeast, p. 178, notes that, in general, the Jesuit missionaries “identified more and more with Abenaki interests”and sought to serve as a
buffer between the natives and the insensitivities of their own French authorities.
60
See Nash, Indians of Kennebec, pp.16-17.
61
See “Rasles to his Brother,” in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67, pp. 182-195.
62
See Calloway, Dawnland Encounter, p. 61, for a discussion of the proposition that
“most Abenakis did not simply cast their old religion aside.” Morrison, Solidarity of Kin,
pp. 171-172, summarizes his whole presentation of the Wabanaki-French encounter with
a similar conclusion.
59

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243

flock. What he most admired in the Wabanaki and seems to have fostered in his pastoral style is the steady pace of everyday life set to the
rhythm of devout Christian prayer, docility to Christian teaching, and
Christianized social mores.63
Nonetheless, Râle’s flock was also a community defined, for him,
almost entirely by its religion. Even though it is evident from his letters
that he participated in the daily and seasonal round of Wabanaki life,
so focused on survival, Râle writes in great detail about the ritual
preparations that he has made for the Wabanaki. For someone also
caught up in affairs of state that had truly international repercussions,
he does not slacken his devotion to the sacred rites or his relating of
all his other activities to this primary purpose; he exhibits no “sacred
vs. secular” split in worldview. Further, as we have seen, he confidently
attributes a similar outlook to the Wabanaki, whose adherence to the
faith he presents as the full explanation of their alliance with France
and as justification enough for his own residence in hostile territory
even after explicit threats.
Râle’s view of the Wabanaki community as his flock should be
understood (together with his linguistic and acculturative efforts) as
mitigating somewhat the obvious paternalism and cultural imperialism
of his pastoral methods. Nicholas, herself a Wabanaki who includes
Râle unhesitatingly among the “agents of imperialism,” is nonetheless
ready to admit that there were individuals in this period who rose
above the common attitudes toward indigenous people and demonstrated the possibility of respect and co-operation that many to this day
are still trying to promote.64 Had attention been paid, in the body of
material written about him since his death, to the intimacy and determination of Râle’s relationship with the Wabanaki, and had his quite
explicit stance of defense of Wabanaki rights, lands, and faith (not
French colonial claims) been given credence, he would not be so easily
excluded from the more forward-looking category.65 While there is
63
See “Rasles to his Nephew,” in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67, pp. 86-91, and
“Letter of June 15, 1711,” in Calvert,“Appendix,” pp. 258-259, for his appreciation of the
Wabanaki’s docility and piety. In “Postscript of September 9 (no year [1693]), in Calvert,
“Appendix,”pp. 256-257, and in “Rasles to his Brother,” in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol.
67, pp. 176-179, his description of the death of an Algonkian girl whom he baptized on
his way back from the Illinois is a notable exception to Râle’s generally non-enthusiastic
spirituality.
64
Nicholas,“Wabanaki and French Relations,” pp. 33, 18.
65
Râle’s Wabanaki focus is evident throughout his discussion of English “artifices” in
“Rasles to His Nephew,” in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67, pp. 96-119; note his

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THE CHURCH AT NANRANTSOUAK

little doubt that in his mind France was the necessary protector of
these things for the Wabanaki, while the English could not possibly be
because of their espousal of a heretical faith and their immediate
encroachment on Wabanaki lands, it is also clear from what he writes
that foremost in his mind were the people of his troupeau, and not the
colonial advancement of his earthly king.
One of his friendlier English biographers, John Francis Sprague,
seeks to base his defense of Râle on “the fact that his settlement and
mission were on territory claimed by the French; that it was his duty
as a subject of the king of France to be loyal to that side of the contention.”66 Yet, nowhere in Râle’s surviving correspondence is the situation ever described in such terms. It might even be said that Râle’s
concept of his Wabanaki church actually blinded him—not so much in
the sense of a naive lack of understanding but in terms of what he
deemed relevant and worthy of concern—to the political use to which
he was being put by his own government, to the political fury his very
being stirred up among the English, and in general to the political
maelstrom that would eventually destroy both him and his flock. Of
course, his was not the only French voice that the Wabanaki heard.
From the “incriminating” letters taken from Râle in the 1722 English
raid on Nanrantsouak, it is clear that the government officials in
Quebec had their own agendas.The Wabanaki, of course, knew that the
French and the English were at enmity, and they had clearly decided
that it was to their own interest to favor the French in these conflicts.
That this awareness was Râle’s doing or anything like a primary part of
his mission is far from obvious.
IV: Wabanaki People, Wabanaki Church
Perhaps the most important concepts for grasping the Wabanaki’s
own view of themselves as a Christian community are “land” and
“people.” They were the “People of the Dawnland,” and their
comment on France’s cession of Wabanaki land to England: “. . .there is not one
[sauvage] Tribe that will patiently endure to be regarded as under subjection to any
Power whatsoever; it will perhaps call itself an ally, but nothing more” (pp. 102-103).
Morrison, The Embattled Northeast, pp. 174-176, describes Râle’s exchanges of letters
with the English in 1716 and 1717, in which he argued that Wabanaki tradition prohibited selling the land, and also warned that the king of France would aid the Wabanaki
in retaining their lands (at a time when, in fact, the French willingness to intervene was
not at all evident).
66
Sprague, Sébastien Ralé, p. 49.

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245

Christianization by the Jesuits, although it defined for them a set of
relationships to other peoples and institutions to which they had not
been formally related before, did not change their fundamental identity. As Morrison notes of them, “community and religious practice
were co-extensive.”67 They had never had an institutionalized religion
that could stand over against the rest of their lives, and the Jesuits did
not supply one; as I have noted, Râle did not instruct them in the fine
points of ecclesial structure and politics.Their Christianity was called
“the prayer”68—an activity of a people, not a new structure or rival ideology—and so the Wabanaki remained predisposed toward being a
community that could be defined by its religion, in that everything
they did had a spiritual meaning. It is in this context that we must
understand Râle’s accompanying the tribe on fishing and hunting
expeditions, at councils, and to parleys with the English.69 Here, too,
the stage is set for the grand misunderstanding of Râle’s role by the
English and numerous subsequent historians.This unitive view of society encouraged the Jesuit to write as though he had become a sachem
of the tribe, and indeed he seems to have played a comparably important role in shaping the dispositions of the entire community. By the
Wabanaki, as well as in his own estimation, he seems to have been
taken not as the representative of a foreign power so much as a
revered member of the community itself.
The Wabanaki adopted Christianity in an attempt to maintain, or
regain, their equilibrium as a people living on the land that they had
always occupied.70 Until 1675, they seem to have had no clear sense of
having been invaded, no strong reaction to being “crowded out” of
their own land. Nonetheless, the appearance of the Europeans had
already had profound internal effects in their communities, which they
struggled to comprehend. Morrison outlines these, under rubrics such
as disease, commercial and spiritual rivalries, and resulting tribal divi67

Morrison,“Mythological Sources,” p. 238.
Râle notes this in discussing the Illinois in “Letter of April 15, 1693,” in Calvert,
“Appendix,” p. 255.
69
Morrison,“Mythological Sources,” p. 247, concludes from an earlier description of
Fr. Druillettes accompanying a hunting party and offering Mass for its success that “priest
and shaman barely differed” in the social role that they played on such occasions. Idem,
Solidarity of Kin, pp. 88-93, discusses Druillettes’ sojourn among the Kennebecs, and his
“shamanic pose.” Also on Druillettes, see Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 37, p. 245.
70
Morrison,“Mythological Sources,”p. 252:“In entering the Canadian missions [during
King Philip’s War], the Abenaki acknowledged their individual and collective stand
against impending communal chaos.”
68

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THE CHURCH AT NANRANTSOUAK

sions (including in-fighting among the shamans).71 The Wabanaki had
come to live in a world of religious bewilderment and confusion that
caused in them an almost panicked desire to find other solutions—a
sort of “spiritual longing.” As Morrison expresses it, “The Kennebecs’
appeal for a priest came from a people who were pushed to the brink
of physical and psychic survival.”72 This helps to explain the Christian
zeal that Râle and others note in them;73 but this zeal itself, unaccompanied as it was by similar conversion to European cultural values and
practices, helps explain the chronic misunderstanding among the
Wabanaki, the English, and the French.
A crucial fact in understanding the Wabanaki retention of their original communal identity is that they themselves sought out the teaching of the Jesuit missionaries who eventually came to them, after
apparently being rebuffed in the first few contacts that they made with
the French.74 The Jesuits seemed to offer solutions to the many problems that the Wabanaki were encountering. At the same time, they
seemed to exemplify the Wabanaki ideal of “the personal characteristics of socially constructive men of power” in a way which the
shamans had ceased to do.75 And while it may not be said of the French
generally, individual Jesuit missionaries, at least, lacked the commercial
interests of the English with which the Wabanaki had all too much contact. Thus one of the sachems described the Wabanaki attachment to
Catholicism when urged by the English to send Râle packing:
When you came here, you saw me a long time before the French governors,
but neither your predecessors nor your ministers ever spoke to me of
Prayer or of the Great Spirit.They saw my furs, my beaver and moose skins,
and thought of these alone; this is what they looked for so eagerly; I was not
able to furnish them enough, and when I brought many, I was their great
friend, but only then. But one day my canoe missed the route; I lost my way,
and wandered a long time at random, until at last I landed near Quebec, in
71

Ibid., pp. 242-249. See also Morrison, Solidarity of Kin, pp. 86-93.
Morrison,“Mythological Sources,” p. 244; idem, Solidarity of Kin, p. 88.
73
Morrison,“Mythological Sources,” pp. 250-252, citing an account in Thwaites, Jesuit
Relations, vol. 62, pp. 29-49, provides a description of the “considerable energy” behind
Wabanaki Christian activities at the Quebec mission village of Sillery in the period just
before Râle’s Kennebec mission.
74
Nash, Indians of Kennebec, p. 15. See also Morrison,“Mythological Sources,”p. 235.
Nicholas,“Wabanaki and French Relations,” p. 25, is careful to emphasize, however, that
“Wabanakis did not seek out conversion in any significant numbers until hard-pressed by
the unspeakable horrors of war, disease and starvation,” brought on by European contact.
75
Morrison,“Mythological Sources,” p. 249.
72

BY WILLIAM A. CLARK, S.J.

247

a great village of the Algonquins, where the Black Robes were teaching. I
had hardly arrived, when a Black Robe came to see me. I was loaded with
furs, but the French Black Robe did not even bother to look at them. He
spoke to me first of the Great Spirit, of heaven, of hell, and of the Prayer,
which is the only way to reach heaven. I listened to him with pleasure, and
I enjoyed his talks so much that I remained in that village a long time in
order to hear him. In the end, the Prayer pleased me, and I besought him to
instruct me; I asked for baptism, and received it.Afterward, I returned to my
country, and recounted what had happened to me: they envied my happiness; they wanted to share it; they left to go find the Black Robe and ask him
for baptism.Thus have the French acted toward me. If when you first saw
me you had spoken to me of the Prayer, I would have had the misfortune
of praying as you do, for I was not able to tell if your Prayer was good. Now,
I tell you, I hold to the Prayer of the French; I accept it, and I will keep it
until the world burns and comes to an end. Keep your workmen, your
money, and your minister; I will speak of them no more. I will speak to the
French governor, my father, and he will send me some.76

The story also demonstrates that despite their initiative, the conversion of the Kennebec Wabanaki was part of a wider process
taking place among tribes with whom they had important contact.
They were not, in fact, isolated, either in accepting the faith or in
maintaining it during the time that they had no missionary, since
before the coming of the Europeans they had always had bonds—of
trade, language, and kinship—with the other peoples around them.
These others faced the same great problems as the Wabanaki, and
from them the Wabanaki first received the suggestion that “the
Prayer” might hold the solutions. If we were to search for a “universal”—a cosmos of meaning and connection—into which to fit the
phenomenon of the local Wabanaki church, this native web of relationships, values, and ways of living would be most appropriate for
the role. It was this world that the Wabanaki who accepted
Christianity were really trying to retain and reconstruct. Just as
Europeans sought to draw the native peoples into the European
cosmos, so the native peoples sought to fit the Europeans, and all the
cataclysmic changes they had brought, into their cosmos. With the
Puritans (and perhaps the French) we might today think of the
Wabanaki as having become “Roman Catholics,” but it is clear that
“Rome” was not a meaningful or relevant concept in Nanrantsouak.
76
“Rasles to his Brother,” in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67, pp. 210-213 (translation
adapted). See also “Fr. Sébastien Rale, S.J.,” Catholic World, p. 549. Nash, Indians of
Kennebec, pp. 15-17, provides historical details that corroborate the story as told here
via a European impression of a Wabanaki storyteller’s speech.

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The heartiness with which the Wabanaki embraced the religion the
Jesuits offered them suggests that it did for them what they needed it
to do: it ordered the spiritual chaos that they were experiencing. It
seems unlikely that it could have done this, however, if it had been
experienced as entirely foreign at the outset. Rather, the ritual emphasis of Catholicism, its focus on moral social behavior, and its communitarian rather than individualist imagination greatly attracted the
Wabanaki because these were elements of their traditional spiritual
practice.“The religious alliance between the Abenaki and the French
developed,” says Morrison, “because their religious sensibilities were
compatible.”77 So it is not surprising to hear the Wabanaki explain to
the grumbling English traders at Cushnoc (Augusta), regarding Gabriel
Druillettes,“We have adopted him for our comrade, we love him as the
wisest of our captains, . . . and whoever assails him attacks all the
Abenaquiois.”78 Similarly Râle, by his inculturation and long residence
with them, became for the Wabanaki a bridge between the pre-contact
and post-contact realities.
Telling details of precisely how the Wabanaki, in practice, fitted
Christianity into their attempt to retain their traditional lifestyle and
worldview are few and far between. Occasionally, however, a window
opens in the European accounts that allows a glimpse of a deeper
Wabanaki reality. Wabanaki women and children on the Penobscot
River keep vigil for their warriors during the second conflict with the
English (King William’s War, 1689) by confessing and praying the
rosary.79 Father Druillettes listens to a chief, who feared for the souls
of his sick children, explain how he tried to minister to them in the
absence of the priest.80 Father Râle marks the season of the tribe’s
annual move to the sea by referring to the feasts of Corpus Christi and
Assumption, but his description of the pomp with which the former is
celebrated suggests that such feasts quickly came to signify in the
mind of the Wabanaki more than simply a point of Christian doctrine,
with significant moments in the agricultural cycle being marked by
77
Morrison, “Mythological Sources,” p. 248. Nicholas, “Wabanaki and French
Relations,” p. 25, has “no doubt that there are many points of comparison to be made,”
among them the “aim of communal well-being,” but is much more circumspect about
statements that seem to equate the two spiritualities.
78
Nash, Indians of Kennebec, p. 25.
79
Calloway, Dawnland Encounter, p. 144, quoting a letter of Fr. Pierre Thury of 1689.
80
Nash, Indians of Kennebec, p. 26. Morrison,“Mythological Sources,” p. 237, notes as
a characteristic of seventeenth-century Wabanaki community that “religious power was
widely shared [but always] existed only for the people’s welfare.”

BY WILLIAM A. CLARK, S.J.

249

them.81 Included in matter-of-fact style in Râle’s correspondence and
in his dictionary are also notices of various other Wabanaki customs
that surely had an unarticulated spiritual significance that the missionary never challenged: the custom of eating the food of someone who
has just died, the “usual dances”at funerals, the killing of dogs for a warfeast.82 In all of this, it is clear that the Wabanaki went on living their
communal life, weaving their new religious practice into their ordinary
traditional activities in a way that greatly strengthened both, secured
the identification of church and community among them, and
undoubtedly stiffened their resolve to defend themselves and their
lands from English encroachments.
Given the general ethnocentrism of the Europeans, it is not surprising that the English were unable to recognize the Wabanaki initiative,
both spiritual and political, in the resistance that they encountered
increasingly from 1675 onward.The Wabanaki’s spiritual renewal had
been catalyzed by their contact with the French Jesuits, and so in the
eyes of the English any trouble from their Wabanaki neighbors was
simply a result of Jesuit agitation among the simple and easily misled
natives. The several comments of Puritan churchmen on what they
take to be Râle’s distorted teaching to “his Indians” suggest now a
Puritan failure to grasp the Wabanaki spiritual context within which
Christian doctrine was heard and interpreted. Cotton Mather, the
Puritan preacher most notorious for his support of the Salem witch
trials, had an interview in 1696 with the Nanrantsouak chief
Bomaseen, who was then being held for ransom in Boston, and
reported that the Wabanaki had been taught
that the Lord Jesus Christ was of the French nation; that His Mother, the
Virgin Mary, was a French lady; that they were the English who had murdered Him; and, that whereas He rose from the dead, and went up to the
Heavens, all that would recommend themselves unto His favour, must
revenge His quarrel upon the English, as far as they can.83

Mather took these declarations at face value and denounced them
to Bomaseen as “French poison,”without ever, it seems, considering the
81
See “Rasles to his Brother,” in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67, p. 215, for the
annual migration, and Ibid., p. 183, for the celebration of Corpus Christi.
82
Râle, Dictionary, p. 330;“Rasles to his Brother,” in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, vol. 67,
pp. 183, 203.
83
Cotton Mather, Decennium Luctuosum, quoted in Charles M. Lincoln (ed.),
Narratives of the Indian Wars 1675-1699 (New York, 1913), p. 256.

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THE CHURCH AT NANRANTSOUAK

possibility that they were a quite reasonable (though hardly orthodox)
Wabanaki attempt to apply the Christian story to a very real circumstance in their own world. Nicholas speaks of narratives that
blend myth and reality, the spirit world and the natural world, into a story
that is at once captivating, haunting and instructive—an age-old technique
of Native oral tradition that not only instructs, but reflects perfectly the reality of the Native world view.84

The likely application of such a technique can be discerned in other
reports of Râle’s instruction, such as the story, apparently stemming
from reports of forest fires in Canada, that he predicted the destruction
of the earth by fire in forty-nine days, or the account of the priest’s
dream of wrestling with the devil over the Wabanaki. Both of these
were duly recorded (having been heard in translation from Wabanaki
conversants) in the journal of Reverend Joseph Baxter, who conducted
a short-lived Puritan ministry among the Wabanaki along the coast in
1717 and 1721.85 “You will not find among Native People,” Nicholas
reminds us,“a Western preoccupation with separating dream from reality, the spiritual from the commonplace.All is real and all is truth.”86
The Kennebec Wabanaki both became a church and remained a
native community. In examining this phenomenon, we repeatedly
encounter a religion that was fitted into the established way-of-life of
a people who were yet being thrust into an unfamiliar role in an
unfamiliar system, in the very land which they themselves grew
increasingly anxious to preserve for its traditional meaning and uses.
The Wabanaki do not seem to have imagined that they could rid
themselves of the Europeans, nor did they express a desire to do so.
They had become dependent on both the French and the English for
European commodities for which previous generations of their
people would have had no need. French Jesuit missionaries like Râle
were now defining themselves by their lives with the Wabanaki, and
the French authorities were relying on them to occupy their English
rivals.The English, in their turn, tried hard to “pacify” the Indians—by
treaty or by force—so as to keep the advantage of their trade and to
continue uninterrupted the process of settlement on the eastern
lands. As they were not isolated from other native tribes in their
84
Nicholas,“Wabanaki and French Relations,” p. 14. Here she writes appreciatively of
M.T. Kelly, A Dream Like Mine (1987).
85
Nason, Journal of Several Visits, pp. 8, 11.
86
Nicholas,“Wabanaki and French Relations,” p. 14.

BY WILLIAM A. CLARK, S.J.

251

choice of Christianity, so the Wabanaki were not in a world apart
from the Europeans either. They were enmeshed in the new system
and they knew it; otherwise, adoption of Catholicism would have
been out of the question. But they also knew what the Europeans
seemed hardly to grasp—that they were a nation among nations just
as the French or English were. The Wabanaki church was never
simply a creature of French Catholicism or even of one zealous and
devoted Jesuit missionary. For the Wabanaki, the Christian community was their very selves, their very identity, not because they had
sold out to the Europeans but precisely because they were struggling
not to sell out to them.

REVIEW ARTICLE

THE NAZIS’ RELIGIONSPOLITIK:
AN ASSESSMENT OF RECENT LITERATURE
BY

MARK EDWARD RUFF*
The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945. By Richard
Steigmann-Gall. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2003. Pp. xvi, 294.
$34.99)
Richard Steigmann-Gall, “Was National Socialism a Political Religion or a
Religious Politics?” in Michael Geyer and Hartmut Lehmann (eds.), Religion
und Nation: Nation und Religion. Beiträge zu einer unbewältigten
Geschichte (Göttingen:Wallstein Verlag, 2003), pp. 386–408. €30.00
Himmlers Glaubenskrieger: Der Sicherheitsdienst der SS und seine
Religionspolitik, 1933–1941. By Wolfgang Dierker. 2nd ed. (Paderborn:
Schöningh Verlag. 2002. Pp. 639. €82.20.)
Scholarly investigation into the relationship between the German churches
and National Socialism invites controversy.The judgments meted out by historians, journalists, and theologians reveal little consensus even after almost forty
years of acrimonious exchanges and debates. They have portrayed the
churches as beleaguered institutions struggling to keep their heads above
water in the face of relentless state persecution, as heroic individuals courageously spearheading resistance against Nazism, or as opportunists eagerly
offering to collaborate with the regime either out of tactical calculations or
ideological conviction.1 Yet in spite of these clashing verdicts, most scholarly
*Dr. Ruff, an assistant professor of history in Saint Louis University, is deeply indebted
to John Conway, Wilhelm Damberg, Martin Menke, Jonathan Sperber, Jonathan Wiesen,
and Jeff Zalar, as well as members of the Saint Louis University History Department
Colloquium, for their helpful comments on drafts of this article. Responsibility for any
errors of interpretation, however, lies strictly with the author.
1
For a massive annotated bibliography on the Catholic Church struggle, see Joseph
Bottum and David G. Dalin (eds.), The Pius Wars: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII
(Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2004). Currently, there is no recent larger synthetic
work that examines the response of both churches to National Socialism that details the
ever-growing body of scholarship. See also the bibliography in Doris Bergen, Twisted
Cross:The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill, 1996). See also

252

BY MARK EDWARD RUFF

253

accounts show a great deal of unanimity in their depictions of the churches as
the objects of unwelcome intrusions and outright persecution from the
National Socialist state, in which the initiative lay almost completely with the
Nazi regime. To date, most depictions of the churches under Nazi rule have
portrayed this complex relationship between religious and secular authorities
primarily through the eyes of the churches themselves.
Two notable recent works turn this picture upside down.They focus on the
motivations and tactics not of church luminaries but of the Nazis themselves,
who usually (but not always) remained in the driver’s seat in this relationship.
Arguing that many Nazis sincerely believed themselves to be good Christians,
Richard Steigmann-Gall elucidates the religious beliefs of the leading Nazis,
including Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and Bormann.Though he covers this same
terrain,Wolfgang Dierker analyzes in great detail the religious politics and religious beliefs of one particular branch of the Nazi state, the SD, the
Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers SS.The SD was an offshoot of the SS created to gather intelligence on ideological enemies of National Socialism. Only
recently have historians researched its activities.2
These two books have certain superficial features in common.Both appeared
with first-rate publishing houses at roughly the same time. Wolfgang Dierker’s
book, Himmlers Glaubenskrieger: Der Sicherheitsdienst der SS und seine
Religionspolitik, 1933–1941, arrived in 2002 as part of the so-called Blaue
Reihe, or blue series, an extremely well-regarded series produced by the Roman
Catholic historical association, Die Kommission für Zeitgeschichte. Richard
Steigmann-Gall’s book, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity,
1919–1945, was published in 2003 by Cambridge University Press. Both works
were the outgrowths of dissertations by promising younger scholars who had
carried out their research in the 1990’s.
But here the similarities end. Steigmann-Gall’s book bears the burden of
unusually high praise. On the cover-jacket, Helmut Walser Smith extolled this
work “as a brilliant and provocative work that will recast the whole debate on
Christianity and Nazism.”Additional encomia by the eminent scholars Richard

the citations in Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel,“The German Churches and the
Holocaust,”in Dan Stone (ed.), The Historiography of the Holocaust (London, 2004), pp.
296-318.
2
See Jens Banach, Heydrichs Elite. Das Führerkorps der Sicherheitspolizei und des
SD, 1936–1945 (Paderborn, 1998); George Browder, Foundations of the Nazi Police
State: The Formation of Sipo and SD (Lexington, 1990); George Browder, Hitler’s
Enforcers: The Gestapo and the SS Security Service in the Nazi Revolution (Oxford,
1996); Lutz Hachmeister, Der Gegnerforscher. Die Karriere des SS-Führers Franz Alfred
Six (Munich, 1996); Christian Ingrao,“Culture de guerre, imaginaire nazi, violence génocide. Le cas des cadres du S.D.” in Revue d’Histoire moderne et contemporaine, 47
(2000), 265–289.

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THE NAZIS’ RELIGIONSPOLITIK

Evans and Michael Burleigh only bolstered its reputation as a path-breaking
revisionist work that would destroy existing orthodoxies. Such advance
endorsements ensured of course that The Holy Reich would be widely
reviewed. Its revisionism has earned it not only acclaim but also trenchant criticism, so much so that its claims are to be the subject of an upcoming forum
in the Journal of Contemporary History, of which Evans himself is an editor.
Dierker’s unheralded work, in contrast, has been scandalously overlooked in
the United States. Although it has been very well received in Germany, few
American libraries have even purchased it—as of this writing, forty-five,
according to World-Cat.The €82.20 price tag, its length, the lagging publicity,
the fact that Dierker opted to pursue a non-academic career with HewlettPackard, and, above all, the absence of an English translation have muted the
impact that this outstanding book should have had on this side of the Atlantic.
To date, only two reviews have appeared in English-language journals, the
second of which was penned by Steigmann-Gall himself.3
The dissimilarities extend further to style, structure, and methodology.
Steigmann-Gall’s book is clearly written, incisive, and compact. Its approximately 275 pages of text rely, however, primarily on selections from secondary
sources and ephemera.4 There is less firsthand archival work. He made use of
only a relatively small number of collections from seven German archives. In
addition, his scholarship is not always exact.5 As at least one scholar has
pointed out, the footnotes occasionally refer to the wrong event or misrepresent particular arguments or points of view.6 By contrast, Dierker’s considerably lengthier 600-plus-page tome is more narrowly focused. Its scope is
largely restricted to the SD, its origins, development, the ideology of its zealous,
3
See Shelly Baranowski’s review in the Journal of Modern History, 77 (2005), 851,
and Richard Steigmann-Gall’s review in Central European History, 38 (2005), 687–690.
4
German scholars would refer to “gray literature.”
5
In one instance, Steigmann-Gall refers to a meeting convened by Hitler on January
25, 1934, and attended by Martin Niemöller and other prominent Protestant officials, a
meeting that went awry for these opponents of Reichsbischof Müller. Steigmann-Gall
argues, “This encounter has almost always been cast as a classic example of Hitler’s
hatred for Christianity,” referring specifically to p. 76 of John Conway’s classic work, The
Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933–1945 (London, 1968). However, on this page,
Conway actually claims, “Hitler’s innate hostility to the Church, however, tempered
though it was by political expediency, was clearly shown in his interview on 13 March
with the two South German Evangelical Bishops Meiser and Wurm, who came to complain that, despite the declaration of solidarity which the bishops at Hitler’s request had
given to the Reich Bishop on 27 January, Müller’s subsequent actions had only further
demonstrated his untrustworthiness.” Conway was clearly referring to a different meeting that year. See Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, p. 166, and Conway, The Nazi
Persecution of the Churches, p. 76.
6
See the forthcoming article, Irving Hexham,“Goebbels, Rosenberg, and the Problem
of Interpretation in Richard Steigmann-Gall’s Holy Reich,” Journal of Contemporary
History, 42 (2007).

BY MARK EDWARD RUFF

255

if not fanatical employees, and its impact on the German church struggle.
Perhaps somewhat less readable than The Holy Reich on account of its greater
density, it nonetheless contains exceptionally limpid prose, at least by the standards of German academics. It is largely free of serpentine sentences and ponderous theory. More importantly, Dierker’s book is exhaustively and methodically researched. His range of both primary and secondary sources far exceeds
those of Steigmann-Gall. He visited twenty-three archives, including collections
in Moscow and Washington, D.C., and made much more extensive use of collections at the Bundesarchiv Berlin.As we shall see, his work employs secondary sources that Steigmann-Gall did not incorporate into his analysis.
Such differences derive from two very different interpretative frameworks. Even if it occasionally refers to the “polycratic” nature of the Nazi state,
Steigmann-Gall’s book is, at heart, a work of “intentionalist” history.7 This
approach emphasizes that the Nazi regime was a dictatorship.To understand
the decisions and policies of the Nazi state, one needs to analyze the intentions of those at the apex of the Nazi hierarchy—Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels,
Goering, et al. Steigmann-Gall accordingly focuses on the public pronouncements and private utterances of top-ranking Nazi officials. From this more limited foundation, Steigmann-Gall extrapolates universal moral reflections.
“Christianity, in other words, may be the source of some of the same darkness
it abhors,” he informs us.“The discovery that so many Nazis considered themselves or their movement to be Christian makes us similarly uncomfortable.
But the very unpleasantness of this fact makes it all the more important to
look it squarely in the face.”8 Nazism, he emphasizes, was not a political religion but, in certain ways, a perverse extension of Christianity. In other writings, he argues even more forcefully that Nazism cannot be interpreted as a
political religion at all.9
Dierker’s more meticulous work, in contrast, refrains from absolute pronouncements. Larger questions concerning the responsibility of Christianity for
the catastrophes engineered by National Socialism do not factor into his analysis.
What emerges instead, in often painstaking detail, are the day-to-day activities of
the SD and how these, in turn, helped reinforce pre-existing ideological hatred of
the Christian churches.Though not stated directly, this work employs a moderate
functionalism, in which structural circumstances deepened and radicalized the
SD’s hostility toward Christianity.10 Only at the close does he hint at the larger
7
On occasion, he refers to “the party’s internal social Darwinism”—see The Holy
Reich, p. 242. For an overview of the debates between “intentionalists” and “functionalists”see Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems & Perspectives of Interpretation,
4th ed. (New York, 2000), pp. 69–92.
8
Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, p. 267.
9
Steigmann-Gall,“Was National Socialism a Political Religion or a Religious Politics?”
in Geyer and Lehmann (eds.), Religion und Nation.
10
See footnote 7 for an overview of the functionalist interpretation.

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THE NAZIS’ RELIGIONSPOLITIK

implications of his subject-matter, arguing that the participants in the SD believed
themselves to be representing a political religion.11
But even if the reader is left, in turn, to flesh out some of the larger implications of Dierker’s work, it is clear that these authors come to opposite conclusions about the relationship between the churches and the National
Socialist regime. The differences in methodology and conclusions point to
larger historiographical questions that invite further exploration. This essay
will explore three such topics by analyzing the differences between these two
books. It will first attempt to shed light on the nature of Nazi religious beliefs,
secondly, consider how the structure of the regime shaped Nazi attitudes
toward Christianity, and, finally, evaluate the place of the Nazi regime in the
larger process of secularization in twentieth-century Europe.
Were Nazism and Christianity compatible? Dierker takes it as a given that
the most prominent Nazi leaders believed the National Socialist and Christian
ideologies to be incompatible. This is precisely the position that SteigmannGall dismisses at the outset as all too typical of the existing scholarship. In fact,
in a recent review of Dierker’s book, he alleges that Dierker’s “affirmation of
the conventional wisdom on the churches in the Third Reich also brings with
it repetition of many of the fallacies.”12 Instead, he argues, Nazi leaders were
genuine Christians. They sincerely believed that their beliefs were Christian,
even if they diverged from Christian orthodoxy. Top Nazi officials, he maintains, earnestly subscribed to the ideals of a “positive Christianity,” proclaiming
their faith in an Aryan Jesus, rejecting the Old Testament, and viewing Paul as
a Jewish betrayer of Christ’s message of rejuvenation. Likewise, they identified
with Martin Luther, who had tried to restore the true essence of Christianity
that had been destroyed by the Roman Catholic Church. Liberal Protestantism,
he argues, shaped the Nazis’ conceptions of “positive Christianity.” It attempted
to reconcile faith with science, became increasingly anti-Semitic, and was identified with the national cause. Though often violently anticlerical, Hitler
remained committed to a nonsectarian positive Christianity and “never
attacked the faith of Catholicism.”13 It is not difficult to see how such claims
lead Steigmann-Gall to his conclusion that Christianity ultimately shares partial
responsibility for the sins of National Socialism.
But he pushes his argument further. Nazism represented something even
more basic: the attempt to fight secularization.“. . . [F]or many of its leaders,
Nazism was not the result of a ‘Death of God’ in secularized society, but rather
a radicalized and singularly horrific attempt to preserve God against secularized society.”14 Tellingly, Steigmann-Gall does not develop the second part of
11

Dierker, Himmlers Glaubenskrieger, pp. 548–549.
Steigmann-Gall’s review in Central European History, 38 (2005), 687–690.
13
Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, p. 65.
14
Ibid., p. 12.
12

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257

this argument in his book to show how Nazi leaders believed their crusades
to be directed against secularism. One would have liked to have seen quotations from leading Nazis in which they defend their movement as preventing
a secular tide from washing over the German nation.
At the most fundamental level, Steigmann-Gall’s work raises the question of
canonicity.Believing oneself to be a Christian,he ultimately argues,is tantamount
to being a Christian. In this vein, he rejects the claims made by previous scholars who argue that “either such Christians deceived themselves or they were not
truly Christian.”15 Such definitions of canonicity are unreliable since “others
whose Christian credentials are undisputed would similarly fail to pass.”16 Hitler,
therefore,was a Christian,even if there is no evidence that he accepted the divinity and resurrection of Christ, the dogma that lies at the core of Christian teachings. But Steigmann-Gall’s redefinition is ultimately too loose to be especially
useful. It is reminiscent of postmodern definitions of art that define art as that
“which the artist says it is,” claims that can easily lead to fruitless controversies.
To determine whether the Nazis were or were not Christians, historians
have a more difficult challenge in reconciling statements by the Nazis that
alternatively praised and excoriated Christianity. Steigmann-Gall accuses
Dierker of ignoring the voices of those Nazis who “upheld Christianity as a
fundament both of the personal beliefs and of Nazi ideology itself.”17 But
Steigmann-Gall himself does not always successfully explain away the sundry
anti-Christian statements that he did not incorporate into his analysis. In his
memoirs, for instance,Albert Speer reported how Hitler expounded his views
on Christianity to a visiting delegation of Arabs. Discussing the implications of
the battle of Tours, Hitler held forth:“`Had the Arabs won the battle, the world
would be Mohammedan today. For theirs was a religion that believed in
spreading the faith by the sword and subjugating all nations to that faith.The
Germanic peoples would have become heirs to that religion. Such a creed
was perfectly suited to the Germanic temperament.’” Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have
been unable to contend with the harsher climate and conditions of the country. They could not have kept down the more vigorous natives, so that ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this
Mohammedan Empire. Hitler usually concluded this historical speculation by
remarking:“‘You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion.Why
didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the
Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have
been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be
Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?’”18
15

Ibid., p. 5. He directs some of his criticism at Doris Bergen’s book, Twisted Cross.
Ibid., p. 6.
17
Steigmann-Gall’s review in Central European History, 38 (2005), 689.
18
Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York, 1970), p. 96.
16

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Dierker’s work also provides many similar statements that were antiChristian. He quotes Hitler, who excoriated Christianity as being little more
than “Bolshevism,” an offshoot of Judaism. In 1942, Hitler prophesied the end
of Christianity, not within his lifetime but within several hundred years: “It
could take a hundred or two hundred years. I am sorry that I, like Moses, can
only see the promised land from afar.We are growing into a sunny, truly tolerant Weltanschauung.”19 In another monologue from 1941, he vented his spleen
against the churches, concluding with an ominous threat:“I am forced to let a
tremendous amount pile up inside me; that doesn’t mean, however, that I have
let go of what I have noted and not reacted against immediately. It will be put
into an account and the score will be settled. I could do nothing against the
Jews as well for a long time. It doesn’t make any sense to create artificially additional problems; the more shrewdly one acts, the better.”20
To deflect such criticism that he ignores the anti-Christian statements by
the Nazis, Steigmann-Gall takes several tacks. Relying primarily on evidence
from the early Nazi years, he insists that Hitler’s mounting hostility toward the
churches arose only much later when the Protestants were unable to achieve
unity.21 Even at the close of his life when his beliefs approached those of a
theism, he “put limits on his apostasy.”22 He never abandoned his belief in the
relevance of the Aryan Jesus nor did he espouse atheism or agnosticism. Even
the more virulent anti-Christian utterances reveal, at most, Hitler’s well-known
capacity for self-contradiction.
In addition, Steigmann-Gall questions some of the sources that ostensibly
reveal Hitler’s anti-Christian fervor. He cites a then yet-to-be published study
that calls into question the credibility of Hitler’s Table Talks.23 Though he pro19

Dierker, Himmlers Glaubenskrieger, p. 23.
Ibid., p. 534.The original reads as follows:“Ich bin gezwungen, ungeheuer viel bei
mir aufzuhäufen; das bedeutet aber nicht, dass in mir erlischt, was ich, ohne gleich zu
reagieren, zur Kenntnis nehme. Es kommt auf ein Konto; eines Tages wird das Buch herausgezogen.Auch den Juden gegenüber musste ich lange tatenlos bleiben. Es hat keinen
Sinn, künstlich auch zusätzliche Schwierigkeiten zu machen; je klüger man verfährt,
desto besser.”I have taken some liberties in the translation of this passage, as the German
idioms do not translate especially well into English.
21
Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, pp. 252–253.Yet it is important to remember that
the debates about the reliability of Hitler’s anti-Christian utterances extend back to the
1950’s and 1960’s. For an overview, see Heike Kreutzer, Das Reichskirchenministerium
im Gefüge der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft (Düsseldorf, 2000), pp. 33–36. For
discussions in the 1950’s and 1960’s, see Walter Adolph,“Ziel und Taktik der Kirchenpolitik Hitlers, insbesondere gegenüber der katholischen Kirche,” in Wichmann-Jahrbuch
für Kirchengeschichte im Bistum Berlin, 11/12 (1958/9), pp. 131–142, Klaus Scholder,
“Die evangelische Kirche in der Sicht der nationalsozialistischen Führung bis zum
Kriegsausbruch,” in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 16 (1968), 15–35, and Dierker,
Himmlers Glaubenskrieger, p. 499.
22
Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, p. 260.
23
Ibid., p. 253.
20

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259

vides no details as to why the Table Talks might lack legitimacy, it seems that
Martin Bormann, the most anti-Christian member of Hitler’s inner coterie, may
have been in charge of compiling Hitler’s monologues and potentially imbued
them with even darker anti-Christian tones. Yet the anti-Christian examples
that Dierker brings to the table (including Hitler’s prophecy of the end of
Christianity) come not from the Tischgespräche but from another collection
that Steigmann-Gall did not analyze, a collection of Hitler’s monologues compiled by Heinrich Helm.24 The statements there corroborate the overall picture
presented in the Table Talks.25
Steigmann-Gall essentially argues that we should take the Nazis at their
word that they were genuine Christians. Previous historians “hold that these
actors completely rejected their Christian script after the curtain came
down.”26 But the Nazi leaders were long known for their duplicity. Hitler promised to uphold the terms of the Concordat. He insisted that he had no further
territorial claims to make in Europe. In light of this pattern of mendacity, why
should we give their religious statements credibility? To assess the veracity of
the Nazis’ religious affirmations, one needs a more careful analysis of the context in which they were articulated to determine whether the statements
affirming Christianity were made in a setting that was both religious and
public or whether the anti-Christian invective was overwhelmingly private.
The Nazis were faced with serious constraints on their anti-Christianity.
Overtly anti-Christian measures were much more likely to alienate a larger section of the population than their anti-Semitic measures, since practicing
Catholics and Protestants made up a much larger segment of the population
than German Jews. Outright declarations of atheism or even anticlerical invective would expose them to charges that they had adopted the tactics and ideology of their Communist adversaries.The Nazis’ public statements were thus
simply not always a reliable guide to their thinking.
Yet there is an additional possibility that neither author explores.The Nazis’
contradictory positions on Christianity may also simply have been a sign of
their own ideological incoherence. Nazi positions on many ideological questions were frequently muddled. Nazi ideologues denounced Bolshevism’s
attacks on private property, while Hermann Goering created his giant state-run
Hermann-Goering-Werke. Hitler’s views on painting were unabashedly traditional, yet he also embraced Speer’s monumental and often strikingly modern
architectural visions. Why then should we expect ideological consistency on
the question of religion? After all, few Nazi ideologues were trained theologians who carefully thought through their religious beliefs. Steigmann-Gall
24
Werner Jochmann, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1944. Die
Aufzeichnungen Heinrich Heims (Hamburg, 1980).
25
He likewise discounts the statements attributed to Hitler by Hermann
Rauschning—see The Holy Reich, pp. 28–29.
26
Ibid., p. 3.

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emphasizes that Hitler never questioned his faith in an Aryan Jesus even as he
became increasingly anti-Christian. Such a stance may have simply been part
of the welter of contradictions that characterized Nazi religious beliefs. The
leading Nazis lacked the theological competence (and arguably the desire) to
make a symbiosis of Nazism and Christianity convincing and enduring.
Further complicating our understanding of Nazi attitudes toward
Christianity was the tangled structure of the Nazi state. Here, Dierker’s moderate functionalism leads to a very different set of conclusions. Hitler, he notes,
propounded the sincere belief that the Nazi ideology was always to be predicated on action. Ideologies, Hitler averred, were useless if they were unable to
be realized through state action. Likewise, state and party had no fixed value if
they were not anchored in an ideological core.27 As contradictory as individual facets of the Nazi Weltanschauung may be, they achieve a greater coherence when seen as part of an ongoing dynamic relationship between action,
ideology, and political tactics.An intentionalist analysis of Hitler’s own religious
beliefs, Steigmann-Gall’s home turf, may paradoxically bring us back to a functionalist analysis of the day-to-day treatment by state and party of the churches
and Christianity.
Dierker’s functionalist approach strengthens his claim that the Nazi leaders
believed that their ideology and Christianity were irreconcilable. Few historians would adopt a totally intentionalist approach when attempting to explain
the planning that led to the Holocaust.Why should we do the same with the
Nazis’ religious policies, especially when many at the lower levels of the Nazi
bureaucracy were clamoring for a “final solution to the religious question?”28
Dierker recognizes that the Nazis’ church policy was steered by political reality and not just ideology: it was a potent mixture of political realism and ideological conviction, in which these two forces shaped and reinforced each
other.The mixture of tactical reserve, ideological firmness in which violence
always remained a possibility, and persistent encroachments on the churches’
sphere of influence explains the vacillating policies toward the churches.29
Even though the war tempered some of the most severe measures against
the churches, it was clear that Nazi attitudes toward the churches became
increasingly hardened from the mid 1930’s onwards. Dierker focuses on the
anti-Christian zealots who were interested in dealing with the churches most
radically and brutally. A group that might be likened to greyhounds straining
at the leash, these ideological hardliners were shaped considerably by their
place in the Nazi polyocracy.30 Led by an angry ex-priest,Albert Hartl, the reli27

Dierker, Himmlers Glaubenskrieger, p. 120.
For another recent work which also opens up the question of the structure of the
Nazis state and Hitler’s role in shaping religious policy, see Kreutzer, Das Reichskirchenministerium im Gefüge der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft.
29
Dierker, Himmlers Glaubenskrieger, p. 499.
30
Ibid., pp. 60–95.
28

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261

gious affairs branch of the SD encouraged anticlerical attitudes. It housed
other disgruntled ex-priests who vilified their former calling.31 It drew a significant percentage of its employees from the lower middle classes. Its leadership included academics and students who had not pursued a profession in
the universities or had interrupted their studies. Once in the SD, these workers lived together in barracks, where they worked grueling hours for low
wages. Contrasting their fortune with that of the better-paid and more highly
regarded men of the Gestapo, they developed an inferiority complex which
manifested itself in an unwillingness to compromise along tactical or pragmatic lines. These hardliners who strove to uphold the purity of Nazi ideals
believed themselves to represent the elite within the Nazi state.
The men at the SD, a number of ex-priests included, chafed over the unwillingness of their superiors in the Nazi state to launch a series of initiatives against
the churches.At heart, the SD wanted to minimize the churches’ influence and
even push Christianity as such completely out of German society.32 They sought
a radical separation of church and state, the seizure of the churches’ financial
assets, and the destruction of all religious ancillary organizations.To these ends,
the SD gathered information on church officials, attempted—usually unsuccessfully—to infiltrate religious organizations through the use of spies and turncoats,
conducted raids and arrests, and provided the ideological justifications for the
state’s antireligious measures.That they did not succeed in their long-term goal
of the “destruction of all Christianity” does not indicate that they had given up
on it: rather, this final struggle had to be postponed for tactical reasons until a
more opportune day at the close of the war.33 Regrettably, Dierker’s book concludes in 1941, as the sources for an analysis of the remaining four years were
either nonexistent or unavailable.34
The functionalist approach helps explain the vacillations in Nazi religious
policies. At times, the SD pressured the Gestapo to pursue a tougher policy
against the churches to the point of even spying on Gestapo officials and
accusing them of ideological laxity.35 It created a sweeping definition of opposition to the regime by allowing the “law” to be understood not just as a formal

31
This finding corroborates Kevin Spicer’s analyses of “brown priests,” who consisted
largely of disgruntled priests with strong nationalist leanings on the margins of their
church. See Kevin Spicer, “Gespaltene Loyalität. ‘Braune Priester’ im Dritten Reich am
Beispiel der Diözese Berlin,” translated by Ilse Andrews, Historisches Jahrbuch, 122
(2002), 287–320, and Kevin Spicer,“To Serve God or Hitler: Nazi Priests, a Preliminary
Discussion,” in John K. Roth and Elisabeth Maxwell (eds.), Remembering for the Future
2000. The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide. Volume 2: Ethics and Religion (London,
2001), pp. 493–508.
32
Dierker, Himmlers Glaubenskrieger, p. 170.
33
Ibid., p. 522.
34
Ibid., p. 493.
35
On the relationship between the Gestapo and the SD, see ibid., pp. 289–301.

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system of laws but as the Nazi ideology itself.36 On the other hand, the SD’s
zeal was so great that it had to be reined in at times by higher-ranking officials.
Its relentless attempts to spy on and infiltrate the Catholic Church, especially,
had the effect of making church officials take extra precautions to guard their
privacy. They increasingly operated in secret, thereby exacerbating the SD’s
fear that the Roman Catholic Church was by nature a conspiratorial institution
hostile toward National Socialism. This was a self-fulfilling prophecy which
only led the SD to propose ever harsher measures toward the churches, a
“cumulative radicalization” that led SD members to envision ultimately a “final
solution to the Christian problem.”37
This functionalist account also elucidates how the behavior of local Nazi
officials toward Christian institutions diverged from the public pronouncements of the top leaders. Steigmann-Gall points out, for instance, that Baldur
von Schirach instructed the Hitler Youth not to sponsor their activities during
Sunday morning to avoid conflicts with Christian church services.38 From this
and other public statements, he concludes that von Schirach maintained a
“positive attitude toward religious observance in the HJ.”39 Yet the history of
the Hitler Youth at the local level is replete with accounts of skirmishes with
members of the Catholic Youth, the distribution of songs with biting antiCatholic lyrics (Hetzlieder), and the scheduling of events to conflict with
Sunday services or Catholic youth activities.40 Either local party leaders chose
to ignore blithely the order from von Schirach or they believed that they were
correctly discerning the will of von Schirach and Hitler. More telling than von
Schirach’s public statements was his refusal to discipline the local officials
who countermanded his instructions. Even after Müller had ordered the members of the evangelical youth to join the Hitler Youth, the Protestant youth
organizations were still disbanded.
Above all, Dierker’s approach sheds light on a central paradox, which
Steigmann-Gall did not address: the Nazis, supposedly believing in positive
36

Ibid., pp. 378–379.
Ibid., pp. 491–534. See in particular, p. 528, footnote 179, where reference is made
to the “Endlösung der religiösen Frage,” in the RSHA documents.
38
Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, p. 215.
39
Ibid., p. 216.
40
On the encroachments by the Hitler Youth, see Christoph Kösters, Katholische
Verbände und Moderne Gesellschaft. Organisationsgeschichte und Vereinskultur im
Bistum Münster 1918 bis 1945 (Paderborn, 1995), and Georg Pahlke, Trotz Verbot nicht
Tot: Katholische Jugend in ihrer Zeit, 1933–1945 (Paderborn, 1995). See the following
example of a bitingly anti-Catholic song distributed to thousands at Mass in Speyer:
“Die alte Judenschande ist endlich aufgefegt/Die schwarze Lügenbande wühlt weiter
unentwegt./ Du deutsches Volk, sag, muss das sein?/ Dass Dich bespeit das schwarze
Schwein./ Wenn nicht, dann dresch doch drauf/dass Funken fliegen hoch hinauf!/
Halli, hallo. . . .” Historisches Archiv des Erzbistums Köln, Gen. II 23.11, 16, Flugblatt, das
zu Tauschend in Speyer in den hl. Messen verteilt wurde, no date.
37

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Christianity, did little to advance the cause of those committed Christians who
embraced Nazism, including most notably the ardently pro-Nazi German
Christians.Time after time, Dierker shows how almost all of the attempts at rapprochement by prominent Christians, including Hanns Kerrl in the Reichs
Kirchenministerium, were rebuffed, sometimes by SD officials. In 1934,
Himmler ordered the remaining clergy out of the SS.41 Even Catholic clergy
who were regarded as “brown priests” were regarded by the SD as potential
double-agents or undermining the work of National Socialism by trying to “gain
influence” in the Nazi state.42 Such disdain for tradition underscores once again
the explanatory power of the functionalist approach, which showed how the
representatives of the old order—the army, the civil service, the traditional judiciary, and, importantly, the traditional churches—lost out in the struggle against
the more dynamic and radical forces within Nazism, the “prerogative state” as it
has been called.The true believers in National Socialism were convinced that
all attempts to adapt Christianity to National Socialism ran counter to the
National Socialist ideology. In the words of one lecturer from the SD:“We must
prevent, however, that these efforts go too far, because a national Christianity,
which we would receive in this case, is much more difficult to fight than an
international Christianity. The fight is not over Christianity and a Christianity
appropriate (to Germany) but rather over Christianity or no Christianity!”43
Even if we accept Steigmann-Gall’s premise that prominent Nazi leaders
genuinely believed in the ideals of a positive Christianity, such observations
lead us to question how central these beliefs were, in fact, to the Nazi ideology. Likewise, Dierker might have detailed more precisely just where the antiChristian measures ranked on the Nazis’ list of priorities.And here it is all the
more regrettable that Dierker’s sources do not permit him to extend his analysis in any great detail beyond the year 1941, for the Nazi religious policies
remained muddled during the war.44 Hartl was removed from his position
within the RSHA on the pretext of his having made sexual advances to a young
woman in his department. The Department IVB, which examined “religious
opposition,” was dismantled by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Heydrich’s successor,
who apparently did not understand how Heydrich “could harbor such a deadly
hatred of the (Catholic Church).”45
Yet at the same time,it is clear that the most radical ideologues had not given
up their aspirations to deal a death blow to Christianity, and at the close of the
war would have been free of the tactical restraints on their ambitions. In addi41

Dierker, Himmlers Glaubenskrieger, p. 156.
Ibid., pp. 356–359.
43
Referat “Nationalkirchliche, christliche Bestrebungen,” October 16, 1935, quoted in
Dierker, Himmlers Glaubenskrieger, p. 228.
44
Many of the SD records were either systematically destroyed, or perished in Allied
air raids.
45
Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, p. 252; Dierker, Himmlers Glaubenskrieger,
pp. 106–108.
42

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tion, some of those who had been active in the Religious Opponents division
of the SD were directly supervised by those co-ordinating the deportations of
the Jews to the East, an ominous precedent should these hard-liners have
gained further power at the close of the war. Other Nazi militants threatened to
hang the Pope in St. Peter’s square. Certainly Hitler’s increasingly belligerent
anti-Christian rhetoric and promises to settle the score with churchmen like
von Galen hardly portended an auspicious future for organized Christianity.
What was the long-term significance of the Nazis’ religious attitudes?
Historians can place these jumbled beliefs in the larger context of a postChristian Europe.To begin this task, historians and scholars of religion need to
dissect the Nazis’ “faith journey” more carefully. Hitler began as a Catholic,
became more sympathetic toward Protestantism, became extremely anticlerical in the process, but, as Steigmann-Gall points out, probably ended up somewhere near theism.46 On one level, this admission might undermine his fundamental premise. Even if the Nazis believed that they were fighting
secularism and thwarting secularization, as Steigmann-Gall insists, their own
anti-Christian actions and anticlerical beliefs paradoxically promoted secularization, or at the least, the end of confessionalism, which some sociologists of
religion and theologians see as the precursor to secularism.
Similarly, one might view their effects as similar to those of liberal
Protestantism on Christian faith in Germany.Already in the late nineteenth century, many liberal Protestants in Germany called into question many Christian
orthodoxies but outwardly retained a Christian vocabulary and patterns of
thought. In their rational theologies, they embarked upon a search for the “historical Jesus,” posited rational explanations for Christ’s alleged miracles, leading to what Robert Ericksen has called a “loss of content” and a “loss of constituency.”47 Neither all liberal Christians nor all Nazis, moreover, formally left
the churches, including most tellingly, Hitler. Some of their members had some
inward revulsion toward making this step: a decisive break with a religion that
threatens eternal damnation and had defined German culture was not always
easy, especially for Nazis who were middle-aged. One associates this sort of a
break more often with youth. Others, including Hitler, may have feared the
political consequences of taking this drastic step. But the children of both liberal Protestants and Nazis in the 1930’s may have been less likely to retain their
Christianity, once they reached adulthood.
For these reasons, many historians and sociologists have argued that Nazism
constituted a “political religion.”48 Its propaganda was filled with many pseudo46

Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, p. 259.
See Robert Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel/Paul Althaus/
Emanuel Hirsch (New Haven, 1995), p. 13.
48
The discussions on this topic extend back to the 1930’s. For summaries of these
debates, see Hans Maier (ed.), Totalitarismus und Politische Religionen. Konzepte des
Diktaturvergleichs,Vols. I and II (Paderborn, 1996, 1997). For a translation in English, see
47

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religious elements with speeches such as “Für Dein ist das Reich.”It stressed the
notion of Hitler as a savior who himself suggested that he was a prophet who
had often been ridiculed and scorned.49 Historians have often viewed
Communism and Nazism as ersatz-religions that bore many similarities to
Christianity. It should hardly be surprising that the Nazis held on to pre-existing
Christian mental frameworks. Those steeped in values and upbringings very
rarely escape these structures altogether, even when they otherwise abandon
the faith. Here, one might see the Nazis as a step on the way toward a postChristian world, a (mostly) secularized world, in which a general Christian
framework became filled with an anti-Christian content. Such a model also
explains the rejection of paganism by Hitler that Steigmann-Gall describes. But
the Nazi migration away from Christianity proved to be a dead end.After 1945,
few followed the Nazis’ specific path away from Christianity. Only a few unrepentant Nazis joined such organizations as the “German Unitarians,” a free-religious pantheistic association that has been described as a “Sammelbecken für
versprengte Nationalsozialisten und Deutschgläubige.”50 Some rejoined the
Protestant and Roman Catholic churches, while others simply kept their distance from all forms of religious life. Nazism thus may have represented a
middle-ground between Christianity and the current European secularism, but
it was a stopping point that had little direct impact on the more powerful wave
of secularization that ensued in the late 1950’s and 1960’s.51
Steigmann-Gall’s arguments that insist the Nazis should be regarded as
Christian even if their beliefs had become diffuse resemble those that have
been used to deny that secularization has taken place in contemporary
Europe. Over the last fifteen years, sociologists of religion have disagreed over
the extent to which Europe has lost its Christian heritage.52 In these contro-

Hans Maier (ed.), Totalitarianism and Political Religions: Volume I: Concepts for the
Comparison of Dictatorships, translated by Jodi Bruhn (London and New York, 2004).
For another important collection of essays, see Michael Ley and Julius Schoeps, Der
Nationalsozialismus als politische Religion (Bodenheim bei Mainz, 1997), and in particular, Philippe Burrin’s essay, “Die politischen Religionen: Das MythologischSymbolische in einer säkularisierten Welt,” pp. 168–185. See also George Mosse, The
Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism & Mass Movements in Germany
from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New York, 1975).
49
See Ian Kershaw, The ‘Hitler Myth.’ Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford,
1989).
50
Kurt Nowak,“Deutschgläubige Bewegungen” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Bd.
VIII (Berlin, 1981), pp. 554–559, as quoted in Dierker, Himmlers Glaubenskrieger, p. 117.
51
See Mark Edward Ruff, The Wayward Flock: Catholic Youth in Postwar West
Germany, 1945–1965 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2005), for fuller citations of the literature on this point.
52
Steve Bruce, God Is Dead: Secularization in the West (Oxford, 2002), pp. 45–59;
Rodney Stark,“Secularization, R.I.P.,” Sociology of Religion, 60 (1999), 249–273. Stark has
argued that medieval and early modern Britons were no more religious than their contemporaries, citing examples of superstition in the past and conflicts between laity and

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THE NAZIS’ RELIGIONSPOLITIK

versies, none of the participants have quarreled over the reality of declining
church attendance. Instead, those who insist that secularization has not taken
place point to lingering evangelical narratives, in which secular phenomena
such as dieting contain “narratives” of backsliding, temptation, and sin.53 Like
Steigmann-Gall, they posit very loose definitions of religion, raising, once again,
the question of canonicity.The presence of New Age groups, they claim, is evidence that Europe is emphatically not secular.Their critics, in contrast, maintain that these New Age movements put forward highly individualistic and diffuse beliefs that verge on pantheism—views that are certainly not Christian.54
They point to the absence of orthodox beliefs amongst many Europeans and
the disappearance of notions of religious obligation and religious community.
The fact that many Europeans today are still formally members of their
churches, moreover, parallels the reality that many Nazis also chose to retain
their church membership in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
At the heart of these controversies may be political and religious agendas.
The historian Robert Ericksen has argued that German society was less secular than many historians have assumed. The churches, he writes elsewhere,
could (thus) have done more to oppose Nazi policies and to rescue Jews from
the Holocaust.55 Going even further, Steigmann-Gall concludes that the
churches adeptly manufactured and manipulated a myth of resistance to hostile paganists to further their own political and ideological agendas both
during the Third Reich and especially after 1945. It ultimately justified conservative Christian Democratic movements throughout Europe:“. . . what we

clergy over the lack of allegiance to orthodox beliefs.While there probably never were
coherent religious communities that were completely uniform, in some eras they were
more uniform and coherent than in others. For other literature, see Grace Davie,
Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging (Oxford, 1994). Rodney
Stark and L. Iannacone,“A Supply-Side Reinterpretation of the ‘Secularization’ of Europe”
in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 33 (1994), 230–252, and Rodney Stark
and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion (Berkeley,
California, 2000).
53
For the literature that argues that the secularization narrative should be abandoned,
see Jeffrey Cox,“Master Narratives of Long-Term Religious Change,”in Hugh McLeod and
Werner Ustorf (eds.), The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750–2000
(Cambridge, 2003), pp. 201–217; Jeffrey Cox,“Secularization and Other Master Narratives
of Religion in Modern Europe,” in Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, 14 (No. 1, 2001), 24–35;
Callum G. Brown,“The Secularisation Decade:The 1960s,” in McLeod and Ustorf (eds.),
The Decline of Christendom, p. 37; and Brown’s The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800–2000 (Cambridge, 2001); David Nash, “Reconnecting
Religion with Social and Cultural History: Secularization’s Failure as a Master Narrative,”
Cultural and Social History, 1 (2004), 302–325. Of these authors, Nash argues most
forcefully for the persistence of evangelical narratives.
54
Bruce, God Is Dead, pp. 90–95.
55
Robert Ericksen and Susannah Heschel, Betrayal: The German Churches and the
Holocaust (Minneapolis, 1999), pp. 4, 10.

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267

suppose Nazism must surely have been about usually tells as much about contemporary societies as about the past purportedly under review. The insistence that Nazism was an anti-Christian movement has been one of the most
enduring truisms of the past fifty years. It started as a preconception even
before the movement gained power and only gained strength after the war.
For Western societies intent on rebuilding themselves after the worst devastation in world history and facing a new atheistic “menace,” it could be argued
that preserving the truism was a political necessity. . . . Exploring the possibility that many Nazis regarded themselves as Christian would have decisively
undermined the myths of the Cold War and the regeneration of the German
nation that the metaphor of the Stunde Null (zero hour) so precisely represented.”56 How these narratives of resistance were constructed is a topic far
beyond the scope of this essay, one that requires much more careful historical analysis. But in any case it is fallacious to conclude that because these narratives were constructed by churchmen and scholars during the Nazi era and
thereafter, they lack historical veracity.57
In sum, Steigmann-Gall is correct in perceiving that not all of the statements
made by prominent Nazis were hostile toward Christianity. In so doing, he has
performed a helpful service to the study of Nazi Germany, especially in correcting those who commonly assume that all of the Nazis were uniformly and
consistently hostile toward Christianity. But he overstates the case when he
argues that the Nazis’ positive statements toward Christianity indicated a genuine belief in Christian teachings. In this context, Dierker’s careful scholarship,
the result of the meticulous handling of many complicated sources, tempers
some of the sensationalism of The Holy Reich.

56

Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, p. 266.
On this point, see Mark Edward Ruff, “The Postmodern Challenge to the
Secularization Thesis: A Critical Assessment,” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religionsund Kirchengeschichte, 99 (2005), 385–401.
57

REVIEW ESSAYS
MORE POPES THAN PIETY? APPROACHES TO RELIGION
IN THE NEW CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY
The New Cambridge Medieval History.Vol. IV: c. 1024–c. 1198. Parts 1 and 2.
Edited by David Luscombe and Jonathan Riley-Smith. (New York:
Cambridge University Press. 2004. Pp. xxii, 917, xx, 959. $180.00 each.)
It is unquestionably magisterial. Clad in mauve dust jackets decorated with
golden, interlaced borders, the two volumes (called parts) that make up the
1916 pages of Volume IV of the New Cambridge Medieval History were more
than ten years in the making.The individual chapters are written in all cases
by recognized experts, a number of them now emeriti and the deans of their
respective scholarly areas. Although the pages, like those of their 1920’s predecessor, the Cambridge Medieval History, are packed with small print and
hence not particularly inviting, the volumes have been produced with truly
extraordinary accuracy. (I found only three typos in the entire two volumes.)
The relatively few illustrations are well chosen and reproduced; the maps in
part two are helpful and professionally done. We feel that we are in the presence of auctoritas and gravitas—and not only because the volumes weigh in
at over three and a half pounds each.
The editors,David Luscombe and Jonathan Riley-Smith,in short introductions
to the two parts, maintain that the period covered, ca. 1024–ca. 1198, was a turning point in relations between Islam, Byzantium, and the Latin West and that the
Europe surveyed here is interpreted broadly to include the Near East and North
Africa. In contrast to the twenty-five chapters and 1000 pages of the twelfth-century volume of the Cambridge Medieval History, which began with church
reform and ended with medieval philosophy, the NCMH has forty-two chapters
and almost 2000 pages and appears to give considerably more attention to social
and economic history.A comparison of the NCMH with its predecessor should
thus enable one to see how much the study and interpretation of eleventh- and
twelfth-century European history has changed over the past century.
Nonetheless, for all that is useful, reliable, comprehensive, and judicious
about this handbook, it in fact gives little sense of whether basic scholarly
questions have altered since 1926, especially in the area of religious history,
which will be of particular interest to readers of this journal. Although a multiauthored guide such as the NCMH naturally cannot advance radical, idiosyncratic, or highly controversial theses, these two fat volumes leave one with the
impression that interpretation has changed only a little around the edges over
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the past one hundred years. Since the editors never justify the devotion of
almost twice as much space to this period as to others covered in the NCMH
or indeed discuss the choice of beginning and end dates, the reader is left puzzled not only about the trends of recent historiography but also about how the
years between 1024 and 1198 are to be characterized. Before I question
whether it is true that interpretation has changed little or ask how we should
interpret what was once known as “the twelfth-century renaissance,” I
describe what this mammoth work covers and accomplishes.
Volume IV, like other volumes in the NCMH, begins with what are called
themes—that is, aspects of institutional, political, social, economic, and cultural
history (such as law, literature, demography, and war) better not treated under
geographical headings. The theme chapters are followed, in Part 2, by a very
detailed political and institutional history of Europe and the Mediterranean,
area by area, with the larger regions divided chronologically. Germany, Italy, the
papacy, France, Spain, England, and Byzantium receive two chapters each;
Russia, Poland, Scandinavia, Hungary, the Latin kingdom in the East, Egypt,
Syria, and Scotland, Wales, and Ireland taken together, receive one each. The
individual authors have clearly been enjoined to avoid teleology or so-called
Whig history—an injunction signaled through the NCMH by the studied
refusal to give any titles to the volumes other than chronological ones.
“Contest of Empire and Papacy” (Cambridge Medieval History,Volume V) and
“Victory and the Papacy” (CMH, Volume VI) are replaced by the blander “c.
1024–c. 1198” (NCMH, Vol. IV) and “c. 1198–c. 1300” (NCMH, Vol. V). But the
categories of dynasty and nation persistently intrude, just as they did in the volumes of the 1920’s. Free of assumptions about national or ethnic character, the
entire second part of Volume IV is nonetheless organized primarily around
what would become the nations of modern Europe. Several of the chapters
(Giovanni Tabacco on Italy, Michael Angold and Paul Magdalino on Byzantium,
Thomas Keefe on England) are structured in whole or in part as a series of
reigns or dynasties, although some (for example, Peter Linehan on Spain and
Peter Sawyer on Scandinavia) try to avoid this, using social or demographic
trends instead, and the authors (Constance Bouchard, John Baldwin, Michel
Bur) who treat France pay admirable attention to regional and linguistic differences and the importance of local lords. The chapters differ greatly in the
amount of documentation provided, ranging from one of I. S. Robinson’s articles on the papacy with 616 footnotes to articles by Martin Dimnik, Giovanni
Tabacco, Geoffrey Barrow, and Hans Eberhard Mayer with none. Full bibliographies of secondary material are provided for each chapter, but the absence of
supporting references in some places is annoying, especially in cases where a
scholarly disagreement is referred to but no citations given. The tone of the
articles varies enormously as well. All are carefully written, but in a number
the prose is rather lifeless. Several authors address recent debates implicitly
(there are, for example, a number of different definitions of “feudal” at play in
the various chapters, although all authors agree that the word is problematic)
but the reader perks up in relief when Susan Reynolds, Jean Flori, and Peter

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Kidson tackle modern assumptions and out-of-date interpretations directly and
in distinctive voices.
All in all, the focus and coverage of the NCMH has changed far less in comparison to the old CMH than one might have expected. There is really little
more on agriculture and domestic space than there was before, although it is
now in a chapter called “the rural economy and demographic growth” rather
than one called “feudalism” (CMH, Vol. IV) or “England” (CMH, Vol. V). The
period is no longer titled “Empire and Papacy,” but the amount of attention
given to the history of the papacy, papal institutions, and church law has, if anything, grown. Peter Landau on canon law, H. E. J. Cowdrey on church structure,
four chapters by I. S. Robinson on ecclesiastical institutions, Uta-Renate
Blumenthal on the political history of the papacy, and Hanna Vollrath on the
conflict of emperors and popes from the German perspective—all thoughtful
and learned chapters—nevertheless cover in part the same material.
Cowdrey’s attention to bishops as well as popes is welcome and parallels the
attention in the secular chapters to principalities and castellanies as well as
kings; Vollrath’s chapter embeds the conflict of pope and emperor in lots of
local politics and includes much recent research. Readers of this journal will,
however, be surprised to find here a great deal of what used to be called
church history and little history of piety, or spirituality, or religious thought. It
is surely an odd twelfth century when we find forty-nine references in the
indices to Gratian and only twelve to Peter Lombard, 304 to the papacy (not
counting those to individual popes) but only eight to “women,” one to the
Eucharist, and none to purgatory. Since we find similar lacunae in Volume V
(“c. 1198–c. 1300”), where there is also little about lived religion or religious
ideas, this skewing must rest partly with publisher’s decisions that were made
before individual editors took over and partly as well with the ghost of the old
CMH lurking behind the choice of topics and contributors.
What then might have been different? If we consider the topics of religious
life and the history of ideas, these volumes are written almost as if M.-D. Chenu
and Herbert Grundmann,two of the greatest medievalists of the last century,had
never lived.There is nothing about the emergence of the beguines; female saints
and women among the Cathar perfecti are mentioned (Pt. 1, p. 529) only as possible “role models”—an anachronistic concept that misses the power of female
sanctity and charismatic gifts to inspire people of both sexes. Religious life is
treated in a chapter on “religious communities” (replacing “monastic orders” in
the old CMH) and one on “religion and the laity.” But the first actually focuses on
the monastic orders, and the second, although it devotes a few excellent pages
to parish life and pilgrimage, is primarily a survey of heresy, especially dualist
heresy. The implication that Catharism—a dissident religion in the south of
Europe with its own clergy and widespread support from elites—was “lay religion” seems misleading. Moreover, the chapter on “thought and learning” covers
mostly the institutional containers of thought: types of schools, types of books,
the influx of new texts.There is almost no sense of what ideas excited twelfth-

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century intellectuals or those ordinary people who followed wandering preachers and reformers. The sexual slurs hurled against Peter Abelard get as much
space as the controversy over the Eucharist, and more attention is given to the
aggression displayed in twelfth-century polemic than to what people argued
about. Several of the authors in Part 1 consider with sophistication the question
of why simony and nicolaism rose to the center of eleventh-century reform concerns, but no one treats the impact of the campaign against clerical marriage on
women or its implications for a new sense of spiritual and secular, or of the body
and sexuality.When Ernst-Dieter Hehl, in an excellent chapter on war, concludes
that developing ideas concerning peace and violence reflect both the rationalization of socio-political attitudes and a new insistence on the individual and
intentionality (Pt. 1, p. 228), I find myself wondering why similar points are not
made somewhere in the volume about twelfth-century developments in marriage law (and indeed why war receives so much treatment and marriage so
little).When I. S. Robinson, in another excellent chapter, treats the campaign for
clerical celibacy in an economic context but pauses to muse on the effects the
campaign had on priests’ sons (Pt. 1, pp. 436-437), I cannot help noticing that the
effect on priests’ wives is left unmentioned.Whatever one things about Jacques
Le Goff’s arguments from linguistic evidence, it is hard to understand how
twelfth-century theology, piety, or folk culture can be treated without attention
to ideas of purgatory or to what Jean-Claude Schmitt has called the invasion of
ghosts circa 1200. One need invoke neither the tired concept of “individualism”
nor that of “renaissance” to mention at least in passing the optimism about the
human person implied in renewed theological attention to creation in imagine
Dei or to consider the new interest in psychology or in the natural world found
in twelfth-century spiritual writing and natural philosophy.
All this is to say that what is present in these 2000 pages is in general well
done, but some topics get far too much attention and others none. Nor does
this skewed distribution of words accurately reflect the current state of scholarship, for the late twentieth century gave much attention to women’s piety,
marriage law, the semiotic as well as theological subtleties embedded in
Eucharistic debate, and questions of intentionality raised by ethics and penitential theology.
This leads me back to my earlier questions. It is clear that approaches to the
eleventh and twelfth centuries have recently changed far more than this
volume indicates (and the same conclusion would be justified if one considered the coverage of secular institutional and political history). Is there then a
new consensus concerning, or a new characterization of, the period between
1024 and 1200 that these authors and editors have somehow missed? After all,
the past thirty years have seen, at one end of the Middle Ages, the line between
“medieval” and “renaissance” erased, and, at the other, the period of “late antiquity” created. Recent surveys by Julia Smith, Chris Wickham, and Michael
McCormick are giving us a new “early Middle Ages” as well. Do we have a new
“central Middle Ages,” or “age of reform,” or “twelfth century”?

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Neither this volume nor a reprise of current scholarship suggests that we
do.The older picture of some kind of turning point in the eleventh century—
in mentality as well as in demography, economic life, and the geo-political situation in the Mediterranean—seems still to hold, although recent work seriously questions any abrupt mutation in political and social structures around
1000.The sense, adumbrated by Chenu and Grundmann, not to mention C. H.
Haskins, that 1200 is not itself a break in the religious, intellectual, and institutional trends that began around 1100 seems to hold too (and it is a sense that
is unfortunately occluded by the decision to end this volume in 1198). But
scholarly enthusiasm for the revivals and retrievals of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries has clearly waned.These articles express such disillusionment—not
directly or explicitly but in their attention to instruments of aggression and
repression. Perhaps it is not an accident that the final paragraph of the final
article in Part 1 speaks of the period covered by Volume IV as a “chaotic interlude,” a period of “negative identity,” best described by “the absence of defining
characteristics.” Kidson is, in this essay, talking about art. One may question
whether any other scholar writing for the volume would employ such adjectives, or whether they should be applied to other areas of history in the period
1024-1198. But the impression given by the NCMH, Volume IV, is that—
whether or not “negative identity” describes the period—it does describe a
nagging uncertainty at the heart of much current scholarship about it.
The lack of coherent overall interpretation in this volume is surely owing
partly to the failure of the editors to make hard decisions about coverage or to
deal explicitly with the question of chronological boundaries (in contrast to
what the late Timothy Reuter, for example, managed to achieve in NCMH,
Volume III). But I think this lack is owing as well to the fact that the eleventh
and twelfth centuries have simply received less attention recently than the
more troubled centuries that came before and after. The years “c. 1024–c.
1198” still wait for historians (among them historians of religion) to reinvigorate and re-imagine them.When this new interpretation comes, however, one
suspects that it will be forged at least in part by approaches and insights
absent from this volume.
Institute for Advanced Study

CAROLINE WALKER BYNUM

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273

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY DIVISIONS AND
ECUMENICAL DIALOGUE
The Eucharist. By Edward Schillebeeckx. (New York: Burns and Oates, a Continuum imprint. 2005. Originally published 1968. Pp. 160. $18.95 paperback.)
The Eucharist in the Reformation. Incarnation and Liturgy. By Lee Palmer
Wandel. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. xii, 302. $70.00
clothbound, $24.95 paperback.)
It has been remarked more than once that ecumenical dialogue risks failure
when the appropriate historical studies are neglected, either not done or not
taken into account when the possibilities of eventual communion between
churches are discussed.Without these, the issues in dispute at the time of the
Protestant and Catholic Reformations of the sixteenth century are not clarified, nor can it be seen what import they have for present ecumenical efforts
and what relation they have to the Gospel and to the apostolic tradition.
Both of the above books show careful historical research into sixteenth-century developments and questions. Schillebeeckx is concerned with more theological issues, historical and current. He bases his thoughts about present trends
in Eucharistic theology on careful historical research into the Council of Trent.
He then relates the issues debated by the Council to contemporary European
ways of thinking about the symbolic. Wandel is more purposefully historical.
She writes principally about how the Mass, Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion
were celebrated by the communities that drew apart from each other in their
understanding of what they did and what Christ commanded. Holding these
two works in hand together is a reminder of how complex the issues were and
of how quite varied aspects of dispute and schism need to be studied. They
illustrate the distinction that has to be made between doctrinal and practical
questions, as well as the need to explore the relation between the two. They
also make the reader sensitive to what is at stake in relating such matters to current thought, practice, and teaching.While that is not her intent,Wandel’s book
in particular should make it clear that no solution to ecumenical communion,
such as a general policy of open communion table, is possible unless churches
address the ways in which members of different traditions inevitably think differently about the meaning of the communion table. Even the existing agreed
statements on the Eucharist, rich and important though they are, do not take
the belief and feeling of participants in the liturgy into full account and so
seldom address how to deal with popular and pastoral exigencies.
The small book of Edward Schillebeeckx, rather deceptively entitled The
Eucharist, is a reprint of a 1968 book.When written it was not meant to be a
full range Eucharistic theology. It might better have borne the title “Christ’s
Presence in the Eucharist” since it treated of then current trends in the discussion of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist in the light of the Tridentine doctrine
given in the Decree on the Sacrament of the Eucharist.The work is still very rel-

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evant, both to historical studies on Trent and to the development of a theology
of Eucharistic presence in the light of contemporary thinking and culture.
Indeed, one might say that in Catholic circles Schillebeeckx’s presentation surpasses much that has been written between then and now and students and
scholars would benefit from returning to the careful and accurate thought of a
Magister in the field.We can be grateful to Continuum for the reprint.
The book is divided into two parts, the one historical and the other a treatment of theological trends of the period before, during, and after Vatican Council
II. In the historical section, Schillebeeckx’s purpose is to clarify what was discussed and defined at the Council of Trent and to place its teaching into its
proper historical and cultural setting. Contrary to the positions taken by some
others, Schillebeeckx insists that the matters of Christ’s presence and of transubstantiation were thought through in terms of the prevailing Aristotelian natural philosophy. It is only by recognizing this fact that we can know what was
intended by its doctrine and how we are to take it seriously in a time when
thought forms are more phenomenological and personalist. Neither slavish repetition nor simplistic dismissal of the need for ontology will satisfy. It is from this
perspective that the author tackles the thorny question of how to be faithful to
the substance of Tridentine teaching while adopting thought forms of quite a different pattern.Both his survey of how theologians,primarily Catholic,had begun
before 1968 to discuss Eucharistic presence and his own thinking in the matter
are invaluable to present Catholic and ecumenical theology.While this was not
his purpose, given his attention to an understanding of symbolic activity, as distinct from scholastic theology’s treatment of the eucharist in terms of substantial presence and efficient causality, his approach could be adopted in discussion
of Eucharistic sacrifice as well as in discussion of Christ’s Eucharistic presence.
To place Schillebeeckx’s work alongside that of Wandel is fascinating, for at
first sight they hardly seem to be discussing the same sixteenth century.The difference lies in the fact that whereas Schillebeeckx talks of a fairly sophisticated
theology, which he admits might not have had much effect on popular devotion
and Eucharistic participation, Wandel’s concern is with practice and liturgical
forms. It is not about theological discussions and doctrinal proposals as such,
though these are not neglected, but about what pastors and people thought was
being done and conveyed in the celebration of the Mass or Lord’s Supper.This is
a genuine problem in understanding the question of ecumenical exchange,since
the matter cannot be resolved simply by formal statements on Eucharistic understanding. For his part, Schillebeeckx shows himself aware of the distance that
can exist between theological thinking and common belief.Wandel on the other
hand, while being very careful and complete within the defined limits of her
research, could appear to be unaware of the more sophisticated side of medieval
theology. She is inclined to treat of all Catholic thought as physicist rather than
truly sacramental and metaphysical. The difference between the two authors
highlights a problem which neither of them treats, namely, how can we bridge
the gap between theological thought and popular thought and practice,
whether in studies of the past or in addressing questions of the present.

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Before tackling the controversial issues of the Reformation period,Wandel
gives quite a long account (pp. 14-45) of the way in which the Mass was celebrated and perceived in the later Middle Ages and of how Eucharistic devotions were promoted and practiced. She brings out especially two things. First
is how in the Mass attention was focused on the consecration and the presence of Christ in the host, even to the neglect of communion. Second is how
the Mass was identified with the priest who was said to act in the person of
Christ and by his mimetic actions recalled Christ’s doings at the Last Supper.
Given present discussions of presence, it is interesting to note that she points
out that though the presence of Christ in the host was taken to be central,
there were also other ways in which he was considered present and to which
this was related (pp. 45f.), i.e., in the structuring of the year’s feasts and celebrations, in plays within the liturgical calendar, in images, and in the mimetic
actions of the priest, especially at the consecration. Naturally, as with any
survey of history, one might have expected to find other items noted, such as
a greater account of the sacrificial aspects of the Mass and the people’s part in
offering through stipends and designated prayers to be said to accompany the
priest’s actions. For all that, the reader gets what seems to be quite an accurate
account of what the Eucharist meant to people before the Reformation.
After this introduction, Wandel then deals with the early development of
the Lutheran tradition, with the diverse traditions of Reformed Churches, and
with Catholic tradition as it emerged from the controversies with Protestants.
In her accounts of Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic celebration Wandel’s
book is a careful and detailed analysis of available evidence.Though she cites
some doctrinal sources, such as the Confessio Augustana, the decrees of the
Council of Trent, and the Heidelberg Catechism, her principal aim is to trace
what was conveyed by the forms of celebration adopted variously within the
Catholic tradition, the Lutheran tradition, and the Reformed tradition, indicating the deep divide between them. To do this, she focuses on how the two
terms of Jesus’s Supper Words were understood, “Do this,” and “This is.” In
other words, she asks how these traditions understood what was to be done
in obedience to Jesus’s command and what meaning to attach to the verb “is”
in the sentence “This is my body.” As they all obeyed the command to keep the
memorial, Wandel shows that the distance between the past of Christ’s sacrifice and the present of the Church was seen differently in each confession. For
the Protestant traditions generally, the memory involved was of an event that
belongs decidedly to the past, namely, the once and for all sacrifice of Christ in
virtue of which and through faith in which believers are saved.This inevitably
affected the forms of celebration and of the offering of communion in the
sacramental gift. For the Catholic tradition on the contrary the past belonged
in some kind of enduring present because of the identification of the action of
the priest with the action of Christ. How a deeper grasp of the pneumatological, ecclesiological, sacramental, and symbolic characteristics of keeping
memorial might lessen the divide is not within the province of Wandel’s book.
Nor should we expect it to be, but we ought to be able to see that while

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thought on these matters was not highly developed in the sixteenth century
it could well be brought into contemporary exchange between Churches.
Maybe it is because of her concentration of purpose that Wandel’s treatment of Trent is disappointing and needs completion by studies such as that
of Schillebeeckx. In particular, she gives the impression that all Catholic
thought on transubstantiation was physicist, whereas Schillebeeckx’s work
shows that Trent quite clearly eschewed such meaning and that analogies
drawn from Aristotelian metaphysics by scholastic theology provided a way
out of this dilemma in giving ontological but not physical weight to the conversion of bread and wine. She also seems to pass lightly over Trent’s insistence
in treating of the sacrifice of the Mass that the Eucharistic sacrifice is totally
and entirely sacramental and memorial and so in no way derogatory from the
sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross.What she does show, however, is
that both Trent and the revision of the Missal under Pius V deliberately kept
the focus on the priest’s rather than on the congregation’s action and that
Catholic doctrine and liturgical reform were voiced in such a way as to retain
and promote medieval forms of the celebration of the Mass and of devotion to
the reserved sacrament, albeit rejecting and condemning many abuses.
Whatever the rejection of transubstantiation by Luther, or the accent on
spiritual eating and drinking in the Reformed tradition, and whatever the indifference to material things sometimes attributed to them, Wandel shows that
for a while Protestant worship was much more attentive to the signs of bread
and wine than was Roman Catholicism. Roman liturgy in its focus on the host
and in the external forms given it, in fact lost touch with the signs of bread and
wine as such and with the invitation to eat and drink. It was the respect for the
Gospel story and Christ’s own injunction which led Lutheran and Reformed
confessions and practice to hold firm to the signs of the table. It is rather paradoxical that while Catholicism built up a theology and practice that accentuated the real presence of Christ in the Mass and in the reserved sacrament, it
did so at the expense of the tangibility of the signs, both things and action, so
that Protestant traditions were and are in practice more evangelical or closer
to the Gospel stories in their celebration of the Lord’s Supper.
Despite the emphasis on the distinctively sacramental forms of Eucharistic
conversion and of memorial sacrifice promoted by Trent, when we turn once
more to Schillebeeckx we see that the categories of substance and causality on
which medieval and post-Tridentine theology relied are not able to give a persuasive treatment of sacramental symbolic activity.This is of course even more
difficult when respect for the signs of eating bread and drinking wine practically
vanishes. Schillebeeckx shows us that the efforts of the twentieth century, both
Protestant and Catholic, are attempts to find explanations of the Eucharist in
terms of God’s Word and of understandings of symbolic activity and exchange.
A further problem has to do with the interaction of priest and congregation. In reading some Roman instructions on the Eucharist as well as the most

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recent revision of the General Introduction to the Roman Missal (GIRM) one
might well ask if Catholic teaching can retrieve an adequate (and indeed ontological) understanding of the Eucharist if it continues to hold to such a strong
distinction between the actions of priest and of congregation, and continues
to offer an apologetics which justifies communion under only one kind for the
faithful (whatever the recommendations for communion under both kinds)
and for Masses celebrated without a congregation. In reading these instructions together with Schillebeeckx and Wandel, one is left to wonder whether
in practice and doctrinal formulation, and despite innumerable agreed statements, churches today are not still living the impasse of the sixteenth-century
controversies amid differences in understanding and devotion.
Asking this is not meant to be a postulate for homogeneity of belief and practice. In that regard, it is refreshing to read Schillebeeckx’s plea for a distinctive
Catholic belief which supports the doctrine of transubstantiation and ontological change, while at the same time refusing to reject other traditions as lacking
in orthodoxy (p. 159).Though in 1968 he did not formulate it that way, one can
say that he anticipates the question put in a 1982 ecumenical study of Catholic,
Lutheran, and Reformed traditions as to whether it may not be possible to have
differing doctrines and practices within fidelity to the Gospel and the one apostolic tradition (The Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They Still
Divide? Edited by Karl Lehmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg [Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1990]).There may be room for each church to support what it inherits
from its own tradition as particular to its own understanding and practice, but
in more irenic openness to the peculiarities of other churches.This is not to say
that there is no room for liturgical revision for all churches in the light of the
Gospel and of early apostolic traditions. It is also not to say that developing cultures do not raise their own set of questions and bring their own insights to doctrine, theology, and celebration. It is rather to suggest that in every development
there is a place for the particularities of sixteenth-century heritages, but in such
a way that the differences may be lived in a serene ecumenical exchange rather
than in polemics and the condemnation of what is different. It is also to suggest
that eventual full communion between churches may mean accepting unity in
diversity, as far as the understanding and practice of the Eucharist is concerned.
In brief one can say that as a contribution to theological and liturgical studies, both of these books are valuable and worth reading. It is in part their very
difference that helps ongoing discussion, for this highlights both the complexities and the possibilities of historical study and so of ecumenical exchange.
The Catholic University of America

DAVID N. POWER, O.M.I.

BOOK REVIEWS
General and Miscellaneous
Thinking about Religion:An Historical Introduction to Theories of Religion.
By Ivan Strenski. (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. 2006. Pp. vi,
358. $34.95 paperback.)
This text is not focused on setting out how religion is practiced. Professor
Strenski’s interest here, rather, is to help undergraduate students to understand
how religion came to be the focus of theoretical interest. He attempts to set
out here how, in various ways, religion became problematic and how scholars
attempted to solve those problems. As he puts it: “This book tells the ‘story’ of
important attempts to raise and solve many of the chief problems of religion
by inventing what we call ‘theories’ of religion” (pp. 1-2).That ‘story’ is set out
in three parts.
In the first section of this volume,“The Prehistory of the Study of Religion,”
Strenski accounts for the emergence of a methodical study of religion as a
response to the doubts raised about it in the intellectual ferment created by
the Protestant Reformation and the discovery of new worlds that brought with
it an encounter with other religions (chap. 1), and by the effects of the historical-critical study of the Bible on traditional religious belief (chap. 2). These
developments spurred on thinking about “religion as such,” which led, on the
one hand, to a quest for the first or natural religion, and on the other, to the
naturalistic study of scriptural texts. These enterprises, according to Strenski,
constitute “the beginnings of serious and open critical inquiry into the nature
of religion” (p. 17)—an inquiry that was executed by some scholars in a religious vein and by others as a secular or naturalistic undertaking.
In part two of the text,Strenski treats “Classic Nineteenth-Century Theorists of
the Study of Religion”who he maintains were primarily concerned with the question of the origins of religion. Four major figures are treated here: Friedrich Max
Müller (chap. 3) and William Robertson Smith (chap. 5) are presented as dealing
with difficulties related to the understanding of sacred texts,and E.B.Tylor (chap.
4) and J. G. Frazer (chap. 6) represent early anthropological approaches to understanding religions and religion. For Strenski, Müller, and Robertson Smith not only
were students of religion but also advanced religious agendas—they were therefore both “critics” and “caretakers” of religion (p. 132). Tylor and Frazer, on the
other hand, are presented as antagonistic to religion. Although Strenski considers
such approaches as ideological as those of Müller and Robertson Smith, he nevertheless claims Tylor’s work constitutes the first real science of religion.
278

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In part three of this volume, on the “Classic Twentieth-Century Theorists of
the Study of Religion,” Strenski argues that scholars of religion moved from
empirical (philological, historical, and anthropological) studies to phenomenological and psychological interpretations of religion that transcended the
grip of nineteenth-century evolutionism by admitting “subjectivity into the
human sciences” (p. 166).Treating such figures as Wilhelm Brede Kristensen,
Cornelis Petrus Tiele, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Rudolf Otto, and Ninian Smart
in chapter 7, Strenski notes: “Every one of the thinkers with whom we will
deal from this chapter on out, had, as well, to take seriously the idea that the
study of human culture and society required certain methods especially tailored to the human subject—even if they finally opposed giving the human
realm special status” (p. 166).The scholars he chooses to focus on include Max
Weber (chap. 8), Sigmund Freud (chap. 9), Bronislaw Malinowski (chap. 10),
Emile Durkheim (chap. 11), and Mircea Eliade (chap. 12).
Although the title and subtitle of this volume suggest that the reader will
be introduced to theories of religion that have constituted avenues for thinking about religion, Strenski has rather focused attention on the theorists themselves.Throughout the volume he insists on the importance of finding out why
theorists of religion thought they were right to propose the theories they elaborated. Theorists of religion, one might reasonably presume, formulated their
theories because they believed them capable of providing cogent, testable
accounts of religion. Strenski, however, appears to believe that it is rather a
matter of biography; that one needs to look more deeply into the idiosyncratic
aspects of the lives of theorists, and the peculiarities of their particular social
contexts, if one is to understand why they believed their theories to be right.
Thus he writes: “Whatever else students take from this book, I at least hope
they will feel that they understand how and why some remarkable folk
thought about religion” (p. 6). I find that an inadequate goal for a book meant
to introduce students to the importance of theory in the study of religion.
University of Toronto

DONALD WIEBE

A Church That Can and Cannot Change:The Development of Catholic Moral
Teaching. By John T. Noonan, Jr. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre
Dame Press. 2005. Pp. xiv, 297. $30.00.)
Noonan’s thesis is that while the Catholic Church cannot change in holding
to the deposit of faith, its moral doctrine has changed with regard to slavery,
usury, and religious liberty, and it is in process of changing with regard to the
dissolving of non-sacramental marriages. In his final thirty pages, he offers his
reflections on factors that have influenced the development of moral doctrine.
Noonan treats slavery as the prime case of change in moral doctrine. He
observes that no condemnation of this institution is found in Scripture or in
the writings of the Fathers except for Gregory of Nyssa. Aquinas said slavery

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was “added” to natural law, but it did not contradict it. Moral theologians such
as St.Alphonsus Liguori raised no objection to it. In the colonial period several
popes did condemn the enslavement of innocent people, and in 1839 Gregory
XVI condemned the slave trade as “inhuman.” But Francis P. Kenrick, the moral
theologian later named Archbishop of Baltimore, insisted that the Pope had not
condemned slavery as it was then practiced in the United States.
Vatican Council II, however, in Gaudium et Spes included slavery in a list
of things it called probra (infamies), and John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor condemned all these things as “acts which are intrinsically evil.” Noonan is convinced that here the Pope has condemned the ownership of one person by
another as per se and always gravely wrong. But there is a weakness in his position, because the same list includes such things as subhuman living conditions
and degrading conditions of work. Here, by “acts which are intrinsically evil,”
one would have to mean acts that reduce people to such conditions. By the
same logic, one could conclude that what John Paul II condemned is no more
than what previous popes had condemned, or what the Catechism of the
Catholic Church calls “a sin against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights,” namely,“to reduce them by violence to their productive value
or to a source of profit.”
Noonan next treats the development of the Church’s judgment on usury
when it meant charging any interest on a loan. In the time of Charlemagne the
Church began to forbid this as against the natural law, and in 1182 Pope Urban
III interpreted Jesus’ words: “Lend, expecting nothing back,” as condemning
usury. Gradually, with the development of modern commerce, Rome came to
understand that there were legitimate titles to interest on a loan, and that
Jesus’ words did not mean what Pope Urban III thought they meant.
Noonan asserts that, from St.Augustine to the eve of Vatican II, the doctrine
that the Church should prevent the propagation of heresy, and rightly calls
upon friendly civil powers to enforce its suppression, was taught by the ordinary magisterium of the Catholic Church. Vatican II, however, taught that all
persons should enjoy freedom from coercion in religious matters.As Noonan
observes, this change raises questions about the irreversibility of what has
been taught by the ordinary magisterium.
After tracing the history of the Church’s explanation and application of the
“Pauline” and “Petrine” privileges, Noonan raises questions about the justification of papal power to dissolve the marriages of the unbaptized. He observes
that this doctrine has developed without resolving the tension between natural indissolubility and the power to dissolve the marriages of two-thirds of the
world’s people. He believes that further development, in both theory and practice, must be awaited.
In his final section, Noonan suggests three ways in which development of
moral doctrine takes place: by deepening the understanding of revelation; by
the observation of human experience leading to a better understanding of nat-

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ural law; and by the enhancement of people’s capacity to comprehend what
the pursuit of truth and happiness by human beings depends upon.
The text is followed by fifty-eight pages of informative notes.These are not
numbered, but running heads indicate the pages to which they refer.There is
an index of names and topics.
This is a thoughtful and scholarly work, which raises questions for both
moral and systematic theologians.
Boston College

FRANCIS A. SULLIVAN, S.J.

The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. Edited by Matthew Kuefler. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2006. Pp. viii, 348. $75.00 clothbound; $27.50 paperback.)
The publication in 1980 of Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (hereafter CSTH) by John Boswell marked the beginning of radical
changes that persist to the present in the ways that historians, especially
medievalists, deal with same-sex relationships.The sixteen chapters that make
up The Boswell Thesis seek to assess some of the ways that Boswell’s work has
continued to roil historical scholarship during the past quarter of a century.
The opening essay by the editor, Matthew Kuefler, outlines the central tenets
of Boswell’s argument. In brief, Christianity, according to Boswell, emerged in a
Mediterranean world where intimate relations between persons of the same
sex were widely tolerated, if not invariably condoned. Neither the Christian
Scriptures nor the early church Fathers, Boswell maintained, expressed blanket
disapproval of homosexual practices.Those who now believe that they did so,
he asserts, misunderstand the sources.The moral neutrality toward homosexual
relations that characterized the Early Church, Boswell continues, persisted
throughout the early Middle Ages. Hostility toward same-sex relationships
began to surface in Christian Europe only during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries.As condemnation of same-sex relationships and those who engaged
in them grew more severe, Boswell concluded, mainstream scholars and church
authorities began to read their own attitudes back into the documents of the
Early Church in order to justify their position.
Boswell, to say the least, set the cat among the pigeons, and feathers continue
to flutter furiously, both among those who accept his views and those who find
them unpersuasive or even abhorrent. Both groups, it must be said, include
people of all sexual orientations. Indeed some of the earliest and most vociferous
critics of Boswell’s views were members of the gay community, many of whom
considered his judgments of the Church far too benign, as Kuefler points out in
his extended account of the reviews that CSTH received upon publication.The
present book, however, presents overwhelmingly the views of accepters,
although the individual authors do so with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

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The chapter by Ralph Hexter that follows Kuefler’s introduction is a particularly informative, indeed moving, personal account of the making of CSTH
and subsequent reactions to it. Hexter, to whom Boswell dedicated CSTH and
whom he designated as his literary executor, was close to Boswell throughout
the period when he was working on CSTH. On Boswell’s own published testimony, Hexter contributed enormously to the book’s development. He is
accordingly able to draw not only upon personal recollections of the book’s
creation, but also to document his statements in detail from the correspondence that remains in his keeping, pending its deposit in a public archive.
å
Among the more notable of the fourteen remaining chapters in The
Boswell Thesis are Mark D. Jordan’s reading of Boswell’s conception of his
scholarship as a Christian ministry, Amy Richlin’s analysis of the love letters
exchanged between Marcus Cornelius Fronto and the emperor Marcus
Aurelius, E. Ann Matter’s investigation of the traces of lesbian relationships in
medieval religious houses for women, Jacqueline Murray’s reflections on male
expressions of fear of castration and their implications for medieval notions of
masculinity, Ruth Mazo Karras’ study of “compulsory heterosexuality” among
medieval knights, and Penelope D. Johnson’s examination of the visions of
Gerardesca of Pisa and her apparent obsession with her clothing.
Anyone concerned with the study of medieval sexual attitudes and behavior
will find this attractive and well-chosen collection of essays intellectually
provocative and stimulating, whether they agree with the authors’ views or not.
University of Kansas, Emeritus

JAMES A. BRUNDAGE

The Spirituality of the Christian East, Volume 2: Prayer. By Thomaš Špidlík.
Translated by Anthony P. Gythiel. [Cistercian Studies Series, Number 206.]
(Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications. 2005. Pp. xviii, 540. $39.95
paperback.)
This volume is a development of the last two chapters of Tomaš Špidlík’s
earlier book, The Spirituality of the Christian East (1978; English translation
1986), and so presents itself as being the second volume of a series with the
same title, or volume two of what the author describes as a Systematic
Handbook (p. xv).While the two concluding chapters of the first volume covered “Prayer” and “Contemplation,” Prayer now itself covers a significantly
broader range of material: The Divine-Human Dialogue (Chapter Two), Prayer
as Supplication (Three), Bodily Prayer (Four), Liturgical Prayer (Five),
Meditative Reading (Six), Contemplation (Seven), Mysticism (Eight),
Dispositions for Prayer (Nine), and Hesychasm (Ten), followed by a summarizing conclusion. The bulk of the work is preceded by an Overview of the
Sources (One), providing a brief description of the Fathers and spiritual writers, the liturgical documents, and the liturgical poetry, from which the material
presented here is drawn. The range is characteristically broad, encompassing

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the material from throughout the Christian East (Coptic, Syrian, Armenian,
Georgian, Ethiopian, Russian, as well as Greek), early as well as late (including
material from the twentieth century).These chapters are each divided into sections and subsections (usually a page or two), the headings for which are all
listed in the table of contents. The bibliographic references to the material
cited and further secondary work are provided in notes at the end of each
chapter, and the work concludes with a selected bibliography, in which primary and secondary material are listed under the subsection headings and
page numbers. The result is a veritable compendium of information, clearly
arranged and readily accessed.
The sheer breadth covered by this volume in turn, however, accounts for its
major weakness, that the information that it provides about or from any one
figure, or concerning any one topic, is so brief that it does no more than provide a mention, before moving on to the next topic. In doing so, while attempting to be respectful of different traditions within the spirituality of the East, the
work ultimately subsumes all the particular voices into one grand stream analyzed in terms of distinct categories, the legitimacy of which is simply presumed: the “cloud of witnesses” is reduced to an undifferentiated grey sky.
Nevertheless, the work will be of use to both general and scholarly audiences;
it will whet the appetite of the former, leading them on to further study, and
for the latter, those who know how to contextualize its gems, it will provide a
handy treasure trove.
St.Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary
Crestwood, New York

JOHN BEHR

A History of Preaching. By O. C. Edwards Jr. Contains a CD-Rom with a second
volume of primary sources, 665 pages as well as a digitized copy of volume
1. (Nashville: Abingdon Press. 2004. Pp. xxviii, 879. $65.00.)
Homiletics professors looking for a brief, manageable, and contemporary
history of preaching have commonly been frustrated; the existing works tend
to be (1) old and out of date, and/or (2) vast multi-volumes, many of which are
devoted to specialized study, and/or (3) histories reflecting questionable scholarship, and (4) usually out of print. O. C. Edwards’ A History of Preaching is
one of three works on the topic published in the past five years to fill the void
that has existed for the past thirty years. Edwards work has at least one clear
advantage over the other two contemporary histories: his has been completed, while the multi-volume works by Ronald E. Osborn (The Folly of God)
and Hughes Oliphant Old (The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in
the Worship of the Christian Church) are still in process. Additionally,
Edwards’ history is a more manageable size. A History of Preaching consists of
one printed volume plus an additional CD-Rom that contains both a second
volume as well as a digitized copy of the first.The second volume consists of
665 pages of primary sources: complete sermons and reflections on what

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preaching is and how it should be conducted, beginning with a synagogue
homily and a sermon by Melito of Sardis (ca. 165 A.D.) and extending up to the
work of homilists preaching and homileticians reflecting on preaching in the
last decades of the twentieth century. In some ways, by collecting this material
and making it available in one source, the second volume may easily be as valuable as the first.
Describing his book as “a homiletic genealogy for those who preach the
faith today in English—especially Americans, but British as well,” Edwards
acknowledges the limitations that space and time have constrained him to
make. He begins with a consideration of the earliest examples of Christian
preaching and reflections on preaching that are available, but soon begins to
focus his attention, first on the Greek and Latin Fathers; then, after the patristic period, on preaching in the West; then, after the Reformation, on preaching
in England; and finally on preaching in the United States.Although he critiques
Fant and Pinson’s 20 Centuries of Great Preaching for devoting ten of twelve
volumes to preaching in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he comes
dangerously close to falling into the same pattern himself. Over half of the
book treats the history of preaching in England and America. Indeed, his treatment of recent British and especially American contributions to the art of
preaching and homiletic theory are the strongest part of the book, and happily,
he considers a wide variety of traditions, from Evangelical to main-line
Protestant to Roman Catholic, treating each tradition with respect. On the
other hand, the progressively narrowing focus necessarily precludes treatment
in other branches of Christianity and thus tends to make his history more helpful for a seminary professor who teaches preaching than for anyone doing an
in-depth study of the field.
Although responsibly researched, Edwards’ would have to be considered a
popular history, as unlikely as that description might seem for a book
approaching a thousand pages.The pattern he follows is to give an overview
of preaching in the various periods of Christian history, then, identifying the
major figures in preaching from each period, provide a brief biography and
analysis of their homiletic style, often, although not always, with a consideration of one or more of their sermons. For each period, he has included either
complete sermons or reflections on the art and technique of preaching in the
companion CD-Rom.The information he provides gives a good introduction
to the major figures and movements in preaching; his bibliography points the
way for those who wish to pursue a more in-depth study. A History of
Preaching should prove a handy and helpful text for seminar courses on the
history of preaching or for those looking for a good and thorough overview
of the topic.
The Catholic University of America

DONALD J. HEET, O.S.F.S.

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285

The Papacy: An Encyclopedia. General editor Philippe Levillain, English language edition editor John W. O’Malley, translated by Deborah Blaz et al. 3
vols. (New York/London: Routledge, 2002. Pp. xxxvi, 614; xiv, 615-1266; xiv,
1267-1780.)
Originally published in 1994 as Dictionnaire historique de la papauté, the
English edition updates the bibliography and some of the articles and adds several new entries. As evident from its French title, the emphasis in the articles
is historical. It was designed for use in libraries.
The topics covered range from biographies of the popes acknowledged by
the Vatican and of most of the antipopes in brackets, to a vast array of themes
related to the papacy. Separate entries are devoted to papal conclaves, simony,
habemus papam, onomastics (naming of the new pope), coronation, possesso,
titles, residences, allocutions, benedictions, canonizations, patronage, offenses
against, travels, sickness, deposition, resignation, death and tomb, and vacant or
impeded see. Items associated with the pope are also treated such as regalia,
tiara, vestments, keys, fisherman’s ring, pavilion (sunshade), coins, medallions,
banners, chair of St. Peter, sedia gestatoria (litter), ferula (ceremonial rod), flabellum (feather fan), and floreria (warehouse of papal paraphernalia).The papal
chapel is described in entries on the Sistine Chapel,ceremonials,liturgy,castrati,
and breviary, while one has to consult various entries for the music used there.
The papal court is described in entries dedicated to such topics as the
papal palace, garb, gentlemen, diplomatic corps, nuncios, and legates. Various
papal officials are delineated in the entries on the papal family and household
and its prefecture, on almoner, barber, caudatary, chancellor, chaplain, chef, collector, cursor, datary, sacristan, and secretary. Cardinals receive extensive treatment: their appointment (e.g., in petto), garb (e.g., cappa [mantle up to seven
meters long], mozzetta [ermine cape], and biretta), offices (e.g., papal nephew,
protector, and legate), and titles.
To help understand the organization of the papal bureaucracy, there are
separate entries on the consistory, secretariats (e.g., of State, of the Roman
Curia, of Briefs, etc.), congregations (e.g., Holy Office, Index, Penitentiary,
Signature of Grace, Propaganda Fide, Index, etc.), and tribunals (e.g., Rota and
Apostolic Signature)—an organizational flow chart would have been helpful,
but is missing.The Roman Curia is also studied by entries on its officials (e.g.,
chancellor, camerlengo, abbreviator, minutante, and scriptor), on its style (bollatica), fees (common and small services, annates), documents (recorded in
registers, differences among bulls, briefs, constitutions, and encyclicals), forgeries, and practices (provisions, petitions, expectatives, reservations, and ad
limina visits).
Papal teaching authority can be studied through the entries on magisterium,
Holy Office, master of the sacred palace, infallibility, ex cathedra, heresies,
anathema, and social teachings. Papal law is treated under various headings
such as code, Decretum, decretals, exemptions, and reserved cases and causes.

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The Papal States and Vatican City State are treated in long articles with separate entries for such items as the superintendent of the ecclesiastical state,
annona (a provision of grain), passports, labor unions, library, secret archives, gardens, museums, observatory, postage stamps, railway station, press office,
Osservatore romano, radio, television, and telephone. The state’s defense is
described in entries on the gendarmes, papal navy, Swiss Guards, Palatine Guards,
and zouaves. Papal finances receive an appropriately long entry, plus separate
studies of banking, tax, and tithes.The city of Rome is given a substantial entry. It
can be further studied under such headings as its images in literature, traveler’s
views of,its Senate,its famous buildings (e.g.,Colosseum,Pantheon,and Quirinal),
its basilicas (major and minor, St. Peter’s [its fabric and excavations], St. John
Lateran, St. Paul Outside the Walls, and St. Mary Major), obelisks, sackings, confraternities, nobility, feasts, the diocese of, and its suburbicarian dioceses.
Relations with secular states can be found in such entries as the Roman
Empire, Donation of Constantine, barbarians (with separate entries for the
Franks and Lombards), Holy Roman Empire, investiture controversy, concordat,
crusades, holy helmet and sword, golden rose, consecrated swaddling clothes
(a papal gift on the birth of a princely heir), wars of Italy, Italian unity, and the
world wars.
Papal relations to other members of the Catholic Church outside Rome are
found in entries on councils (but not all general councils receive treatment), on
bishops (conference of, synod of), on religious orders and groups (under the
separate headings of monasticism, military orders, Dominicans, Franciscans,
Jesuits, and Opus Dei, but with many other groups ignored), and on seminaries.
Papal relations with other religious communities can be found in the
entries on ecumenism, Judaism, Anglicanism, and Uniates, but for the Eastern
Churches and Protestantism one has to consult a variety of entries such as the
Third Rome and Anglican ordinations.
The above are only a sampling of the topics! This encyclopedia provides a
true cornucopia of substantial matters (e.g., on the Second Vatican Council
[pp. 1569-1586]), minutiae (e.g., the papal processional cross is turned toward
the pope [p. 437]), and the arcane (the ten categories governing pontifical
secrets [p. 1399]).Amusing anecdotes can be found in a number of entries.A
121 double-column page index allows one to mine quickly this reference
work. It also contains a chronological table of the popes and lists of martyred
popes and of “popes who are saints”—claiming incorrectly that no pope was
canonized after 1295 (yet the entries on Pius V and Pius X state otherwise).The
map of the Papal States incorrectly states that Ferrara in 1598 and Urbino in
1625 became autonomous or independent, when the opposite was the case.
Perhaps to keep costs down, no illustrations accompany the entries.
The contributors, over two hundred in number, come mostly from France,
but there is also a good representation of German and Italian scholars.Those

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from England and America contributed to the English-language edition a few
articles, such as that on Americanism. That a French audience was primarily
intended is suggested by the special attention given to such topics as the
Franks, Wars of Italy, French (sixteenth century), the French Revolution, the
First French Empire, the Oldest Daughter of the Church, Gallicanism,
Jansenism, and Quietism. Many of the entries are written by an expert on the
topic, and they conclude with a bibliography that ranges in length from a
couple of works (papal resignations) to almost fifty (inquisition).The quality of
the translations is generally good. This is attributable to the hiring of professional translators and the review of their work by experts. Nonetheless, an
occasional problem crept in—e.g., Adrian VI of Utrecht (his birthplace) is
referred to as bishop of Utrecht (p. 344), and Paul II (d. 1471) issued his decree
in 1464, not 1494 (p. 267). I would strongly recommend that every university
and seminary library obtain a copy of this encyclopedia for its collection.
The Catholic University of America

NELSON H. MINNICH

History of the Diocese of Clogher. Edited by Henry A. Jefferies. (Dublin: Four
Courts Press. Distributed in the United States by ISBS, Portland, Oregon.
2005. Pp. 249. $65.00.)
The Irish diocese of Clogher, which incorporates County Monaghan, most
of County Fermanagh, and portions of counties Cavan, Donegal, Louth, and
Tyrone, has the good fortune of possessing many rich and important historical
records. The Clogher Historical Society, which has produced the wellrespected journal Clogher Record since 1953, has ensured that a lively interest
in ecclesiastical history continues in the diocese to this day. This volume
builds upon this strong tradition of historical scholarship by making available
a pot pourri of important articles which cast light not just on Clogher but also
on significant national historical questions.
The editor, Henry A. Jefferies, admits that the volume does not pretend to
be exhaustive, and this is borne out by the lack of treatment given to the early
modern period: nevertheless, there is much to recommend this collection.
Charles Doherty begins with a study of the early cult of St. Molaisse, arguing
that the ecclesiastical site of Devenish was an important and powerful force
from the early seventh century, with wide jurisdiction, and that the status of
Armagh, with the support of the Airgialla dynasty, only increased considerably
around the year 640. Cormac Bourke traces a number of significant metalwork
survivals from the early medieval period and in particular saints’ bells.
Katharine Walsh, in a substantial and comprehensive article, examines evidence for the popularity of St. Patrick’s Purgatory (Lough Derg) among late
medieval continental pilgrims and provides much that is new and original.
Brendan Smith explores diocesan relations in the late medieval period, with
particular reference to papal interventions and the relationship between the
bishop of Clogher and the archbishop of Armagh, which varied from collabo-

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rative to hostile. Henry A. Jefferies, in a ground-breaking study of the papal registers referring to Clogher, challenges the view that the late medieval Irish
church was on the verge of “total breakdown.” His systematic examination of
the registers reveals some significant statistics, which call into question previous generalizations.A second article by Jefferies, which assesses the career of
Dr. Hugh MacMahon, vicar general and later bishop of Clogher from 1707 to
1715, also constitutes a fascinating yet accessible study of the practicalities of
living under the penal laws in one Irish diocese. MacMahon’s relatio status is
the most comprehensive found for any diocese during the period and is of
considerable importance not just for local history but for national history also.
Two poems treating of the pilgrimage to Lough Derg are edited by Seosamh Ó
Dufaigh, who in later articles casts light on both Richard Owens, bishop of
Clogher (1894-1909), and on the Lenten pastorals of Bishop Patrick McKenna
(1916-1922). Eamon Phoenix and Daithí Ó Corráin explore aspects of diocesan history in the twentieth century, Phoenix examining the issue of partition
and Ó Corráin the career of Bishop Eugene O’Callaghan (1943-1969).
There are, however, some careless errors and inconsistencies within the
text, which should be rectified for future printings. A typographical error on
page 20 has the translation “In all Ireland Macculaisre” inserted into the Latin
text of the hymn of Molaisse while “Macculasrius Hibernia” appears in the
English translation.The sentence beginning “It need hardly be said. . .” on page
29 requires a complete re-write as it contains a number of errors. On page 38,
the author McKenna is spelt in two different ways at note 96.There is no agreement on whether translations should be provided for quotations in Latin (a
translation is given at note 44 on page 17, for example, but not for note 3 on
page 41). On page 44 (line 13) and page 45 (line 10) “Middle Ages” is found
written in upper case and lower case respectively. There is also a noticeable
lack of consistency between articles regarding nomenclature: on page 44 we
are introduced to Jacobus de Voragine (of Legenda Aurea fame) who in a subsequent article is found under the Italian version, Giacamo de Varragio (p. 70).
On page 56 we meet the Catalan pilgrim Ramon de Perellós y Rhode who is
subsequently found under the name Raymond de Perelhos in the article following (p. 73). Furthermore, it is disappointing that the volume lacks a Note
on Contributors.
This is a welcome and important addition to Irish historiography. A wide
range of readers should find it an accessible and varied collection, with much
to contribute to our understanding of Irish cultural and religious history.
St. Patrick’s College Thurles
County Tipperary, Ireland

SALVADOR RYAN

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Cinquant’anni di vita della ‘Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia.’ Atti del
Convegno di Studio (Roma, 8-10 settembre 1999). Edited by Pietro Zerbi.
[Italia Sacra, Studi e Documenti di Storia Ecclesiastica, 71.] (Rome: Herder
Editrice e Libreria. 2003. Pp. xi, 298. €45.00 paperback.)
This volume publishes the papers of a conference held in 1999 that
assessed the first fifty years of the Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia
(hereafter RSCI), which publishes two thick issues every year.
In an excellent article with an appendix of documents, Paolo Vian describes
the origins of RSCI. From 1938 onward, various individuals and groups proposed a journal devoted to the history of the Italian church from its origins.
Several wanted an historical institute as well, and some wanted it to be located
at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. Substitute Secretary of
State Giovanni Battista Montini offered strong encouragement. Finally in 1945
Michele Maccarrone, a diocesan priest and medievalist originally from the
Romagna, won the approval of Montini when he proposed just a journal without an institute and did not ask for a Vatican subvention. Rome became its
home because of the number of church historians located there. Maccarrone
was appointed editor of the journal along with an editorial board of distinguished scholars. It was decided that every issue would include a bibliographical section, because the war had made it difficult for scholars to learn of new
publications.The first issue appeared in 1947.
Under the editorship of Maccarrone, the RSCI emphasized the institutional
church and a straightforward presentation of historical material. There was
little space for debates over historical issues in the opinion of some members
of the editorial board and outsiders. The differences came to a head in “the
crisis of 1976.” Paolo Brezzi, a member of the editorial board, wanted a change
of policy that would include more debates and a broader definition of church
history. Maccarrone disagreed. Two members of the board resigned, and the
editorial board of Hubert Jedin and others dissolved itself and gave complete
editorial responsibility to Maccarrone. Ovidio Capitani, a participant in the
crisis who agreed with Brezzi, describes the issues of 1976 in an article that
demonstrates that considerable anger remains, although his allusive prose
leaves some things unclear. RSCI operated without an editorial board until a
new one was constituted in 1979.
RSCI sponsored some very important conferences. Paolo Prodi describes
the conference entitled “Problemi di vita religiosa in Italia nel Cinquecento”
that met in Bologna in 1958, a successful attempt to bring together clerical and
lay scholars. Indeed, the list of the 135 speakers and attendees is a who’s who
of the most important Italian historians on sixteenth-century Italian religious
history over the past fifty years. There was one Anglo-Saxon there, Leonard
Boyle, O.P., a future prefect of the Vatican Library.The volume that came out of
the Bologna conference included some seminal studies.The Bologna meeting
also marked a split between RSCI and the Bolognese Istituto per le Scienze

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Religiose, when Maccarrone refused to publish Giuseppe Alberigo’s preface to
the volume. Prodi publishes it here. At the time there was a plan for RSCI and
the Istituto jointly to sponsor a series of monographs. This also fell through,
possibly because Alberigo wanted to include Delio Cantimori on the board of
editors. Maccarrone, a gifted scholar and editor of RSCI from 1947 to 1993,
appears to have been quite dictatorial.
Other studies analyze the four important conferences on the medieval
church and the two dedicated to nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian
church history. The last section of the book offers papers about three other
Italian journals dedicated to religious history. Franco Bolgiani, editor of Rivista
di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa (first issue 1965), describes that journal and
how it differs from RSCI in admirably clear prose. Mario Fois describes the
Archivum Historiae Pontificiae (first issue 1963), and includes the sad information that it has only thirty North American subscriptions. And Alberigo
describes Cristianesimo nella storia (first issue 1980).
From the beginning RSCI published more research in medieval history than
any other field and it emphasized institutional church history, while avoiding
the history of spirituality and piety. Nevertheless, in the 1960’s and 1970’s it
published some fundamental studies on sixteenth-century Italian
Protestantism. While few debates on methodology and disputed questions
appeared in its pages, there were some very sharp reviews that expressed profound differences.When Monsignore Maccarrone died in 1993, the creation of
the Fondazione Mons. Michele Maccarrone per la Storia della Chiesa in Italia
ensured that the journal would continue.
There is rich material here for anyone interested in the evolution of Italian
church historiography over the past sixty years, as Brezzi, Delio Cantimori (a
friend of Maccarrone from youth), Giuseppe De Luca, Jedin, Giacomo Martina,
Raffaello Morghen, Pio Paschini, Pietro Pirri, Paolo Sambin, and others wrote
for RSCI or served on its editorial board. RSCI also published about 45,000 bibliographical entries in its first fifty years and a good number since. RSCI has
played a major role in promoting historical research on the Italian church and
will probably continue to do so.
University of Toronto and Chapel Hill, North Carolina

PAUL F. GRENDLER

Ancient and Medieval
Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity: The Reception of
Enochic Literature. By Annette Yoshiko Reed. (New York: Cambridge
University Press. 2005. Pp. xiv, 319. $75.00.)
The focus of this excellent monograph in the field of Enochic studies is the
Book of the Watchers (chaps. 1-36 of 1 Enoch), which itself is an expansion of

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the enigmatic tale about the “sons of God” in Genesis 6:1-4.Through its seven
chapters, the monograph traces the “fate of this apocalypse from its composition around the third century B.C.E. and its widespread influence among preRabbinic Jews . . . to its rejection by the Rabbinic movement, adoption by early
Christians, suppression by later church leaders, and eventual loss to the West”
(pp. 1-2).
After an introduction that succinctly sets out the plan of the book, the first
chapter asks how the fallen angels and their teachings function within the
Book of the Watchers. In this chapter attention is also drawn to the complex
literary relationship that exists between Gen. 6:1-4 and Watchers. Following on
the observations made in the first chapter about the redaction history of the
Watchers, chapter two investigates the text as the product not of a single
author, but instead as the product of a series of authors and redactors. Chapter
Two ends by suggesting that the author and audience of Watchers should not
be assumed to be on the fringes of Judaism; so Chapter Three seeks to map the
reception-history of it among pre-Rabbinic Jews.
In a similar vein, Chapter Four seeks to understand the reception history of the Watchers in early Christian circles.Yoshiko Reed asks the salient
question to which the chapter is dedicated: “If pre-Rabbinic Jewish and
proto-Christian interpretations of this text are so similar, why would the
Book of Watchers eventually be preserved in Christian circles but not
Jewish ones?” (p. 123). The focus of Chapter Five is upon Justin Martyr’s
understanding of the instruction motif in Watchers and how it played a
central role in the “Christianizing” of the angelic descent myth. The sixth
chapter considers the reasons why the Christian attitudes toward the
Watchers myth increasingly came to parallel Rabbinic attitudes in the
fourth and fifth centuries after Christ. The final chapter explores the reemergence of Jewish interest in Enoch (and thus the Watchers myth) in the
early Middle Ages. Lastly, the book’s findings are summarized in a brief epilogue (pp. 273-277).
Fallen Angels traces a specific tradition (the Watchers) over a long time
period (several centuries).The difficult task of tracing the complex interaction
between Judaism and Christianity over time is done with sophistication. The
study leads Yoshiko Reed to raise two important caveats. First, her study
demonstrates that the so-called “parting of the ways” between Judaism and
Christianity is an oversimplification of a very complex relationship; scholars
must acknowledge this. Second, the canonical bias of the academy must be
redressed, because to ignore or undervalue traditions that come out of socalled “”Pseudepigraphal texts” is to impoverish our understanding of antiquity. As Yoshiko Reed states in her conclusion,“Much is lost when we treat the
‘extrabiblical’ status of a text as somehow inherent to the text itself and
assume that such works were, from the very moment of their composition,
fated to circulate only on the fringes of society” (p. 274).

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Anyone interested in the Book of Watchers, the development of the
Enochic literature, or the complex development of Judaism and Christianity
needs to interact with this significant study.
Illinois Wesleyan University

KEVIN SULLIVAN

The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography. Edited by Dale B. Martin and Patricia Cox Miller. (Durham and
London: Duke University Press. 2005. Pp. ix, 364. $89.95 cloth; $24.95
paperback.)
Dedicated to the pioneering scholar of late ancient studies, Duke
University’s Elizabeth Clark, The Cultural Turn offers specialists and students
fifteen innovative essays in the fields of gender, asceticism, historiography, and
Mediterranean history, c. 100-700 A.D. Dale Martin’s fine introduction to the
collection surveys cultural approaches to the study of late antiquity, maps out
the intellectual heritages of new methodologies, and underscores the interdisciplinary nature of this exciting field. In so doing, Martin makes available for
graduate students preparing for comprehensive exams a handy overview of
the last thirty years of scholarship on late antiquity, from the field’s origins in
patristic studies to its fusion with social and cultural history, as well as anthropology, the philosophy of language, and linguistics.Acknowledging late antiquity’s debt to the field work of cultural anthropologists, Martin notes that
intrepid scholars must now “enter a world—a different and somewhat odd
world—much the way an ethnographer would enter a foreign culture” (p. 5).
The fifteen essays then navigate the steadfast reader through the complexities of this “odd world,” focusing on diverse topics such as Susan Harvey’s inventive study of the gendered, liturgical speech of Syrian Christians and its performative spaces, to Blake Leyerle’s provocative analysis of desert ascetic
prohibitions against oral violence, that is, meat-eating or slanderous speech, itself
considered a kind of symbolic cannibalism. James Goehring traces the export of
the mythic Egyptian desert as exotic exchange-commodity, from its hagiographical origins to its Gallo-Roman reinvention. Equally intriguing are the intellectual
forays into the body-history of late antiquity, including spiritual tattooing on virginal flesh (Virginia Burrus) and the “grotesque” bodies of harlot-saints (Patricia
Cox Miller).David Brakke meticulously negotiates the charged territory between
gender theory and women’s history by arguing that rhetorical portraits of
women in early ascetic texts do have “concrete effects for real women” (p. 27).
Maureen Tilley moves the reader into the social realm of women’s history by
excavating Augustine of Hippo’s epistles penned to elite female recipients in
order to recover “information about historical women” (p. 41).
In his essay on Theodoret, the fifth-century bishop of Cyrrhus in Syria,
Philip Rousseau encapsulates perfectly the tension inherent in this field
between literary and historical methodologies: “a key problem in late ancient

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studies in recent years, especially for historians, has been the problem of
access . . . are we truly getting in touch, so to speak, with the peoples of a
remote past? Or are we condemned, rather, to be mere aesthetes, judging in
the terms of our own times. . .” (p. 278). Rousseau challenges his readers to
bridge the gap between this alien past and the familiar present by presenting
them with a Bishop Theodoret whose epistemology and subjectivity turn out
to be “quite modern in their tone” (p. 281). In contrast, Daniel Boyarin, drawing on the methodologies of New Historicism, invites his readers to contemplate the chasm separating modern interpreters from the (unknown) crafters
of early rabbinic texts.
Identity politics play a central role in the chapters devoted to the study of
heresy in late antiquity (Teresa Shaw, Averil Cameron, David Hunter) and the
intersection of classical and Christian paideia (Susanna Elm, Mark Vessey,
Dennis Trout).Whereas Cameron looks to Byzantine heresiologies for jewels of
poetic inspiration, Trout turns to the poet of the martyrs, Pope Damascus, to
chart the transformation of civic identity and public memory in fourth-century
Rome. Trout ventures into spatial and visual theory (something one might
expect even more of in this cutting-edge collection) by incorporating the work
of French sociologist Henri Lefebvre and art historian Jaś Elsner. Overall, there
is much to admire in The Cultural Turn, from its balance of literary and historical readings of the past to its disciplinary range and theoretical creativity.
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

LYNDA L. COON

A History of the Church in the Middle Ages. By F. Donald Logan. (London and
New York: Routledge. 2002. Pp. xiv, 368. $22.95 paperback.)
The success of The Da Vinci Code has a special meaning for historians of
Christianity. It points to the importance of history, even in mythological and
legendary form, to satisfy the fundamental relationship between story and
human understanding. What is perhaps most interesting is that considerable
effort is being devoted to serious discussion of this most recent resurrection
of conspiracy theory. Still, we can take some consolation that this period has
witnessed a modest increase in courses devoted to church history and in the
number of general works on the topic. Also, the field has been undergoing a
quiet revolution, from an exclusive emphasis on ecclesiastical governance and
doctrinal disputes to an interest in the Church as it touched the lives of
people. F. Donald Logan’s work reflects this trend.
I have often thought that the best church history is found in the “Acts of the
Apostles” and the Epistles and that this should serve as a model for modern historians. It is a delight to see scholars moving in that direction. Of course, Logan
gives ample space to topics like the conversion of Constantine, Justinian, Pope
Gregory the Great, the Carolingians, the papacy, and the Great Schism, but he
also has sections on popular devotion, Peter Abelard, universities, and a whole

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chapter on death and purgatory. But it is in the tone of his work that we find
his effective use of narrative and his eye for illustrative detail and apt quotations. It seems important to learn that Pope Alexander VI was knowledgeable
about Greenland and was aware that the Christians there tried to preserve their
faith even though they had had no bishop or priest for eighty years. A similar
story in more modern times is told about the Japanese Christians who survived
a long period of isolation.When we tell the story of the Church, these episodes
deserve serious examination. It is one of the strengths of Logan’s book that he
works to capture the flavor of a topic as well as the facts. For him, the relationship between Abelard and Heloise is very human. He contrasts the passionate
tone of Heloise’s letters with Abelard’s reply.“How cold his response must have
seemed when, in reply, he merely counselled her to pray.” On the other hand,
Innocent III, who receives a detailed treatment focusing on relations with secular rulers, the crusade, and the Fourth Lateran Council, never comes to life in
the same way. This is the most extensive treatment of any pope and reflects
Logan’s adherence to conventional views. Given the extensive work done on
Innocent III in recent years and the image of Innocent that has been emerging,
this treatment inevitably falls short. On the whole his treatment of the papacy
neglects important new research that provides much more dynamic and
engaged pictures of the popes. An exception is the considerable space he
devotes to Pope Nicholas V’s efforts to restore Rome after the period of long
neglect in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and his founding of the Vatican
Library, an effort not appreciated by his successor, Calixtus III.
There is considerable merit to this volume, and it will prove useful to both
students and teachers. A new edition will provide opportunity for revisions.
One problem stands out. Logan approaches the Church from a northern
European perspective. This is evident in interpretations as well his organization of the materials. Christianity was, however, a Mediterranean religion.The
Church reflects this fact, though the Latin Church’s ties to northern Europe
have obscured this reality to a considerable degree, especially as a result of the
Protestant Reformation.As the Latin Church has moved away from its eastern
roots, its history has become more separated from the eastern Churches.The
western Church even up to the fifteenth century remained much more conscious of its relationship to the eastern Churches than was the case after the
Reformation. I suggest that Logan would strengthen his already valuable book
by recognizing this fact and giving it due attention.
Professor Logan writes well and is a conscientious scholar. His book will
win numerous well-deserved adherents. My suggestions are made in a spirit of
making a very good book better.
Syracuse University, Emeritus

JAMES M. POWELL

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Il battesimo di Costantino il Grande. Storia di una scomoda eredità. By
Marilena Amerise. [Hermes Zeitschrift für klassische Philologie, Einzelschriften, Heft 95.] (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 1995/2005. Pp. 180.
€34.00 paperback.)
The story which Amerise has to tell is an extremely interesting one, even if
some of its details will probably always remain obscure. The emperor
Constantine was baptized in May, 337, when he was very close to death, and the
bishop who baptized him was Eusebius of Nicomedia. Eusebius was constantly
and consistently reviled by the adherents of the creed drawn up at Nicaea in 325
as an arrant heretic,not merely after his own death in 342,but even while he and
Constantine were both still alive, as his political ally Eusebius of Caesarea complained (Contra Marcellum 1.4.9). Hence it is not surprising that the orthodox
of later ages found it hard to stomach the fact that the first Christian emperor
had been baptized by an “Arian.” The truth about Constantine’s baptism was,
therefore, concealed, adapted, and modified, then eventually completely
replaced by deliberate invention.The first part of Amerise’s study analyzes the
account of the baptism of the emperor in the Life of Constantine by Eusebius
of Caesarea (pp. 13-64); the second part describes how writers of the fourth century after Eusebius presented Constantine’s baptism in a new way because they
depicted the emperor, who had in reality been sympathetic to Arius and had
recalled him twice from exile, as an unwavering supporter of doctrinal orthodoxy against Arius,“Arians,” and “Arianism” (pp. 65-92); the third part examines
the emergence of the completely fictitious account which subsequently established itself as canonical and was accepted throughout the Middle Ages—the
legend that Constantine had at first persecuted the Christians and had been
stricken with leprosy, but converted to Christianity, was miraculously healed and
then baptized by Pope Silvester in Rome (pp. 93-120).
Unfortunately, it is not clear to the present reviewer that Amerise’s monograph marks any significant advance on previous scholarship, and her bibliography raises serious doubts about her scholarly expertise and judgment.A bibliography of “secondary literature,” which runs to fully twenty-seven pages in
what is a rather short book (pp. 145-172), includes several unscholarly and perverse books such as Alastair Kee’s notorious Constantine versus Christ. The
Triumph of Ideology (London, 1982), yet finds no space for (1) W. Levison,
“Kirchenrechtliches in den Actus Silvestri,” Zeitschrift der Savigny Stiftung,
Kanonistische Abteilung, 15 (1926), 230-240, reprinted in the posthumous
volume Aus Rheinischer und Fränkischer Frühzeit. Ausgewählte Aufsätze
(Düsseldorf, 1948), pp. 466-473; (2) Jean Gaudemet,“La législation religieuse de
Constantin,” Revue d’histoire de l’église de France, 33 (1947), 25-61; or (3)
Peter Weiss, “Die Vision Constantins,” Colloquium aus Anlass des 80.
Geburtstages von Alfred Heuss. Frankfurter Althistorische Studien, 13
(Kallmünz, 1993), pp. 146-169, now translated into English by A. R. Birley and
revised by the author as “The Vision of Constantine,” Journal of Roman
Archaeology, 16 (2003), 237-259.These omissions are regrettable because they
are so relevant to Amerise’s book. (1) Levison’s short paper of 1926 adds to the

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arguments for a Roman origin for the Actus Silvestri which he had advanced
two years earlier in his long and justly famous paper of 1924, which Amerise
cites and uses, although her bibliography does not direct readers, as it should
have done, to the revised and more readily accessible version in Levison’s collected papers. (2) Gaudemet’s study played a significant part in quieting
doubts about Eusebius’ veracity and authorship of the Life of Constantine in
the middle of the twentieth century. (3) Weiss’ important and original paper
puts the conversion of Constantine in an entirely new light.Amerise’s bibliography also misreports a fair number of titles (e.g., books by Richard Burgess
and Alexander Demandt), misstates the names of several authors (e.g.,“Klein
1974” refers to an article by Konrad Kraft first published twenty years earlier),
often fails to give references to the series in which monographs are published
and under which alone many libraries catalogue them—and it pays the
reviewer an unintended compliment by attributing his article “The Conversion
of Constantine,” Classical Views, 29 (1985), 371-391, to Averil Cameron.
On matters of substance, doubts about Amerise’s competent and judgement
arise on the very first page of her introduction. She puts the end of the Roman
Republic in the first century after Christ (p. 11 n. 2: “Augusto che ha determinato il passaggio dalla reppublica al principato nel I secolo d(opo) C(risto)’
[emphasis added]) and illustrates the proposition that the conversion of
Constantine remains a vexata quaestio with a footnote that cites no fewer
than fifty modern works in a list which mingles inextricably good, bad, and
indifferent scholarship without attempting to analyze the real progress which
has been made in this controversial field (p. 11 n. 4). In the first part of the
book, the author insists that Eusebius himself, not a posthumous editor, is
responsible for the structure and arrangement of Book Four of the Life of
Constantine and bases substantive arguments on this supposed fact (esp. pp.
17-18 nn. 21, 25). Since the reviewer takes a different view, he regrets that
Amerise seems nowhere to mention his fullest statement in the case in “The
Two Drafts of Eusebius’ Life of Constantine,” in: From Eusebius to Augustine.
Selected Papers 1982-1993 (Aldershot: Variorum Reprints, 1994), no. XII,
whose conclusions are, despite some minor verbal quibbles, essentially
accepted by Averil Cameron and S. G. Hall, Eusebius: Life of Constantine
(Oxford, 1999), pp. 9-12, 24-34. As for the third part of her study, Amerise
appears not to have taken the precaution of consulting the entry for the Actus
Silvestri (of which there is as yet no proper critical edition) in the Clavis
Patrum Latinorum3 (Turnhout, 1995), no. 2235, which registers yet another
relevant modern study absent from her bibliography—W. Pohlkamp,“Tradition
und Topographie: Papst Silvester I. (313-335) und der Drache vom Forum
Romanum,” Römische Quartalschrift, 88 (1983), 1-100. Quid plura?
University of Toronto

TIMOTHY D. BARNES

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297

Maiestas Domini: Une image de l’Église en Occident Ve-IXe siècle. By AnneOrange Poilpré.(Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf.2005.Pp.300. €35.00 paperback.)
The author revisits an iconographic theme, Maiestas Domini, that has been
comprehensively treated before, notably in Frederik Van der Meer’s monograph of 1938. In modern art-historical jargon the term is applied most particularly to images that surround an enthroned figure of Christ with the beastsymbols of the four evangelists, and it is often extended to images that, drawing
on the Apocalypse, represent a lamb instead of an anthropomorphic figure of
Christ. Here the author’s focus is primarily on early Italian images, monumental mosaics, and also some small-scale works in metal or ivory, and on
Carolingian manuscript illustrations.
The term Maiestas Domini is elastic and difficult to define, and the author
is aware that it is a Latinate pseudo-medievalism when used in an iconographic
sense, applying important textual constructs to images seldom if ever so designated in medieval sources.The author, strongly influenced by many studies
of Yves Christe, presents an ecclesiological rather than theophanic (Van der
Meer’s emphasis) or parousiac interpretation of the imagery. In the author’s
view, the earliest examples of her themes, primarily in monumental mosaics in
Rome, are statements about the nature and power of the institutional church.
Later images are related to ecclesiastical reform, sometimes not very persuasively. For example, the author argues that the unusual image in the
Gundohinus Gospels (from Francia, after 754) should be related to Boniface’s
reform mission east of the Rhine, although no evidence is presented connecting it with Boniface or with that area, and despite the image’s close association
with a rare text on the facing page that, as she states, strongly supports a dogmatic rather than an ecclesiastical interpretation. An extended discussion of
the Godescalc Evangelistary makes interesting reading, but has as its premise
the notion that five images displayed on five separate pages in a book, so that
they can never be seen together, should nonetheless be interpreted within the
category of the Maiestas Domini image, all or nearly all of the other examples
of which are visible as an ensemble. One would wish for a presentation of
premises and evidence rather more open to alternative interpretations. Too
often such conclusions seem arbitrary, and thus unpersuasive.
The book’s illustrations are, unfortunately, grossly inadequate. There are a
few color plates, all of familiar images available in many other publications.
Most of the illustrations provided are in black-and-white, but many of these are
presented through very crude drawings rather than photographs, a procedure
never explained. Photographs are expensive and annoying to acquire, especially as many institutions now assess significant or even punishing reproduction fees even for such a scholarly publication as this, but one expects to see
them unless for some reason unobtainable. In too many cases the reader is not
even directed to another publication where a photograph rather than a drawing might be seen, and many works are not illustrated at all, even when discussed at length. Unless already an expert in this area, with a library at hand

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and pre-existing knowledge of what sources to consult, the reader often has
no means of evaluating the author’s interpretations against the visual evidence. It seems that the author does not want to lose sight of larger interpretive issues by becoming bogged down in details. Ah, but in the details is the
devil (or whoever, for there are many variants of the saying).
Basically the author reads the images against modern secondary literature,
and agaInst primary sources, both patristic and early medieval. For example, in
discussing the important Maiestas Domini image from the Codex Amiatinus
(Monkwearmouth-Jarrow before 716) she adduces Ambrose’s commentary on
Luke for the view that Christ is present in the four symbolic symbols of the
Evangelists, while the four Gospels represent ecclesia.The connection between
text and image is not explored in detail, however. Is the citation just a tool with
which the modern beholder might form an interpretation of the image’s meaning? The author provides neither evidence nor argument that this patristic work
was known in the Northumbrian context of the manuscript’s production or in
any hypothesized context whence its model or models stemmed.Such questions
are difficult, but the reader who wants to pursue such issues receives no help
from the author.In sum,this book is a convenient and often thoughtful essay presenting a strong reading of the images and texts considered, with hypotheses
that a highly-motivated and expert reader might want to consider further.
University of Delaware

LAWRENCE NEES

The Origins of Medieval Architecture: Building in Europe, A.D. 600-900. By
Charles B. McClendon. (New Haven: Yale University Press. Pp. xii, 264 with
175 b/w and 35 color plates. $65.00.)
This accessible and well-illustrated book provides a thoughtful overview of
the history of architecture between the later Roman period and A.D. 1000.
Dedicated to the memory of Richard Krautheimer, it in fact brings to mind
Krautheimer’s seminal volume on the architecture of the Byzantine world as
well as Kenneth Conant’s companion volume on Carolingian and Romanesque
architecture. Indeed, in many ways this is a shorter, updated version of these two
great volumes squeezed comfortably into 208 handsomely illustrated pages.
Part one reviews the legacy of “late antiquity,” the Roman response to the
cult of relics, Romanitas and the barbarian West, and the Christianization of
Anglo-Saxon England. Part two focuses principally upon the Carolingian era
and its aftermath in six chapters which include a review of the eighth century,
the impact of Rome on Charlemagne’s Aachen, private patronage and personal
taste, the monastic realm, the innovation of later Carolingian architecture, and
an epilogue that examines the architecture at the turn of the millennium in
terms of the foregoing history. These contents illustrate immediately that,
notwithstanding the reference to the new discoveries thanks to recent
medieval archaeology in the introduction, this is essentially a history of eccle-

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siastical architecture following closely the works of great masters such as
Krautheimer. Moreover, if there is one point that reveals the author’s thesis, it
is to be found on page 195, where, in sum, he argues that early medieval architecture evolved in response to the later Roman cult of relics. Over time this
architecture was fashioned in “an array of shapes, sizes, and decorative textures” by the Franks, Lombards, Visigoths, and Anglo-Saxons, all of whom,
McClendon contends, sought to emulate Roman techniques. So, he concludes
tellingly, “the so-called Carolingian Renaissance . . . marked a shift in degree
rather than kind.” In other words, while he identifies the new architectural
forms of the era after c. 814, following Charlemagne’s death, continuity of
experimentation with Roman concepts is his principal theme.
This thesis must surely merit reconsideration following the results of many
important excavations. Undoubtedly, the theme of continuity cannot be set aside.
The Roman triclinium form,for example,well known in late antiquity,outlives the
collapse of Romanitas and is to be found in excavated sites such as the Mercian
palace in ninth-century England and, similarly, it served the abbots of San
Vincenzo al Volturno as either a residence or guest-house in the same era.Yet we
now know that other forms of elite dwellings existed as well: the small but wellpreserved ninth-century aristocratic house with its porticoed front from the
Forum of Nerva in Rome certainly merits mention,as does the contemporary hallhouse with its bowed walls from the village of Poggibonsi,Tuscany.Similarly,while
McClendon identifies the Roman conceptual framework for the schematic plan
of St. Gall, he pays little attention to the evidence from the extensive excavations
at San Vincenzo al Volturno which illustrate how a small nucleus was transformed
into a ninth-century modular arrangement on terraces that, in Roman terms, now
intentionally dominated the landscape. Traces of the same urban concept have
been found elsewhere in Italy at Farfa and Monte Cassino, and hints of it exist as
far afield as St. Denys. In sum, the archaeology emphasizes a massive injection of
investment in the Carolingian era in order to emulate fully Romanitas.This is perhaps best illustrated by the ubiquitous discovery of animal-driven mortar-mixers
associated with late eighth- and ninth-century building projects as lime mortar
replaced the use of more primitive building materials.
In sum, this handsome book serves to summarize much great scholarship,
but new research emphasizes how much there is to ponder as we grasp the
rhythms of a truly formative era in European architecture.
University of East Anglia

RICHARD HODGES

The Story of Wamba: Julian of Toledo’s ‘Historia Wambae regis.’ Translated
with introduction and notes by Joaquin Martínez Pizarro. (Washington,
D.C.: Catholic University of America Press. 2005. Pp. xviii, 262. $64.95.)
The Historia Wambae, an account of the suppression of the revolts in the
provinces of Narbonensis and Tarraconensis against the new king Wamba in

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672-673, together with three related legal or rhetorical documents, is the only
historical work produced in Visigothic Spain between the mid 620’s and the
Arab conquest of 711. It is also the only early medieval historiographical text
to devote itself in such detail to so short a period and so confined a topic. It is
all the more surprising, therefore, that it has never previously been rendered
into English, despite the existence of several recent useful anthologies of such
translations. In fact the first Spanish version appeared less than five years ago.
In part its uniqueness and also the difficulty of the questions of its nature, purpose, and compositional history may explain its relative neglect. However, this
only makes the appearance of this careful and accurate translation all the more
welcome. Its lack of inclusion in a previous anthology gives Professor Martínez
Pizarro the opportunity to devote the rest of his book to lengthy historical and
literary introductions to the text and to substantial notes on the texts.As these
make frequent reference to the Latin original, it is perhaps regrettable that he
did not go so far as to re-edit the text, or alternatively reprint the Wilhelm
Levison edition of 1910 for the MGH. There are no extant medieval manuscripts of the work; only sixteenth century copies, but the time may be right
for a fresh editorial eye on the text itself.
The two introductory essays are substantial, but the historical one suffers
from being too even-handed. Professor Martínez Pizarro is not himself a specialist in the Visigothic period, and in consequence may not recognize that he
is attempting to construct a synthesis from the works of scholars whose views
do not easily coexist, or are often flatly contradictory.The effect is rather like
trying to write history by committee.A further consequence is that he allows
a surprising amount of space to older interpretations that have few if any
modern followers. On the literary side, which is where his own interests
mainly lie, he is far more original and indeed has few predecessors in the task
of trying to establish the influences that may be detected in this short but complex group of texts. In particular he argues for an indebtedness to the Late
Antique tradition of verse panegyric that has not previously been noticed. As
the formal parallels are not exact, he may be overplaying his hand, but it is certainly thought-provoking.The notes can repeat some of the arguments of the
introduction, and are not as full on some topics as on others, but all of these
are minor quibbles.This book is to be warmly welcomed, and deserves a paperback version too.
University of Edinburgh

ROGER COLLINS

Heresy in Medieval France: Dualism in Aquitaine and the Agenais, 10001249. By Claire Taylor. [Royal Historical Society, Studies in History, New
Series, Vol. 46.] (Rochester, New York: Boydell Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 311.
$90.00; £45.00.)
This book swims interestingly and successfully against the tide. In its scope
and intent, it rejects a number of the orthodoxies of current heresiography, and

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looks both forward to a synthesis of recent methodologies, and back to the
grander perspectives of certain founding texts. Modern Anglophone research
on medieval heresy has tended to focus either on the apparently disparate heresies of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, or on the larger sects of Cathars
and Waldensians, seen as beginning in the later twelfth century and stretching
into the early fourteenth century (and, in the case of the latter, to the
Reformation).To express the division more crudely, historians work either on
chronicle accounts or on trial registers. In recent years, in both Anglophone and
Francophone work, methodologies within both camps have tended to focus
upon source-criticism, and interpretations have minimized or even dispelled
the sense in which those phenomena labelled as heresy had any ‘real’ existence.
‘Heresy’ in chronicle accounts has been read as a code for other religio-political
disputes;‘heresy’ in trial registers has been localized and anthropologized, with
historians (myself included) focussed particularly on how the records construct
the details they claim to depict. In both of these areas, Claire Taylor resolutely
refuses the pull of the current. Her fascinating book on heresy in France,
focussed particularly upon the medieval diocesan area of Agenais (almost coterminous with the modern département of Lot-et-Garonne), takes us from the
early eleventh to the mid-thirteenth century, and spends almost equal weight
on each chronological pole, making extensive use of both early narrative materials and later trial evidence, alongside charters and other documents. And
Taylor’s argument is (as she puts it) resolutely ‘post-revisionist’: whilst alert to
the complexities of the evidence, and conscious of the ways in which orthodox
authority could shape and distort the surviving material, she firmly argues that
dualist heresy did exist and extended over both time and space to a degree that
other recent commentators have rejected almost out of hand.
Key to Taylor’s argument is careful consideration of what orthodox
medieval commentators may have had in mind when they used the term
‘Manichaean’ to describe contemporary heresies. Rather than simply adopting
a patristic reference without reflection, she suggests, the eleventh- and early
twelfth-century chroniclers were making an honest attempt to diagnose
heretical phenomena upon which they had seriously reflected. The use of
‘Manichaean’ in this period was, she demonstrates, quite different from that
deployed by writers in the ninth and tenth centuries, and much more focussed
upon elements Taylor sees as being fairly secure ‘markers’ of dualist belief: “the
rejection of sex, the refusal to drink wine, eat meat or otherwise harm living
creatures, a predilection for fasting and the refusal to speak evil” (p. 113).Thus
casting a more sympathetic eye upon the narrative materials, traces of dualism
can be located more widely than a revisionist viewpoint would allow, and
Bogomil influences from the East identified in south-western France. Taylor
also, however, insists upon the importance of the local social context for
heresy: that heterodox belief, and dualism in particular, were most likely to
arise in areas experiencing weak ecclesiastical control and suffering oppression and social insecurity. Her picture of what occurs in the Agenais is thus a
complex interplay between changing social conditions (crises in the early

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eleventh century, political instability in the later twelfth) and intellectual currents (principally Bogomil missionizing in the early period, but also indigenous
reflections upon the nature of Evil).
I am not completely convinced by all that Taylor argues: I’m less certain
that one can build any very secure sense of what lies ‘beyond the text’ in the
case of the early narratives, and more doubtful than she about the precise role
of social experience in the formation of heterodoxy. But the former may be the
methodological prejudice of an historian more used to focussing on the high
and later Middle Ages, and the book is never less than highly thought-provoking, a sensitive engagement with both the modern historiography and the
experiences of the real people who once lived, believed, and died in medieval
France. In clear and elegant prose, Taylor asks us to confront the more glib
assumptions of various revisionist trends in modern heresiography, and provides an inspiringly diligent model for the historiographical pursuit of heresy
over several centuries.
Birkbeck College, University of London

JOHN H.ARNOLD

Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, roi de France: Volume V: Supplément
d’actes, actes perdus, additions et corrections aux précédents volumes.
Edited by Michel Nortier. (Paris: Boccard. 2004. Pp. ix, 589.) Volume VI:
Lettres mises sous le nom de Philippe Auguste dans les recueils de formulaires d’école. Edited by Michel Nortier. (Paris: Boccard. 2005. Pp. viii, 215.)
The project to publish the acts of King Philip II Augustus of France
(1179/1180-1223) was supposed to be completed long ago, but the systematic
scrutiny of archival sources has had the good effect of turning up more and more
authentic acts and of providing the sorts of information that make it possible to
assess the authenticity of many others. Michel Nortier,the editor of these two volumes, believes that the project is now more or less done, except for a projected
interpretative volume, which, it is hoped, will have a comprehensive index.
Part one of volume V includes about sixty newly identified acts, as well as
others falsely or with insufficient evidence attributed to the king. Part two of
this volume describes acts now lost but alluded to in various sources. And part
three offers corrections and additions to the previous four volumes. It also has
an “annex” on the execution of the king’s testament and an appendix on the
places where Philip’s acts were issued.
Volume six, as its subtitle suggests, excerpts formulaic letters which, from
internal evidence, probably were issued by the king but were turned into
models for students at the schools, in particular the Universities of Paris and
Orléans.Two annexes provide two additional documents from similar sources.
And two appendices marshal the evidence that can be garnered on the practices (diplomatics) of the royal chancery.

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The sixty new acts in volume V are a hodge-podge, as might be expected,
but there are a number of them that deal with or mention Jews (nos. 1830,
1865, 1875), grants to lepers (nos. 1828, 1838, 1844, 1854), and the extension
of the king’s protection to vulnerable subjects (nos. 1833, 1835, 1842, 1853).
Two false acts are among the most interesting. No. 1834 purports to be Philip’s
personal letter to the Count of Foix, asking him to join the king’s expedition
to the Holy Land, the Third Crusade (1190). It was published in French in 1640,
although the original version may have been a late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century Latin forgery that evokes authentic details, like the presence of
the count of Foix on the expedition.The tone is one of a kindlier, gentler Philip
Augustus than most historians would recognize. He signs off, “Vostre bon et
ami PHILIPPE.” The other false act, no. 1872, was issued allegedly on July 28,
1214, in camp soon after the Battle of Bouvines, where Philip Augustus routed
the German allies of King John of England. The act commends a southern
baron, Déodat, described with imaginary titles, like Duke of Narbonne and
Prince of Rouergue. He is cited for his bravery and audacity and the conceit of
fighting at Bouvines under the alias Tristan! The Pierre Tristan who really did
fight in the battle and is mentioned in a well-known contemporary source, was
a familiar of Philip Augustus, one of his chamberlains, but the name Tristan and
the disguise motif of the great romance that bears his name seem to have tickled the falsifier’s fancy and generated the forgery.
Scholars of all types owe a great debt to the efforts of editors of royal, aristocratic, and ecclesiastical acta.These two volumes published by Nortier show
that the debt continues to increase.
Princeton University

WILLIAM CHESTER JORDAN

The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham (1376-1422). Translated by
David Preest; introduction and notes by James G. Clark. (Rochester, New
York: The Boydell Press. 2005. Pp. viii, 471. $150.00.)
It will be enormously useful to students of the later Middle Ages to have a
readily accessible translation of Thomas Walsingham’s Chronica Maiora, the
single most important narrative source for English history between the Good
Parliament of 1376 and the death of Henry V in 1422; and, after having had to
wait so long for one, it is more than a little ironic that two have now appeared
within the space of two years. In 2003, Oxford Medieval Texts published the
first volume of The St. Albans Chronicle: The Chronica Maiora of Thomas
Walsingham, edited by John Taylor, Wendy Childs, and Leslie Watkiss, which
contained both the text and translation from 1376 to 1394 (volume 2, from
1394 to 1422, is forthcoming), and now David Preest and James Clark have
published this translation (with introduction and footnotes, but lacking the
original Latin text) of the whole chronicle.
The first question that needs to be asked, however, is whether this is
indeed the Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham. The authorship and

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relationship of the various chronicles written at St.Albans during this period
is, of course, a complex and much-debated question, but ever since the publication between the 1920’s and the 1940’s of V. H. Galbraith’s seminal articles on these texts, the general—though not unanimous—opinion has been
that it is the chronicle which goes by the title of Annales Ricardi Secundi
et Henrici Quarti which constitutes the fullest printed text of the Chronica
Maiora for the years 1392 to 1406.This does not mean that it constitutes the
fullest text, which is probably to be found in British Library Ms. Bodley 462,
which is being used by Taylor, Childs, and Watkiss as the basis of their edition
and translation. But it is certainly a significantly fuller chronicle of these
years than is to be found in the Historia Anglicana, which Clark and Preest
have used as the basis of this translation (collated with Galbraith’s edition of
the so-called St.Albans Chronicle from 1406 to 1420). James Clark has stated
on a number of occasions that he considers it unlikely that Walsingham
wrote the chronicle printed as the Annales; he considers the abbot’s chaplain, William Wintershill, a more plausible candidate (p. 19).This may be the
case (although it does not seem to be an opinion shared by Taylor, Childs, and
Watkiss), but for a work entitled The Chronica Maiora of Thomas
Walsingham, there is strangely little discussion in the introduction about
these opposing points of view.
Nevertheless, given that the fuller St. Albans/Walsingham text will before
long appear in Oxford Medieval Texts, it is in a certain sense fortuitous that
translations of both the longer and the shorter versions of these texts will
now be available. For these are, in truth, marvelous chronicles. Walsingham
was the last great monastic chronicler of the English Middle Ages, and he is
in most respects fit to rank alongside the best of them: inquisitive, informed,
deeply chauvinistic and prejudiced, fiercely devoted to St. Albans and the
monastic profession.Walsingham’s love of anecdote and caustic wit brought
out in his work both the best and the worst in the English monastic tradition
of historiography. Moreover, as James Clark has emphasized in a series of
deeply perceptive publications over the past few years,Walsingham’s historical writing was consistently informed by his classical learning, making him
not just the last great English chronicler of the Middle Ages, but simultaneously one of England’s first ‘Renaissance’ historians: thus “he cultivates a
classical style of narration in which even the most commonplace events . . .
are reported as moments of great passion and high drama” (p. 9). Much of his
narrative, not surprisingly, concerned the travails of the Catholic Church at
this time: after all, his chronicle coincided almost exactly with the Great
Schism in the Church (1378-1417), which permitted Walsingham to draw on
his deep reserves of antipapalism, and with the rise and ostensible defeat of
Lollardy, the first significant heretical movement in England for a millennium. For the Lollards, he cultivated a finely-honed contempt, just as he did
for the friars: when the devil appeared at Danbury (Essex) on the evening of
June 2, 1402, it was “in the likeness of one of the Friars Minor” (Franciscans)
that he did so (p. 321).

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All this is well brought out in David Preest’s very readable translation and
elucidated by James Clark’s concise and informative introduction and footnotes. Whether or not this really is Walsingham’s Chronica Maiora, it makes
one of the great chronicles of medieval England available to a much wider
audience than hitherto, and is a fine work of scholarship which will be equally
valued by students and researchers alike.
University of St.Andrews

CHRIS GIVEN-WILSON

St. George’s Chapel Windsor in the Fourteenth Century. Edited by Nigel Saul.
(Rochester, New York: The Boydell Press. 2005. Pp. xviii, 241. $90.00.)
Edward III’s foundations at Windsor (the chivalric Order of the Garter and
associated college of secular canons) centered on St. George’s Chapel, in the
lower ward of Windsor castle. St. George’s Chapel Windsor in the Fourteenth
Century seeks to demonstrate Edward’s motivation for these extraordinary
foundations, and their impact.
This book is, in fact, one of several recently published on St. George’s. In
2001 St. George’s Chapel in the Late Middle Ages edited by Richmond and
Scarff, was published, based on a conference of the same name. Following that
the British Archaeological Association published the proceedings of its
Windsor-based conference. In the same year a further conference took place,
and from this the latest offering has emerged. Is there room, one might ask, for
a further substantial volume? The series of eleven fascinating and highly
informative papers in this book confirms that there is. The first three papers
focus on Edward III; they are followed by five on the College and three on
architecture and building.
The first three papers focus on the Order of the Garter; topics include the
relationship of Edward’s Order to his political maneuverings, the construction
of a public image of monarchy, and iconography.A brief but fascinating contribution by D.A. L. Morgan subtitled “How God became an Englishman revisited”
covers the rise in status of St. George and the Blessed Virgin Mary under the
Plantagenets and its association with a sense of nationalism.
A more substantive contribution is made by Clive Burgess in his excellent
and important account of collegiate foundations. Following this is A. K. B. Evans
on litigation, a fascinating story of an obstinate vicar—highly revealing about
legal cases in the late Middle Ages. It follows the editor’s own contribution on
the canons of the collegiate foundation, a clear and concise account of their
careers.These papers tell us much about the personalities and people involved
in the institution, additionally identifying what was exceptional or otherwise
at St. George’s.The musical tradition (albeit in the fifteenth century) is charted
next through the career of John Plummer.
At the time of Edward’s foundation the college was served by a small chapel
(constructed by Henry III), later wholly reconstructed by Edward IV and

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Henry VII. For survivals of Edward’s college, one must look to the ancillary
buildings, in particular the original college entrance. John Goodall’s article
assesses this porch, tracing from it an incredible series of buildings, and telling
us much about the character of late medieval English architecture, within
which clearly the concepts of continuity and revival, interpretation and adaptation are firmly rooted.
An account of the masons working at St. George’s is provided next. The
issue of the scale and complexity of Edward’s works is well made.The impact
of gathering together this enormous group of masons in the mid-fourteenth
century is here associated with the subsequent development of a so-called
national style. This concept, perhaps too heavily indebted to John Harvey,
raises a crucial question about the character of late medieval English architecture and such generalizations have done much to undermine the varied and
innovative character of architecture in England in the late Middle Ages. The
exceptional nature of Edward’s foundations, however, is confirmed by the final
paper detailing the castle’s carpentry.
At times one might wonder whether the articles do not stray too far from
the title of the volume. Conferences, however, do not produce monographs,
and this volume is satisfyingly coherent. Several of the essays stand out as significant contributions to the history of Edward III, and the history of both colleges and architecture in late medieval England. Its broad contextualization,
therefore, is perhaps not a failing but rather this book’s great value.
English Heritage

LINDA MONCKTON

Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378-1417. By Renate
Blumenfeld-Kosinski. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
2006. Pp. xiv, 240. $45.00.)
Whereas most books on the Great Schism have considered it from the point
of view of ecclesiastical and/or national politics, this is a study of literary and
artistic works produced in response to that calamity. It moves from a discussion of reactions to the schism of 1179, which throws some light on the later
affair (via the works of Hildegard of Bingen, Elizabeth of Schönau, and John of
Salisbury), to two chapters on saints and visionaries (Birgitta of Sweden,
Catherine of Siena, Pedro of Aragon, Constance of Rabastens, Peter of
Luxembourg, Vincent Ferrer, Marie Robine, Ursulina of Parma, Ermine de
Reims, and Jeanne Marie de Maillé), followed by what the writer calls poetic
visions by Philippe de Mézières, Eustache Deschamps, Honoré Bovet, and
Christine de Pisan. The final chapter is about prophecy and in particular the
‘pope prophecies’ and Telesphorus.The work should introduce scholars who
have concentrated too much on politics to a world of discourse which is not
very familiar. One strength of the book is its discussion of some relatively unfamiliar authors whose works may not be readily accessible to students. Some of

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these writers were lowly persons, and the book certainly reveals the reactions
to the crisis of some very unpolitical Christians.
The book is relatively sparing in giving the political and historical background and to the present reviewer, a historian, it lacks historical nuance.The
literature in question frequently reminds one of the polemics of some modern
members of the Anglican communion against those who disagree with them.A
dialogue of the deaf is to an extent represented here.The author says (p. 162)
that the solutions in the texts discussed were “eminently reasonable, exactly
what was needed to solve this intractable problem.” This was so only for those
who could accept the premises on which they were based. Cessio, subtractio,
and even a general council all presented intractable problems, theological, legal,
and political, which genuinely could trouble the consciences of those in power,
and to refuse to accept what was offered was not always a sign merely of being
power-hungry.“No poet or prophet can sway those who are truly determined
to hang on to power” (p. 163) of course, but it was not only power politics
which made the schism so intractable, despite the rhetoric on both sides which
accused opponents of such sins. In all of this the political problems were probably the most important, but the theological should never be underestimated.
Almost all those who spoke here had the advantage of speaking as people who
could only exhort, without being daily obliged to devise policy for the Church
or the nation. In the end the Council of Constance opted for a solution which
blamed no one who was prepared to accept it, even two of the rival popes.
For the historian, then, much more context and background would make
the work more useful.There are also a few strange errors which I suspect are
the result of a literary rather than a historical approach. For instance de
summis pontificibus, is translated as “the last popes” (p. 81); the ‘plot’ by the
cardinals which was the undoing of Adam Easton and his colleagues was not
pro-Clementist but seems to have been a plan to subject Urban to a committee (p. 172);“la Santità vostra” (p. 54) is surely not “your saintliness” but “your
Holiness”; Sigismund certainly did not depose John XXIII; Constance did that.
Students should read this book but will want to go further.
Durham University

MARGARET HARVEY

Mary’s Mother: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Europe.By Virginia Nixon. (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2004. Pp. xiv, 216. $35.00.)
Since early Christian times, artists have faced the challenge of giving visual
form to beliefs. Dogma and devotion evolve, and so must art.Thus, the study of
religious iconography goes hand in hand with that of theology and spirituality,
and because none of them exists in a vacuum, such study must consider wider
contexts (historical, social, economic, etc.) as well. Hagiography provides fertile ground for this type of enquiry as the popularity of saints ebbs and flows
across time and geographic areas.As Virginia Nixon states in the preface to her

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new book on Saint Anne, “Far from being a purely art historical project, it
turned out to be as much about the history of religion, and indeed about history in a general sense” (p. xi).
Despite its title, the book is concerned with a more limited area than “Late
Medieval Europe” and deals mostly with German-speaking lands (along with
Flanders and Holland) in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It
focuses on two iconographies: Anna Selbdritt (Saint Anne, the Virgin Mary, and
the Baby Jesus) and the Holy Kinship, in which the three figures are accompanied by Anne’s three husbands and their abundant progeny. Although the
book takes art as a starting point, its essential focus is on the saint’s cult: the
texts that chronicle her life (apocrypha and later writings), shrines, monastic
foundations, and confraternities dedicated to her.
The author argues that Anne was “a saint among other saints” (p. 21) until
the 1470’s, when her popularity grew through the agency of clerics and humanists who believed in her salvific powers (chapter 3) and saw her as a model for
female behavior, especially that of middle-class laywomen (chapter 4). Perhaps
the book’s most interesting contribution is its discussion of how the cult was
used in fund-raising for the Church (chapter 6). Focusing on two German examples—Augsburg,“an old city undergoing major social and economic changes”
(p. 92), and the newly created Saxon town of Annaberg—the author shows how
the rebuilding of churches and convents, along with the acquisition of relics,
works of art, and indulgences, were the result of their “competition with one
another for status, clientele, and ultimately income” (p. 82). The next chapter,
“Functions and Perceptions: How People Used Images,” on contemporary reactions to images (in particular as criticized by Protestant writers), remains too
general. It contributes no new information to a topic that has been studied in
depth by other scholars. After a short chapter (eleven pages) on “Anne’s
Decline,” we encounter the concluding chapter,“The Images.”
It is surprising, to say the least, for a book that aims to explain the remarkable flourishing of Anne imagery at the turn of the fifteenth century, to wait
until the last chapter to see images addressed in depth.The limited number of
illustrations (thirty-six, all black and white) does not do justice to the richness
of the material. Also problematic is the absence of any methodological background.The author ignores important work on the construction of saints’ cults
(for instance, André Vauchez’s, missing from the bibliography), or Jean Wirth’s
1978 essay “Sainte Anne est une sorcière” (re-edited by Droz in 2003). Nixon is
surprisingly oblivious of medieval spirituality (exegetical readings of the Song
of Songs, so fundamental for Marian imagery, are absent), which limits her ability to understand the images she discusses. A case in point is her discussion of
the motif—rather than a compositional feature, as she calls it (p. 58)—of the
Madonna and St. Anne gazing into space.This unfocussed gaze, betraying their
knowledge of the baby’s future Passion, expresses their participation in the
plan of redemption. Although certainly true, this insight leaves out important
implications for the way images were actually used. As the author later

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acknowledges, it is an “inward” gaze (p. 59): the two meditating women act as
models for the devout.
Overall, this is a disappointing book, one that would have greatly benefited
from careful editing and serious reorganization of its chapters and their contents.
Colby College

VÉRONIQUE PLESCH

Introducing Nicholas of Cusa: A Guide to a Renaissance Man. Edited by
Christopher M. Bellito, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Gerald Christianson. (New
York/Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press. 2004. Pp. xvi, 480. $29.95 paperback.)
Attempting to introduce Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) to the twenty-first
century involves almost as much complexity and nuance as typified the subtle
mind of Nicholas himself.The contributors to this volume, mostly members of
the American Cusanus Society, have achieved a formidable task. The volume
divides into five sections: Introduction, Church and Society, Humanism and
Spirituality, Philosophy, Theology, and Science, and a Guide to Research. This
works well, for it allows the readers to dip into whichever facet of Cusa’s writings has the most fascination for them or one can just read the book straight
through.To get a glimpse of the whole picture one would do best by reading
the two chapters in Part I: Introduction, i.e., “An Appreciation” by Morimichi
Watanabe and chap. 2 “Life and Works” by Donald F. Duclow.They place Cusa in
the context of the fifteenth century, and they reflect the breadth of Cusa’s interests, the profundity of his thought, but also how his life and works reveal his
involvement in the issues and events of his lifetime: the Council of Basel, the
attempt at reunion with the Greek Churches, and also an issue of his time and
ours, the attempt at dialogue between the European and Christian worlds on
one side and the non-Christian and especially the Muslim world on the other.
Section II presents in three chapters parts of Cusa’s life that have become
better known in the last two generations: [Cusa and] “Reform” by Brian A.
Pavlac, “The Church” by Thomas M. Izbicki, and “Political and Legal Ideas” by
Morimichi Watanabe. One of the terms in Cusa’s mystical theology and metaphysical thinking could be very aptly applied here: “the coincidence of opposites.” Pavlac concentrates on Cusa and reform in a discussion of his deeds. Cusa
was an advocate of the contemplative life but was constantly on the move,
involved in the major crises of his day. He worked for reform as a bishop and
preacher but was also a collector of benefices, a curialist at the heart of what
many saw as the major structure in need of reform. He was open-minded and a
realist in his dealings with the Hussites at Basel and wrote his major treatise (De
concordantia catholica) at Basel but then broke with Basel to side with Pope
Eugenius IV in hope of having a better chance of reuniting the churches. His
personal intervention and journey to Constantinople in pursuit of union led to
the remarkable vision and shift in thinking while on the return voyage which
leads into the third part in this volume: Humanism and Spirituality.

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Here several writers expound on Cusa and “Renaissance Humanism” by
Pauline M. Watts, “Mystical Theology” by H. Lawrence Bond, “Preaching” by
Lawrence F. Hundertsmarck, and “Interreligious Dialogue” by James E. Beichler.
Many of the insights and clarifications in these are helpful for the section that
follows. The fourth section “Philosophy, Theology, and Science” through no
fault of the authors presents the most dense reading: “Knowledge and the
Human Mind” by Clyde Lee Miller; “Christ and the Knowledge of God” by
Walter Andreas Euler; “Sacraments” by Peter Casarella; and “Mathematics and
Astronomy” by Tamara Albertini. In reading these it is good to consult chap. 15
“A Glossary of Cusan Terms” by H. Lawrence Bond since Cusa’s themes of
enfolding-unfolding (complicatio-explicatio), learned ignorance (docta ignorantia) among others play a significant role.
Clyde Miller discusses the relation of God’s mind and the human mind,
Cusa’s idea of the “conjectural” nature of all human knowledge and how this
way of thinking, a pre-Cartesian mind-set, is easily misunderstood in later analysis. Walter Euler’s essay presents a theme, discussed earlier, that Cusa while
striving for interfaith dialogue and openness to the insights and contribution
of other religions (e.g., Biechler’s article) also tried to balance this with a
Christocentric perspective. For Cusa the search for God was through Christ.
The word play in Cusa’s “Vision of God” is developed since this conveys both
our seeing God and God’s seeing all things. Peter Casarella continued this line
of thinking when writing on the sacraments, since Cusa balanced an affirmation of an incomprehensible God with a Christ-centered mysticism. Cusa as a
preacher saw himself as a communicator of spiritual wisdom, a theme stressed
also in Lawrence Hundertsmarck’s essay.
There is so much in this book that individual nuggets cannot be listed.The
richness and profundity of Nicholas of Cusa’s ideas as expressed in his writings are elaborated by Chapter 14,“Nicholas of Cusa in English” by Thomas M.
Izbicki and Kim S. Breighner. Here we find a listing of the many translations,
the great studies on his life and works, an alphabetical listing of his individual
works with commentaries and studies, studies of his speculative thought, his
ideas on interreligious dialogue, on reform of the Church, political and ecclesiological thought, his influence on later thinkers, and finally manuscripts, editions and his library.
For anyone who has at some time said, I wish I could learn more about
Nicholas of Cusa, this book is a good place to start. For others to whom the
question has never arisen, this collection makes a good case for why one
should study him. It leaves one pondering without being ponderous.
State University of New York at Fredonia

THOMAS E. MORRISSEY

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311

Die Sermones des Nikolaus von Kues.Merkmale und ihre Stellung innerhalb
der mittelalterlichen Predigtkultur. Akten des Symposions in Trier vom
21. bis 23. Oktober 2004. Edited by Klaus Kremer and Klaus Reinhardt.
[Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft, 30.] (Trier:
Paulinus, Cusanus-Institut. 2005. Pp. xlii, 270.)
The present volume presents papers from the first of two international
symposia focused on the sermons of Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464).The complete 293 sermons are now available in edited, printed form in Vols. XVI-XIX of
the series Nicolai de Cusa Opera Omnia (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1970-2006).
To anyone who is studying Nicholas’ thought the sermons are an essential
resource, constituting, as they do, approximately one-third of his writings.
Some of the sermons were put into written form after they were preached;
some were written down before they were preached; and some were
preached without ever being written down.The 293 sermons of which we are
in possession are more correctly referred to as sermon-sketches—some of
which are lengthy sketches, others of which are quite short. Although all of the
sermons except for two (viz., XXIV and LXXVI) are written in Latin, most of
them were preached in German.As a result, the written sermons give us only
thematic impressions of what Nicholas actually preached more or less extemporaneously. There can be no doubt that at times he also preached in Latin,
especially when preaching in Rome and when preaching to priests. In preaching to the latter, his sermons were, presumably, oftentimes macaronic.
Moreover, the German Sermon LXXVI, unlike Sermon XXIV, is not from the
hand of Nicholas himself; rather, it is the report of a hearer in Vienna, where it
was preached.
By contrast with Cusanus, Meister Eckhart wrote some 243 sermons (fifty
less than did Cusanus). Over half of them (140 in number) were in German,
whereas the others (103 in number) were in Latin. But what is it that explains
why Nicholas wrote only one Sermon in German but preached most of them
in German? How long, typically, did a sermon, as preached, last? Have there
survived manuscripts (of the sermons) written in Nicholas’s own hand? Is
there evidence that Nicholas was an effective preacher, an interesting
preacher? How highly philosophical and theological are his sermons? How
extensive is his use, in the sermons, of dramatization, parable, anecdote? How
rich and how novel are his metaphors? What sources does he cite? What
themes seem to be the most prominent? These and other questions are
raised—and answered (in some cases decisively, in other cases tentatively)—
in the present collection of symposium papers.Thus, as in the first paragraph
above, the papers furnish us with a wealth of knowledge about the background context, the thematic contents, and the varied forms of Nicholas’s
Predigten.Accordingly, the volume is to be highly recommended to medieval
and Renaissance scholars.
Klaus Kremer provides an introductory overview that does much more
than merely summarize the other contributors’ papers.Thereby it stands on its

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own as a major contribution to the volume. Maarten Hoenen, in explicating the
relationship between exegesis and philosophical teachings in the sermons,
makes innovative comments on Nicholas’ way of interrelating faith and reason.
Walter Euler explores the historical development of the sermons and identifies
changing emphases. He seeks to group the sermons into different time-periods—periods of development that differ from Nicholas’ own estimate thereof
in his De Aequalitate. Marc-Aeilko Aris looks at the different audiences
addressed by Nicholas and investigates the influence that respective audiences
had on the construction of the sermons. Kazuhiko Yamaki focuses intensively
on Nicholas’ use of the book-metaphor—a metaphor that includes Nicholas’
speaking of “the book of conscience,” “the book of the soul,” “the book of
man’s intellectual nature,” and so on. Georg Steer delves into Nicholas’ knowledge of, and use of, Eckhart’s sermons.And Volker Mertens examines Nicholas’
preaching as it is situated in the context of the vernacular homilizing of that
day. The volume concludes with three further items. There is a well-documented analysis, by Klaus Kremer, of Nicholas’ understanding of visio intellectualis and of his distinguishing it from visio mystica. Furthermore, Karl
Bormann offers a spirited defense (1) of his edition and German translation (a
revision of Paul Wilpert’s earlier edition and translation) of Nicholas’ De
Venatione Sapientiae and (2) of Raymond Klibansky and Hans G. Senger’s edition of this same Latin text. Bormann’s defense, against a hostile critic, is certainly important, though of interest only to those readers who are working
directly with Nicholas’ texts.The final item is a book review of Vol. XVIII, fascicle 3 (certain Sermones) of the Opera Omnia.
In summary, the present collection of symposium papers represents some
of the key conclusions of most recent scholarship. Probably no reader can
agree with every detail of these scholarly determinations—of the groupings
into periods, etc. And, undoubtedly, no single treatment of a topic—e.g., as
regards faith and reason—can be expected to suffice by itself.Yet, the volume
offers the reader, along with an abundance of reliable information, a helpfully
balanced perspective. For Nicholas of Cusa was not only a man-of-learning
(who twice declined the offer of a professorship at the University of Louvain)
but was also a devout priest (who served as apostolic legate to the German
nation, as Bishop of Brixen, and as Cardinal of St. Peter in Chains).The sermons
help us not to lose sight of iste totus homo.
University of Minnesota

JASPER HOPKINS

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313

E arly Modern European
The Formation of Clerical and Confessional Identities in Early Modern
Europe. Edited by Wim Janse and Barbara Pitkin. [The Dutch Review of
Church History, Volume 85.] (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. 2006. Pp.
viii, 569. €169,00; $228.00.)
Excluding the book reviews appended at the end, this volume collects
twenty-four essays from two conferences under the procrustean frame of the
title indicated.The editors have divided the essays into three parts. Seven are
grouped under “Education and Theological Training,” which deal with the theological and pedagogic undertakings of the Reformed Church in the
Netherlands and Germany, giving this section a strong thematic unity; they represent the contributions by Riemer Faber, Stefan Ehrenpreis, Leendert
Groenendijk, Andreas Mühling, Wim Janse, F. G. M. Broeyer, and Karin Maag. A
second group of eight essays in Part Two, “Interpretation of Scripture and
Confessional Preaching,” represents two directions of research: while
Raymond Blacketer, G. Sujin Pak, Barbara Pitkin, and Rady Roldan-Figueroa analyze Protestant (mostly Reformed) biblical exegesis, Robert Christman, Sven
Tode, Emily Michelson, and Jason Sager devote their essays to the study of sermons. A third group of nine essays goes in different directions in spite of the
loosely worded theme, “Construction of Clerical and Communal Identities”:
three deal with England (Robert Scully, Gary Jenkins, and Ellen Macek), two
with Italy (Kathleen Comerford and Wietse de Boer), and one each with
Scotland (Margo Todd), Germany (David Fors Freeman), and The Netherlands
(Gerrit Voogt). For the readers of this journal, there are nine contributions on
Catholicism that may be of more interest which will be discussed below.
Robert Scully examines the Jesuit mission strategy in Tudor England. Its
focus on the gentry and aristocracy reflected both the family origins of many
of the English Jesuits themselves as well as a strategy to secure protection and
maximum political influence. Highly successful in counties removed from central governmental intervention, such as in Lancashire, this Jesuit strategy of
gentry missions came under criticisms by secular priests and limited, in the
long run, the social impact of recusant Catholicism. That last subject is the
theme of Gary W. Jenkins’s examination of recusant political thought in the
first decade of the reign of Elizabeth. Bested by the Anglican rhetoric of monarchical apotheosis, as in the writings of Bishop Jewel, the recusants found themselves caught between loyalty to their earthly sovereign and a universal ecclesiastical authority. In her essay, Ellen Macek examines advice manuals for both
Anglican and Catholic clerics between 1560 and 1660 to reconstruct the different ideals for the clergy. Turning to Spain, Patrick J. O’Banion studies confessional manuals to argue for the importance of negotiations in the relationship between clergy and laity. Taking a wider perspective, Kathleen M.
Comerford examines the professionalization of the clergy in the dioceses of
Florence, Lucca, and Arezzo after the Council of Trent. Comparing the synodal

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and episcopal acts with the records of diocesan visitations, she concludes that
Tridentine norms were hardly fulfilled up to the middle of the seventeenth
century. Arguing against the theories of professionalization and confessionalization, Wietse de Boer pleads for reflecting on the individual experiences of
the parish clergy and offers the interesting example of Girolamo Magni, a
parish priest in Tuscany who kept a personal journal from 1531 to 1595.
Pennsylvania State University

R. PO-CHIA HSIA

Luthers trinitarische Theologie des Heiligen Geistes. By Pekka Kärkkäinen.
[Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte/Abteilung
Abendländische Religionsgeschichte, Band 208.] (Mainz: Philipp von
Zabern, 2005. Pp. viii, 208. €34.80.)
A new picture of Luther is thankfully emerging as the result of detailed
studies, among them Pekka Kärkkäinen’s book Luthers trinitarische Theologie
des Heiligen Geistes, on Luther’s thought as contextualized in late-medieval
nominalist theology and philosophical theology. The choice of the Trinity, and
in Kärkkäinen’s case the Holy Spirit as related to the Trinity, lends itself to the
study of Luther’s rich understanding of the knowledge and the experience of
the triune God, as well as to the analysis of characteristic themes in Luther’s
thought—e.g., the relation of law and gospel—as those themes are interwoven
with classical doctrines. Kärkkäinen’s study is representative of this new line
of scholarship on Luther, heralding the growing consensus that Luther cannot
be studied without paying careful attention to the distinct influences on his
thought by his teachers Trutfetter and Usingen, particularly their connotation
theory (p. 43), by the metaphysical and language-philosophical issues of the
via moderna represented by Ockham, d’Ailly, and Biel, and by the precise doctrinal questions posed by Lombard in his Sentences. Luther must be studied, as
Kärkkäinen demonstrates, with the full critical apparatus of late-medieval
thought at one’s disposal in order to understand the distinctions and predications that Luther makes when articulating doctrinal claims, as well as the way
in which his thought is deeply informed by philosophical-theological issues.
Kärkkäinen’s study begins with a description of the historical trajectory of
trinitarian theology from significant proponents in the Middle Ages (e.g.,
Aquinas, the Victorines), and ending with d’Ailly and Biel. Kärkkäinen effectively shows Luther’s thought on the Trinity to be a development of the tradition in Western theology that reaches back to Augustine’s psychological
model, rather than a break from it. Luther’s vast corpus is organized chronologically in three parts: the early marginal notes to Lombard’s Sentences, the
biblical commentaries from 1513 to 1520, and the various writings—sermons
delivered primarily at Pentecost, catechetical material, and disputations—
until his death in 1546. By this seamless historical order the argument is made
that Luther develops features of his understanding of the Trinity from his earliest days as a student, particularly that he considers the Spirit in full view of

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the complexities of trinitarian-theological themes. One question concerns the
relation of the Spirit to Father and Son in the inner Trinity that Kärkkäinen
shows Luther answers by stressing the filioque in the relations of origin.The
crucial outer-trinitarian question concerns the personal marks of the Spirit in
the economic order of grace that is dictated by the axiom opera trinitatis ad
extra sunt indivisa. Kärkkäinen shows that Luther understands the Spirit’s
distinct contribution to grace by the Spirit’s presence of love as gift (donum),
while also discussing in detail the relation of the Spirit to the law and to the
hidden aspect of the divine essence. Another result of this study is that we
may now understand that claims about the Spirit’s work in the world can be
made analogously to claims about Christ. The union of eternal essence with
bodily manifestation and the communication of attributes show that the
Spirit’s work is not reducible to applying Christ’s work to the believer but
that the Spirit has its own integrity in contributing to the grace available by
presence (pp. 98, 100).
Kärkkäinen’s study is a hopeful indication that important epistemological
and doctrinal questions are raised in Luther scholarship and it will serve as an
exemplary monograph on how these questions should be treated.The historical approach tends, however, to overshadow the conceptual-doctrinal results.
The Spirit is encountered in Luther’s corpus through the vast array of biblical
images—the dove, flame of fire, tongues—and creedal statements—the Spirit
of the prophets, the Holy Spirit, the one who makes alive (vivificans). A topic
as imaginatively and scripturally diverse as the Spirit would greatly benefit
from conceptual analysis, which would abstract from the particular claims in
order to develop the conceptual relations of parts within the whole. A systematic-theological analysis of the Spirit would also help situate Luther as a
necessary dialogue partner in recent constructive-theological discussions of
the Spirit. A further question that Kärkkäinen inspires concerns the experiential dimension of the Spirit’s presence. If the Spirit is understood as Luther
does by the gift and presence of love, then what are the anthropological, psychological, spiritual, and empirical dimensions of that presence with the
believer? Philosophical theology just might have many conversation partners
in the empirical studies of religion.
Harvard Divinity School

CHRISTINE HELMER

Orden und Klöster im Zeitalter von Reformation und katholischer Reform
1500-1700, Band 1. Edited by Friedhelm Jürgensmeier and Regina
Elisabeth Schwerdtfeger. {Katholisches Leben und Kirchenreform im
Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung, Band 65.] (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag.
2005. Pp. 256. €22.80 paperback.)
This first of three volumes designed to survey religious orders in the period
of Protestant and Catholic Reformations covers (1) Benedictine monks and (2)
nuns, (3) Cistercian monks and (4) nuns, (5) the Teutonic Order, (6) the

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Knights of St. John of the Hospital (Knights of Malta), (7) Servites, (8)
Birgittines, (9) Brethren of the Common Life, (10) Canonnesses and collegiate
foundations for women, and (11) Ursulines. Subsequent volumes will take up
Augustinian Eremites, Celestines, various mendicant friars, Jesuits, Carmelites,
Carthusians, Poor Clares, Crosiers, Maria Ward’s Congregatio Jesu,
Praemonstratensians, and others. Only houses located within German-speaking
regions of Europe are to be included. The first four chapters on Benedictine
and Cistercian monks and nuns make up nearly half of the book.The editors
explain that these eleven orders are included largely because the scholars
assigned to cover them submitted their entries first.
Most entries follow a standard pattern, beginning with a statistical snapshot
of the order’s situation ca. 1500, ca. 1550, and ca. 1648, followed by a map and
a numerical listing of each German house of the order coded to permit the
reader to gain an overview of which houses survived or failed to survive the
chaos of the era and which regions suffered greater or lesser losses.The standard entry then continues with sections on (1) the origins, character and
charism of the order; (2) its late medieval life, culture, and reform efforts up to
1517; (3) the impact of the early Reformation; (4) the impact of the “second
Reformation,” territorialization, and confessionalization; (5) the impact of
Trent’s reforms; and (6) spirituality, art, culture, and scholarship at the end of
the era. Extensive bibliographies at the end of each entry make up in part for
the decision to eschew footnotes or endnotes.
Although perhaps most useful as a reference work, the book does give the
reader some sense of both common patterns and circumstances specific to
certain orders. One notes how, for Benedictines, areas of late medieval reform
correspond strongly to areas in which these orders survived the upheaval of
the Reformation. On the other hand, in some instances an unreformed convent
survived better than one that had been reformed under pressure during the fifteenth century, because the former often represented an institution of noblewomen embedded in the politics of the territory, which enabled it to weather
the Protestant attacks on monastic life. Indeed, the chapters on women’s
houses (including Chapter 10 on canonnesses and women’s collegiate foundations) as well as the two chapters on the military orders illustrate extremely
well how adaptable certain institutional forms of religious life were; by the end
of the era, some houses of each order had simply become Protestant versions
of their pre-Reformation institutions, in some instances with Protestant and
Catholic branches existing side by side.
Yet a different pattern is observable with the Servites. Originating in
Florence, their core area in German-speaking lands became the heartland of
the Reformation, Saxony and Thuringia, where all their houses were lost. But
two new Observant provinces in Tyrol and Bohemia in the seventeenth century thrived and played an important role until the Josephine secularizations
in the 1780’s and even influenced nineteenth-century Catholic life in Austria.

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The authors take care to build up their descriptions as a series of concrete,
vivid vignettes exemplary of the houses of a particular order in German-speaking regions.As a result, this valuable reference work is anything but an arid collection of data. One awaits eagerly the completion of the series.
Loyola University Chicago

DENNIS MARTIN

Working in the Vineyard of the Lord: Jesuit Confraternities in Early Modern
Italy. By Lance Gabriel Lazar. (Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press.
2005. Pp. xvi, 377. $80.00.)
Revealing the complex dynamic that existed between religious institutions
and the laity represents one of the richest veins that scholars have mined in
recent works that explore early modern Catholicism. Lance Gabriel Lazar’s
book offers a fine addition to this growing body of literature.Taking as his main
focus three early, signal Jesuit confraternities in Rome that worked with
reforming prostitutes, their “at risk” daughters, and for the conversion of Jews,
respectively, Lazar examines how the Jesuits fostered “the active engagement
of the laity in pious devotions” (p. 30).While the Marian congregations became
the characteristic form of Jesuit confraternity, especially after the 1560’s, Lazar
argues successfully that these earlier confraternities represented important,
exportable models for translating the Jesuits’ “way of proceeding” into concrete examples of charitable activity.
Lazar structures his book thematically, beginning with a useful introduction
to Jesuit ministries within the broader context of early modern Catholic charitable activities, and spending the next three chapters exploring key features
of each of the representative confraternities. A final chapter demonstrates how
the Jesuits expanded these model confraternities beyond their Roman base
and synthesizes the interpretive conclusions of the study.
While Lazar wisely decides to follow the lead of his archival documents in
filling out the portrait of each confraternity, focusing on important themes such
as membership composition, the motivations of the recipients of charitable
activity, and strategies for conversion employed by the Jesuits and their lay associates, respectively, this approach leads to some unanswered questions and a
certain imbalance among Chapters Two through Four. For example, while
Chapter Two provides a fascinating exploration of the evolution of S. Marta, an
early Jesuit confraternity that sought the reform of Roman prostitutes, through
a close examination of the composition of confraternal membership, it leaves
questions of motivation underdeveloped. Lazar does a good job of showing
how Ignatius Loyola inspired the development of this institution though his
long-term interest in working with “fallen women,” and introducing the key
players among the Roman élite who helped to found and finance the confraternity and its (literal) charitable structures.Nevertheless,while Lazar highlights
the central role played by élite female patrons in supporting this endeavor, he

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says precious little about their complex motivations.Although he cites secondary literature that has begun to round out the picture of the gender dynamics
of early modern reform, he provides a far too cursory discussion for this reader,
given the tantalizing questions that his material raises (p. 60).
Chapters Three and Four are more successful. In the third chapter, for example, Lazar offers an excellent discussion of the entrance process for “at risk”
young girls at the charitable house run by the S. Caterina confraternity, the
kinds of inmates that the institution attracted, and key personae who supported
its growth and financial stability. Chapter Four offers some fascinating case studies to demonstrate the strategies that the Jesuits employed to effect the conversion of Jews through their Catecumeni houses in Rome and beyond. Here,
Lazar argues incisively that these houses offer a window onto the broader conversion strategies that the Jesuits employed in future apostolic activities.
Aside from some minor critiques of the book, Lance Lazar’s Working in the
Vineyard of the Lord offers a valuable new piece to the complex puzzle that
is early modern Catholicism. Clearly written, well-researched, and cogent, the
book illuminates another dimension of early Jesuit institutional history, while
also offering an important view of the nuts and bolts of lay reform activity in
early modern Italy.
University of New Hampshire

JENNIFER D. SELWYN

Annotations and Meditations on the Gospels, Volume III: The Resurrection
Narratives. By Jerome Nadal, S.J. Translated and edited by Frederick A.
Homann, S.J. (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press. 2005. Pp. xvi,
181, 18 illustrations. $39.95.)
Shortly before his death in 1556, Ignatius of Loyola asked Jerome Nadal
(1507-1580) to write a book of meditations on the Gospels keyed to their
Sunday and feast day sequence in the Roman missal.The founder of the Society
of Jesus also requested that the book be illustrated. Nadal, one of the most peripatetic members of a decidedly peripatetic order, devoted what little free time
he had to this task between 1568 and 1576.The result is the Annotations and
Meditations on the Gospels, initially published by Martin Nunius in Antwerp
in 1593/95. Diego Jiménez, Nadal’s secretary and later literary executor, oversaw the project through its completion. Although originally written for Jesuit
seminarians, the book’s sponsors, including Pope Clement VIII, who provided
a sizable publication subvention, insisted that it be available to a much broader
Latin-reading audience, such as candidates for the priesthood. Nadal’s masterpiece soon became one of the seminal devotional treatises of the Catholic
Reformation. A second edition appeared in 1595 and a third in 1607. Its success was due in part to the harmonious integration of Nadal’s often poignant
text with the equally moving set of 153 accompanying engravings created by
the Wiericx (Wierix) family workshop of Antwerp.

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Much to its credit, Saint Joseph’s University Press decided to publish an
English translation of the Annotations and Meditations on the Gospels. Given
the length of Nadal’s text and the complexity of the project, the book is being
issued in three parts. Volume 1 on The Infancy Narratives appeared in 2003
with Melion’s lengthy essay (pp. 1-96) on the history, devotional methodology,
and significance of the Nadal-Wiericx enterprise.A CD-ROM containing all 153
engravings scanned from the 1607 edition was included. Volume 2 on The
Passion Narratives, by far the longest section of the book, will be published last.
In his preface to Volume 3 on The Resurrection Narratives, Frederick A.
Homann discusses the historical use of Latin within the Society of Jesus and,
more broadly, by the Catholic Church. He notes some of the challenges
involved in translating Nadal’s words and his meanings into standard American
English. Homann briefly explains Nadal’s use of the Latin Vulgate Bible and his
exegetical procedures. Here, as in volume 1, Homann’s translation seems
smooth, accurate, and eminently readable.
Walter S. Melion’s essay (pp. 1-32) focuses on Nadal’s understanding of
Christ’s Resurrection narratives as a series of “sensible signs,” such as his bodily
appearances to Mary Magdalene or his disciples.These visual prompts inspired
Nadal to structure his own text around the perceptible evidence of the accompanying engravings. Or as Melion puts it, his text “examines Nadal’s sense of
the relation between historical sights seen and the image of truth his meditative program implants” (p. 3). He briefly explains the structure of Nadal’s text,
specifically how it links Ignatius’ practice of “seeing the place” or making oneself present with the engraved image, each of which is marked with letters that
sequence or control the viewer’s movement through the narrative.These letters in turn are keyed to the accompanying annotations and the more extensive meditations. Melion next offers detailed readings of the Resurrection and
Pentecost prints for the opening and closing chapters of this section of Nadal’s
book. Since the Synoptic Gospels do not narrate the Resurrection, Nadal faced
the difficult challenge of deciding what to include. Melion persuasively proposes that Nadal viewed the Resurrection as a redemptive stream in which the
viewer reads the engraving and the accompanying text as a rising by stages
from sin and death to a new life. In his analysis of the Pentecost, Melion returns
to Nadal’s understanding that sensible signs “make visible the lineaments of
faith” (p. 11). Melion’s essays here and in Volume 1 are in some ways akin to
Nadal’s own writings. His often dense texts challenge his readers yet wonderfully reward their persistence with a wealth of insights about the brilliance of
Nadal’s vision and the complementary power of art to stimulate devotion. I
eagerly await the publication of Volume 2.
University of Texas at Austin

JEFFREY CHIPPS SMITH

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The Seventh Window: The King’s Window Donated by Philip II and Mary
Tudor to Sint Janskerk in Gouda (1557). Edited by Wim de Groot.
(Hilversum,The Netherlands: Verloren Publishers. 2005. Pp. 304. €40.)
This collection of some twenty essays is an in-depth discussion of a prestigious piece of artwork. The two scenes depicted in the large window
described are the dedication of the Temple of King Solomon and the Last
Supper, both scenes replete with iconic significance, particularly for Philip.At
the time of the donation the King was not only patron of the church, but ruler
of Spain, England, and the Netherlands. He was frequently compared to
Solomon, just as his father was referred to as David, the Great King, and the
Last Supper was also representative of the Eucharist, which was central to his
personal piety. The gift was solicited and negotiated by Vigilius van Aytta, a
royal official and courtly intermediary, and was occasioned by the rebuilding
of the church which followed the destructive fire of 1552. Gouda at the time
was a ‘loyal’ town, whose officials had taken their oaths to Philip during his
visit to The Netherlands in 1549, although he had not visited the town. The
church suffered from iconoclastic riots at the time of the Troubles in 1566, but
the window was spared because the main targets of the rioters were ‘graven
images,’ and in 1572 the town passed into Protestant control, remaining thereafter part of the United Provinces.Although the Provinces repudiated Philip’s
sovereignty in 1581, and the church was never again used for Catholic worship, the regime remained relaxed about the imagery of this—and other—windows in Sint Janskerk. Pride in their beauty and workmanship seems to have
overcome any repugnance at what was represented, and Gouda was in any
case never a center of radicalism. Over the succeeding centuries the window
has been maintained, and periodically restored, as taste and resources have
permitted, sometimes with beneficial results, and sometimes not. During World
War II the whole collection was dismantled and stored, but the church fortunately survived both the occupation and the liberation, and the windows were
put back in place in 1947.
One of the reasons why it has been possible to keep the King’s window in
something like its original form is that the cartoon, executed by Dirck Pietersz
Crabeth, has also survived, much restored but still containing most of the original work.That, and the fact that the widow was finely illustrated by Christoffel
Pierson in 1675, has kept subsequent renovations sufficiently accurate. Only a
proportion of the original glass now remains, but that includes the images of
the donors; Philip probably taken from a portrait by Titian (or possibly from
the life) and Mary from an unknown source. The image of Mary is more significant for its iconography than for any accuracy of the likeness.
The essays in this beautifully produced and lavishly illustrated book cover
every aspect of the window’s concept, creation, installation and subsequent
fortunes with relentless scholarship. Treated are the political and economic
circumstances of Gouda; Philip’s relations with his Netherlandish subjects;
Crabeth’s educational background; the nature of Habsburg patronage; Philip’s

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subsequent creation of the Escorial; and (in great detail) the iconographic significance of the scenes chosen.To the student of English history it is notable
that Mary is a mere cipher. She just happened to be Philip’s wife at the time,
and although she bore his numerous titles, plainly had no role outside of
England.This is made clear both from the heraldic representation, which is discussed by Andrea Gasten, and also from her general position in the iconography. In spite of the Queen’s presence, England had no part in this piece of
patronage, either symbolically or actually, and that is perhaps reflected in the
fact that the longer of the two articles which deal with Philip as King of
England, and with England’s role in Philip’s dominions at the time is reprinted
from the English Historical Review of 1997. It was a perfectly good article, and
some of the references have been updated, but it is a pity that Glyn Redworth
could not have been prevailed upon to provide a new piece for this collection.
There may be errors, but the only one which I detected is a statement that
England did not formally declare war on France in 1557. On the whole the
quality of the scholarship, whether dealing with politics, imagery, or conservation, is very high.Although the accounts for the installation of the window do
not survive, much of its subsequent history can be (and is) traced from that
source by Henny van Dolder-de Wit. It is also worthy of comment that this
whole work, dealing with a Dutch subject and its Spanish antecedents, and
compiled mainly by Dutch and Spanish scholars, should have been published
in English.The Anglophone world has cause to be suitably grateful.
University of Oxford

DAVID LOADES

Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy: Catholic and Anti-Catholic
Discourses in Early Modern England. By Arthur F. Marotti. (Notre Dame,
Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 320. $55.00 cloth;
$25.00 paperback.)
Professor Marotti’s book makes a constructive addition to the literature on
religious conflict in early modern England. He does not pretend to be breaking new ground in what has become a steadily growing field except to do precisely what his subtitle promises: set the two rival denominational discourses
side by side for consideration.The primary value of the volume is his addition
of Catholic sources to a discussion that among literary critics has been largely
confined to their opponents, since Protestant propagandists, including such
major figures as Edmund Spenser and John Milton, were free and even encouraged to be as vocal as they pleased, whereas Catholics who preferred not to
share the fate of Robert Southwell had to be a good deal more circumspect;
thus, there has been considerable speculation in recent years that Shakespeare
may have been Catholic, and certainly the absence of hostility to the old faith
in his works has been observed for centuries, but if he was a Catholic yet
nonetheless wanted to keep working as a playwright in London, he had no
choice but to be extremely careful. Literary texts are not Marotti’s chief inter-

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est, however; his chief interest is the polemical duels that regularly recur
between the 1580’s and the Glorious Revolution, the two termini of his study.
Between a short preface and shorter afterword, the book is divided into five
chapters, four short ones devoted to various particular controversies and one
last, longer one, longer than any two of the preceding ones together, where he,
by his own account for the first time in the book, begins to point toward a
larger historiographical conclusion as to the impact of anti-Catholic discourse
in constructing an English nationalism in direct contradistinction to how the
English had defined themselves less than two centuries before. Alert perceptions abound: his first chapter notes how a 1599 edition of Southwell “clearly
Protestantized the verse” (p. 30). His second chapter, “Alienating Catholics:
Recusant Women, Jesuits, and Ideological Fantasies,” discusses how the everdemonized Jesuits were depicted as prosecuting their subversions via weak
women and via Phineas Fletcher’s short epic, The Locusts, or Apollyonists,
arrives at the insight, useful to this Milton teacher, that “the seduction of Eve
[in Paradise Lost] takes place in the context of anti-Catholic and anti-Jesuit
polemic.A diabolical disguiser who is a skillful rhetorical seducer succeeds in
enticing his female victim into idolatrous, superstitious practice and alienating
her from both her husband and the faith in which they have grounded their
marital relationship” (p. 65).The fit is astonishingly neat, and is plausible, given
Milton’s obsessive hatred of Catholicism.
In his preface he notes the discomfort of a questioner at a conference who
wondered at his not “address[ing] the issue of whether or not they [the Jesuits]
had done some or all of the things of which they were accused”; in a “somewhat exaggerated reply,” he said,“I did not care what actually happened (the
province of the professional historian) but rather that I was interested in what
people thought happened, since this was at the center of the imaginings and
of the polemical logic of the works I had examined” (p. 4). He here gets to the
heart of the difference between the two disciplines, the one tethered to reality, the other to fantasy, but as a fellow fantasist of his, another inmate of the
English-Department madhouse, I can’t help but be a little disturbed (my only
objection to his useful work) by the coolness with which he surveys a literature of oppression and execution, whether it is the individual slaughter of missionaries in the name of religious freedom or the protracted horrors visited
upon Ireland by a religious bigotry enlisted to support a national antipathy and
justify the worst excesses of colonial brutality. Scholarly objectivity is a marvelous thing, but would he have maintained an equally Olympian detachment,
avowedly indifferent to mere facts, if the objects of hatred, persecution, and
butchery had been distinguished not by their faith but by their gender, sexual
preference, or race?
Kutztown University
Kutztown, Pennsylvania

RAYMOND D.TUMBLESON

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Anthony Munday and the Catholics, 1560-1633. By Donna B. Hamilton.
(Aldershot, Hampshire, and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing
Company. 2005. Pp. xxvi, 268. $94.95.)
In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, England was a dangerous place for Roman Catholics.The penal laws laid heavy fines on those who
did not attend weekly Protestant religious services and, at an extreme, set capital punishment not only for priests, but also for those who sheltered or helped
them,the government treating Catholics as actual or potential traitors.Captured
priests and laypersons who appeared on the official recusancy rolls were the
most visible of the Catholics, but there were many other Catholics who kept a
lower profile, including “Church papists” who avoided the charge of recusancy
by going through the motions of conformity. At a time of solidifying nationalism, loyalty was a key issue, both for the authorities and for English Catholics
who wished to live unmolested—especially in the light of the Papal Bull of
1570 excommunicating Queen Elizabeth and the papal assertion of a temporal
authority superior to regal sovereignty. Most Catholics tried not only to avoid
the harsh penalties of law, but also to demonstrate their national allegiance—
especially in the wake of the Spanish invasion attempt of 1588 and the failed
Gunpowder Plot of 1605. In this religious context, Donna Hamilton argues, the
prolific, if second-rank, writer Anthony Munday adopted a survival strategy that
involved balancing a continuing commitment to his Catholic faith with an
English loyalism, exploiting opportunities to criticize not only hard-line or fanatical Catholic resistance but also the continuing oppression of Catholics and the
relentless assaults on traditional Catholic culture.
Hamilton admirably handles the task of examining and interpreting the
varied works Munday composed, translated, or revised over the course of a
writing career of some four decades—for example, plays, civic entertainments,
chivalric romances, religious polemic, and urban chorography. She offers a
nuanced analysis of Munday’s celebration of Catholic cultural plenitude, universalism, and triumphalism through translations of continental romances. She
teases out the Catholic ideology implicit in the city entertainments and in the
revisions he made for two different editions of Stow’s Survey of London (1618
and 1633), the former offering him an opportunity to express the City’s resistance to monarchical encroachment on traditional rights and liberties and the
latter allowing him to underscore the traditional Catholic foundation of the
modern urban and civic culture. She has a particularly insightful discussion of
the religious and political complexities and topicalities of the dramas in which
he had a hand, especially the plays on Sir Thomas More, the Earl of
Huntingdon, and Sir John Oldcastle. Given the relatively scant attention such
texts have been given, her keen analysis of them is a welcome one.
The large argument Hamilton is pursuing with regard to Munday’s
Catholicism opens up his writing to fresh understanding. In a context in which
Catholics needed to present sociopolitical criticism through the self-protective
strategies of rhetorical indirection, equivocation, and disguise, Munday,

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Hamilton argues, consistently introduced into works that ostensibly supported
the Protestant hegemony elements that subverted it, responding not only just
to the general situation of Catholics in his time, but also to specific historical
moments such as the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the Gunpowder Plot, and
the Jacobean-Spanish Match negotiations. Hamilton calls Munday a “skilful
equivocator” using the “methods of rhetorical indirection” (p. xvii), but this
description might also apply to other writers as well—Jonson and
Shakespeare, for example. Scholars have, over the years, developed ways of
decoding literary texts written in a period of censorship and political oppression. What Donna Hamilton has done in her examination of the life and writings of Anthony Munday is a fine example of historically informed close reading, but the larger picture that emerges of Elizabethan and early Stuart culture
is also quite valuable.
Wayne State University

ARTHUR F. MAROTTI

Les Curés de Paris au XVIe siècle. By Vladimir Angelo. [Histoire Religieuse de
la France, no. 26.] (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf. 2005. Pp. v, 906. €49.00
paperback.)
At 906 pages, this book, a revised thèse de doctorat completed under the
direction of Marc Venard, cannot help but to command attention.The author
seemingly left no stone unturned in his effort to bring the parish clergy of sixteenth-century Paris into the historical spotlight. The significance of Paris as
the demographic, intellectual, and political hub of sixteenth-century France is
well understood, as is its emergence as a bastion of militant Catholicism (here
Megan Armstrong’s recent study of Franciscan preachers in particular comes
to mind).Yet, a few well-known curés aside, the place of the secular clergy is
largely absent from scholarly discourse. This absence is regrettable, Angelo
argues, because the curés serving the city’s thirty-nine parishes were not only
deeply enmeshed in everyday life, but they also formed “le lien entre théologie
et pastorale, entre pratique religieuse quotidienne et orientation politique” at
a time when the dual forces of Catholic reform and Protestantism were reshaping the city (p. 596).
Angelo sets out to reconstruct the curés’ world, layer by layer, over the
course of the sixteenth century. He intentionally casts a broad chronological
net in order to expose change and continuity over time. It is a daunting agenda,
which, he explains, he began by identifying the names of as many curés as possible, where they served, and for how long. Once armed with this list, comprised of 386 men in all,Angelo culled through an enormous range of sources
(synodal statutes, capitular and parish registers, wills, inventories after death, to
name only a few) to illuminate the trajectory of the curés’ careers as both an
ideal and lived experience. The result is a well-organized and cogently presented group portrait of Parisian curés that in its sheer scope and concomitant
refusal to rest on generalizations forges new historiographical ground.

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Divided into three parts, Angelo’s narrative draws the reader into ever
closer concentric circles around the curés and their parishes. Part I examines
the varied, and often competing, jurisdictional frameworks in which curés had
to function, followed in Part II with a detailed look at how men became curés,
and what intellectual and cultural “baggage” they brought with them to the
job. Angelo reserves his most extended discussion for Part III, where he
explores the realities of the curés’ lives as pastors—how well they performed
their charge; their relations with auxiliary clergy and parishioners; the manner
in which they lived. His study concludes with two, user-friendly appendices: a
chronological list of the 386 curés by parish (pp. 605-622); and a biographical
sketch of each man comprised of ten categories (sources permitting), ranging
from diocese of origin to political choices (pp. 623-838). Consequently, the
book is at once an essential end and beginning for a fuller understanding of
the institutional and human landscape of parish life in sixteenth-century Paris
and its impact on the development of early modern French Catholicism.
Although the book paints a picture vast in its detail, some dominant images
emerge. Drawing on a mixture of medieval pastoral traditions and Catholic
reform, Parisian curés appear to have fulfilled their duties attentively, if not
always with visible passion, and largely to their parishioners’ satisfaction. By
law, every curé in Paris was required to have a maîtrise ès arts, but in the
second half of the century, one in two curés held an advanced degree. In addition, more than 40% of the curés remained in charge of their parishes in excess
of eleven years, thus allowing them to establish firm roots in the community.
For these reasons, they were well positioned to cultivate Parisians’ strong
Catholic sensibilities, particularly when confronted with the rising tide of
Protestantism. However, following Robert Descimon’s lead, Angelo challenges
many historians’ assumption that the secular clergy were animators of the
Catholic League after it gained control of Paris in 1588.Although a dozen or so
curés were diehard Leaguers, five situated themselves at the opposite end of
the spectrum as committed Politiques. More curés still occupied neutral
ground, reinforcing Catholic orthodoxy through liturgy and ritual without
overtly engaging in League politics.
Despite the richness of this picture,Angelo is aware of its limitations. Most
notably, because his sources reflect a predominantly clerical, elite bias, parishioners’ voices are largely silent.A striking exception is the marguilliers, parishioners elected to oversee the temporal administration of the parish. For example, we see the marguilliers of Saint-Séverin petitioning the bishop for a
reduction in the number of foundation Masses said in the parish due to insufficient funds (p. 325); the marguilliers of Saint-Eustache demanding that their
curé limit his early morning and late afternoon sermons to one hour so as not
to interfere with the Mass and vespers schedule (p. 344); and the marguilliers
of Saint-Jean-en-Grève allying with their curé to defend parishioners’ burial
rights (p. 422). Their tenacious presence reminds us, as John O’Malley has
argued, that the needs and experiences of local communities shaped early

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modern Catholic religious identity as much, if not more, than blind obedience
to the church hierarchy.
University of Southern Maine

KATHARINE J. LUALDI

Sex, Marriage, and Family in John Calvin’s Geneva. Volume 1: Courtship,
Engagement, and Marriage. Edited by John Witte, Jr., and Robert M.
Kingdon. [Religion, Marriage and Family.] (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William
B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2005. Pp. xxxii, 512. $32.00.)
John Witte and Robert Kingdon have compiled a very interesting and useful
collection of primary sources pertaining to marriage in Calvin’s Geneva. They
have culled fascinating information on marriage and the control of matrimony
from an impressive variety of documents, including excerpts from sermons, biblical commentaries,statutes,legal memoranda,and correspondence.Almost all the
correspondence and normative literature reproduced in this volume was
authored by Calvin, though the editors have also included a number of important
pieces written by Theodore Beza, Calvin’s successor as the leading pastor in
Geneva. Of particular interest are excerpts from the registers of the Consistory, a
quasi-tribunal that was comprised of the city’s pastors and elders and had jurisdiction over a wide range of moral issues, including marriage disputes. Having
founded the Consistory in 1541, Calvin religiously attended its weekly meetings
and profoundly shaped its agenda until his death in 1564.The selected Consistory
records date from 1546, 1552, and 1557, sample years that corresponded respectively to the appearance of Calvin’s Marriage Ordinance, growing opposition to
Calvin among some native Genevans, and the summit of Calvin’s power following his defeat of Ami Perrin and the so-called “Children of Geneva.”
The fourteen chapters are organized around a variety of topics, including
courtship, parental consent to marry, polygamy, incestuous unions, religiously
mixed marriages, and proper wedding ceremonies. For each chapter, the editors
provide a useful overview of the issues involved and detailed background to the
documents they have chosen. Denying that marriage is a sacrament, Protestants
introduced several significant changes in the control of matrimony: the reduction in the number of impediments to marry (based on consanguinity, affinity, or
the spiritual ties of godparentage), the rejection of clerical celibacy, the compulsory publication of the banns, mandatory parental consent for the marriages of
minors, and the possibility of divorce for adultery or desertion.
In handling disputed marriage engagements, which were much more
common than divorce cases, Calvin and the Consistory were interested above
all in establishing whether couples had freely and unconditionally promised to
marry each other.They declared null any engagement involving coercion, be it
from parents, the other party, or anyone else. Marriage promises required
parental permission for males under twenty and females under eighteen, and
the Consistory even nullified an engagement because of the opposition of a

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party’s Catholic mother, who lived outside Geneva’s jurisdiction. Some may be
surprised that Calvin and the Consistory viewed engagements that had been
freely and properly made as binding, occasionally obliging couples to go
through with the wedding even though both now wanted to be released from
the bond. Notwithstanding biblical examples to the contrary, Calvin expressed
strong opposition to marriages between people of widely disparate ages, aptly
seen in his great consternation when, at 69, his friend Guillaume Farel married
a woman less than half his age.
Calvin revealed the limited grounds for divorce in a letter in which he
informed an unidentified Protestant woman that she must continue living with
her physically abusive Catholic husband unless her life was actually in danger.
Calvin’s call for simplicity both in weddings, which were celebrated during the
church service, and in postnuptial celebrations was reflected in a big controversy over dancing that allegedly occurred at a wedding feast in 1546, resulting in the arrest of several people, his nemesis Perrin among them.
All told, the documents from Calvin’s Geneva that are reproduced here are
very well chosen, eloquently translated, and deftly analyzed. This volume
should be of great interest to anyone interested in the history of marriage and
of the Reformation.
University of Mississippi

JEFFREY R.WATT

Bellarmino: Una teologia politica della Controriforma. By Franco Motta.
(Brescia: Editrice Morcelliana. 2005. Pp. 683. €42.00.)
This difficult, densely written book does reward the reader who perseveres to the end. Its subject, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), stands
out as a major figure in the Counter-Reformation; indeed, for Franco Motta in
terms of the development of thought, he is the Counter-Reformation. The
author considers his book to be neither a study of Bellarmine’s theology nor
an intellectual biography, but “an historical essay on the ideas of Bellarmine as
they are found in the context of his biography” (“un saggio di storia delle idee
calata in un contesto biografico”) (p. 10). He aims to uncover the fundamental idea in the cardinal’s mentality, his forma mentis, which is at the root of
his position on multiple theological issues. This centerpiece of Bellarmine’s
thought, and by extension that of the Counter-Reformation, turns out to be
the principle of authority and its correlative, obedience. The author investigates this theme principally but not exclusively with regard to three issues:
the composition of the Controversies (Disputationes de Controversiis
Christianae Fidei adversus hujus temporis Haereticos) (3 vols., 1586-1593),
the arsenal of Catholic apologetics and the most influential theological work
of the Counter-Reformation; the conflict with King James I of England over
the indirect power of the pope in temporal matters; and most extensively, the
inner-Catholic dispute De Auxiliis over the role of grace and free will in the

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process of salvation which finally ended with a 1607 degree of Pope Paul V
exonerating both the Dominican and Jesuit adversaries of heresy but taking
no position on the issue.Those interested in Bellarmine’s role in the Galileo
Affair will find nothing here.
Motta finds Bellarmine to have inclined to the principle of authority from
the beginning as nephew of Marcello Cervini, a papal legate at the Council of
Trent and briefly pope himself (1555), and then as a member of the Society of
Jesus formed by the Spiritual Exercises; in these Motta takes the “Rules for
Thinking with the Church” to be of central importance. From his earliest years
Bellarmine was acclaimed as a preacher, but it was at Louvain from 1570 to
1576, where he experienced heresy at first hand during the Dutch rebellion,
that he developed his controversial method. His Jesuit education in a rhetoric
that aimed to persuade his adversaries of the truth of the Catholic faith
brought with it an increasing emphasis on historical argument and on the various theological authorities, starting with the Bible and the Fathers. Neither he
nor his Protestant opponents were speculative thinkers. But these authorities
frequently did not provide conclusive answers. Eventually there had to exist
one authority which could definitively decide controversial issues. For
Bellarmine this had to be the pope, so that he arrived at papal infallibility out
of the necessity for an ultimate judge in matters of controversy. Papal authority stood at the center of the Controversies. It was also this need for a central
authority, according to Motta, that dictated Bellarmine’s advocacy of the indirect power of the pope in temporal affairs.The pope as universal pastor had
to be able to discipline and control kings and princes, who belonged to his
flock, when they obstructed the way to salvation for their subjects. Motta
reminds us of the part that the papal absolution of Henry IV from heresy
(1595) played in the consolidation of his position as king of France.
Like Bellarmine, Motta considers the contest De Auxiliis between Jesuits
and Dominicans to have been not only over grace and free will, important as
that was, but over cultural dominance in the Church and two competing theologies. The Dominicans supported a conservative theology that saw itself
maintaining traditional Augustinianism with its pessimistic vision of human
nature and the Jesuits a theology more ready to adapt to the changing times
with a more optimistic assessment of human nature based to a degree on their
experience in the foreign missions. Motta argues that Bellarmine, as the principal papal consultant to both Clement VIII (1592-1605) and Paul V (16051621), considered the position on predestination of the Dominican Domingo
Báñez to be heretical and that of his fellow Jesuit Juan de Molina on scientia
media to be at least close to heresy; his own position was subsequently called
“congruism.” But for largely political reasons, his allegiance to the Society, and
especially his awareness of the division a condemnation would cause in the
Church, he effectively hindered Clement VIII, who was strongly inclined to
condemn Molinism, from doing so and then counseled Paul V not to take a
definitive position on the issue. So, paradoxically, by persuading the popes not

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to exercise their admitted infallibility Bellarmine helped prevent them from
damaging their own credibility and so he fostered papal infallibility.
This is an immensely learned book that touches upon many other issues
that cannot be discussed in this short review. Motta presumes a detailed
knowledge in his readers and writes for specialists who certainly should consult it. The book is provocative and stimulating in its attempt to characterize
not only the thought of Bellarmine but also the whole Counter-Reformation.
But only to a limited degree is it persuasive. The author himself refers to his
findings as hypotheses. Perhaps we should see in Bellarmine and in the
Counter-Reformation rather a pursuit of order in a period of change and
upheaval. This would align him with other major thinkers of the period, for
example, Jean Bodin, Descartes, and later even Thomas Hobbes, not to mention
the Protestant Scholastics, all of whom aimed at intellectual order. Motta’s discussion of Bellarmine’s theory of the indirect power of the papacy disappoints. He would have benefited from Franz Xaver Arnold, Die Staatslehre des
Kardinals Bellarmin: Ein Beitrag zur Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie des
konfessionellen Zeitalters (Munich, 934), which remains in my opinion the
best discussion of Bellarmine’s political thought and is missing from his bibliography. Arnold points out that Bellarmine recognized the need for an international authority in a time of the rising modern states and at one point even
suggested a temporal form of this authority to be exercised by princes. This
position looks much better from the perspective of the early twenty-first century. Motta recognizes in Bellarmine and in the Counter-Reformation the
attempt to adapt theology to the changing times but he does overlook a major
feature of it, or Early Modern Catholicism, a term Motta avoids: the attempt to
develop a spirituality for life in the world as found most significantly in Francis
de Sales.This is found in only a limited fashion in Bellarmine and thus, in my
opinion, weakens Motta’s claim that he is the Counter-Reformation.
Loyola University Chicago

ROBERT BIRELEY, S.J.

Retrying Galileo, 1633-1992. By Maurice A. Finocchiaro. (Berkeley: University
of California Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 485. $50.00.)
This book is an important addition to the literature on the Galileo affair.
Finocchiaro is already well known for his indispensable English anthology of
the documents of Galileo’s trial and its background. Now he turns his attention
to the very complex history of how the results of that trial were received,
interpreted, refuted, reinforced, misinterpreted, and mythologized in the next
three and a half centuries up to, and including, Pope John Paul II’s “rehabilitation” of Galileo in 1993.There is no other book which attempts to synthesize
this history, and Finocchiaro’s presentation of it is so well done that it shows
every promise of being the basic foundation for any further research in this
area for many years to come.The emphasis throughout is primarily on objective history rather than interpretation (the latter is promised in a later volume).

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The former is unusually extensive in coverage, minutely researched and documented, and based on many largely inaccessible and neglected primary
sources, many of which are translated at length into English (the longest being
twenty pages).An extensive bibliography and detailed index allows the reader
to use the book almost as one would use an encyclopedia.
The seventeen chapters of the book are arranged in chronological order.
Some of the main topics discussed are how the result of the trial was promulgated and received up through the Enlightenment; Pope Benedict XIV’s qualified removal of the ban against publication of the works by Copernicus and
Galileo; the removal of these books from the Index in 1835 after the Settele
affair in 1820; the opening of the Vatican file on the case in the 1870’s and the
subsequent flood of Galileo interpretations; the tricentennial attempt to rehabilitate Galileo which culminated in the Pio Paschini affair at Vatican Council
II; and the Vatican Commission Report in 1992.
The long historical journey also provides the author an opportunity to
debunk the large accumulation of myths about the Galileo affair, arising from
numerous sources and motives, by showing when and how they originated in
later years. Examples are the “but still it moves” comment which was supposedly made by Galileo immediately after his condemnation (which could well
have then led to his execution as a relapsed heretic); a detailed examination of
the claims that he was tortured; his being blinded by his captors; his supposed
five years in prison; and whether some key documents in the case were forged.
Also of special value for scholars is Finocchiaro’s lengthy history of the
adventures of the Galileo file, which was located originally in the Vatican
Secret Archives, but which was later included in the very large collection of
church records which Napoleon’s army stole in 1810 and removed to Paris,
where many of the documents were lost or destroyed for making cardboard.
However, after diligent efforts by Rome the Galileo file ultimately was found
and was returned to the Vatican in 1843. By piecing together the author’s
accounts of the irregular peregrinations and gradual release of documents pertaining to the case, Galileo scholars will find this book an invaluable aid to
identify and understand what was known, when, and by whom, regarding the
primary source material on the Galileo case.
Recurrent interpretive topics in the book include the issue of slippage back
and forth over the centuries between the meanings of the phrase “contrary to
the Scriptures” and “heretical”; whether or not the Bible teaches natural science; and the Holy Office’s 1616 memorandum to the effect that Galileo had
been placed under an injunction not to teach, defend, or hold Copernicanism,
while Cardinal Bellarmine’s letter to Galileo three months later about the same
meeting seems to say that there was no injunction.
Finocchiaro’s reading of the work of the Galileo Commission and of
Cardinal Poupard’s Report of October 31, 1992, is quite thoughtful and worthy

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of careful reflection. The “rehabilitation” of Galileo at that time, according to
the author’s reading of the documents, seems to mean the following. Pope
John Paul II accepted Poupard’s Report summarizing the work of the Galileo
Commission, but did not formally approve it.Then later at that same session of
the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (which was meeting on the topic of
Complexity in Science) the Pope pointed out that the 1616 Decree of the
Congregation of the Index presupposed a univocal view of the methodology
and epistemology of natural science and scriptural theology. But we now
know that that is not the case. An inter-disciplinary epistemology which formulates a non-univocal complexity view of the methodologies and the modes
of knowing in these areas is rather what was called for and needed.As a result
the 1616 Decree, which was the primary legal ground for condemning Galileo
at his trial, was faulty precisely because of its univocal view of science and
Scripture. This is as far as Pope John Paul II and this book by Finocchiaro
pursue this point. However, this seems to be enough to suggest the question
of whether it is implied here that the verdict against Galileo at the trial was in
turn faulty, given that the Decree of 1616 was faulty. Why not take this issue
one step further toward a complete closure of the case and a full rehabilitation
of Galileo in 1992? Was that the intention? After all, the original dispute in
1616-1633 did not involve matters of de fide truth.
Whether or not this “closes the case” of Galileo, discussion of the Galileo
affair will no doubt continue for a long time. During that future historical interval,“retrying Galileo” will thus also continue.And Finocchiaro’s book, which is
most welcome especially for its thoroughness, historical objectivity, and balance, will play a large role in that discussion.
Saint Louis University

RICHARD J. BLACKWELL

Pierre-François Chifflet, Charles Du Cange et les Bollandistes.Correspondance.
Présentation, édition et commentaire par Bernard Joassart. {Tabularium
hagiographicum, Volume 4.] (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes. 2005. Pp.
305. €60.00 paperback.)
The monumental hagiographical collection known as Acta Sanctorum has
been in continual publication for over three centuries. It was inspired by the
researches of the Jesuit, Héribert Rosweyde (1569-1629), but it was his successor, Jean Bolland (1596-1665), who recast the whole enterprise so as to encompass publication of every Life of every saint of the Church, ordered liturgically
by calendar month. It was Bolland who turned a partnership of Jesuit scholars
into a small, cohesive society devoted to this task, but from the first, the society
made call upon the expertise of others who, although not of the community,
were decisively in tune with its spirit and critical methodologies. The literary
correspondence between the first Bollandists and two very notable French collaborators is the matter of this book. Pierre-François Chifflet (1592-1682) had
joined the Jesuits in 1609 and was taken up by Rosweyde, his senior confrère,

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after the publication in 1618 of his account of the antiquities of Besançon.The
first surviving letter between them is dated 1624, a request from Rosweyde for
transcriptions of Vitae from manuscripts accessible to Chifflet in France. A
great quantity of transcriptions either commissioned by Chifflet or written in
his own hand were found among Rosweyde’s voluminous papers after his
death in 1629, witnessing the beginnings of a collaboration that was to continue for the rest of Chifflet’s scholarly life.The majority of the letters included
in this edition, twenty-nine of them, belong to his correspondence with Jean
Bolland, covering the period from 1624 to 1680 and the publication during that
time of the volumes of Acta sanctorum for January to April.
The support and collaboration of the philologist and historian Charles Du
Cange (1610-1688) belong to the later period, and to the Bollandist generation
that succeeded the two pioneers.The surviving letters all belong to the correspondence between Du Cange and Daniel Papebroch, across the period from
1665 to 1686. Du Cange was well born and a man of position as well as a
scholar of prodigious erudition. A reader of the first volumes of the Acta
Sanctorum, from which he drew material for his Glossaries of late Latin and
late Greek, Du Cange seems always to have remembered thereafter the needs
of the Bollandists in the course of his own researches in Parisian libraries. He
sent to Papebroch in 1683 a long ‘mémoire’ listing nearly six hundred hagiographical texts that he had found among the Greek manuscripts of the
Bibliothèque Colbertine. In the quarrel over the true origins of the Carmelite
order, which saw the Bollandists accused of heresy by the Spanish Inquisition
for refuting the widely-held belief that the Carmelite rule dated back to the
prophet Elijah, both Chifflet and Du Cange lent support to their friends, and
an important part of Du Cange’s correspondence concerns this dispute. The
Introduction reprints an extract from the letter that he sent to his friend Wyon
d’Hérouval in which he set down his esteem for the critical historical methods
of the Bollandists, a letter which was subsequently circulated publicly.
The correspondence in this collection has been edited from a number of
scattered letter-books, some now in Paris, some in Brussels, and others in the
Bollandist archive. Père Joassart, a modern-day Bollandist, is himself heir to the
papers he has so expertly edited and introduced, and is to be congratulated on
the appearance of his fourth volume in as many years in the series “Tabularium
hagiographicum.” The series, which aims to publish all the surviving correspondence between the early Bollandists and their collaborators, is filling out
at a rapid rate, and shows a commitment to coverage worthy of the first
Bollandists themselves.
University of Oxford

JAMES WILLOUGHBY

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333

S. Alfonso Maria de Liguori: Carteggio, Volume I: 1724-1743. Edited by
Giuseppe Orlandi. [Serie dell’Istituto storico Redentorista, Roma.] (Rome:
Edizioni di storia e letteratura. 2004. Pp. 840. €95.00 paperback.)
Giuseppe Orlandi, C.SS.R., professor at the Lateran University in Rome and
member of the Redemptorist Historical Institute, publishes here the first volume
of the correspondence of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori (1696-1787), bishop,
founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorists),
doctor of the Church, and patron of moral theologians and confessors.
This work is most welcome and long overdue, since the last collection of
Alphonsus’ letters, in three volumes, appeared over one hundred years ago, in
1887. The present edition includes numerous letters found and edited since
then, and is not marred by an editorial decision that, in 1887, sometime tampered with the original text. The title indicates that the collection does not
consist merely of letters by Alphonsus (epistolario) but includes letters to him
(carteggio).The reader is thus enabled to see Alphonsus in immediate dialogue
with his contemporaries.
The General Introduction, which applies to all the projected volumes of the
collection, begins with a short biography and personal profile of Alphonsus,
accentuating his literary output.There follows a history of the various collections
and editions of letters that have appeared throughout the more than two centuries since his death in 1787, together with an evaluation of these. Thirdly,
Orlandi explains why he opted to present both the letters of Alphonsus and of
his correspondents; and the reasons for including various non-epistolary texts.
The principal correspondents in this volume are Bishop Thomas Falcoia,
Venerable Maria Celeste Crostarosa, and his early companions: Caesare Sportelli,
Paolo Cafaro, Francesco Rossi, Gennaro Sarnelli, and several contemplative nuns.
The General Introduction continues with a description of the formalities of
presenting each letter and their transcription; it concludes with a valuable section on contemporary Neapolitan divisions of the day, weights and measures,
and coinage—information needed for a precise understanding of the material
in many of the letters.
An introduction to volume I consists of an overview of the 296 letters from
the years 1724 to 1743, of which 106 are by Alphonsus and 190 by his correspondents, and also the meaning of the abbreviations occurring in the letters
and in the footnotes.
The body of the correspondence follows: 296 texts. Each year for which
there is a text is introduced with a brief summary of the events in the life of
Alphonsus for that year.The formalities of each letter are not cramped together,
but are generously spaced: letter number, addressee, short description of the
contents, spiritual invocation, place, date, salutation, closing, and signature.
Large typeface and ample line-spacing make reading easy and enjoyable. The
footnotes, mostly bibliographical references, are helpful but do not overwhelm.

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The 192 pages of back material are most serviceable for a study and an
understanding of the texts. The section “Archival and Bibliographical
References” gives a description of the original document, its location, published editions, and references.Then, short biographies of the correspondents,
a glossary of the modern equivalent of archaic words, a year-by-year curriculum vitae of Saint Alphonsus, twenty-seven pages of select bibliography. Finally,
there are six indices: proper names, places, addresses, correspondents, chronology of the letters, and general index.
This early correspondence is indispensable for understanding the crucial
and troubled events in the founding of the Redemptorist Congregation, the
role of Venerable Maria Celeste and Bishop Thomas Falcoia, the formation of its
Rule, and the clarification of its charisma in the Church. Present throughout is
the very human and amiable personality of Alphonsus himself.
Redemptorist Archives, Baltimore Province
Brooklyn, New York

CARL HOEGERL, C.SS.R.

Late Modern European
Religious Women and Their History: Breaking the Silence. Edited by
Rosemary Raughter. (Dublin: Irish Academic Press. Distributed by ISBS,
Portland, Oregon. 2005. Pp. x, 150. $27.50 paperback.)
Religious Women and Their History is a slim (six essays and a poem)
volume of conference proceedings sponsored by the Women’s Education,
Research and Resource Centre at University College, Dublin. The selections
cover a wide variety of topics under the general heading of Irish women’s religious experiences from the eighteenth century forward, and serve as an excellent introduction to current directions in the field.
The volume has a number of obvious strengths. First, the essays analyze
both Catholic and Protestant women, a welcome trend in Irish historiography.
In her introduction, Rosemary Raughter writes,“the evangelicalism of the nineteenth century suffused all branches of Christianity, affecting both
Protestantism and Catholicism with its message of spiritual regeneration and
moral reform” (p. 5). This is not to deny the differences between Protestant
and Catholic women’s religious experiences, as Raughter later notes that the
operation of the Penal Laws, however fitful, shaped the roles of women in the
Catholic Church in ways that were not shared by their Protestant sisters (p.
26). Nevertheless, a volume that asserts the commonality of Christian religious
experience, in a country where religious divisions are often replicated in the
historiography, should be commended.
The book also strongly emphasizes women’s agency. Religious women are
too often depicted solely as victims of an obviously patriarchal church struc-

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335

ture. However, Rosemary Raughter’s article observes that the structural disorder
caused for the Catholic Church by the Penal Laws opened up a space in eighteenth-century Ireland for female religious work, a time that Raughter calls a
“matriarchal era” (pp. 26-27). For Catholics, that space may have closed in the
later nineteenth century, as the Church began to control female religious organizations more tightly as part of a general consolidation of the hierarchy’s power
(p. 103). Still, the women documented in this volume have considerable
achievements to their names: the founding of religious organizations like the
Sisters of Mercy and the Society of the Sacred Heart, public preaching associated with the Salvation Army, and missionary work in India and China, just to
name a few.
The richest essays were Maria Luddy’s overview of convent archives, Janice
Holmes’s piece on the Salvation Army in Ulster, and Myrtle Hill’s examination of
the Zenana Mission. The Salvation Army piece underlines the combination of
class and religious tensions that female Salvation Army preachers faced when
holding public meetings in nineteenth-century Ulster. Surprisingly, they faced
little criticism along gender lines, and were instead often ridiculed for their
working-class accents and patterns of speech. It would have been interesting to
read more about how these women saw their own gender roles.At one point,
the author notes that one female preacher used “sentiment” to “warm the
hearts” of her audience (p. 69). One wonders if the choice of this “feminine”
rhetoric was unselfconscious, an attempt to appeal to audience expectations,
or part of the general rhetorical strategies of evangelicalism.The experiences of
the women working overseas for the Zenana Mission nicely illustrates the tension between male missionaries’ desire to use women to appeal to colonized
women, and their fear of giving women too much power and visibility.
The volume also admirably highlights directions for further research, particularly in Maria Luddy’s essay on convent archives, which argues for their
usefulness as a window into larger issues in Irish social history, such as medicine or the uses of public space. In fact, Luddy’s essay does such a good job
illustrating the potential value of convent collections that it should have come
earlier in the volume to set up the essays that follow.Another minor quibble is
the book’s brevity, especially given its price. Nevertheless, Religious Women
and Their History successfully encompasses the rich variety of work currently
being done on religious women in Ireland.
Central Washington University

JASON KNIRCK

Culture War: Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Edited
by Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser. (New York: Cambridge University
Press. 2003. Pp. viii, 368. $70.00.)
In an era when the term is being invoked to characterize everything from
international terrorism to the American electorate and campus politics, it might

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seem contrived to give the title Culture Wars to a book of essays on confessional strife in late-nineteenth-century Europe. The term itself, however, was
first introduced (in the 1980’s by the American sociologist James Davidson
Hunter), as a (mis) translation of Kulturkampf, the emblematic German
instance of the conflicts that provide the subject of this anthology. Several features of the volume make it a valuable addition to the literature.The first is the
breadth of its coverage.Its essays span Europe from the United Kingdom to Italy
and Hungary. It is broader in geographical, if not chronological scope that Ellen
Evans’ recent survey, which focused on the politics of confessional tension in
continental western and central Europe. The theme of the anthology is also
broader than Evans’ work.As its title implies, it emphasizes the cultural dimensions of these tensions, which the editors lay out in two introductory essays.
Christopher Clark analyzes the militant “New Catholicism,” while Wolfram
Kaiser deals with its antipode,the militant European anticlericalism that encompassed moderate liberals, free-thinking progressives, and revolutionary socialists. The editors thus attempt to describe “the relationship between the New
Catholicism and its various antagonists” as a transnational phenomenon, the
common theme in a European-wide set of “competing programs for the management of rapid political and social change” (p. 13). It is a sign of their success
that the other ten authors, whose essays on individual European countries constitute the bulk of the volume, address common elements in disputes that raged
during the last decades of the century over civil marriage, charity, the disposition of religious property, and—above all—education. In every land, both parties to the disputes became increasingly versed in the techniques of popular
mobilization, especially in the exploitation of the new national media. The
essays then explore with particular success the rhetoric, imagery, and rituals
that were popularized in the polemics—the Belgian “frère quêteur,”the Spanish
Good Friday banquet, the Masonic “Synagogue of Satan.”
This is no introductory survey. The authors are a distinguished group of
scholars, who attend to the rich variety of these culture wars in lands whose
confessional history they know well.The cultural tensions were extraordinarily complex amid the political and social flux of the late nineteenth century.
They were complicated by questions of gender and generations, uneven
regional development, and differences of national political culture. With the
exception of the United Kingdom, where they shared the role with Anglicans,
Catholics everywhere made up the clerical party, but their antagonists were
more often secularists than Protestants. In Italy and other Catholic lands, the
tensions extended into the Church itself. In Austria, particularly in the Tirol,
they were complicated by ethnic struggles, while anti-Semitism figured prominently in most countries. Perhaps the most complicated case was the Swiss,
which Heide Bossard-Borner ably analyzes. Here the dynamics of the antagonism varied from canton to canton. Given the “cellular character” of this country, it is hard, she writes,“to write a coherent account of the place” (p. 281).
Readers who do not have a firm grasp of the national histories will find it hard
to make sense of the abundant detail offered in the other essays as well. Still,

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for students of European Catholicism and confessional history, this volume is
welcome indeed.
Georgetown University

ROGER CHICKERING

Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris, 1919-1933. By
Stephen Schloesser. (Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. 2005. Pp. xi, 449.
$85.00.)
Jazz Age Catholicism offers an original, insightful, and penetrating analysis of
an important moment in the cultural history of modern France. It argues that
pervasive collective bereavement in the aftermath of World War I prompted a
profound cultural shift in elite French society that made Catholicism—dismissed
only a few years earlier as retrograde, essentially out of step with the modern
world, and archaic—a vibrant and consoling cultural option for many of France’s
most innovative and creative minds. But Stephen Schloesser’s argument is more
subtle still: not only did many within the avant garde turn to, and find in,
Catholicism a vibrant cultural paradigm that offered solace and spiritual renewal;
but prominent French Catholic thinkers and artists embraced modernity not by
wholesale rejection of the past but by effecting a synthesis of medieval and
modern philosophical principles and artistic forms. At the forefront of this
experiment in Catholic renewal and redefinition were Jacques Maritain, Georges
Bernanos, Georges Roualt, and Charles Tournemire. Refusing to abandon the
philosophic and aesthetic traditions of the Catholic past—whether
Scholasticism in philosophy (in the case of Maritain) or Gregorian chant in
music (as was Tournemire’s striking accomplishment)—each of Schloesser’s subjects “formulat[ed] traditional Catholic ideas in modernist guise” (p. 15).Thus it
is Catholicism’s outreach to the modern—as much as modernity’s embrace of
Catholicism—that emerges most powerfully from this analysis.
One of Schloesser’s most impressive qualities is his ability to write clearly,
intelligently, and originally about cultural production in its many forms: literature, philosophy, and music are analyzed with equal ease and clarity.This facility
is especially evident (and welcome, to this reviewer, at least) in his analysis of
Charles Tournemire, composer and organist. Deeply familiar with the technicalities of musical composition, Schloesser successfully sets forth the formal characteristics of plainchant and explains how Tournemire, who harbored no political sympathy with the ultra-conservative, integralist appropriation of plainchant
in the late nineteenth century, claimed it as a mode of modernist expression in
his masterwork of 1927, L’Orgue Mystique. Because Schloesser can write authoritatively about music, philosophy, and literature, he is able to demonstrate that
Catholicism’s appeal extended broadly through the cultural domain and was not
limited to one or two specific genres.Furthermore,his willingness to think about
how sexual modernity (epitomized in the 1920’s by homosexuality) often coincided with a deep respect for cultural order—most evident in Jean Cocteau’s
abiding friendship with, and respect for, Jacques and Raissa Maritain—offers us

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a new way to understand the modernist initiatives of inter-war Catholicism: “la
main tendue,” once understood only as the outstretched hand that hoped to
bring Catholics and Communists together, emerges here as another form of cultural rapprochement, equally unexpected by the standards of the pre-war era, by
which Catholics and homosexuals could find common ground.
Jazz Age Catholicism contributes in two significant ways to our understanding of twentieth-century French cultural history: first, it prompts a serious reconsideration of the role played by, and the cultural attraction of,
Catholicism in the aftermath of World War I; second, it contributes importantly
to a scholarly re-assessment of the cultural consequences of the war itself.Yet
it leaves one wanting something more. The argument is well made that this
new spirit of innovation emerged from the psychological trauma of World War
I, thus linking this work with a very rich vein of recent scholarship on the cultural consequences of the war.What remains less well developed is the longerterm significance of this cultural shift.Was “Jazz Age Catholicism”an ephemeral
phenomenon without long-term, lasting significance? Or was it the beginning
of a fundamental reorientation in Catholicism that led to the Second Vatican
Council and its defining spirit of ecumenicism? And what of the modernists
who perceived in Catholicism a new opportunity for spiritual renewal? Was
theirs only a fleeting alliance? These questions might rightly belong to a subsequent study, but the richness of this book makes one eager to know more
not just about the individuals examined but the lasting impact of the cultural
transformation they helped to effect.
University of Colorado, Boulder

MARTHA HANNA

Crusade of Charity: Pius XII and POWs (1939-1945). By Margherita
Marchione. (New York and Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press. 2006. Pp. xx,
284. $19.95 paperback.)
Since the performance of Rolf Hochhuth’s drama The Deputy in 1963, studies of Pius XII, pope from 1939 to 1958, have been decidedly partisan with a
long list of detractors on the one hand and his defenders on the other. Both
sides have often seemed more interested in denigrating or vindicating his
actions during the course of the Holocaust than in ferreting out the truth.To
complicate the picture, many of the positive or negative images have been
drawn not by historians but dramatists, lawyers, and journalists. Part of this
large and growing “historiography” has been catalogued in José M. Sánchez’s
Pius XII and the Holocaust: Understanding the Controversy (2002) and The
Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII, edited by Joseph Bottum and
David G. Dalin (2004).William Doino, Jr., in “An Annotated Bibliography on Pius
XII, the Second World War, and the Holocaust” (pp. 97-280) found in The Pius
War, aptly notes that Sister Margherita of the Religious Teachers Fillipini is
“among the most passionate supporters of Pius XII” and her prodigious effort
is not “primarily a work of scholarship.”

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The author of half a dozen volumes defending Pius XII, in Crusade of
Charity, as elsewhere, the author readily acknowledges that she does not write
from a detached perspective,“convinced that Pius XII was a wise and saintly
man” (p. xvi). This apologetic tone leads one to hold suspect some of her
important findings and presentation of material not readily found elsewhere.
Her main focus here is on the work of the Vatican Information Office formed
by this pope in 1939 to monitor and mitigate the suffering and separations
provoked by World War II. Part of this vast correspondence has been drawn
from the earlier printed eleven-volume Actes et documents du Saint Siège
relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (1965-81), but many more documents
have now been made accessible by the Secret Vatican Archives. Some ten million wartime documents of the prisoner of war/missing person service
presently available have been catalogued in two large volumes entitled Inter
Arma Caritas: Uffizio Informazioni per i prigionieri di guerra istituto da
Pio XII (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2004). The first volume
includes an inventory of files and description of how the service operated; the
second includes a selection of the millions of requests received, and in some
cases the responses provided.
Many of the requests are written in Italian, German, or French, and Sister
Margherita has translated and included some one hundred requests and
responses. Her volume is divided into three parts: the first is on “Leaders of the
Catholic Church” (Benedict XVI, John Paul II, and Pius XII [pp. 3-41]).Why the
first two popes are included is not clear.The second on “World War II” (pp. 4564) explores how and when the Vatican intervened on behalf of the families
of prisoners and the dispossessed, and the concrete assistance provided.The
bulk of the book is found in part three,“Requests for Vatican Assistance” (pp.
67-229), which provides a wide range of requests for papal assistance from
Christians and Jews. In her “Conclusion” (pp. 230-241), Marchione returns to
her apologetic mode noting that the millions of requests attests to “Their trust
in the efforts of Pope Pius XII” (p. 230), and that “a grave injustice has been
done to the memory of Pope Pius XII” (p. 240).This theme is reiterated in the
Epilogue (pp. 242-248), concluding that “personally and through his representatives, Pius XII employed all the means at his disposal to save Jews and other
refugees” (p. 248). An “Appendix” (pp. 249-259) contains additional pertinent
Vatican documents, while the short annotated “Bibliography” (pp. 267-274),
reflects her sentiments and assumptions.
St. John’s University, New York

FRANK J. COPPA

The Papacy, the Jews, and the Holocaust. By Frank J. Coppa. (Washington,
D.C.: Catholic University of America Press. 2006. Pp. xxii, 353. $59.95.)
Before venturing into the minefield covered by this book, Coppa notes that
“many of the most influential works on the Church and the Holocaust have
been produced not by historians and theologians but by dramatists, novelists,

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journalists, and lawyers.” Hence “one must keep in mind the difference
between advocacy and historical scholarship.”
Coppa deserves credit for writing as a historian, albeit—and this is a major
weakness of the book—one so detached that he is often unwilling to judge
between sharply contesting advocates. Herewith an example of his “on the one
hand—on the other hand” methodology.
Coppa reports, correctly, that the protest of Pope Pius XII against the Nazi
roundup of Roman Jews in mid-October 1943 was private and discrete. He also
gives the reason: because the German Ambassador to the Holy See, Ernst von
Weiszäcker, who worked behind the scenes to frustrate his superiors’ persecution of Jews, warned the Pope that a public protest would put the Jews at
even greater danger. Labeling the Pope’s policy “subtle benevolence” (toward
whom? Coppa does not tell us), he writes that “some observers are convinced
that [the Pope’s course of action] avoided a massive massacre of Roman Jewry.
Others discount the papal role in saving Rome’s Jews.” A footnote refers to the
works of Susan Zuccotti.The reader is not informed that her arguments have
been decisively refuted by Ronald Rychlak.Though herself a historian (unlike
many non-historians cited uncritically by Coppa—notably James Carroll, a frequent source throughout the book), Zuccotti’s work is a prime example of
what Coppa calls in his Introduction “a process of selection that bolsters a preconceived interpretative bias.” In a work heavily dependent on secondary
sources the failure to distinguish between advocates and honest seekers after
truth is a major flaw.
We all make mistakes. But the number of them in these pages is troubling.
Repeated citations of an important article by Martin Rhonheimer all refer to
non-existent page numbers. Well-known contemporary names are garbled
(curial Cardinal “Jeijia,” Archbishop “Gunthausn” of Seattle). Coppa writes
twice about “2600 priests at Vatican II,” seemingly unaware that almost all were
bishops. He gives a version of the prayer for the Jews in the Good Friday liturgy
never heard in any church in the English-speaking world. A reference to a
“bishop’s protest” against Nazi euthanasia fails to identify the prelate in question.A number of pronouns lack antecedents, leaving the reader to guess at the
author’s meaning.
Worst of all is his account of “a postwar document, discovered only at the
close of 2004,” ordering that Jewish children baptized during the Holocaust
not be returned to their parents. Coppa fails to inform readers that within days
of this discovery the document in question was shown to be of uncertain
provenance, and that its account of Vatican policy was false. An omission of
this magnitude is difficult to excuse.
Inconsistencies abound. Coppa writes on page 143, for instance, about Pius
XI’s “conciliatory approach toward Nazi Germany,” only to tell us fifteen pages
later that “between 1933 and 1936 Pius made more than thirty protests against

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Nazi actions.” Coppa cites defenders of the disputed 2000 Vatican document
Dominus Jesus who pointed out that calling Christianity the only true religion
“does not claim that all others are false, or even that Christianity is perfect as
it is lived today.” His comment that “this line of thought seems to defy logic”
makes one wonder about Coppa’s own logic.
A writer familiar with Catholicism could not write about the priest at Mass
“sanctifying the host.” Nor could he call Pope John Paul II’s statement that
Vatican II’s language about Christ as “the only Savoir of the world does not
forbid, but on the contrary calls for, the peaceful relations with the believers
of other religions” merely “one side of the debate.” And such a writer would
not write about a post-conciliar debate about “whether to implement the
Council’s decrees.” The debate was about their interpretation.
Despite these serious flaws, Coppa’s summing up is fair. In the pre-modern
age, he writes, the popes protected Jews as often as they restricted them. Many
of those who have written on this subject “ignore the persistent reality that hostility between Jews and Christians was often mutual, and that some Jews have
been guilty of anti-Christian sentiment and conduct.” The Church never called
for a racially pure society, a demand which arose only in the nineteenth century
and which even the Church’s critics acknowledge was “contrary to its theology.” And finally “Pius XII’s position toward the Jews, like that of his predecessors, was far more complex and nuanced than many of his critics will allow.”
Archdiocese of St. Louis

JOHN JAY HUGHES

Chrétiens et Juifs sous Vichy (1940-1944): Sauvetage et désobéissance civile.
By Limore Yagil. {Histoire religieuse de la France, 26.] (Paris: Éditions du
Cerf. 2005. Pp. 766. €59 paperback.)
This massive volume has four especially noteworthy features. First is the
importance of the politically charged question which it poses: why was it that
France, in sharp contrast to her neighboring counties, had such a high rate of
survival (75% approximately) of its Jewish population, despite the harsh exterminationist policies of both the Nazis and their Vichy counterparts.
The key to the originality of this study is the richness of its sources. The
archival fruitfulness especially from departmental and local sites is particularly
impressive. Even more striking is the extensive use of the extraordinarily
detailed material of the Department of the Righteous at Yad Vashem. This
second asset has opened up a whole new avenue of inquiry concerning help
to the Jews of France during the Nazi occupation.
The approach which the author adopts in utilizing her wide array of sources
constitutes the third characteristic of this volume.The author first examines the
administrative and ecclesiastical background of each region, department, and
diocese prior to making a specific assessment of conditions in each locality

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under investigation.While the circumstances differed dramatically everywhere
she investigated, she found countless, conscious-driven individuals ready, able,
and unyielding in their efforts to help their persecuted Jewish neighbors.
Thus the fourth and final feature of this remarkably developed study is the
radically revisionist conclusion: it is a variety of administrators at every level
and humanists of every persuasion who are ultimately responsible for the safeguarding of 75% of the Jews of France during the Shoah.These benefactors of
the Jewish community are apolitical—neither resistance nor collaboration—
rather they are individuals acting in response to their own consciences.Within
this previously ignored moral force are especially large numbers of spiritually
dynamic Catholic priests, laity, and above all often-forgotten religious women.
This book will undoubtedly spark a heated debate in French historical circles.
It will likewise undoubtedly become an indispensable contribution to our
understanding of France during the Nazi occupation. No French historian and
no research library will want to let this superb study go unrecognized.
Boston College

FRANCIS J. MURPHY

Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel’s Foreign Policy,
1948-1967. By Uri Bialer. [Indiana Series in Middle East Studies.]
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2005. Pp. xiv, 241. $39.95.)
This book should be required reading for all Vatican diplomats, and for
those who study twentieth-century Vatican diplomacy. This is not because it
gets the Vatican side of the diplomacy with Israel right. It often doesn’t. Rather,
it will help readers understand how the other side interprets Vatican diplomatic maneuvers, and this is a crucial test case with core values and needs at
stake, both politically and religiously, on both sides.
Uri Bialer, who holds the Maurice Hexler chair in International Relations–
Middle East Studies at Hebrew University, has published two previous books
on Israeli diplomacy, and had available for this volume recently released
archives of the Israeli government. An equivalent Catholic study of the Holy
See’s side of the events narrated here, of course, will have to await the release
of the remainder of the Vatican’s archives of the Secretariat of State for the pontificates of Pius XII, John XXIII, and Paul VI.
I would estimate that roughly two-thirds of this book deals with IsraeliVatican relations, which is of interest because the large majority of Israeli
Christians are not Catholic, but Orthodox, and Israel’s chief international ally
is the United States, a country whose world view has been dominated by
Protestant Christianity.
Bailer’s scholarly attention is focused on the years after the establishment
of the State of Israel. For what led up to it, and for the Vatican’s role in the
United Nations’ debate on it, he relies on the standard Jewish sources, particu-

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larly Sergio Minerbi, who felt that the Holy See harbored an implacable theological animus against the very idea of a Jewish state in the Holy Land because
of the ancient teaching of contempt which held that the Temple was destroyed
and the Jews exiled from their homeland because of their alleged collective
guilt for the death of Jesus.
True, this idea was commonly held among Christians before the Second
Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate in 1965. But it was not really the
motivating factor in Vatican reactions to Zionism, as Bialer, following Minerbi,
erroneously alleges. Bialer, for example, cites the negative response of Pope
Pius X to Theodore Herzl’s 1904 appeal. Herzl’s diary, however, recounts only
what Pius said, not what he said to Pius. If Herzl, as is likely, gave the same
grandiose, eschatological arguments about the Jewish return to the Land to the
Pope that he gave to British evangelicals, the Pope’s rejection of millennialist
argumentation takes on a different valence.And, in fact, Bialer fails to mention
the message sent by Cardinal Merry del Val to Herzl only some days later, that
if the gathering of the Jews in Palestine was a humanitarian need, of course
the Church would support it.
Bialer illustrates early in his book that the Israelis viewed Vatican officials as
harboring an implacable hatred of Jews and therefore (they believed) of Israel.
He also shows that many Israeli officials were in consequence opposed to an
exchange of ambassadors with the Holy See. But there is no evidence in
Catholic sources, such as the Actes et Documents, to support such theological
hostility to Israel as a state. Rather, there is, and this is what in fact Bialer’s book
deals with and deals with quite well, overwhelming evidence that the Holy See
in the years leading up to the UN partition vote, supported it, tacitly if not publicly, because of its inclusion of the internationalization of Jerusalem. Indeed,
the Catholic countries of the world, especially Latin America, provided the
votes, virtually as a bloc, for the very creation of Israel, which would not have
been possible if the Vatican had in any way actively opposed the creation of
Israel as a Jewish state. The Vatican did not retreat from its support for internationalization until 1967, when it changed its language subtly to “international guarantees” for freedom of access to the Holy Places.
But what remained over the years was a mutual mistrust, a burden of the
centuries, which drove both diplomacies. It is only now, ever so slowly, being
replaced by a cautious trust, based on the larger Catholic-Jewish experience of
dialogue. Bialer’s book faithfully and insightfully records the Israeli side of
numerous events which led in the end to the historic Fundamental Agreement
between the Catholic Church and the State of Israel.
Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

EUGENE J. FISHER

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The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience. Cardinal Aloisius Muench and the
Guilt Question in Germany. By Suzanne Brown-Fleming. (Notre Dame,
Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, in association with the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2006. Pp. xiv, 240. $45.00 clothbound;
$20.00 paperback.)
Suzanne Brown-Fleming’s short study of the post-1945 career in Germany
of Bishop, later Cardinal,Aloisius Muench seeks to rectify some shortcomings
she finds in F. Colman Barry’s biography written in the 1960’s. In particular, she
examines the Cardinal’s record on the question of German guilt for the crimes
of the Holocaust, and the underlying anti-Semitic attitudes shared by so many
Germans. In her view, Muench, as the Vatican’s leading representative in
Germany from 1946 to 1959, contributed to the lack of self-examination and
the perpetuation of anti-Semitic prejudices among German Catholics. In this
way, he was emblematic of the Catholic Church’s failure in this period to confront its own complicity in Nazism’s anti-Jewish ideology.
Brown-Fleming is quite right—even though not the first—to note the peculiar mentality which prevailed among the German established classes in the post1945 years. Many foreign observers, including this reviewer, recall very clearly
the repellent mixture of self-justification and self-pity, based on a still vibrant
nationalism, even racism, which concentrated on the Germans’ suffering and
alleged mistreatment and ignored entirely the fate of others. Only a few stalwart
voices called for acknowledgment of, and repentance for, the crimes committed
in Germany’s name. Bishop Muench was not among them. Instead, as an
American envoy, he swallowed uncritically the Germans’ self-assessment and did
his best to promote his philo-German and anti-guilt ideology, based on his own
deeply conservative and often anti-Semitic world-view. But Brown-Fleming runs
the risk of exaggerating Muench’s influence. The regrettable attitudes she
deplores were not his invention and indeed owed little to his advocacy.
In fact, this German mood was founded on several fundamental points.The
German elite had been badly scarred by the humiliations suffered in 1919; they
now expected that their second defeat would lead to a super-Versailles. All
shared a deeply-entrenched dread of Russian Communism, and many believed
the Western allies’ policy would also be based on revenge. German Catholics
sought to defend their new-found national position as exemplified in the
Concordat.When the Cold War broke out, the Western allies needed to recruit
the west German population to their side. They therefore accepted the selfserving apologias proffered by this group and the accompanying amnesia
about their Nazi past. Muench’s views nicely fitted into this political reality.
Why was Muench appointed, not only as the Vatican’s representative but
also as liaison adviser on Catholic affairs to the U.S. military government? He
was born and brought up in the Catholic diaspora in Milwaukee, taught in the
seminary, and was promoted to the small rural diocese of Fargo, North Dakota,
in 1935. His contacts with Europe were limited, and he had no diplomatic

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experience. His nomination as Apostolic Delegate in 1946 was in fact largely
due to the fiasco of an earlier attempt to resurrect the Vatican’s diplomatic
presence in Germany. In November, 1945, the Vatican had sent an elderly
Italian Archbishop, who spoke no English, but appeared with a large retinue to
uphold the Papal presence. General Eisenhower was not pleased, and made it
clear that only an American would do. At the same time, the Secretary for War
in Washington wanted a German-speaking Catholic dignitary to act as liaison
with the military government.Apparently no one else filled the bill, so Muench
in fact obtained both appointments and fulfilled both for three years. He
avoided any potential clash by becoming a strong advocate of the interests of
his “clients,” the German Catholic population.These people, in turn, assumed
that Muench had substantial influence in both Rome and Washington, and
when they found him to be sympathetic, increasingly sought his good offices
on their behalf. Brown-Fleming believes that in this way Muench had “undue”
influence. But his work clearly pleased Pope Pius XII, who, as soon as possible,
promoted him to be nuncio, and he came to be regarded as a valuable ally by
the new West German government after 1949.
Brown-Fleming is strongly critical of Muench’s exculpatory attitudes
toward all Germans, his repudiation of collective guilt, and his failure to
denounce the German mass murder of the Jews. She attributes this to the
entrenched anti-Judaic prejudices common to his generation of conservative
Catholics, both in America and Europe. On the other side, his sharp criticisms
of American occupation policies—as being too harsh—nearly had him recalled
by Washington.These authorities, however, were less concerned about his distortions of history or the support he gave to the Germans’ sense of victimization. In Brown-Fleming’s view his principal fault was to encourage German
Catholics to believe they needed no examination of conscience.
Brown-Fleming’s stance is naturally affected by the perspective of fifty
years later, and by the subsequent striking emendation of Catholic attitudes
toward Judaism. Her book is not free from the kind of wishful thinking which
believes that attitudes at the time should have been different. And while her
well-researched examination of the available sources, especially Muench’s own
papers, now in Washington, is thorough, her book suffers from the inaccessibility of the Vatican’s records, since the papers for the reign of Pius XII are
still—regrettably—closed. Eventually the whole story will have to be told
again. But she does well in throwing light on some of the less attractive aspects
of post-1945 German/American Catholicism and on the evidence of the
Church’s continuing anti-Jewish stereotypes in the years before the Second
Vatican Council.
University of British Columbia

JOHN S. CONWAY

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Araldo del Vangelo. Studi sull’episcopato e sull’archivio di Giacomo Lercaro
a Bologna 1952-1968. Edited by Nicla Buonasorte. [Istituto per le scienze
religiose—Bologna: testi e ricerche di scienze religiose, nuova serie 32.]
(Bologna: Il Mulino. 2004. Pp. 313. €25.00 paperback.)
The book under consideration here, Araldo del Vangelo, yields many fruits.
Edited by Nicla Buonasorte of the University of Modena and the John XXIII
Foundation for Religious Sciences in Bologna, the book contains a useful
chronology and bibliography of Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro’s life and work; it
provides a valuable and detailed catalogue of the Lercaro archive at the John
XXIII Foundation; and it includes four studies of Lercaro, by Giuseppe
Alberigo, Angelo Varni, Alberto Melloni, and Giuseppe Battelli. Although
Giacomo Lercaro is best remembered for his tenure in Bologna, he was born
(1891) in Genoa, launched his career there, and lived over half of his life there.
Beyond some early study in Rome, in fact, Lercaro was fifty-five when he left
Genoa for good, to become the archbishop of Ravenna in 1947. Five years later,
in 1952, he arrived in Bologna. In January 1953 Pope Pius XII elevated Lercaro
to the cardinalate.The new archbishop had already acquired fame as an activist
who labored to engage, and engage with, the laity, a quality that would be
tested by Lercaro’s tenure in Bologna, a citadel of Italian Communism during
the Cold War. Under its legendary mayor, Giuseppe Dozza, and his successor,
Guido Fanti, Red Bologna did, indeed, figure prominently in Lercaro’s fortunes.
The Christian Democrats, for example, tried to unseat Dozza in 1956 by challenging him with Giuseppe Dossetti, Lercaro’s close associate and advisor.
After that debacle, Lercaro’s career peaked with his work at the Second Vatican
Council where he assumed a number of tasks, as one of the principal co-ordinators of the proceedings, one of Pope Paul’s chief aides, and as president of
the Consilium ad exsequendam constitutionem de sacra liturgia.The archbishop’s work on liturgical reform, however, brought controversy on him
through the publication in February 1967 of The Torn Tunic, Letter from a
Catholic on the ‘Liturgical Reform’ by Tito Casini, an angry conservative.
Although Giuseppe Alberigo portrayed Casini’s attack as “a vulgar libel,” it
seemed to signal the beginning of a rough period that ended Lercaro’s career
in a cloud.The central enigma in these last years, moreover, was the role and
motivation of Paul VI. Lercaro’s positive relationship with Paul (and Montini
before 1963) seemed to work against him after the Casini assault. Shortly
before its publication, Lercaro offered his biretta to the Pontiff in line with the
August 1966 motu proprio that called for ordinaries to tender their resignations upon reaching their seventy-fifth birthdays. Lercaro would become seventy-five that October; but Paul, significantly, rejected the resignation.The following July, however, after the publication of Casini’s book, Rome appointed
the bishop of Mantua, the conservative Antonio Poma, to be Lercaro’s replacement (and perhaps watchdog) in the wings, as Bologna’s archbishop cum iure
successionis. Matters came to a head at the end of 1967 when Lercaro and Paul
diverged over the war in Vietnam. Encouraged by Dossetti, the archbishop
advocated a more activist position than that taken by the more diplomatic

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Paul. In his meticulously researched contribution to this study, “Lercaro,
Dossetti, the Peace and Vietnam ‘1 January, 1968’” (Lercaro, Dossetti, la pace e
il Vietnam ‘1º gennaio 1968’), Giuseppe Battelli relates the steps and relationships, such as those with Dossetti and Fanti, that led to Lercaro’s New
Year’s homily in the Bologna Cathedral which called for an end to the United
States bombing campaign, triggering what Battelli termed “the impossible
union (connubio) of prophecy and diplomacy.” On February 12 the Italian
press announced Lercaro’s resignation as archbishop, the victim of a far-off
war that had forced the Vatican into a quandary.
ROY DOMENICO

The University of Scranton
American

Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions
of Florida and New Mexico. By Robert C. Galgano. (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 212. $32.50.)
This relatively brief work of 188 pages of text and notes provides a glimpse
of the results of the meetings between Indians and Spaniards in those two
diverse areas in the seventeenth century.The inspiration that led to this study
was its author’s conviction that the historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists who have studied the peoples of the two disparate regions over the last
half century or so, in studying specific cultures, have missed “the bigger comparative picture that leads to greater insights and reveals new patterns.”
Galgano also believes that earlier scholars have failed “to explain the dynamic
variations of Spanish colonization schemes” and “to see broader designs in the
negotiated coexistence between natives and newcomers.”
Galgano defined his “pedagogical goal” as “to emphasize the central roles
Indians played, and their reactions to Spanish missionization in Florida and
New Mexico.” He claimed to have designed his work “as an accessible history
especially for undergraduate use.” In the same vein he also explained: “Though
I am most interested in natives’ views, the Spanish perspective is equally
important.” He has succeeded in achieving these latter goals. But he has given
relatively little attention to his more ambitious ones of presenting “the bigger
comparative picture” and “dynamic variations of Spanish colonization
schemes” and “broader designs in the negotiated coexistence.”
This book grew out of a paper the author gave at a meeting of graduate students who were attending a summer archaeological field school at the College
of William and Mary under the auspices of the Omohundro Institute of
American History and Culture and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
Professor James Axtell apparently was the director of that field school. For
some time since then Galgano has taught at both the College of William and
Mary and James Madison University. The author identified himself as a histo-

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rian. In the preparation of this work, the author claimed to have done research
at both the University of Florida’s P. K.Yonge Library of Florida History and at
the University of New Mexico’s Zimmerman Library. But, the author’s cited
fonts indicate that his book is based largely on secondary sources or on primary ones that have been published.
In that sense his work is derivative as it is based almost exclusively on the
published work of other scholars rather than on unpublished primary sources.
However, his “Selected Bibliography,” as he termed it, indicates that he did
research in the manuscripts of the Jeannette Thurber Connor Papers, the
Woodbury Lowery Collection, and the Stetson Collection for the Florida portion of his narrative and in the France Vintor Scholes Collection of the
University of New Mexico for the section devoted to that region. But there is
scant reflection of that documentary research in his thirty-one pages of
“Notes” concerning his sources. In a hasty perusal, I found only one citation
from the Stetson Collection and one from the Connor Collection. His inclusion
of those manuscript collections in his bibliography appears to be more
“window dressing” than a reflection of reality.
Nonetheless, he has done a workmanlike job of extracting information from
his sources to present a very readable and enlightening account of the Indians’
and Spaniards’ seventeenth-century encounters in both Florida and New
Mexico. Galgano observes that considerably more is known about Florida’s
original native peoples because of the wealth of documentation that has survived for it while much of the documentation for New Mexico perished during
the Pueblo Revolt in 1680.
Toward the end of his introductory chapter on page 31 Galgano makes a
somewhat puzzling observation. In it he notes that, “In the process of reChristianization Spain became intimately associated with the Christian Church
and later the Roman Catholic Church.” The period that he was discussing was
the Moorish period. Some elaboration seems to have been called for on the
nature of the distinction that he was making in that remark.
On a more nit-picking level, Galgano consistently misspells “Chisca” as
Chicsa. The book’s index is too skimpy to be very useful. Galgano on page 8
observes that “Spanish secular and ecclesiastical officials . . . recklessly exercised
their power over others.” Such an accusation seems to demand some proof or
further elaboration at least. The author seems to have a taste in the opening
pages particularly for such unsupported generalizations. On page 15 a sentence
begins: “A trembling mouth suggested that something bad was eminent.” The
context suggests that “imminent” probably was what the author intended.
Three lines below it a sentence begins with: “By combining augers in their
environment . . . the Indians gleaned more information about the future.”
“Auguries” is what the context seems to call for. A more careful proofreading of
the manuscript by someone at the press should have caught such flaws. But
they are only minor ones that do not detract seriously from the book’s read-

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ability or usefulness.The University of New Mexico Press is to be commended
for having made Robert Galgano’s work available to the general public.
San Luis Archaeological and Historic Site
Tallahassee, Florida

JOHN H. HANN

Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the
Civil War By E. Brooks Holifield. (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press. 2003. Pp. ix, 617. $35.00.)
A book like Theology in America is a rarity these days.An ambitious tome,
it traces the ideas of nearly 300 theologians in the Anglo-American colonies
and the United States between 1636 and 1865. It does so at a time when most
historians of religion have shifted their focus away from the ideas and debates
of literate, intellectual elites and toward such topics as everyday practice and
popular ideology. Holifield’s work can be read as a valuable counterweight to
this trend, as “rare was the discourse in early America in which theology had
no role” (p. viii).
Holifield’s work draws narrative coherence from the argument that early
American theologians shared a concern with the reasonableness of
Christianity that led them to infuse their arguments with philosophical theory.
This overarching theme interplays with five others: “the continued insistence
on theology’s ‘practicality’ and its ethical functions, the importance of
Calvinism, the interplay between Americans and Europeans, the denominational setting of theology, and the distinction between academic and populist
strands of thought” (p. 4).
The first part of the book treats the Reformed tradition from the first
debates in New England to its fragmentation in the wake of Jonathan Edwards.
Initially, seventeenth-century Calvinists relied on Protestant scholasticism and
humanist logic in making their arguments. But a mounting challenge from
English deists led subsequent generations of New Englanders to evidentialism
and natural theology to defend truth as revealed only in the Bible.The second
part of the book elaborates upon the use of evidentialism beyond New
England and through the early national and antebellum periods. It covers a
broader array of denominations including, among others, Unitarians,
Universalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, Shakers, and Mormons.
Uniting these disparate and competing strands, according to Holifield, was a
methodological foundation based on Scottish Common-Sense traditions and an
exaltation of Baconian science.
By the 1830’s, many dissenters found limited utility in Baconian Science.The
book’s third part traces the work of Lutherans, Catholics, and Transcendentalists,
and how they turned to intuition,historical communities of faith,and other alternatives to Baconian empiricism.A short chapter on the challenge presented by

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slavery details how the institution forced many theologians to question the practicality of theology and consider “a form of interpretation that took into account
historical criticism, the social and cultural context of the biblical writings, diversity and development within the canon, and the force of presuppositions in biblical scholarship” (p. 495).A brief afterword, however, points to the persistence
of evidential theology into the twentieth century.
In devoting a chapter to the debate over slavery, Holifield provides an excellent example of theologians attempting to put their work to practical use. But
in so doing, he makes one wonder if he should have done more on the relationship between theology and the rhetoric of the American Revolution, antebellum reform, nativism, or anti-Catholicism.To what extent did theology play
a role in these movements, and what effect did they have on theology? To be
sure, this would entail Holifield’s veering somewhat from his stated purpose,
but his theme of practicality begs for just a bit more sociopolitical contextualization of the ideas discussed.
It is also noteworthy that Holifield departs from the current tendency of
many colonial American historians to approach their subject from a broad, continental perspective. Jesuit activities in New France and New Spain receive
only passing mention.While it would not be fair to insist that Holifield should
have devoted comprehensive attention to all of North America—his work is
magisterial as it stands—he might have chosen a less ambitious title.
Metropolitan State College of Denver

JAMES D. DRAKE

The Founders on God and Government. Edited by Daniel L. Dreisbach, Mark
D. Hall, and Jeffry H. Morrison. (New York: Rowman & Littlefield. 2004. Pp.
xx, 314. $80.00 cloth, $29.95 paperback.)
Setting the tone of this anthology, Michael Novak, in the foreword, contends
that “scholars since about 1950 have thoroughly misconstrued the high
achievements of the founding generation with respect to religious liberty”
(p. ix). Even a cursory examination of the literature will reveal that is correct.
Recent historians of the founding period have concentrated their efforts primarily on social and economic questions of the era.
The editors of this anthology have assembled essays by ten authors who
seek to demonstrate that religious belief was of prime importance for leaders
of the founding generation.As with all anthologies, the authors accomplish this
goal with varying degrees of success. Among the best of the essays are
Morrison’s on John Witherspoon and James R. Stoner’s on the Carroll family of
Maryland. At the other end of the spectrum is Dreisbach’s essay on George
Mason, an essay in which the author seems to devote more space to James
Madison than to Mason.The other seven essays do a very good job of demonstrating the importance of religion and religious liberty for the founders.

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For example, Vincent Phillip Munoz, in his essay on Washington, makes a
good case for Washington’s view that “reason and the lessons of experience . .
. taught that patriotic republicans ought to recognize and endorse religion
because only a religious citizenry could sustain republican self-government”
(p. 7). Indeed, this is a recurring theme throughout many of these essays—that
religious belief, particularly Christian beliefs (although not Roman Catholic
Christianity), was useful to maintain the orderly society. John Adams, according
to John Witte, advocated the establishment of what he called “public religion.”
While not explicitly endorsing any particular sect or denomination, Adams’s
public religion would inculcate “honesty, diligence, devotion, obedience,
virtue, and love of God, neighbor, and self” (p. 26), the characteristics necessary to sustain a republic.As Morrison points out, John Witherspoon’s “formulation of the relationship between religion and republicanism [can be]
reduced to this truism: no republic without liberty, no liberty without virtue,
and no virtue without religion” (p. 129). Even the Reverend Witherspoon at
times emphasized the utilitarian nature of religion.
Thomas E. Buckley, S.J., tackles the difficult job of addressing Jefferson’s religiosity. Buckley presents convincing evidence to overcome the historical myth
that “Jefferson was personally irreligious and desired his fellow Americans liberated from the shackles of belief” (p. 53). Equally challenging was Howard L.
Lubert’s task of resurrecting Benjamin Franklin’s religious beliefs.The core of
Lubert’s argument is that “Franklin invoked religious language to promote
socially beneficial behavior” and that Franklin believed “that the most acceptable form of worship is to do good works. . .” (p. 157).
The other theme in the book is the matter of religious liberty. Here the
authors seem to be in agreement that freedom of religious belief was an important value for the Revolutionary generation, at least as that generation is represented by the ten founders dealt with in this collection. Even John
Witherspoon “always argued that the conscience must be left free” (p. 131).
It is sometimes difficult for us in the early twenty-first century to appreciate the importance of religious belief for Americans of the late eighteenth century. And perhaps it is even more difficult to understand that the leaders of our
Revolution viewed religion, specifically Protestant Christianity, as necessary for
maintaining the stable society necessary for the preservation of republican
government.This collection goes a long way toward putting us in the mindset
of the founding period of the United States. It should be of interest to students
of the founding era, and useful in advanced undergraduate as well as graduate
courses in the history of the American Revolution and the constitutional history of the period.
University of St. Thomas
St. Paul, Minnesota

THOMAS B. MEGA

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Who Shall Take Care of Our Sick? Roman Catholic Sisters and the
Development of Catholic Hospitals in New York City. By Bernadette
McCauley. [Medicine, Science and Religion in Historical Context.]
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2005. Pp. xiv, 146. $45.00.)
In 1849 the Sisters of Charity opened St.Vincent’s Hospital, the first Catholic
hospital in New York City. It was the third in the city and the first to be established by a religious congregation of women. In Who Shall Take Care of Our
Sick?, Bernadette McCauley analyzes the prominent role of religious women in
the development of Catholic hospitals in New York City in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries.These sisters served as administrators, nurses, supervisors, heads of departments, and board members.Today, Catholic hospitals are
the largest single group of not-for-profit health care sponsors, systems, and facilities in the United States, making McCauley’s history particularly important.1
She not only examines how and why hospital development and nursing were
so important to sisters but also what made Catholic hospitals distinctive from
their secular counterparts. In this regard, she argues that hospital work and spiritual pursuits were inseparable. Indeed, Catholics claimed their hospitals were
different because religious women cared for them in a special way.
Using primary historical documents from the sisters’ and archdiocesan
archives and secondary sources in the histories of women, religion, medicine,
and nursing, McCauley weaves together a fascinating story of the sisters’ foundations, their lives in the United States, the nursing care they provided, their
financial activities, and the modernization of their hospitals in the early twentieth century. In so doing, her main thesis is that it was Catholic sisters, rather
than priests and bishops, who placed their church as central to the hospital
landscape in New York City. At the same time, sisters created institutions that
were distinctive not only from secular facilities but also from each other.
Ethnic connections were central: the Sisters of Charity established St.Vincent’s
Hospital, where Irish patients predominated; the Dominican Sisters, originally
from Germany, founded St. Catherine’s in Brooklyn; an Italian immigrant sister
established Columbus Hospital in Manhattan for the Italian population; and sisters from Quebec developed Misericordia Hospital. Indeed, cultural and ethnic
differences are major themes of the book.
McCauley also delineates a specific regional difference between New York
hospitals and those established by sisters in other parts of the country: namely,
that in New York City, Catholic hospitals received money from the state legislators.The power of Catholic votes in New York State, particularly in the city,
gave the Church a significant political voice there.
Of the many interesting facets of this book, McCauley’s analysis of the modernization of Catholic hospitals and their efforts to attract new patients is par1
”Catholic Health Care in the United States” (The Catholic Health Association’s website. 2006).

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ticularly insightful. By the early twentieth century, patients favored location
rather than religious affiliation as the criterion for choosing a hospital.
McCauley argues,“The large Catholic populations reflected a location with a
high percentage of Catholic residents, not necessarily the patients’ choice to
be treated in a Catholic institution” (p. 85). As a result, Catholic hospital promoters needed to show that they were up-to-date with, rather than different
from, other hospitals, and they no longer emphasized their facilities as “sisters’
hospitals” (p. 88).What was most critical was whether or not hospitals could
provide quality care. Thus, sisters established nurse training schools, while
others obtained further education as laboratory or x-ray technicians and
administrators.They continued to manage and nurse in hospitals in New York
City, but rather than claiming expertise based on religious identity, they
worked as educated professionals.
Who Shall Take Care of Our Sick? adds to understandings of the integration of religion and medicine in the social history of hospitals.This book is well
written and well researched. It is appropriate for scholars in the history of
medicine, nursing, labor, religion, and women and should be required reading
for students in each of these disciplines.
University of Pennsylvania

BARBRA MANN WALL

‘Peace and Good’ in America: A History of Holy Name Province, Order of
Friars Minor, 1850s to the Present. By Joseph M. White. (New York: Holy
Name Province. 2004. Published in Association with the Academy of
American Franciscan History. Pp. xviii, 522. $45.00.)
Joseph M.White, known for his work on the American diocesan seminaries
and on the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, has written a history of the Holy Name
Province of the Order of Friars Minor. Commissioned for this project by leaders of the province, he made extensive use of archives in Rome and in the
United States. The book maps the origins of the province in nineteenth-century America: Sardinians, who came to western New York in 1855 at the invitation of Bishop John Timon of Buffalo and founded, among other works, St.
Bonaventure College [now University]; and Thuringians displaced by the
Kulturkampf who came to America in 1875 and assumed pastoral work in the
Newark Diocese. In 1901, the leadership of the order organized a new
province in America, combining the Germans with a smaller number of
English-speaking members who were predominantly Irish in background,
under the patronage of the Holy Name of Jesus. In the division of properties
and missions, the new province received St. Bonaventure College, together
with parishes and friaries in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey.
White characterizes his endeavor as an attempt to write a history of
Franciscans “in the context of dramatic changes in both society and the
Church. . . . It is a story of constant responses to ever-changing situations” (p.

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viii). Because of his familiarity with broader historical themes,White is able to
characterize the friars’ impact on the life of the Church. Although this book
was published internally by the Franciscans, bypassing the usual process of
scholarly critique, the author acknowledges the assistance of Christopher
Kauffman and others in preparing the text.
The book is divided into four parts, plus an epilogue. Part I covers the
diverse origins of the men who were to form the new province and concludes
with its establishment. Part II, covering the period from 1901 to 1943,
describes the province’s growth, its pastoral and educational work (including
the assumption of parish work in the U.S. South), the founding of Siena
College, and the mission to China. Part III takes the story to 1967.They were
years in which membership reached nearly 1000, work in the Far East shifted
from China to Japan, new initiatives were undertaken in South America, high
schools were opened, and pastoral work in the South was expanded to the
Caribbean. Part IV examines the work of the friars in the years to 1987, and
includes attention to issues of academic freedom and religious sponsorship,
and the province’s many efforts to address pastoral needs in a global age.The
book concludes with an epilogue,“The Refounding Era, 1987-2001,” by Father
Dominic Monti, who served as White’s principal consultant for this project.
The epilogue describes the friars’ success at collaborating with lay people in
the work of evangelization, their efforts to promote individual renewal, and
their adjustment to smaller membership in the province.
‘Peace and Good’ in America includes a helpful glossary of terms to assist
readers unfamiliar with the particular language of Franciscan life.There is an
engaging section of over forty photographs that concludes with a somber picture of the body of Father Mychal Judge, chaplain to the New York City Fire
Department, being carried from the World Trade Center on September 11,
2001.The book also contains a numerical table of province membership, and
two short indexes of names and ministries which, while helpful, could have
been expanded to cover subjects as well. Joseph White has rendered good
service to the Franciscans of Holy Name Province and to those wishing to
know their story.
College of the Holy Cross

ANTHONY J. KUZNIEWSKI, S.J.

Polish National Catholic Church of America: Minutes of the Supreme
Council 1904-1969. Compiler and General Editor Casimir J. Grotnik.
Translated by Theodore L. Zawistowski. [East European Monographs, No.
DCLXIII.] (Boulder: East European Monographs. Distributed by Columbia
University Press, New York. 2004. Pp. 392. $60.00.)
This is a valuable source for the investigation of the understudied Polish
National Catholic Church.The denomination arose in 1897 under the leadership
of a dissident Polish Roman Catholic priest, Father Francis Hodur, and is the lead-

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355

ing American example of an ethnic church which stoutly maintained its Catholic
identity.The compilation provides translated records of the Supreme Council of
the PNCC and is a necessary companion to the earlier compilations Synods of
the Polish National Catholic Church 1904-1958 and The Polish National
Catholic Church: Minutes of the First Eleven General Synods 1904-1963.
The Supreme Council Minutes begin in 1904 and proceed with numerous
lacunae through the leadership tenures of Bishops Francis Hodur (19041953) and his successor, Leon Grochowski (1953-1969). Certain issues appear
repeatedly, most notably the persistent and eventually successful effort to
establish the church in the homeland. A presence in Poland was vital to a
church claiming to represent more fully Polish ethnicity, but World Wars I and
II, interwar hostility from a government linked by concordat with Rome, and
later persecution by the Communist government presented numerous obstacles and gave the effort an overtone of tragedy. Another ongoing concern,
addressed usually by implication, was the reconciliation of the need for
administrative order with a polity avowedly more democratic than Roman
Catholicism. Other topics include a persistent paucity of seminarians and
ongoing rivalry with Roman Catholic Poles, who remained numerically dominant despite PNCC evangelism.
Although minutes are usually only a few pages per session and do not
include quotations, there are some apparent paraphrases, usually from Bishop
Hodur. Despite Roman Catholic Poles’ efforts to marginalize the PNCC within
American Polonia, the records suggest a growing desire for Polish National
Catholic participation in common ethnic concerns such as relief in World War
II and the Polish American Congress (founded in 1944), an ethnic umbrella
organization. Ecumenicism appeared in the 1960’s, notably in the presence of
Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican bishops at an episcopal consecration.
The effects of acculturation received acknowledgement with the proposal for
an English missal in this decade.
The translation is readable and the organization chronological.The indices
are limited to names and places, so topics must be sought by reading the entire
work. Since the original Polish accompanies the translation, the work is shorter
than the apparent size of the volume. But the availability of an English version
of this important source increases the accessibility of information on this interesting if small denomination.
Loyola University Chicago

WILLIAM J. GALUSH

Peter Maurin: Apostle to the World. By Dorothy Day with Francis J. Sicius.
(Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Press, 2004. Pp. xxviii, 187. $20.00 paperback.)
Dorothy Day’s longstanding desire to publish a biography of Peter Maurin
has at last borne fruit through the work of Francis J. Sicius, who served both as

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editor and co-author of the present study. Dorothy had begun her Maurin biography by 1943 and completed the rough manuscript in 1947, just two years
before Maurin’s death. However, the work remained in need of considerable
editing, a job that Day neither found the time nor energy to pursue toward
publication. Thus, we owe a great debt to Sicius, who unearthed Dorothy’s
biography from the archives, readied it for publication, and, when necessary,
filled in the gaps of Day’s account by incorporating passages from her other
writings, such as The Long Loneliness. For greater ease while reading the present work, Day’s words are printed in italics; Sicius’ narrative, which is nearly
half of the book, appears in normal font.
The genius of the content and structure of Peter Maurin: Apostle to the
World is threefold. First, Sicius provides a type of basso continuo that is supportive of Day’s narrative. His own portions of the text unify and clarity her
story without overpowering it, thus carrying through on Sicius’ own claim:
“The true author and inspiration for this work remains Dorothy Day. . .” (p. xv).
Second, Sicius honors Day’s perspective on Peter the man and saint, whose
spirituality greatly affected the development of Dorothy’s own.While focusing
on Maurin the person, Sicius nonetheless provides the reader with a larger historical, theological, and cultural context than the one which Dorothy was able
to provide.Third, Sicius appropriately enlarges upon Maurin’s intellectual heritage—which Day also remarked upon, but in more piecemeal fashion. In this
area, Sicius moves beyond even Marc H. Ellis’s fine study, Peter Maurin:
Prophet in the Twentieth Century (1981).
Sicius is the sole narrator throughout his remarkable Chapter 8,“The Green
Revolution,” in which he clearly distinguishes between Dorothy’s vision and
Maurin’s own. Socius rightly presents Maurin as a Catholic thinker who viewed
the medieval synthesis as an “expression of a moral vision that could be
applied to all time” (p. 124). Maurin, with his great capacity for synthesizing
ideas, offered a dream for integrating matter and spirit as an alternative to the
competitive capitalism that spawned the economic depression of 1929
through the 1930’s. In short, Maurin outlined a plan for faith-based communities, working for subsistence, close to the land. He saw the need for humanity
to live in harmony within the natural environment, as Sicius so aptly notes,
“decades before intellectuals and social activists” took up the baton (p. 126).
Sicius has amply filled a lacuna in Peter Maurin and related Catholic
Worker studies. I have one small suggestion to make: an index would make
the work even more helpful to readers, especially those wishing to use it for
future reference.
Lourdes College
Sylvania, Ohio

SR. BRIGID O’SHEA MERRIMAN, O.S.F.

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357

Canad ian
A History of Canadian Catholics: Gallicanism, Romanism, and Canadianism. By Terence J. Fay. [McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Religion,
Series Two.] (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2002. Pp. xv, 400.
$75.00 clothbound; $27.95 paperback.)
Terence Fay admits that a major hope in writing his book is to “create the
first comprehensive history of Catholics in Canada” (p. ix). Though there are
other works dealing with the history of Canadian Catholicism and Christianity,
Father Fay claims to address his objective by focusing on French and Englishspeaking Canadian Catholics as well as Native people and Euro-Canadians from
first contact to the present. Even so, given its very brief coverage of Canada’s
west and far west, especially since it claims to be “comprehensive,” the book
continues to reflect a perennial problem of Canadian Catholic church historiography of largely ignoring Canadian Catholicism west of Ontario. Surely, given
the ever-increasing number of published monographs and articles on church
history in Canada’s west and far west, such a situation is no longer justified.As
for the book’s subtitle, it reflects its threefold chronological division from a
state-controlled Francophone Catholicism, to a Vatican- or ultramontane-dominated Catholicism and finally, and especially since Vatican Council II (19621965), to a Catholicism that is still struggling to even comprehend, much less
accept the pluralistic, globalized, multicultural, and interfaith reality of modern
Canada, or, in short, that Canada is now no longer a Christian nation.
In trying to achieve his very worthy objective, Fay deliberately follows a
strictly narrative rather than a narrative-analytical approach. In a word we are
provided with “safe” history. Fay does this by stressing the importance of many
figures, both clerical and lay, men and women, though mainly clerical-episcopal; and by covering significant social and political policies that have influenced cultural, ethnic, and gender development over four centuries.Again this
is achieved by taking the “safe” road by not seriously challenging any past
“shadows” in Canadian Catholicism (e.g., J. R. Miller, certainly a major and generally accepted authority on Native residential schools, makes no appearance,
except for an article on anti-Catholicism; though Joanna Manning, a strong
critic of the Catholic Church’s treatment of women, is noted briefly [pp. 316317], but without Fay taking any position short of admitting that, since they are
over half the Canadian population, women are important). Instead Fay states
the obvious that “women, the marginalized, and native people, given a chance,
will help to universalize, energize, and organize the Catholic church in the
twenty-first century” (p. 324). Certainly any critically thinking or curious
reader must ask “why” are they not “given a chance”? But Fay offers no serious
reflections, examinations, or answers to such “whys” on this or other important issues. So while this work could have an appeal to the general reader or
first-time student, given his admitted approach, it will hold little interest for the
scholar or critical reader who would find themselves throughout demanding
far greater exploration and development of such issues.

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Of course,“safe” history does have an obvious objective.There is no doubt
that the aim here is to make the book as acceptable as possible to the general
reader, especially the still regular church-going layperson, or about one in five
(20%) baptized Canadian Catholics. But such a methodology, in avoiding serious and balanced criticism can also err on the side of accuracy. For example,
he states that “while some [most?] women consider the church the hand of the
past and an instrument of oppression, most [some?] Canadian women are willing to engage in dialogue with the [still clerically dominated institutional?]
church in the hope that a conversion experience [by the institutional Catholic
Church?] will renew the Christian vision and inspire all to service” (p. 324).
“Safe” history also has its price. In 1971, due to Vatican II, a Roman Synod
of bishops wisely noted: “anyone who ventures to speak to people about justice must first be just in their eyes.” Surely historians who fail to address seriously and examine the “whys” of past ecclesiastical attitudes toward traditional
“out” groups, such as women, Native people, LGBT people, and many others,
do not fully practice their profession. Perhaps this book might provide the
first-time reader with a desire to journey deeper. Although, in holding out that
possibility, its bibliography and notes need to be far more inclusive, detailed,
and extensive, especially given its claim to being “comprehensive.” But it must
be said that it is a significant start toward the writing of a truly comprehensive
history of Canadian Catholicism, and as such, Fay deserves our gratitude for
laying a foundation on which to build.
Sacred Heart School of Theology
Hales Corners, Wisconsin

VINCENT J. MCNALLY

Latin American
City, Temple, Stage: Eschatological Architecture and Liturgical Theatrics in
New Spain. By Jaime Lara. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame
Press. 2004. Pp. xii, 299. $65.00.)
As objects of scholarly inquiry, utopian projects tend to elicit among historians both indifference and enthusiasm; despite some noticeable changes,
these reactions are not very different from the ones that long have accompanied the historical study of ideas be they religious, political, or philosophical.
However gross this generalization may be, it appears to hold true for the
modern historians who studied the early evangelization of Mexico and the
mendicant friars who made it possible. A similar divide appears to exist among
the art historians who from George Kubler onwards have shed light on the
architectural complexes that served as stages for the Christianization of the
Mexican Indians. In his beautifully produced and richly illustrated City, Temple,
Stage, Jaime Lara has unapologetically made the ideas and expectations about
the end of times held by a select group of friars in sixteenth-century Mexico
the key for understanding this unique architectural legacy.

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The title brings to mind Samuel Edgerton’s Theaters of Conversion, a by
now indispensable study on Mexican religious architecture. Yet for all their
similarities, these are two very different books.Whereas Edgerton focused on
style and the transfer of artistic motifs, traditions, and techniques to Mexico,
Lara makes clear from the outset that he will not concern himself with style
but meaning. And meaning, for the author, is to be found by identifying the
core metaphors that the friars, drawing on both Christian and native traditions
turned into the unifying principle behind their “catechumenal complexes.” As
expressions of the missionaries’ apocalyptic expectations, these complexes,
according to Lara, were meant to encompass the past, the present, and the
future by evoking and embodying all at once Jerusalem, its Temple, and the
heavenly city to come.
The author has a tendency to overstate the hold that millenarian ideas had
on the Mexican friars, even among the Franciscans.This impression is corroborated by the lack of a clear distinction between the particular vision of the
end of times embraced by followers of Joachim de Fiore such as Mendieta—
who arrived in Mexico in 1554 and not in 1529—and the eschatological
themes and motifs that by the sixteenth century had become part and parcel
of Christian liturgy and art. It is not surprising then that the world of the friars
presented in City, Temple, Stage should be an unabashedly medieval one in
which the presence of Renaissance techniques and conventions of visual representation barely registers.
Professor Lara has drawn on an impressive body of theological, literary, and
artistic sources across time and places in search of the prototypes that may
have guided the friars in the planning of the religious complex and the designing of its individual components: posas, open chapels, atrium, atrial crosses,
etc. Some readers will find the seemingly endless correspondences in display
fascinating; others will be more inclined to question the criteria behind a
number of these exercises. Some of Lara’s proposals are also likely to generate
debate. A case in point is his provocative reinterpretation of the checkerboard
plan of colonial towns as a design inspired by Eiximenis’ reading of Ezekiel.
As if overwhelmed by the world of possibilities opened by his sources, Lara
has privileged accumulation over analysis, suggestion over disciplined speculation, a move that may explain why some sections remain oddly tentative.Yet,
this is a valuable if idiosyncratic scholarly contribution in which synthesis and
new reinterpretations, images and ideas have not quite managed to work out
their differences.
University of Connecticut, Storrs

OSVALDO F. PARDO

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Australian
From the Murray to the Sea: The History of Catholic Education in the
Ballarat Diocese. By Jill Blee. (Ballarat,Victoria: Catholic Education Office,
Ballarat and Indra Publishing. Distributed in the U.S. by ISBS, Portland,
Oregon. 2004. Pp. 181. US$38.50;Aus. $49.95.)
This attractively produced, extensively referenced, and well illustrated
study traces Catholic education from its earliest days to the present in the area
which became the Ballarat Diocese in 1874.When Victoria became a separate
colony from New South Wales in 1851, it inherited a publicly funded system of
denominational schools as well as a parallel system of government schools.The
Catholic Diocese of Melbourne, established three years earlier, now covered
the whole of the new colony. Provision of Catholic education, as for other
Australian dioceses, was a priority, and, with the secularizing Victorian Public
Education Act of 1872—which withdrew funding from the denominational
schools—became a matter of urgency for the diocese and of resulting public
conflict in the colony. Blee traces this conflict in the context of the sectarianism of the times which it exacerbated. She feels that accommodation with the
government could have been negotiated and that Catholic parents, through
the policy-driven retention of Catholic schools, became deprived of choice
and the personal religious education of their children. However, as her later
documentation indicates, Catholic parents responded with marked generosity
to the hierarchy’s summons to shoulder the financing of these schools.
The book covers substantial changes in educational organization and practice from the early schools subsidized by the government, through the nine
decades of withdrawal of public funding, to the current now forty-year span of
restored and then considerably increased government aid. Parallel with this is
traced the initial situation where Catholic parochial schools in general were
lay-staffed, through the era of predominant employment of teaching religious
when aid was withdrawn, to the by now ubiquitous return of lay staff with the
restoration of aid. The middle interval, from the vantage point we now have,
calls for in-depth, Australia-wide research into the resolution and sustained
effort to maintain a system of schools become, for so many decades, totally
reliant on Catholic expenditure of commitment, energy, and finance.This was
at cost to all sectors involved, whether clergy, lay people, or religious. For those
interested in the long-term evolutionary movements of history, it seems that,
under a guiding Providence, so many nineteenth-century-founded teaching
institutes were available to staff these schools and that that era has now
passed. Previous eras in the long history of the Church have seen similar births
and deaths, accompanied by new challenges.
Jill Blee knows her Ballarat diocesan area well and re-creates with telling
detail incidents and circumstances of its pioneering years, its subsequent goldbased prosperity, and its present solid establishment as a significant Victorian
regional city. She draws on much relevant contextual history: Irish depopula-

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tion and emigration which predominantly supplied Victoria’s Catholic population; the nature of colonial spread and settlement; the significance of key personalities, whether of public or more local prominence, in the story she
unfolds. She has taken a wide canvas for her study, and, while giving it authentic flavor and atmosphere, some clarifications are called for. For example, on
pages 68-70, the Presentations were not forced to accept enclosure (this came
from the Sisters themselves); the Bar convent is in the city of York; both Teresa
Ball and Catherine McAuley built their centers of operation from their own
resources; the Mercy constitutions followed the Presentation (and Brigidine)
in having independent foundations, while the Sisters themselves became the
most numerous in the English-speaking world. Only solemn-vow orders were
required to seek dowries; there were other institutes which, from their own
constitutions, sought dowries, a stipulation often modified in practice. Should
the tuition fee for the Catholic Central Training College in Melbourne be 80
pounds a year (hardly 800 as given in the text, p. 103)?
This book remains a significant contribution to Australian regional history.
Australian Catholic University

ROSA MACGINLEY

BRIEF NOTICES

Historia jurídica del anatocismo. By María Encarnación Gómez Rojo.
(Barcelona: Universidad de Málaga, Facultad de Derecho. Order from
Librerías Proteo y Prometeo, Puerta Buenaventura, 3, 29008 Málaga. 2003.
Pp. 81. Paperback.)
This brief survey of the ways in which legal systems, ecclesiastical and secular, have dealt with compound interest on loans and deposits seeks to cover
an enormous span of time—from Plato to the 1917 Codex iuris canonici—
and space—its focus is on Spain, but the author also deals briefly with France,
Germany, and Italy, with additional side glances at Islamic and Jewish teachings
on usury and compound interest as well. Given this vast scope, Professor
Gómez Rojo is bound to be highly selective in her treatment and attempts to
provide simply a broad general outline of what she regards as the principal
highlights of this complex topic.The book’s strength lies in the considerable
number of bibliographical references that it provides for the selected writers
and problems that it does cover. It is richest, naturally enough, in citations to
the Spanish-language literature of the subject, but remarkably weak in its coverage of English and American scholarship—I saw no mention, for example, of
such fundamental works as John T. Noonan’s Scholastic Analysis of Usury,
John Gilchrist’s book on The Church and Economic Activity in the Middle
Ages, or John Baldwin’s work on Medieval Theories of the Just Price. On the
other hand, scholars curious about the teachings of, say,Tomás de Mercado or
Juan de Hevia Bolaños on usury and compound interest may find this book a
helpful source of information and references.
JAMES A. BRUNDAGE

The University of Kansas

Remembering Iñigo: Glimpses of the Life of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. The
‘Memoriale’ of Luis Gonçalves da Câmara. Translated with introduction,
notes, and indices by Alexander Eaglestone and Jospeh A. Munitiz, S.J. (St.
Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources. 2004. Pp. xxii, 252. $24.95 paperback.)
There were no portraits of Ignatius of Loyola painted during the lifetime of
the founder of the Society of Jesus.Whereas an image of Ignatius was left to be
painted after his death, the saint’s own writings provide an image which, perhaps, excels beyond what could be accomplished by brush and canvass. By his
own hand or under the direction of a secretary, over 6,000 letters, the Spiritual
Exercises, the Formula of the Institute, and the Constitutions, a few brief com362

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363

mentaries on giving the Exercises, and a dictated version of his life commonly
referred to as the Autobiography provide a substantial insight into Ignatius’
mind and times. Another document, known as the Memoriale by Louis
Gonçalves de Câmara, provides additional details of the saint and founder.
Da Câmara had entered the Society of Jesus in 1545 and from his first days
of novitiate desired to know and observe Ignatius, the man he felt was both
founder and model for the Society of Jesus. The opportunity to fulfill these
desires occurred when Da Câmara was made director of the physical necessities of the community, the minister, a job which put him in close contact with
Ignatius. For a period of seven months in 1555 Da Câmara took daily notes of
the actions of Ignatius and reactions to various events.The collection of memories has no organizational focus other than what Da Câmara chose to include
and thus what is recorded describes a range of behaviors and attitudes not
seen in the saint’s own writings. These descriptions sketch a more human
Ignatius, a man given to a full range of virtues and temperaments. These
descriptions, first published in 1904, afford historians a more precise look at
this man and his times.
The translators and editors deserve praise for a well laid-out translation
which include all the n ecessary apparatus to make this sixteenth-century text
accessible to the modern reader. Scholars of early modern religious history
would be remiss not to find a place for this book on their shelves.
Gonzaga University

MICHAEL W. MAHER, S.J.

The Catholic Revolution. New Wine, Old Wineskins, and the Second Vatican
Council. By Andrew Greeley. (Berkeley: University of California Press. 2004.
Pp. xiv, 224.)
Intending to reprise much of his work on the development of Catholicism
in the United States since the Second Vatican Council, the author succinctly
charts the “demolition of the structure that said that the Catholic Church
would not, could not ever change” (p. 70). Following an introduction which
attempts to justify the use of “revolution,” chapter two outlines features of the
law-dominated Church of the 1950’s, later described as “sin-oriented and
focused on a blind obedience relationship between the lay Catholic and the
Church leadership” (p. 192).This neatly sets up the argument for “revolution”
in chapter three, a summary of Greeley’s own research into the standard sociological markers indicating the “drastic change in Catholic attitude and behavior” (p. 38) between 1963 and 1974. Chapters four and five, the most creative
of the book, make good use of William Sewell, Jr.’s theory of structural change
and Melissa Jo Wilde’s use of Durkheim’s notion of “collective effervescence”
to describe the collapse of inherited structures, the “event” of the Council, and
the spread of euphoric change among the laity. The argument is a helpful
move beyond Greeley’s standard focus on the impact of Humanae Vitae (see

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page 43). Chapter six easily joins with nine to reiterate Greeley’s insights into
the Catholic “religious sensibility,” its sacramentalism and communalism. This
approach is set over against the description in chapter seven of the elite managerial cadre of liturgists, ecumenists, catechists, and feminists who “take control of the direction of change in their own areas of concern and impose their
views on many parishes, usually without consulting the membership” (p. 83).
Next, the author includes a very helpful review of data related to international
Catholicism (chapter 8). As Greeley has argued before, the creators of “beige
Catholicism” joined with the failure of episcopal leaders at almost every level
to cause the current malaise in the Church. His research on the priests, delineated in outline form in chapter ten, describes their behavior as a key indicator in the development of all three dimensions of the revolution: structural collapse and the spread of conciliar effervescence among the laity, the emergence
of a Catholicism without metaphor or story, and, in response to change, the
development of the “new authoritarian pragmatism.” Greeley returns to his
commitment to the recovery of the aesthetic sensibility as the central key to
the reconstruction of contemporary Catholicism in the final four essays in the
book on cultural heritage, the role of beauty in religious education, the importance of “charm” in the exercise of authority, and the need for professional
liturgists to listen to the laity.The book concludes with a helpful summary, ten
pages of notes, bibliography, and index.
An overview of Greeley’s provocative insights, The Catholic Revolution is
a good book and most helpful in pushing historians to develop a theory of
change. Generally uncomfortable with the notion of revolution, most would
probably be cautious with respect to the author’s over-generalizations and his
failure to differentiate in the areas of leadership, episcopal and managerial, and
the always “wise” but rather vague “laity.”The sociology and theology point in
a significant and fruitful direction. In an historical journal it should also be
noted that these reflections on ecclesial change take place outside of the context of the civil rights movement, Vietnam, broader political and economic
developments, and the culture wars, all of which would locate the “revolution”
in the Church within a broader trajectory of change and encourage more sensitive readings of its flawed participants.
Franciscan School of Theology
Berkeley, California

JOSEPH P. CHINNICI, O.F.M.

Exuviae sacrae Constantinopolitanae. Edited by Comte Paul Riant. [Comité
des travaux historiques et scientifiques: Histoire.] (Paris: Éditions du CTHS.
2004. Pp. 44, 12, xiii-ccxxiv, 196. €78.00 paperback.)
This is a facsimile of Paul Riant’s two-volume Exuviae sacrae Constantinopolitanae, which first appeared in 1878-1879, with a new preface by
Jannie Durand. Riant aimed to collect all available sources of information
regarding the transfer of religious treasures from Constantinople to Western

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365

Europe in the thirteenth century.The facsimile was published by the Comité
des travaux historiques et scientifiques in 2004 to commemorate the 800th
anniversary of the sack of Constantinople.
Riant wished to establish a history of the crusades that would transcend the
nationalist particularities and dependence on limited narrative sources that he
thought characterized previous studies. Since, as he explained in his preface,
serious history is based on detailed examination of evidence, he undertook to
gather together all manner of information about the transfer of religious
objects during and after the Fourth Crusade. The bulk of both volumes is
therefore comprised of excerpts of Latin texts. Riant’s preface, which runs 224
pages, contains a systematic and detailed exposition of the sources he chose
to include.The medieval texts are divided into chapters of hagiography, liturgical documents, letters and records, and ‘diverse documents’ including
inscriptions and extracts from ecclesiastical books such as necrologies; all of
which offer testimony to the stunning despoliation of Constantinople’s religious treasures.
Although the work of another era, Riant’s anthology has not been
superceded and will still be consulted by historians.The evidence compiled is
foundational to the modern understanding of the Fourth Crusade. Moreover,
Riant’s efforts at systematization and emphasis on the examination of non-narrative sources were part of the maturation of western historical methodology.
These volumes are consequently of as much interest to those studying development of modern historiographical practice as they are to medievalists.
The modern preface by Durand provides a useful biography and assessment of Riant.
The Catholic University of America

LEONORA NEVILLE

NOTES AND COMMENTS

Association News
Proposals for sessions and papers for the Spring Meeting of 2007 to be held
at Marquette University, Milwaukee,Wisconsin on March 29-31 should be sent
to Dr. Steven Avella at steven.avella@mu.edu.
The President of the American Catholic Historical Association, James M.
Powell, Professor Emeritus of Syracuse University, has appointed Thomas C.
Reeves of the University of Wisconsin, Parkside to the Committee on the John
Gilmary Shea Prize for a three-year term. The chairman of the committee is
Augustine C. Thompson, O.P., of the University of Virginia, and the other
member is Charles J.T.Talar of the University of St.Thomas School of Theology
at St. Mary’s Seminary, Houston.
Professor Powell has also appointed Ann Rose of Pennsylvania State
University to the Committee on the John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award for a
three-year term.
Please send any changes in your email or postal addresses to the Association
office.
Meetings, Conferences, Colloquia, and Lectures
On May 23-24, 2006 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Fondation de
l’Œuvre d’Orient a conference was held in Rome at the Centre Culturel SaintLouis de France and at the Istituto Pontificio Orientale.The following papers
were presented: Dominique Trimbur,“Entre religion et politique: les origines et
les premières anneés de l’Œuvre d’Orient,” Jean-Marc Ticchi,“Les directeurs de
l’Œuvre d’Orient et leurs moyens d’action,” Régis Ladous, “La Papauté et
l’Œuvre d’Orient,” Vincenzo Poggi, “Le déclin de l’Empire ottoman et les
Églises,”Daniela Fabrizio,“Le protectorat de la France et les chrétiens d’Orient,”
Giuseppe-Maria Croce, “Catholiques et Orthodoxes de Pie IX à Jean XXIII,”
Gianpaolo Rigotti, “La Congrégation pour les Églises Orientales et l’Œuvre
d’Orient, 1917-1959,” Christian Sorrel,“L’Œuvre d’Orient et les congrégations
religieuses masculines,” Paolo Pieraccini, “Le Saint-Siège et les Lieux-Saints,
1856-2000,” Rita Tolomeo,“Nonces et représentants pontificaux en Orient, de
1856 à 1958,” Dominique Avon,“Figures de l’orientalisme catholique,” Christian
Cannuyer, “Diasporas chrétiennes orientales en Occident,” Michel Van Parys,
“Les Églises d’Orient et les oeuvres catholiques: de l’assistance à la collabora366

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367

tion,” and François Thual,“Des empires aux nations et des nations à la mondialisation, la permanence d’un projet.”
On May 29-31, 2006 the Canadian Catholic Historical Association held its
Seventy-Third Annual Meeting at York University in Toronto, Ontario. Among
the sessions presented on May 29 were one on “Vocation and Ministry” with a
paper by Michael Power on “From Priest to Urban Pastor: Father Edmund
Burke Kilroy.” Another session featured papers by Glenn Wright on “James F.
Kenny, Founder of the Canadian Catholic Historical Association,” by Richard
Lebrun on “The CCHA Journals, Seventy Years of Scholarship,” and by Brian
Hamilton on “Reflection on a Forty Year Bibliography of Canadian Religious
History.” A session entitled “Canadian Catholicism in Time of Conflict” had
papers by James Trepanier on “For God and Country: Reaction to the Knights
of Columbus Catholic Army Huts Campaign of 1918,” by Laurence Gottlieb on
“Catholic Unions and Catholic Associations in Quebec during the 1920’s,” and
by Brian Watson on “How Silent was the Catholic Church? English-Canadian
Catholicism and the Jewish Plight during the Nazi Era.” On May 31 a session
entitled “Perspectives on Women Religious and Education” featured three
papers: by Mechtilde O’Mara on “The Role of the Sisters of St. Joseph of
Toronto in the Post-Secondary Educational Sector,” by Ellen Leonard on
“Theological Education at the University of St. Michael’s College Through the
Eyes of a Woman Religious,” and by Elizabeth Smyth on “The Sisters of St.
Joseph as a Learning Organization: Rethinking the Creation of St. Joseph’s
College,Toronto.”The final session,“Religious Congregations and 20th Century
Challenges,” had two papers: by Debra Nash-Chambers on “The Sisters of St.
Joseph and Institutional Adaptability in Guelph, Canada West, 1861-2002:
Benevolence, Medical Care and the Pendulum of Civic Affairs” and by Robin S.
Gendron on “Canada’s University:The Dominican Order, Canadian Aid, and the
National University of Rwanda.”
On June 25, 2006 a panel dedicated to the theme “Is God in All of This?
Religion and Religious Culture in United States Foreign Relations” was presented at the Conference sponsored by the Society for Historians of American
Foreign Relations held at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. The four
papers were “The Bush Administration’s National Security Strategy: War on
Terrorism or War on Sin?”by Ira Chernus,“Catholic Good Neighbors: Maryknoll
Catholic Missionaries in Latin America” by Susan Fitzpatrick Behrens, “‘The
People of God in Chains’: Franklin Roosevelt and the Religious Culture of
United States Foreign Policy, 1937-1941” by David Zietsma, and “A Divine
Mission: The Public Diplomacy of German Churches in Occupied Germany,
1945-1952” by JonDavid K.Wyneken.
On September 20-22, 2006 an international seminar entitled “Heritage of
Nicolaus Cusanus and Tradition of European Philosophy” will be held at St.
Petersburg State University in Russia. For more information contact Professor
Oleg E. Dushin at odushin@mail.ru and see the website http:\\philosophy.pu.ru.

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NOTES AND COMMENTS

On October 12-14 at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, the Second Lovis
Corinth Colloquium will be held on the theme “‘Ut pictura meditatio’: The
Meditative Image in Northern Art, 1500-1700.” It will examine the form, function, and meaning of pictorial images produced and/or circulated in the Low
Countries, Germany, and Northern France, as prompts to the meditative life. For
further information, contact conferenceblast-bounces@sixteenthcentury.org.
On October 13-15, 2006 the Cusanus Society will hold a conference at
Gettysburg Lutheran Theological Seminary on “Conforming to Christ in
Learned Ignorance: Ways of Praying and Knowing at the Dawn of the
Reformation.” For further information, please contact Dr. Gerald Christianson
at Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary.
On November 9-11, 2006 a conference on “Guadalupe, Madre de América:
Narrative, Image, and Devotion” will be held at the University of Notre Dame
under the sponsorship of its Cushwa Center and Institute for Latino Studies.
Among the presentations are “America’s Sacred Mountain of Sustenance:Tepeyac
and Its Virgen de Guadalupe” by David Carrasco, a panel discussion of “Poetic
Memory: The Nican Mopohua as Sacred Text,”“Subversive Beauty: Guadalupan
Images in Art and Literature”by John Phillip Santos,“Generations That Called Her
Blessed: The Rise of Guadalupan Devotion and Theology” by Kathleen Sprows
Cummings,“From Patroness of New Spain to Banner of Mexican Independence:
Guadalupe and Ecclesial Transformations, 1754-1810”by Teresa Maya Sotomayor,
“Finding Our Lady of Guadalupe in Eighteenth-Century Mexico” by Willian
Taylor, and “The Theology of Guadalupe: From Miguel Sánchez’s Imagen de la
Virgen María (1648) to Pope John Paul II” by Timothy Matovina. For further
information, visit http://marketplace.nd.edu/cce/.
On November 10-11, 2006 a congress about Alcalá la Real will be held in
that Spanish city. It welcomes papers on a variety of topics including religious
and lay institutions and popular religiosity. Proposals for communications
should be sent to the Secretaria at tecnicocultura@alcalalareal.es.
On December 2, 2006 a conference on “War and Peace in the Middle Ages
and Renaisssance” will be held at Barnard College in New York City. Proposals
for papers from any discipline or methodology were to be sent by May 15 to
Laurie Postlewate at lpostelw@barnard.edu.
Among the seminars to be offered in the spring semester by the Folger
Institute in Washington,D.C. are “The Mental World of Restoration England” by
Annabel Patterson and “The Spanish Connection” by Barbara Fuchs.The deadline for admission is January 3, 2007. For further information, contact institute@ folger.edu or see www.folger.edu.

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369

Anniversaries and E xhib itions
To commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Swiss Guards, the world’s
oldest active military force founded by a bull of Julius II in 1505 commissioning the recruitment of 200 Swiss soldiers to guard the person and palace of
the pope, the Vatican has sponsored a number of activities. From March 29 to
July 30, an exhibition is open in the Charlemagne Wing at the left (south)
colonnade of St. Peter’s Square.Among the items in the exhibit are the bull of
1505, a sword of Julius II inscribed with his motto, the helmet and breastplate
of Emperor Charles V, two of Benvenuto Cellini’s commemorative medals, a
painting by Giuseppe Rivaroli in 1927 depicting the death of 147 Swiss Guards
while defending Clement VII during the Sack of Rome in 1527, and the twohanded swords from 1584 that used to accompany the papal sedia gestatoria.
On May 4 the pope blessed a troop of seventy former guards who retraced on
foot the 440 mile route followed by the first Swiss Guards who departed from
Bellinzona in the canton of Ticino and arrived in Rome on January 22, 1506.
On May 5 to 7, there were held choral performances, a commemorative Mass,
a wreath-laying honoring the fallen guards, a swearing in of new recruits, a fireworks display over Castel Sant’Angelo, and a concert.
On April 20 the Vatican announced a series of celebrations to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone of the new St.
Peter’s Basilica by Julius II on April 18, 1506.
On May 10 an exhibition opened in the Walter Reade Theatre at Lincoln
Center in New York entitled “Picturing Mary.” It traces the representations of
Mary across the globe and over almost two thousand years.
Benedict XVI’s Renouncement of the Papal Title
“Patriarch of the West”
The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity announced on March
22 the decision of Benedict XVI to abandon the title “Patriarch of the West,”
implicitly assigned to him by the Eastern churches and formally adopted in
642 by Pope Theodore. Noting that title was somewhat vague since it does not
refer to his jurisdiction over a specific territory but over the Latin Church and
refers to a cultural context stretching from Western Europe to the Americas,
Oceania,Australia, and New Zealand, the pope considers the title obsolete and
practically unusable. In addition, his patriarchal powers have been modified by
the episcopal conferences and their international meetings instituted by
Vatican II. He hopes that this renouncement will also prove useful in ecumenical dialogues.

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Canonizations
On April 27 Benedict XVI in a message to the prefect of the Congregation
for the Causes of Saints insisted on the need for physical (not just moral) miracles to provide divine confirmation of judgments reached by ecclesiastical
authorities regarding a person’s virtuous life. He also stated that only the
Roman Pontiff can concede veneration to a Servant of God.
On March 21 the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints opened an official investigation into the life and virtues of Father Walter J. Ciszek, S.J. (19041994), of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, who spent twenty-two
years in prison, forced labor camps in Siberia, and supervised freedom for serving as a missionary in Russia. Released in 1963, he returned to the United States
where he engaged in spiritual direction and wrote two books: With God in
Russia (1964) and He Leadth Me (1973).
On April 5 in the cathedral of Krakow in a ceremony attended by the Polish
Prime Minister,Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz,and other high-ranking civil authorities
and by cardinals, bishops, priests, religious, and laity, Cardinal Stanisl-aw Dziwisz,
the archbishop of Krakow, announced the successful conclusion of the fivemonth rogation process that took testimony from over one-hundred witnesses
regarding the life of Karol Wojtyl-a, prior to his becoming Pope John Paul II.
On April 19 Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis informed the General
of the Society of Jesus that he is initiating the process that may eventually lead
to the canonization of Father John A. Hardon, S.J. (d. 2000), who founded the
Marian Catechist Apostolate, of which the archbishop is the current director.
On April 28 Pope Benedict XVI authorized decrees recognizing the miracles that will advance the causes of a number of candidates for sainthood,
among whom was Blessed Rafaele Gulzar Valencia, the thrice exiled bishop of
Veracruz, Mexico, and great uncle of the founder of the Legionaries of Christ,
Father Marcial Maciel Degollado.Also having miracles accredited to their cause
were Blessed Theodore (christened Anne Thérèse) Guérin (1798-1856), French
foundress of the Sisters of Providence of Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods in Indiana,
and the Venerable Servant of God Basile Antoine Marie Moreau (1799-1873),
French priest and founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross.
On April 30 in the cathedral square of Milan, the first beatification ceremony in the history of Milan ever celebrated there with papal authorization
was conducted by Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, the local archbishop. He beatified Father Luigi Monza (1898-1954), the founder in 1937 of the Secular
Institute of the Little Apostles of Charity, whose consecrated sisters are dedicated principally to helping physically handicapped children.The archbishop
also beatified Monsignor Luigi Biraghi (1801-1879) who was the spiritual
director of the Major Seminary of Milan and founded in 1838 the Sisters of
Saint Marcellina, who engage in the cultural and moral education of youth and
in foreign mission activities.

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371

On that same day in Ramapuan, Kerala, India, Cardinal Varkev Vithayathil, the
major archbishop of Ernakulam-Angamaly of the Syro-Malabars, presided over
the beatification ceremonies of Father Augustine Thevarparampil (1891-1973),
known as the apostle of the untouchables, almost six thousand of whom he
personally baptized. He served for four decades in the local parish church of
St.Augustine as one of three assistant priests (called the “Kunjachan” or “little
priest” in the Malayalam language because he was very short).
Among the websites devoted to the cause of Blessed Junípero Serra, O.F.M.
(1713-1784), are the following: serra.org/frserra.html; home.earthlink.net/
~forhorn1/serra.htm; and www.catholic–church.org/serra-beth/serra-4.htm.

P ublications
The introduction,“Penitential questions: sin, satisfaction and reconciliation
in the tenth and eleventh centuries” (pp. 1-6), sets the theme for the six articles found in Number 1 for 2006 (Volume 14) of Early Medieval Europe: Rob
Meens,“Penitentials and the practice of penance in the tenth and eleventh centuries” (pp. 7-21); Carine van Rhijn and Marjolijn Saan,“Correcting sinners, correcting texts: a context for the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori” (pp. 23-40);
Catherine Cubitt,“Bishops, priests and penance in late Saxon England” (pp. 4163); Roger E. Reynolds,“Penitentials in south and central Italian canon law manuscripts of the tenth and eleventh centuries” (pp. 65-84); A. H. Gaastra,
“Penance and the law: the penitential canons of the Collection in Nine Books”
(pp. 85-102); and Ludger Körntgen,“Canon law and the practice of penance:
Burchard of Worms’s penitential” (pp. 103-117).
“La meditazione nella prima età moderna” is the focus of all the articles published in the third number for 2005 (Volume XLI) of the Rivista di Storia e
Letteratura Religiosa, which are divided into two sections following a
“Premessa” by Benedetta Papàsogli (pp. 507-511): (I) “Tempo, Meditazione,
Contemplazione”: Sabrina Stroppa,“L’«ars meditandi» nel Seicento mistico” (pp.
513-535); François Trémolières, “Haine de la meditation? Notes sur les enjeux
d’une querelle théologique” (pp. 537-552); Gabriele Perrotti,“Tempo della meditazione e tempo della contemplazione.Molinos e la controversia quietista” (pp.
555-571); Marco Maggi, “Orologi ascetici. Meditazione e ‘ordine del giorno’ in
alcuni «orologi spirituali» del Seicento italiano” (pp. 573-597); Benedetta
Papàsogli, “Meditazione e forme della memoria” (pp. 599-621); (II) “Figure e
forme della Meditazione”: Anne Régent, “Du corps démembré au corps
restauré: ferments stylistiques de l’unité textuelle dans les Chrestiennes
Meditations de Théodore de Bèze” (pp. 625-642); Christian Belin,“Figuration et
configuration dans La Croix de Jésus de Louis Chardon” (pp. 645-663); Ralph
Dekoninck,“Ut pictura/sculptura meditatio. La métaphore picturale et sculpturale dans la spiritualité du XVIIe siècle” (pp. 665-694); Agnès GuiderdoniBruslé, “Figures de l’ame pèlerine: la méditation emblématique aux XVIe et

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XVIIe siècles” (pp. 695-723); and Girolamo Dal Maso, “Meditazione e scrittura
musicale nelle Leçons de Ténèbres di François Couperin” (pp. 725-749).
The issue of La Ciudad de Dios for January-April, 2006 (Volume CCXIX,
Number 1) is an “Homenaje al P. Fray José de Sigüenza en el IV Centenario de
su muerte (+1606).” Following a «Resumen de la vida del V. P. Fr. Josef de
Sigüenza» (pp. 11-28) are eleven articles: Ignacio de Madrid, O.S.H.,“El espíritu
y la espiritualidad jerónima en Fray José de Sigüenza” (pp. 29-58); Manuel
Rincón Álvarez,“Fray José de Sigüenza: algunos rasgos de su personalidad” (pp.
59-85); Gabriel Sabau Bergamin,“Valoraciones del monje jerónimo fray José de
Sigüenza y su obra” (pp. 87-111);Annie Fremaux-Crouzet,“Ortodoxia y biblismo
plurilingüe en fray José de Sigüenza” (pp. 113-139); Dominique Reyre,“José de
Sigüenza y los peligros de la lectura de la Biblia en lengua vernácula” (pp. 141151); José M.a Ozaeta, O.S.A.,“Tres sermones inéditos del P. Fr. José de Sigüenza
en honor de San Lorenzo” (pp. 153-183); José Rodríguez Díez, O.S.A.,“Fr. José de
Sigüenza y Fr. Martín de Villanueva, reliquieros del Real Monasterio de El
Escorial” (pp. 185-220); F. Javier Campos y Fernández de Sevilla,“Los prólogos
de las obras del P. Sigüenza: Declaración personal y mensaje institucional” (pp.
221-250); José Sierra Pérez,“Música especulativa y música práctica en el P. José
de Sigüenza” (pp. 251-291); F. Javier Campos y Fernández de Sevilla,“Bibliografía
de y sobre el P. José de Sigüenza, OSH” (pp. 293-313); and «Cronología» en
Valores literarios del P. Sigüenza, de L. Rubio González (pp. 315-317).
A forum entitled “‘A Religious Turn’ in Modern European Historiography?”
was held during the spring meeting of 2005 of the American Society of Church
History in Atlanta, Georgia.The papers presented at that time have now been
published in the issue of Church History for March, 2006 (Volume 73, Number
1), as follows: Jeffrey Cox, “Provincializing Christendom: The Case of Great
Britain” (pp. 120-129); Thomas Kselman,“Challenging Dechristianization: The
Historiography of Religion in Modern France” (pp. 130-138); George S.
Williamson,“A Religious Sonderweg? Reflections on the Sacred and the Secular
in the Historiography of Modern Germany” (pp. 139-156); and Thomas Albert
Howard, “Commentary—A ‘Religious Turn’ in Modern European Historiography?” (pp. 157-162).
Seven brief articles in the issue of U.S. Catholic Historian for winter, 2006
(Volume 24, Number 1), are concerned with “Dignitatis Humanae, The
Declaration of Religious Liberty, on Its Fortieth Anniversary,” as follows: Joseph A.
Komonchak,“The American Contribution to Dignitatis Humanae: The Role of
John Courtney Murray, S.J.” (pp. 1-20); John Coleman, S.J., “The Achievement of
Religious Freedom” (pp. 21-32); Agnes de Dreuzy, “Dignitatis Humanae as an
Encounter between Two ‘Towering Theologians,’” John Courtney Murray, S.J., and
Yves Congar, O.P.” (pp. 33-44); J. Leon Hooper, S.J.,“Murray and Day: A Common
Enemy, A Common Cause?” (pp. 45-61); Joseph F. Chinnici, O.F.M., “Dignitatis
Humanae Personae: Surveying the Landscape for Its Reception in the United
States” (pp. 63-82); William L. Portier, “Theology of Manners as Theology of
Containment: John Courtney Murray and Dignitatis Humanae Forty Years After”

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373

(pp. 83-105); and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan,“‘The Conscience of Contemporary
Man’: Reflections on U.S. v. Seeger and Dignitatis Humanae” (pp. 107-123).
Hallel Videos and DVD’s (www.hallelvideos.com and 1-800-445-7477) has
made available in its series “Catholic Life in America” the following video documentaries: Kateri Tekakwitha: Native American Saint; Isaac Hecker:
Americanist; Daniel Rudd: Founder of Black Lay Catholic Congresses;
Frances Cabrini: Mother of Immigrants; Thomas Turner: Black Catholic
Leader; John Ryan: Labor Priest; Dorothy Day: Blessed Are the Poor; Al Smith:
Irish Catholic Politician; JFK: RC; John Courtney Murray: American
Theologian; James A. Walsh: Fields Afar; and The Catholic Press: A Video
History. Hallel Videos has also produced a series of videos tracing the impact
of the Second Vatican Council on the American Catholic Church entitled “The
Third Millennium:Vatican II,A Civilization of Love.”
The Canadian Catholic Historical Association has announced the launch of
two CD-ROMs. The first contains seventy-one volumes of Historical Studies
from 1933 to 2004 including the Report for 1933-1965, Study Sessions for
1966-1984, and Historical Studies for 1985-2004. The second CD-ROM contains the first edition of the Bibliography of Canadian Religious History,
1964-2005, compiled by Brian Hogan. For more information, contact Valerie
Burke at P.O. Box 398, Kleinburg, ON, L0J 1C0.
Dr. Kevin Schmiesing, the executive director of Catholichistory.net, has
announced a new website devoted to the history of Catholics in the United
States (www.catholichistory.net) that serves as a clearing house for online
information on American Catholic history: significant persons, places, and
events. It spotlights items in the current news and provides bibliographies in
subfields of American Catholic history. He welcomes suggestions and feedback
at kschmiesing@catholichistory.net.
The Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto announces the
launch of its new website (http://www.archtoronto.org/archives), which provides access to information on the services and programs provided by the
Archives, including reference, genealogy, and sacramental records searching.
The Passionist Historical Archives is currently digitizing its collection of
record albums, reel-to-reel tapes, and audio tapes. It is also making available the
table of contents of its Holy Cross Province Publication The Passionist, which
began in the 1940’s. Under the heading “Passionist History” are statistics on
Passionist membership in the United States beginning in 1854.The web address
is http://cpprovince.org/archives; the email address is archives@cpprov.org.
The Claretian Archives of Chicago has announced the microfilming and
indexing of the Voice of St. Jude (Vols. 1-27 [1935-1961]), St. Jude (Vols. 27-29
[1961-1963]), and U.S. Catholic (Vols. 29-34 [1963-1968]). Subsequent issues of
U.S. Catholic are available through Pro Quest Information and Learning of
University Microfilms Inc.The earlier rolls of microfilm with a 407-page index

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NOTES AND COMMENTS

are available directly from the Archives. Please contact the archivist, Dr. Malachy
R. McCarthy, at mccarthym@claretians.org or at (312) 236-7782 ext. 412.

Personal Notices
Dr. Patrick Carey, holder of the William J. Kelly, S.J., Chair in Catholic
Theology at Marquette University, has won first place in the 2005 Catholic
Press Book Award category of biography for his book Orestes A. Brownson:An
American Religious Weathervane.
Dr. Louis J. Reith of Georgetown University has received from the university’s president, Dr. John DiGioia, a vicennial gold medal for twenty years of
service in the Lavinger Library.
Dr. John Frederick (Fritz) Schwaller, of the Executive Council of the ACHA,
has been appointed president of the State University of New York at Potsdam
effective July 1, 2006.

Obituaries
Dr. William M. Daly, professor of medieval history at Boston College from
1947 to 1986, died on October 11, 2005 at his home in Natick, Massachusetts.
He was born in western Massachusetts in West Stockbridge on December 27,
1920. He graduated from Boston College in 1942. From 1942 to 1946 he served
in the United States Army Air Corps.A navigator with twenty-one missions on
B-17 bombers with the 429th Squadron, Second Bombardment group, 15th Air
Force from its base at Amendola near Foggia, Italy, Bill’s wartime experiences
remained vivid to him all his life. He was wounded during his first mission and
believed that he was saved by the Tuskegee Airmen. On October 4, 1944 his
plane was shot down over Munich. He was one of only three airmen to escape
the doomed plane.With typical humility and understatement, he characterized
the interrogation that followed capture as “certainly not the very happiest 24
hours I ever spent.” In winter of 1944-45 he was in a prisoner-of-war camp—
Stalag Luft III. After he was released, he was assigned to the Pentagon, where
he worked for the War Crimes Commission that reviewed courts-martial cases
and recommended clemency reviews where circumstances indicated.
Following military service,William Daly began to teach at Boston College in
1947. He received his PhD at Brown University in 1955 under the direction
Professor Barnaby C. Keeney. His dissertation was on “The Concept of
Christendom in the Western Crusade Chronicles of the Twelfth and Thirteenth
Centuries.” He kept his scholarly interest in the idea of Christendom ever after.
His publications include “Christian Fraternity, the Crusaders, and the Security
of Constantinople, 1097-1204:The Precarious Survival of an Ideal,” Mediaeval
Studies 22 (1960), pp. 43-91; “Caesarius of Arles: A Precursor of Medieval

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375

Christendom,” Traditio 26 (1970), pp. 1-28; “St. Peter, an Architect of the
Carolingian Empire,” Studies in Medieval Culture IV.1 (1973), pp.55-69;
“Christianitas Eclipses Romanitas in the Life of Sidonius,” Religion, Culture
and Society in the Early Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of Richard E. Sullivan
(1987), pp. 7-26;“Clovis: How Barbaric, How Pagan?” Speculum 69 (1994), pp.
619-664; and “An Adverse Consensus Questioned: Does Sidonius’s
Eucharisticon (Carmen XVI) Show that He was Scripturally Naïve?”Traditio 55
(2000), pp. 19-71. Following his retirement in 1986, he pursued his interest in
the emergence of the notion of Christendom (Christianitas). Illness prevented
him from bringing that book to completion. Bill’s wife, Katie (Catherine
McCarthy Daly), arranged to give many of his research materials and personal
papers to the Burns Library at Boston College.
When I was an undergraduate at Boston College (1961-1965) I met Bill in a
history class. We soon discovered that we were both born in Western
Massachusetts and that we had a love of medieval history. Bill was an excellent
teacher. He was a kind, gentle man with a rich sense of humor and a ready
smile. He was demanding in his courses. He took a personal interest in many
students, including me. I remember fondly dinner at his home with his wife
Katie and Professor Sam Miller, who taught the history of the Reformation. Bill
loved lively conversation and was especially interested in things Catholic. I still
remember that at dinner we talked, among other topics, about the movement
to celebrate Mass in English. Bill was also politically active as an early member
of Americans for Democratic Action, as well as at Boston College, where he participated in the formation of a chapter of the American Association of
University Professors at Boston College. He and his wife were active members
of the Natick Fair Housing Committee in the 1960’s.
Bill leaves behind his wife Catherine, two sons, Michael of Manlius, New
York and William F. of Leicester, Massachusetts, one daughter, Patricia of
Norfolk, Connecticut, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
(I want to thank Dr.Alfred J.Andrea, Professor Emeritus at the University of
Vermont, and Mrs.William M. Daly for their help in composing this obituary.)
Ohio State University

JOSEPH H. LYNCH

John F. Broderick, Jesuit priest and historian, was born in Lynn,
Massachusetts, on September 17, 1909, and died at Campion Center, the nursing facility for Jesuits, in Weston, Massachusetts, on May 21, 2006. The son of
Irish immigrants, Patrick and Margaret (Leonard) Broderick, he grew up in Lynn,
where his primary education was at St. Mary’s, a parochial school, and his high
school education at Lynn Classical High School. Fortunate to obtain a job with
the Massachusetts Department of Public Works, he earned his way through
Boston University, where he obtained a bachelor of arts degree in 1931.

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NOTES AND COMMENTS

Continuing to work for the D. P.W. after college, Broderick’s reading led to
an interest in history and in the Jesuits. Having joined the New England
Province of the Society of Jesus on September 15, 1936, he pursued the Jesuit
course of studies with four years in the humanities at Shadowbrook in Lenox,
and three years of philosophy and four years of theology in Weston, both Jesuit
houses of studies in Massachusetts. Ordained on June 16, 1945, he completed
his fourth year of theology at Weston and a year of ascetical studies (tertianship) at St. Stanislaus House of Studies in Cleveland for the 1946-47 academic
year before he was sent to Rome at the end of that year to pursue a doctorate
in church history.
In Rome, Broderick came under Rev. Robert Leiber, S. J. (1887-1967), the
confidant of Pope Pius XII, and other Jesuit historians. Having completed his
dissertation in 1950, he turned it into a book which was published the following year. Broderick had complemented his research in the Vatican Archives
with research in both England and Ireland. The study, The Holy See and the
Irish Movement for the Repeal of the Union with England, was concerned
with Daniel O’Connell and movement for Irish freedom and the attitude of
both the Papacy and the British Government toward the same.With that work
completed, Broderick was appointed to teach church history on the theological faculty at the Jesuit House of Studies in Weston, where he continued his
research and writing.The first of his four periodical articles,“A Census of the
Saints,” published in the American Ecclesiastical Review in 1956, was a surprise to some scholars because it demonstrated how few saints had actually
been canonized.
In 1961, Broderick accepted an assignment as the Editor of Modern Church
History for the New Catholic Encyclopedia, which was published in fifteen
volumes in 1967.To this encyclopedia he contributed thirteen articles, including one on the Jesuits before their restoration, which was reprinted in the
second edition of the same encyclopedia in 2003. Over the years, his other
contributions to encyclopedias included five for the Catholic Encyclopedia
for Home and School in 1965, nine for the Encyclopedia Americana Annual
between 1966 and 1967, thirty for the Encyclopedia Americana in 1968, five
for the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1968, and three for the Encyclopedia of
Religion in 1985, in addition to his output of book reviews between 1952 and
1983: twenty-nine in America, eight in the American Ecclesiastical Review,
nineteen in the Catholic Historical Review, five in Church History, and thirty
in Theological Studies. He published two other books, Documents of Vatican
Council I (1971), and Catholicism in the Upper Wind River Valley (1987), a
work dealing with a parish in Dubois, Wyoming. The latter was indicative of
Broderick’s pastoral ministry which he carried on during the summer as he did
with local parishes around Boston when he was at Weston or in Washington.
Over the years since receiving his doctorate, Broderick taught at various
institutions.While he taught church history, patrology, and sacred archaeology
at Weston before he reached the status of a professor emeritus in 1981, he

NOTES AND COMMENTS

377

became the first Jesuit to teach at Boston University when he took the place
of a professor in the Religion Department for one semester; he taught church
history at the LaSalette Seminary in Ipswich for the 1969-70 academic year, and
to the Daughters of St. Paul in Jamaica Plain, from 1979 to 1981, both in
Massachusetts; and, as a professor emeritus, he remained on the faculty of the
Weston Jesuit School of Theology until 2004.At the same time, during most of
these years between 1972 and 2004, he was the librarian for Campion Center,
until his health declined so that he spent his last year or so praying for the
Church and the Society of Jesus.
Father Broderick was a member of the American Catholic Historical
Association from 1952 until 2003, three years before his death.
In his interview of Broderick for the New England Jesuits Oral History
Program, Richard W. Rousseau, S.J., concluded the session with this prayer:
“Lord, we want to thank you for the gifts that we have received from Fr.
Broderick over the years, all the things that he has done for the Church.And in
our gratitude we hope you will bless him for all that he has done.” May the
noble soul of John F. Broderick, Jesuit priest and historian, rest in peace!
College of the Holy Cross

VINCENT A. LAPOMARDA, S.J.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

General and Miscellaneous
Sul significato di Storia e Storia della Chiesa. Mario Sensi. Lateranum, LXXII (1,
2006), 143-160.
Vatican II: Did Anything Happen? John W. O’Malley, S.J. Theological Studies, 67
(Mar., 2006), 3-33.
L’ecumenismo al concilio: Paolo VI e l’approvazione di Unitatis redintegratio.
Mauro Velati. Cristianesimo nella Storia, XXIV (May, 2005), 427-476.
Facts and Fictions About the History of Separation of Church and State. John
Witte, Jr. Journal of Church and State, 48 (Winter, 2006), 15-45.
Geschichte des Erfurter Augustinerklosters vom Ausgang des Mittelalters bis
zur Säkularisation im Jahre 1828.Adolar Zumkeller. Augustiniana, 55 (3-4,
2005), 321-355.
“Ob communem fructum et consolationem”: La genèse et les enjeux de l’historiographie de la Compagnie de Jésus. Robert Danieluk, S.J. Archivum
Historicum Societatis Jesu, LXXV (Jan.-June, 2006), 29-62.
Il Pontificio Collegio Sistino di S. Bonaventura (1587-1873) in SS. Apostoli di
Roma negli “Acta” della Congregazione della Visita Apostolica. Vincenzo
Maulucci. Miscellanea Francescana, 105 (III-IV, 2005), 667-748.
Ancient
Die Johannesapokalypse und die Kanonbildung im Osten. Marc De Groote.
Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 116 (2, 2005), 147-160.
Sul problema dell’età della traslazione a Roma delle spoglie di papa Cornelio.
Roberto Giordani. Vetera Christianorum, 42 (2, 2005), 251-273.
La divinizzazione imperiale in età tetrarchica. Angela Amici. Cristianesimo
nella Storia, XXV (May, 2005), 353-394.
The origins of Christian veneration of body-parts. John Wortley. Revue de l’histoire des religions, 223 (Jan.-Mar., 2006), 5-28.
Leadership in the Post-Constantinian Church According to St. Gregory
Nazianzen.Georges Demacopoulos.Louvain Studies,30 (Fall,2005),214-228.
In Ambrosiaster’s Shadow: A Critical Reevaluation of the Last Surviving Letter
Exchange between Pope Damasus and Jerome. Andrew Cain. Revue des
Études Augustiniennes et Patristiques, 51 (2, 2005), 257-277.
378

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

379

John Cassian and the Jews. Daniel J. Heisey. Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 41 (1,
2006), 3-16.
The first two centuries of Saint Martin of Tours. Allan Scott McKinley. Early
Medieval Europe, 14 (2, 2006), 173-200.
Cassiodoro a Costantinopoli. Da magister officiorum a religiosus vir. Angela
Amici. Vetera Christianorum, 42 (2, 2005), 215-231.
Medieval
Answers and echoes: the Libellus responsionum and the hagiography of
north-western European mission. Bill Friesen. Early Medieval Europe, 14
(2, 2006), 153-172.
Arbeo of Freising’s ‘Life and Passion’ of St. Emmeram. The Martyr and his
Critics. Carl I. Hammer. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 101 (Jan.-Mar.,
2006), 5-35.
Die Korrespondentinnen des Bonifatius. Katharina Rösler. Mitteilungen des
Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 114 (1-2, 2006), 26-47.
Les empereurs isauriens et la confiscation des patrimoines pontificaux d’Italie
du Sud.Vivien Prigent. Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome, Moyen Âge,
116 (2, 2004), 557-594.
The Mosaics of Gregory IV at S. Marco, Rome: Papal Response to Venice, Byzantium, and the Carolingians. Claudia Bolgia. Speculum, 81 (1, 2006), 1-34.
Alvar von Cordoba über den Gebrauch des nichtchristlichen Geistesgutes. Igor
Pochoshajew. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 116 (2, 2005), 161-172.
Of holy men and heroes: the cult of saints in medieval Perthshire. M. A. Hall.
Innes Review, 56 (Spring, 2005), 60-87.
I viaggi a Costantinopoli di Liutprando da Cremona fra professione storiografica e spunti terenziani. Marco Giovini. Studi Medievali, XLVI (Dec.,
2005), 753-781.
Liutprando di Cremona: un detrattore di Roma o dei romani? Girolamo Arnaldi.
Studi Romani, LIII (Jan.-June, 2005), 12-50.
Il culto dei santi nel Medioevo: alcune considerazioni quantitative e tipologiche sulle dedicazioni pievane e parrocchiali nella arcidiocesi genovese
di Levante (secoli X-XIII). Carlo Moggia. Mélanges de l’École Française de
Rome, Moyen Âge, 117 (1, 2005), 305-321.
Los modelos monásticos en Galicia hasta el siglo XI. José M.Andrade Cernadas.
Archivo Ibero-Americano, LXV (Sept.-Dec., 2005), 587-609.
L’abbazia torinese di S. Solutore: origini, rapporti, sviluppi patrimoniali. Patrizia
Cancian. Bollettino Storico-Bibliografico Subalpino, CIII (2, 2005), 325-400.
Sinodalità e Leone IX: Bilancio storiografico e prospettive di un problema pregregoriano. Cristianesimo nella Storia, XXIV (May, 2005), 499-526.

380

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

The Eleventh-Century Epistolary of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. Joseph Dyer.
Archiv für Liturgie-Wissenschaft, 46 (3, 2004), 311-350.
Wilhelm von Hirsau und Gregor VII. Pius Engelbert, O.S.B. Römische Quartalschrift, 100 (3-4, 2005), 145-180.
Vita activa, vita contemplativa: enjeux pour le Moyen Âge. Christian Trotmann.
Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome, Moyen Âge, 117 (1, 2005), 7-25.
Les débuts de l’ordre du Temple en Orient. Pierre-Vincent Claverie. Le Moyen
Age, CXI (3-4, 2005), 545-594.
La composición del Decreto de Graciano. José Miguel Viejo-Ximénez. Ius
Canonicum, XLV (July-Dec., 2005), 431-485.
La Vita Landiberti Leodiensis (ca 1144-1145) du chanoine Nicholas de Liège.
Étude sur l’écriture hagiographique à Liège au XIIe siècle. Renaud Adam. Le
Moyen Age, CXI (3-4, 2005), 503-528.
The First Crusade in Late Medieval Exempla. James B. MacGregor. Historian,
66 (Spring, 2006), 29-48.
When Exile is Home: The Biography of Isaac of Stella. Elias Dietz. Cistercian
Studies Quarterly, 41 (2, 2006), 141-165.
The Hidden Years of Ælred of Rievaulx: The Formation of a Spiritual Master.
Chrysogonus Waddell. Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 41 (1, 2006), 51-63.
Le moine et le saint roi. La qualité de confesseur dans la Vita Edwardi d’Aelred de
Rievaulx (1). Matthias Lemoine. Collectanea Cisterciensia, 68 (1, 2006), 34-47.
Classical Learning in William FitzStephen’s Life of Thomas à Becket. James L.
Butrica. Studi Medievali, XLVI (Dec., 2005), 535-567.
L’image au lieu de la liturgie: le décor du pupitre de l’Évangile de l’ambon
d’Aiello dans la cathédrale de Salerne (Campanie, dernier quart du XIIe
siècle) et ses principales variantes. Laurence Aventin. Mélanges de l’École
Française de Rome, Moyen Âge, 117 (1, 2005), 323-352.
Domestic opposition to Byzantium’s alliance with Saladin: Niketas Choniates
and his Epiphany oration of 1190. Dimiter G. Angelov. Byzantine and
Modern Greek Studies, 30 (1, 2006), 49-68.
The Prodigal’s Journey: Ideologies of Self and City in the Gothic Cathedral.
Gerald B. Guest. Speculum, 81 (1, 2006), 35-75.
Conscience et gestion de la crise dans le patrimoine de Saint-Pierre: systèmes
d’exploitations, offices et pouvoirs à Cencelle (XIIIe-XVe siècle). Armand
Jamme. Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome, Moyen Âge, 117 (1, 2005),
353-406.
Illegale Eheschließungen und gültige Ehen. Die Ehestatuten der Salzburger
Kirchenprovinz (1215-1515). Christina Deutsch. Archiv für Katholisches
Kirchenrecht, 173 (II, 2004), 353-383.
El convento de San Francisco de Valladolid en la Edad Media (h. 1220-1518).
Los aspectos materiales (II). Francisco Javier Rojo Alique. Archivo IberoAmericano, LXV (Sept.-Dec., 2005), 421-585.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

381

«Rendiamo lode a quegli uomini gloriosi...» (Sir 44,1). Elementi per una lettura
teologica della Legenda de origine Ordinis. Luca M. Di Girolamo, OSM.
Studi Storici dell’Ordine dei Servi di Maria, LIV (2004), 37-134.
The Franciscans and the Scottish Wars of Independence:An Irish perspective.
Naev Gallagher. Journal of Medieval History, 32 (1, 2006), 3-17.
The Historical and Literary Context of Fasting and Abstinence in the Life of St.
Nicholas of Tolentino (†1305). Karl A. Gersbach, O.S.A. Augustiniana, 55 (34, 2005), 247-296.
A settecento anni dall’approvazione definitiva dei Servi di santa Maria: la Dum
levamus del papa domenicano Benedetto XI del 1304. Franco Andrea Dal
Pino. Studi Storici dell’Ordine dei Servi di Maria, LIV (2004), 11-35.
Marriage and Morals in the Fourteenth Century: The Evidence of Bishop
Hamo’s Register. Lindsay Bryan. English Historical Review, CXXI (Apr.,
2006), 467-486.
The Pardoner’s Promises: Preaching and Policing Indulgences in the
Fourteenth-Century English Church. Robert W. Shaffern. Historian, 66
(Spring, 2006), 49-65.
Les chanoines à l’échelle de la chrétienté: l’exemple du Portugal.Ana Maria S.
A. Rodrigues and Hermínia Vasconcelos Vilar. Mélanges de l’École Française
de Rome, Moyen Âge, 116 (2, 2004), 611-629.
The Involvement of the Late Medieval Urban Authorities in the Low Countries
with regard to the Introduction of the Franciscan Observance. Marjan De
Smet and Paul Trio. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 101 (Jan.-Mar., 2006),
37-87.
The Visual Hagiography of a Stigmatic Saint: Drawings of Catherine of Siena in
the Libellus de Supplemento. Emily A. Moerer. Gesta, XLIV (2, 2005), 89-102.
Assemblée conciliaire et liturgie aux conciles de Constance et Bâle. NatachaIngrid Tinteroff. Cristianesimo nella Storia, XXIV (May, 2005), 395-424.
Figures of Thought and Figures of Flesh: “Jews” and “Judaism” in Late-Medieval
Spanish Poetry and Politics.David Nirenberg.Speculum,81 (2,2006),398-426.
Il Sinodale del vescovo Ludovico di Romagnano e la tradizione sinodale nella
diocesi di Torino (secoli XIII-XV) (parte 2a). Antonio Olivieri. Bollettino
Storico-Bibliografico Subalpino, CIII (2, 2005), 555-594.
Dieci anni di studi savonaroliani. Tra celebrazione e ricerca. Lorenzo Tanzini.
Archivio Storico Italiano, CLXIII (4, 2005), 761-780.
Sixteenth Century
Due domenicani savonaroliani lunigianesi: Stefano da Codiponte e Zaccaria di
Bagnone. Cesare Vasoli. Nuova Rivista Storica, LXXXIX (Sept.-Dec., 2005),
603-624.

382

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Le discours de Cajetan au Ve concile de Latran. Charles Morerod. Revue
Thomiste, CXIII (Oct.-Dec., 2005), 595-638.
St. Luke as Painter: Post-Byzantine Icons in Early Sixteenth-Century Ethiopia.
Marilyn E. Heldman. Gesta, XLIV (2, 2005), 125-148.
The Spanish Reformation: Institutional Reform, Taxation, and the
Secularization of Ecclesiastical Properties under Charles V. Aurelio Espinosa.
Sixteenth Century Journal, XXXVII (Spring, 2006), 3-24.
Religionsfrieden als politisches Problem der frühen Neuzeit. Eike Wolgast.
Historische Zeitschrift, 282 (Feb., 2006), 59-96.
La condemnation par les théologiens parisiens du plaidoyer d’Érasme pour la
traduction de la Bible dans la langue vulgaire (1527-1531). Wim François.
Augustiniana, 55 (3-4, 2005), 357-405.
Drawing Christ’s Blood: Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and the Aesthetics of
Reform.Una Roman D’Elia.Renaissance Quarterly,LIX (Spring,2006),90-129.
Le ambiguità della porpora e i «diavoli» del Sant’Ufficio. Identità e storia nei
ritratti di Giovanni Grimani. Massimo Firpo. Rivista Storica Italiana, CXVII
(Dec., 2005), 825-871.
Peter Faber, S.J. (1506-1546): Geistliche Gestalt und Spiritualität. Severin
Leitner. Geist und Leben, 79 (Mar.-Apr., 2006), 89-106.
Una carta inédita de San Francisco Javier. Manuel Ruiz Jurado, S.J. Archivum
Historicum Societatis Jesu, LXXV (Jan.-June, 2006), 78-87.
Ceremony versus Consent: Courtship, Illegitimacy, and Reputation in Northwest England, 1560-1610. Jennifer McNabb. Sixteenth Century Journal,
XXXVII (Spring, 2006), 59-81.
La peur du grand complot catholique. La diplomatie espagnole face aux
soupçons des protestants allemands (1560-1570). Monique Weis. Francia,
32 (2, 2005), 15-30.
The Guises, the Body of Christ, and the Body Politic. Jeanne Harrie. Sixteenth
Century Journal, XXXVII (Spring, 2006), 43-57.
Le débat sur la représentation des saints à San Lorenzo del Escorial après le
concile de Trente. Sylvène Edouard. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 101
(Jan.-Mar., 2006), 89-115.
Napoli e la ‘nuova maniera’ nel XVI secolo: eredità michelangiolesca e lezione
spagnola nei progetti di Giovanni Vincenzo Casali.Alessandra Quarto. Studi
Storici dell’Ordine dei Servi di Maria, LIV (2004), 137-151.
Jesuit Missions in Italy, Confraternities, and the Jubilee of 1575: Centers and
Peripheries. Lance Gabriel Lazar. Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu,
LXXV (Jan.-June, 2006), 3-27.
O Alcázar do Ceo: The Professed House at Lisbon in 1588. Liam M. Brockey.
Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu, LXXV (Jan.-June, 2006), 89-135.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

383

La fin des guerres de Religion et l’exclusion des femmes de la vie politique
française. Michel De Waele. French Historical Studies, 29 (Spring, 2006),
199-230.
Dr. theol. Georg Hänlin (1556-1621): Theologieprofessor, Stadtpfarrer und
Domdekan zu Freiburg. Tilo Huber. Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv, 125
(2005), 249-264.
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Remembering Henry Garnet, S.J. Thomas M. McCoog, S.J. Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu, LXXV (Jan.-June, 2006), 158-187.
An Unknown Illustrated Life of Ignatius of Loyola by Petrus Firens (about
1609). Paul Begheyn, S.J. Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu, LXXV (Jan.June, 2006), 137-157.
Dall’inventio del corpo santo alla costruzione della reliquia: Giovanni Angelo
Santini, ditto il Toccafondi, pittore romano (con 8 tavv. f.t.). Massimiliano
Ghilardi. Studi Romani, LIII (Jan.-June, 2005), 94-121.
Ruling Eldership in Civil War England, the Scottish Kirk, and Early New
England: A Comparative Study of Secular and Spiritual Aspects. William M.
Abbott. Church History, 75 (Mar., 2006), 38-68.
Primitiae martyrum Societatis Iesu in Ecclesia Iaponica: Der Maler Bernard
Fuckerad S.J. Ein Beitrag zur Arbeitsweise der Ordensmalerei. Dietmar
Spengler. Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu, LXXV (Jan.-June, 2006),
63-77.
. . . Combatter coi tribunali dell’impero . . . Zum Konflikt um Jurisdiktion und
Rechtssprechung zwischen römischer Kurie und Reich in der Frühen Neuzeit.
Burkhard Roberg. Römische Quartalschrift, 100 (3-4, 2005), 181-239.
Die Hugenottenverfolgung in der zeitgenössischen deutschen Publizistik
(1681-1690). Ulrich Niggemann. Francia, 32 (2, 2005), 59-108.
Newton’s treatise on Revelation: the use of a mathematical discourse. Raquel
Delgado-Moreira. Historical Research, LXXIX (May, 2006), 224-246.
Anglican Perceptions of Lutheranism in Early Hanoverian England. Daniel L.
Brunner. Lutheran Quarterly, XX (Spring, 2006), 63-82.
Bernard Picart e Jean Frédéric Bernard dalla religione riformata al deismo. Un
incontro con il mondo ebraico nell’Amsterdam del primo Settecento. Silvia
Berti. Rivista Storica Italiana, CXVII (Dec., 2005), 974-1001.
Nuovi contributi documentari alle vicende architettoniche di Santa Maria in
Gradi a Viterbo tra XVIII e XIX secolo. Salvatore Enrico Anselmi. Studi
Romani, LIII (Jan.-June, 2005), 161-185.
P. Cayetano Ramo Parrilla de San Juan Bautista, XXI Prepósito General de la
Orden de las Escuelas Pías (1713-1795( (Continuation). Adolfo GarcíaDurán. Archivum Scholarum Piarum, XXX (59, 2006), 131-186.

384

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Marco della Tomba and the Brahmin from Banaras: Missionaries, Orientalists
and Indian Scholars. David N. Lorenzen. Journal of Asian Studies, 65 (Feb.,
2006), 115-143.
Les élites parisiennes et la seconde réhabilitation de Jean Calas (15-18 février
1767). Francis Garrisson. Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du
Protestantisme Français, 152 (Jan., Feb., Mar., 2006), 19-55.
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Eine “Imagined Community” jenseits der Nation. Die Herrnhuter Brüdergemeinde als transnationale Gemeinschaft. Gisela Mettele. Geschichte und
Gesellschaft, 32 (Jan.-Mar., 2006), 44-68.
Mission Impossible? Baptism and the Politics of Bible Translation in the Early
Protestant Mission in Bengal.Torkel Brekke. History of Religions, 45 (Feb.,
2006), 213-233.
Los papas en la modernidad (1789-2005). Manuel Martín Riego. Isidorianum,
XIV (28, 2005), 241-326.
“rheinisch-katholisch”. Zur Mentalität des rheinischen Katholizismus seit der
Aufklärung. Michael Klöcker. Römische Quartalschrift, 100 (3-4, 2005), 288312.
Die Gedenkveranstaltungen zum 200. Jahrestag der Säkularisation 1803-2003.
Ein Kritischer Rückblick. Marcel Albert. Römische Quartalschrift, 100 (3-4,
2005), 240-274.
Le due incoronazioni di Napoleone. Emanuele Pigni. Aevum, LXXIX (Sept.Dec., 2005), 739-744.
L’incoronazione di Napoleone I a re d’Italia nei documenti del Capitolo Metropolitano di Milano. Fausto Ruggeri. Aevum, LXXIX (Sept.-Dec., 2005), 745-776.
The Contribution of the University of Malta in the Formation of the Maltese
Priests, 1838-1850. Francis Bonnici. Melita Theologica, 56 (2, 2005), 71-99.
Nursing the mission: the Franciscans Sisters of the Immaculate Conception
and the Sisters of Mercy in Glasgow, 1847-1866. Karly Kehoe. Innes Review,
56 (Spring, 2005), 46-59.
Die ‘rosminische Frage’ als Exemplar kirchenpolitischer Auseinandersetzungen
im 19. Jahrhundert. Markus Krienke. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 116
(2, 2005), 173-203.
The Golden Legacy of Dr. Henry Backhaus. Malachy J. Nolan. Australasian
Catholic Record, 83 (Apr., 2006), 154-166.
From Church-Based to Cultural Nationalism: Early Ukrainophiles, RitualPurification Movement and Emerging Cult of Taras Shevchenko in Austrian
Eastern Galicia in the 1860s. Ostap Sereda. Canadian American Slavic
Studies, 40 (Spring, 2006), 21-47.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

385

Zwischen Bauhütte und Bauhaus: Die Beuroner Kunstschule als Wille und
Vorstellung. Johannes Werner. Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv, 125 (2005),
265-276.
Gladstone and Newman. Edward Short. Newman Studies Journal, 3 (Spring,
2006), 45-59.
Joseph Ritter von Zhishman und die Errichtung der Orthodoxen Theologischen Fakultät in Czernowitz.Thomas M. Németh. Ostkirchliche Studien,
54 (3-4, 2005), 279-291.
Emilie de Vialar and the Religious Reconquest of Algeria. Sarah A. Curtis. French
Historical Studies, 29 (Spring, 2006), 261-292.
Marie-Joseph Cassant: un perdente? Giandomenico Mucci, S.I. La Civiltà
Cattolica, 157, I (Feb. 4, 2006), 232-239.
L’Évangile et l’Église in Light of the “Essais.” Harvey Hill. Theological Studies,
67 (Mar., 2004), 73-98.
La questione modernista a Milano. La visita apostolica del 1904, il cardinal
Ferrari e la S. Congregazione del Concilio. Mario Casella. Rassegna Storica
del Risorgimento, XCIII (Jan.-Mar., 2006), 23-58.
Iglesia y Constitución: La posición de la Iglesia católica en las constituciones
espanolas (1908-1978). Hugo Santos Gil. Revista Española de Derecho
Canónico, 62 (2005), 89-144.
Don Sturzo, il card. Gasparri e la fondazione del PPI. Giovanni Sale, S.J. La
Civiltà Cattolica, 157, I (Jan. 7, 2006), 12-23.
Fine del «non expedit» e partecipazione dei cattolici italiani alla vita politica.
Giovanni Sale, S.J. La Civiltà Cattolica, 157, I (Feb. 18, 2006), 365-373.
I cattolici populari e l’Aventino. Giovanni Sale, S.J. La Civiltà Cattolica. 157, I
(Jan. 21, 2006), 136-147.
Zum Problem der Anpassung der Diözesanzirkumskription an die deutschtschechoslowakische Staatsgrenze zwischen den Weltkriegen (1918-1939).
Die Grafschaft Glatz im Blickpunkt der vatikanischen Diplomatie. Michael
Hirschfeld. Römische Quartalschrift, 100 (3-4, 2005), 275-287.
Bistumsjubiläen und Identitätsstiftung im 20. Jahrhundert am Beispiel der
Diözesen Rottenburg-Stuttgart und Limburg. Claus Arnold. Römische
Quartalschrift, 100 (3-4, 2005), 313-332.
“Stimmen der Zeit” im Kirchenkonflikt. Eine innerjesuitische Auseinandersetzung vor 80 Jahren. Klaus Schatz, S.J. Stimmen der Zeit, 131 (Mar., 2006),
147-161.
Dom Odo Blundell, O.S.B. (1868-1943): a different kind of historian. Br. Paschal
Downs and Alasdair Roberts. Innes Review, 56 (Spring, 2005), 14-45.
Stefan Zweig contre Calvin (1936). Frank Lestringant. Revue de l’histoire des
religions, 223 (Jan.-Mar., 2006), 71-94.

386

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Teresio Olivelli: illusioni, disincanto e martirio. Piersandro Vanzan. La Civiltà
Cattolica, 157, I (Jan. 21, 2006), 114-122.
Pio XII e la democrazia. Il radiomessaggio del Natale 1944. Giovanni Sale, S.J.
La Civiltà Cattolica, 156, IV (Dec. 3, 2005), 431-444.
Zwischen Rassenhygiene und Biotechnologie. Die Fortsestzung der eugenischen
Debatte in Diakonie und Kirche, 1945 bis 1969. Uwe Kaminsky. Zeitschrift
für Kirchengeschichte, 116 (2, 2005), 204-242.
Santamaria and the Legacy of the Split: Fifty Years On. Bruce Duncan.
Australasian Catholic Record, 83 (Apr., 2006), 140-153.
“Über die Rechte und Pflichten an der Bischöflichen Kathedrale zu Freiburg
im Breisgau” mit dem Hintergrund der Beschaffung eines neuen
Münstergeläutes 1959. Hugo Ott. Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv, 125 (2005),
349-366.
–nas Streikus. Religion, State &
Lithuanian Catholic Clergy and the KGB. Aru
Society, 34 (Mar., 2006), 63-70.
Fr.António Joaquim Dias Dinis. OFM (1903-1980) no Centenário do seu nascimento. Biografía e Obra.António de Sousa Araújo, O.P. Itinerarium, L (Sept.Dec., 2004), 499-537.
Coexistence and/or Confrontation? Towards a Reappraisal of Christian-Muslim
Encounter in Contemporary Ethiopia. Hussein Ahmed. Journal of Religion
in Africa, 36 (1, 2006), 4-22.
American
John Clarke and the Complications of Liberty. Theodore Dwight Bozeman.
Church History, 75 (Mar., 2006), 69-93.
“Here Are No Newters”: Witchcraft and Religious Discord in Salem Village and
Andover. Richard Latner. New England Quarterly, LXXIX (Mar., 2006), 92-122.
Evangelicals and the Invention of Community in Western Maryland. James D.
Rice. Maryland Historical Magazine, 101 (Spring, 2006), 27-54.
“The Devil Begins to Roar”: Opposition to Early Methodists in New England.
Eric Baldwin. Church History, 75 (Mar., 2006), 94-119.
The Expanding World of Jacob Norton: Reading, Revivalism, and the Construction
of a “Second Great Awakening” in New England, 1787-1804. Mary Kupiec
Cayton. Journal of the Early Republic, 26 (Summer, 2006), 221-248.
A Family Affair: Cherokee Conversion to American Board Churches, 18171839. Meg Devlin O’Sullivan. Tennessee Historical Quarterly, LXIV (Winter,
2005), 264-283.
Practicing Local Faith & Local Politics: Senecas, Presbyterianism, and a “New
Indian Mission History.” Mark A. Nicholas. Pennsylvania History, 73
(Winter, 2006), 69-101.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

387

Missionary and Mother: Jerusha Swain’s Transformation in the Cherokee
Nation, 1852-1861. Meg Devlin O’Sullivan. The Chronicles of Oklahoma,
LXXXIII (Winter, 2005-06), 452-465.
Faire l’histoire catholique de l’Ouest américain au 19e s. Une terre de missions
à réévaluer. Tangi Villerbu. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 101 (Jan.-Mar.,
2006), 117-141.
Sunday Newspapers and Lived Religion in Late Nineteenth-Century America.
Jeffrey A. Smith. Journal of Church and State, 48 (Winter, 2006), 127-152.
A Lutheran Patriarch: Pastor Theodore Kohn. Scott J. Meyer. Concordia
Historical Institute Quarterly, 78 (Winter, 2005), 194-218.
Zionsgemeinde, Palmenthal, Revisited. Michael Doyle. Concordia Historical
Institute Quarterly, 79 (Spring, 2006), 26-47.
Sermons That Became Charges. William P. Hustwit. Journal of Mississippi
History, LXVIII (Spring, 2006), 29-41.
John Strietelmeier: Called to the “Holy Laity.” Richard Baepler. Concordia
Historical Institute Quarterly, 78 (Winter, 2005), 219-244.
Latin American
Franciscans, Indian Sorcerers, and the Inquisition in New Spain, 1536-1543.
Patricia Lopes Don. Journal of World History, 17 (Mar., 2006), 27-49.
“Heretical Plagues” and Censorship Cordons: Colonial Mexico and the
Transatlantic Book Trade. Martin Austin Nesvig. Church History, 75 (Mar.,
2006), 1-37.
Entre Jonas et Robinson, le voyage contrarié de Jean de Léry au Brésil. Frank
Lestringant. Études Théologiques & Religieuses, 80 (3, 2005), 385-396.
El cristianismo liberal de José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi contra el dominio
eclesiástico. María Rosa Palazón. Cuadernos Americanos, XX (Jan.-Mar.,
2006), 95-108.
La viuda del General Santander cuestionada por el Delegado apostólico de la
Nueva Granada. Luis Carlos Mantilla R., O.F.M. Boletín de Historia y
Antigüedades, XCII (Oct., Nov., Dec., 2005), 845-863.
A un siglo de la frustrada fundación de la Escuela Pía en Sucre (Bolivia).
Roberto Muriel and Manuel Rodríguez Espejo. Archivum Scholarum
Piarum, XXX (59, 2006), 111-130.
Sant-Alberto Hurtado.Antony Mifsud. La Civiltà Cattolica, 157, I (Jan. 7, 2006),
45-53.
Catolicismo y peronismo: debates, problemas, preguntas. Miranda Lida. Boletín
del Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana, 27 (1, 2005), 139-148.

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

Alexander, Denis, and Robert S. White. Science, Faith, and Ethics: Grid or
Gridlock? (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers. 2006. Pp. xii, 190.
$16.95 paperback.)
Bird, Otto, and Katherine Bird. From Witchery to Sanctity: The Religious
Vicissitudes of the Hawthornes. (South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine’s Press.
2005. Pp. x, 164. $24.00.)
Brakke, David, Michael L. Satlow, Steven Weitzman (Eds.). Religion and the Self
in Antiquity. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
2006. Pp. x, 268. $60.00 clothbound; $24.95 paperback.) Among the thirteen essays published here are (8) “Locating the Sensing Body: Perception
and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity,” by Susan Ashbrook Harvey (pp.
140-162); (9) “Dialogue and Deliberation:The Sensory Self in the Hymns of
Romanos the Melodist,” by Georgia Frank (pp. 163-179); (10) “From Master
of Wisdom to Spiritual Master in Late Antiquity,” by Guy G. Stroumsa (pp.
183-196); and (12) “Making Public the Monastic Life: Reading the Self in
Evagrius Ponticus’ Talking Back,” by David Brakke (pp. 222-233).
Branson, Charles N., Jr. Revue des Ordinations Épiscopales, No. 14. (Mango,
Fla.: Charles N. Bransom, Jr. 2005. Pp. 40. Paperback.)
Christopher, Emma. Slave Ship Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730-1807.
(New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. xviii, 241. $65.00 clothbound; $21.99 paperback.)
Compendium: Catechism of the Catholic Church. (Washington, D.C.: United
States Conference of Catholic Bishops. 2006. Pp. xx, 204. $14.95 paperback.)
Durkin, Mary Cabrini, OSU, and Mary Nona McGreal, OP. Always on Call:
Samuel Mazzuchelli of the Order of Preachers 1806-1864. (Sinsinawa,
Wisc.: Éditions du Signe. Order from Dominican Sisters, Mazzuchelli Guild,
585 County Road Z, Sinsinawa,WI 53834. 2000. Pp. 49. $12.00 paperback.)
Galchutt, Kathryn M. The Career of Andrew Schulze, 1924-1968: Lutherans
and Race in the Civil Rights Era. (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press.
2005. Pp. xiv, 270. Paperback.)
Giles, Mary E. (Ed.). Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World.
(Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1999. Pp. xi, 402.
$49.00 clothbound; $19.95 paperback.)
388

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

389

Grelot, Pierre. The Language of Symbolism: Biblical Theology, Semantics, and
Exegesis. Translated by Christopher R. Smith. (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
Publishers. 2006. Pp. x, 238. $19.95 paperback.)
Hangen, Tona J. Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, & Popular Culture in
America. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2002. Pp. x, 220.
$39.95 clothbound; $18.95 paperback.)
Hostetter, Larry. The Ecclesial Dimension of Personal and Social Reform in
the Writings of Isaac Thomas Hecker. [Roman Catholic Studies, Vol. 15.]
(Lewiston, N.Y.:The Edwin Mellen Press. 2001. Pp. xvii, 574. $119.95.)
Irigoyen López,Antonio, and José Jesús García Hourcade (Eds.). Constituciones
Sinodales de la Diócesis de Cartagena de 1583 (Sínodo del Obispo D.
Jerónimo Manrique de Lara). (Universidad Católica San Antonio. 2005. Pp.
441. Paperback.)
Isacsson,Alfred, O.Carm. The Carmelites: The Province of Saint Elias. (Middletown, N.Y.:Vestigium Press. 2003. Pp. 65. Paperback.)
Laurie, Bruce. Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform. (New York:
Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. xxiv, 340. $65.00 clothbound; $23.99
paperback.)
Monfasani, John (Ed.). Kristeller Reconsidered: Essays on His Life and
Scholarship. (New York: Italica Press, Inc. 2006. Pp. 328. $40.00 paperback.)
Murphy, Francis J. (Trans. and Ed.). Listen to the Silence: A Retreat with Père
Jacques. (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies.
2005. Pp. xiv, 122. $12.95 paperback.)
Nash, David. Blasphemy in Modern Britain: 1789 to the Present. (Brookfield,
Vt.:Ashgate Publishing Company. 1999. Pp. xii, 300. $78.95.)
Occhi, Katia. Boschi e mercanti: Traffici di legname tra la contea di Tirolo e
la Repubblica di Venezia (secoli XVI-XVII). [Annali dell’Istituto storico
italo-germanico in Trento, Monografie, 42.] (Bologna: Società editrice il
Mulino. 2006. Pp. 275. €20.00 paperback.)
O’Malley, John W. Four Cultures of the West. (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press. 2006. Pp. x, 261. $14.50 paperback.)
Originally published in 2004 and reviewed by Glenn W. Olsen ante, XCI
(April, 2005), 339-343.
Pellistrandi, Benoît (Ed.). L’Histoire religieuse en France et en Espagne.
[Collection de la Casa de Velázquez, Vol. 87.] (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez.
2004. Pp. xviii, 506. €30.00 paperback.) Contents: I. Méthodes, archives et
enjeux: “État des lieux: France,” by Yves-Marie Hilaire (pp. 3-16);
“Sécularisation et laïcisation. Une trame décisive,” by Jean Baubérot (pp.
17-38); “Archives et écriture de l’histoire. Le Vatican (1939-1945),” by
François Bédarida (†) (pp. 39-46);“El Vaticano y la Guerra Civil,” by Hilari

390

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

Raguer i Suñer (pp. 47-76);“Catholicisme et politique dans la France contemporaine. Un état de la recherche,” by Philippe Portier (pp. 77-106);
“Religión y política en la España contemporánea,”by Juan María Laboa (pp.
107-120); “De la biographie à la prosopographie dans l’historiographie
religieuse contemporaine,” by Jacques-Olivier Boudon (pp. 121-135);
“Biografía y prosopografía en la historia de la Iglesia española contemporánea,” by Enrique Berzal de la Rosa (pp. 137-172); II. Les échelles et les
espaces. Paroisses, diocèses, congrégations, mouvements de laïcs:
“Paroisses et clergé paroissial en France,” by Philippe Boutry (pp. 175-200);
“Parroquias y clero parroquial,” by Antón M. Pazos (pp. 201-224);“Échelles
et espaces: le diocèse. Réflexions sur l’historiographie française contemporaine,” by Christian Sorrel (pp. 225-247);“Les congrégations religieuses,”
by Patrick Cabanel (pp. 249-269); “Las congregaciones religiosas en la
España contemporánea. Etapas históricas, actividades y notas bibliográficas,” by Manuel Revuelta González (pp. 271-294);“Les associations de laïcs
en France (xixe-xxe siècles),” by Gérard Cholvy (pp. 295-319); “Los
«movimientos» en la historia religiosa reciente,” by José Andrés-Gallego
(pp. 321-330); III. Nouvelles relectures et perspectives de recherche:
“L’anticléricalisme,” by Jacqueline Lalouette (pp. 333-352);“El anticlericalismo en España. Un balance historiográfico,” by Julio de la Cueva Merino
(pp. 353-370); “Le catholicisme social en France (xixe-xxe siècles). Une
modernité paradoxale,” by Denis Pelletier (pp. 371-387); “El catolicismo
social en España. Balance historiográfico,” by Feliciano Montero (pp. 389409);“«Nouvelle théologie» et théologie nouvelle (1930-1960),” by Étienne
Fouilloux (pp. 411-425);“Histoire, spiritualité et anthropologie. Femmes en
prière, saints en compétition,” by Claude Langlois, (pp. 427-440);“Religion
et culture: L’intérêt culturel pour la Bible dans la France contemporaine,”
by Anne-Marie Pelletier (pp. 441-451);“Religión y cultura en España en el
siglo xx. Intelectuales, Estado y pueblo,” by Pablo Pérez López (pp. 453469);“Religion et monde moderne,” by Michel Lagreé (pp. 471-487).
Rice, Charles E., and Theresa Farnan. Where Did I Come From? Where Am I
Going? How Do I Get There?: Straight Answers for Young Catholics. Edited
by Ellen Rice. (South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine’s Press. 2006. Pp. xii, 207.
$13.00 paperback.)
Senior, Donald, and John J. Collin (Eds.). The Catholic Study Bible. The New
American Bible: Including the Revised New Testament and Psalms.
Translated from the Original Languages with Critical Use of All the
Ancient Sources. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2006. Pp. xx, 1,851.
Paperback.)
Sider, Robert D. (Ed.). Christian and Pagan in the Roman Empire:The Witness
of Tertullian. [Selections from the Fathers of the Church, Vol. 2.]
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press. 2001. Pp. xviii, 177.
Clothbound.)

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

391

Smit, M. C. Toward a Christian Conception of History. Edited and Translated
by Herbert Donald Morton and Harry Van Dyke. (Lanham, Md.: Institute for
Christian Studies and University Press of America, Inc. 2002. Pp. xi, 426.
$47.95 paperback.)
Smithson, David G. Prayer or Mantra?: A Contrast Between Christian Prayer
and Eastern Meditation. (Shawnee Mission, Kans.: Seventy-Three
Publications. 2006. Pp. x, 84. $11.95 paperback.)
Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Translated by
John Clarke, O.C.D. A Study Edition Prepared by Marc Foley, O.C.D.
(Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies. 2005. Pp.
xxiv, 459. $18.95 paperback.)
Therivel,William. The GAM/DP Theory of Personality and Creativity, 3 vols.
(Minneapolis, Minn.: Kirk House Publishers. 2001, 2002, 2003. Pp. 400, 344,
380. $40.00 each volume.)
Tuninetti, Giuseppe. Monsignor Francesco Lardone (1887-1980): Il Nunzio
Apostolico Precursore della Ostpolitik. (Moretta: Comune di Moretta,
Provincia di Cuneo. 1996. Pp. 111. Lire 15.000 paperback.)
Wergland, Glendyne R. One Shaker Life: Isaac Newton Youngs, 1793-1865.
(Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press. 2006. Pp. xviii, 247;
24 illustrations. $80.00 clothbound; $24.95 paperback.)
Whelan, Ruth, and Carol Baxter (Eds.). Toleration and Religious Identity: The
Edict of Nantes and Its Implications in France, Britain and Ireland.
(Dublin: Four Courts Press. Distributed in the United States by ISBS,
Portland, Ore. 2003. Pp. 304. $50.00.) Contents: Introduction: (1) Ruth
Whelan, “The Other ’98” (pp. 21-37); I. Commemoration and Identity: (2)
Jean Delumeau,“From the Edict of Nantes to ecumenism” (pp. 41-53); (3)
Yves Bizeul, “Identity and commemoration: French Protestants and the
quatercentenary of the Edict of Nantes” (pp. 54-70); II. War and Peace: (4)
Denis Crouzet,“Identity and violence: French Protestants and the early Wars
of Religion” (pp.73-91); (5) Olivier Christin, “‘Peace must come from us’:
Friendship pacts between the confessions during the Wars of Religion” (pp.
92-106); (6) Bernard Cottret,“Religious or secular:The Edict of Nantes, reformation and state formation in late sixteenth-century France” (pp. 107127); (7) Mark Greengrass,“An Edict and its antecedents: the pacification of
Nantes and political culture in later sixteenth-century France” (pp. 128146); IV. An Intolerant Toleration: (8) Olivier Millet,“Intolerance, friendship
and urbanity: Balzac and his Huguenot correspondents” (pp. 149-165); (9)
John Miller,“Pluralism, persecution and toleration in France and Britain in
the seventeenth century” (pp. 166-178); (10) Ruth Whelan,“Repressive toleration: the Huguenots in early eighteenth-century Dublin” (pp. 179-196);V.
Toleration: (11) Alan Kors, “The Enlightenment and toleration” (pp. 199209); (12) Graham Gargett,“Toleration in later eighteenth-century Ireland:

392

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

Voltaire and the Dublin and Hibernian magazines, 1762-84” (pp. 210-230);
VI.Toleration and Reconciliation: (13) Alain Blancy,“Conviction and toleration: a theological and ethical appraisal”(pp. 233-248); (14) Alan D. Falconer,
“Towards a culture of tolerance” (pp. 249-261); and (15) Cecelia Clegg and
Joseph Liechty,“Moving beyond sectarianism: religion, conflict, and reconciliation in contemporary Northern Ireland” (pp. 262-276).
Williams, Peter W. America’s Religions: From Their Origins to the Twenty-First
Century. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 2002. Pp. xviii,
601. $59.95 clothbound; $29.95 paperback.) Originally published in 1990
as America’s Religions: Traditions and Cultures.
Willis, Peter. Dom Paul Bellot: Architect and Monk and the publication of
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