The Catholic Historical
Review
VOL. XCIV

JANUARY, 2008

No. 1

THE ASSASSIN-SAINT:
THE LIFE AND CULT OF CARINO OF BALSAMO
BY

DONALD S. PRUDLO*

St. Peter Martyr was a thirteenth-century preacher and inquisitor
who achieved rapid canonization and attained a worldwide
cult. Less well known was his assassin, Carino of Balsamo. Hired as
a cutthroat thug to murder Peter of Verona, Carino escaped,
repented, and lived out his life as a humble Dominican penitent.
After his death, a local cult developed around him. Although the
story of the famous Inquisitor and the humble penitent were inextricably intertwined, their cults hardly ever intersected. This article
lays out Carino’s biography and his cultic afterlife, and sheds light
on early Dominican practice, on the continuing importance of local
cults in Italy, and on the Christian ideal of conversion.
The year 2003 was the 750th anniversary of the canonization of
Peter of Verona, the martyred Dominican inquisitor of Lombardy.1 In
1251 Pope Innocent IV appointed Peter, already a popular preacher, as
inquisitor.After only nine months, a conspiracy of Cathar-leaning rural
*Dr. Prudlo is an assistant professor of history in Jacksonville State University,
Alabama.
1
For Peter, see my book: The Martyred Inquisitor: The Life and Cult of Peter of
Verona (†1252) (Aldershot, 2008). For an older but still useful study, see: Antoine
Dondaine, O.P., “Saint Pierre Martyr,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 23 (1953),
67–150. Peter’s life is printed in a patchwork of texts in Vita S[ancti] Petri Martyris
Ordinis Praedicatorum, ed.Ambrogio Taegio, included in “De Petro Mart. Ord. Praedic.,”
Acta Sanctorum [hereafter Acta SS], 68 vols., ed. Daniel Papebroch et al. (Antwerp,
1675–1940),April 29, pp. 679–719.Taegio draws his text largely from Thomas Agni’s ca.
1270 life of Peter.

1

2

THE ASSASSIN-SAINT

nobility and townspeople led to his murder. Peter was a popular figure
in his adopted hometown of Milan and, largely due to that city’s
efforts, his cause was the swiftest in the entire history of papal canonization. Peter has received much attention throughout history, both
from the Dominican Order and from the Church at large, which came
to know him best as the patron saint of the Inquisition. Mostly forgotten among those who honored the fallen Preacher was a humble
Dominican lay penitent who died in the convent of Forlì in 1293,
roughly forty years after Peter. This saintly conversus was Carino of
Balsamo, the hired assassin who killed Peter of Verona.
In spite of extensive recent scholarship on saints, inquisition, and
heresy, Carino’s life has been largely ignored.2 Partly because his story
is an appendage to the life and cult of Peter of Verona, Carino merited
little attention. As scholarship about Peter himself trails off after the
1950s, it is little wonder that studies about Carino are lacking. Recent
work can help to contextualize the life and work of him whom
Giovanni da Colonna (the thirteenth-century prior of the Dominican
Roman province) called one of “the bringers of death, the enemies of
justice, the vessels of wickedness, (and) the ministers of Satan.”3 This
article will examine why the man later known as Blessed Carino
aroused such hatred. Its purpose is to trace the development of such a
“minister of Satan” into a beatus.This will shed light on Peter’s cult, on
the stability of locals cults in general, and on the character of
Dominican life in the thirteenth century. This article will follow
Carino’s story first, with interpretive issues addressed at the end.
Carino the Assassin
Those who held Cathar sympathies in the 1250s did not like Peter
of Verona. Less than a week after his appointment by Innocent IV as
inquisitor for all Lombardy, local nobles began preparing a plot to kill
2
There is a short reference to him in: Sadoc M. Bertucci, O.P.,“Carino da Balsamo,”
Bibliotheca Sanctorum, 13 vols. (Rome: Istituto Giovanni XXIII nella Pontificia
Università Lateranense, 1961–1970), vol. 3, 788–89. An older work is F. S. Faucher, “Le
Bienheureux Carino, meutrier de saint Pierre Martyr,” Rivista di scienze storiche 3
(1906), 47–61, 173–211.
3
“[N]uncii mortis, hostes iusticie, vasa nequitie, ministri Sathanae,” Letter of Prior
Giovanni da Colonna to the brethren at Paris, regarding the canonization of Peter of
Verona, March 19, 1253, in Année Dominicaine: ou vies des saints, des bienheureux,
des martyrs, et des autres personnes illustres ou recommandables par leur piété de
l’un et de l’autre sexe de l’Ordre des Frères-Prêcheurs, distribuées suivant les jours de
l’année (Lyon, 1909), vol. 11 [November], pp. 908–10.

BY DONALD S. PRUDLO

3

him.4 Peter had, after all, abandoned his Cathar-leaning Veronese family
and had joined the Dominicans. Targeted with Peter was Rainerio
Sacconi, another Dominican inquisitor who was a recent high-level
convert from Catharism. Perhaps Lombard Cathars were feeling general political and social pressure against them, but the targets of the
plot indicate that the two turncoats were distasteful to those with heterodox proclivities.The planners plotted effectively, and financial backers were not wanting. The money for the project largely came from
well-to-do Milanese Cathar sympathizers: those who were in most
danger from the nascent investigations of the dedicated new inquisitor.The plotter most directly involved in the operational aspect of the
plan, named Manfredo, knew precisely where to go to find an individual who could bring off the murder: Carino of Balsamo.
Manfredo likely chose Carino for one of two reasons. Either he
wanted a hired assassin who was too dull to recognize the danger of
the mission, or too bloodthirsty and greedy to refuse it. It seems that
the latter hypothesis more closely matches the facts, as Carino paused
upon hearing the target, reflecting upon the backlash that could come
from such an action. Manfredo promised ready cash and enigmatically
alluded to some kind of help after the deed was committed. Still this
did not quiet Carino’s fears. He demanded to be permitted to bring
along an accomplice,Alberto Porro of Lentate, who styled himself the
“Magnificent.”5 Manfredo worried that too many people were becom4
The details of the plot may be gathered from several places. The first is partial
records of an investigation into Peter’s death done by the Dominican inquisitors of
Lombardy, which records the confessions of two middle-men, edited in J. S. Villa,
“Processo per l’uccisione di S. Pietro martire,” Archivio storico Lombardo 4 (1877),
790–94. Well aware of the interpretive difficulties inherent in inquisitorial depositions,
one should argue for the substantial veracity of these texts. First, they are spontaneous
confessions as to details of fact surrounding the murder and not accounts of heresy.
Second, no penance was meted out to the two witnesses, as the Church was more interested in the main plotter and his financial backers. Third, the two depositions concur
with each other in their details, and agree with points confirmed in other documents.
Further corroborating evidence is located both in the contemporary letter edited in:
Letter of Romeo de Attencia to Raymond of Peñafort [1252], in “Documents sur Saint
Pierre Martyr,” ed. Raymond Balme, Lettre de Frère Roderic de Atencia à Saint-Raymond
de Pennafort sur le Martyre de s. Pierre de Vérone (Lyon, 1886), pp. 5–22, and also in
the late and less trustworthy: Galvano Fiamma, O.P., Cronica Ordinis Praedicatorum ab
Anno 1170 usque ad 1333, Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Historica, 29
vols., ed. Benedict M. Reichert, O.P. (Rome, 1897), vol. 2, part 1, for the year 1253.
5
“Post hoc autem, ego misi pro homine [qui] facere deberet hoc maleficium, scilicet
pro Carino de Balsamo, et invitavi eum ad hoc faciendum pro tanta pecunia: et respondit, sic; sed dixit non auderet facere solus, et cum acciperet alium secum nominavit

4

THE ASSASSIN-SAINT

ing involved—his own name might come into the open. In response,
Carino promised that he would never betray Manfredo, even under the
threat of torture and death. Such a promise must have been small comfort coming from a man willing to commit murder. With payment for
the deed agreed upon, the two parted to take up their respective positions for the execution of the plan.6
During the next several days Carino proved himself quick, intelligent, and devious. Peter had returned to Como, a town where he was
the Dominican prior, after a visit to Milan for inquisitorial business. He
came to celebrate Easter with his friars and planned to return to work
in Milan a week later. During Easter week, the conspirators came with
Carino and took up residence in a house near the Dominican priory
where they could observe the movements of the friars. Carino himself
boldly went to the priory daily to investigate when Peter would leave.
This evidence refutes the theory that Carino was well known at the
time of the crime, as his overt activity in the town of Como and at the
Dominican priory aroused no apparent suspicion. It is probable that
Carino assumed the aspect of piety during his daily visits.7
Already Alberto “the Magnificent” was demonstrating his true character. He protested how much he wanted to come to Como, but he
chose to remain at his home in the country “in view of the business
to be accomplished.”8 This left Carino to do all of the scouting and
planning alone. Probably exasperated with the man he had chosen to
accompany him, Carino’s attitude went from bad to worse when he
went to the convent on Easter Saturday, April 6, 1252. He found that
Peter had already departed for Milan with three companions.
Evidently Dominicans rose earlier than cutthroats in those days.
Nonplussed, Carino went to Manfredo to demand his horse so that he
could catch up to the early-rising Peter.This horrified Manfredo, who
was better at planning than at real action; not only was his name now
in circulation among unreliable men, but surely someone would recognize his horse. He refused the assassin’s request.9 Clearly having a
Albertinum Porrum de Lentate, qui dicitur magnificus.” From Manfredo’s confession to
the inquisition, in Villa,“Processo,” 792–93.
6
Ibid.
7
“Contraximus autem ibi [Como] morum tribus diebus et ibat Carinus omni die ad
domum fratrum Predicatorum ut quereret de recessu fratris Petri . . .” ibid., p. 793.
8
“Albertinus Porrus voluerat venire Cumas, sed remansit in partibus suis, quia magis
ibi securus erat ad illud negotium peragendum,” ibid.
9
“[R]equiebat a me ipse Carinus equum meum, ut prosequeretur eum [Peter], et ego
nolui dare ei, ne cognosceretur . . .” ibid.

BY DONALD S. PRUDLO

5

bad time of it, Carino was forced to hurry himself along on foot to
meet up with Alberto. Although Peter and his three companions
could have left well before Carino, they were only a little ahead, as the
inquisitor decided to delay their departure to say Mass.10 Ironically,
this pause enabled the tardy Carino to overtake Peter, meet up with
Alberto, and prepare an ambush.
Como lies twenty miles from Milan, and so it would take the greater
part of the day to walk. Peter was then laboring under the grip of a
quartan fever that made his journey slower and more difficult than
usual. About halfway, near the town of Meda, Peter separated himself
and another brother called Domenico from the two others, and they
ate lunch in separate places. Eager to return quickly to Milan, Peter and
Domenico did not wait for the other two brothers apparently lingering over their pranzo.11 Instead they hurried back to the main road,
which led them through the forest of Barlassina. It was there that
Carino had set up an ambush, in an area that both he and Alberto knew
well. In spite of the well-laid plan, Carino’s bad luck continued.Alberto
“the Magnificent”decided he was not quite up to the task and ran away
at top speed from the scene of the impending attack. Running toward
Meda, Alberto met the other two tardy brothers, to whom, with copious tears, he related the whole plot.12
Carino now had to bring off the crime by himself. He lay in wait,
clutching the cruel instrument of his trade: the falcastrum.13 Within
moments he was on Peter. According to the letters of Romeo de
Attencia and Giovanni da Colonna, he struck five blows to Peter, while
Manfredo related that Peter was struck twice on the head and once in
10
It was not common at that time for Dominicans to say daily Mass when away from
the priory. “[S]ubito venit in cor ejus ut ante missam de Resurrectione et cujusdam
fratris, qui secum ire debebat, pedibus provolutus, ut frequenter confiteri consueverat,
solito moriosus et curatius est confessus, ut dictus frater retulit viva voce, et sic, missa
devote celebrata, una cum tribus fratribus iter fecit . . .” Letter of Romeo de Attencia, pp.
14–15. Romeo probably wanted to reassure his readers as to the state of Peter’s soul.This
contemporary source was discovered in 1886, and provides significant corroboration to
the inquisition testimony. It also allows us to trace the actions of Peter that day from eyewitnesses, as the inquisition records allow us to do for the plotters.
11
Ibid., pp. 15–16.
12
“[U]nus illorum penitentia ductus, horrens tanto sceleri consentire, ab altero recedens versus predictum burgum [Meda] cursu celeri properabat et habens obvios alios
duos fratres totum iniquum consilium cum lacrymis propalavit.” ibid., p. 16.
13
This was a bill-hook, a long curved but rough blade with a handle, used in a
machete-like fashion for cutting bushes. It was not a precise weapon, but one made for
acute application of brute force.

6

THE ASSASSIN-SAINT

the back.14 Examination of Peter’s remains showed injuries to the
head and to the front of the chest, not the back or the sides.15 The Bull
of Canonization’s hagiographical reconstruction of the crime betrays
sentiments similar to those expressed at the beginning of the article
by Giovanni da Colonna, absolutizing the struggle into primal
opposed dyads:
[A] wolf against a lamb, the savage one against the meek, the impious
against the pious, the raging against the gentle, the unbridled against the
restrained, the profane against the sacred, consumed with insults, trained in
struggle, eager for death; and attacking that sacred head, he sated his sword
on the blood of the just man. Dreadful wounds inflicted upon him, he did
not turn from the enemy, but immediately showed himself as an offering (to
God), [he expired, sending his spirit to the heavens] sustaining his patience
in the awful blows of the butcher; laid low in the place of his suffering, (he
lay dead).16

A probable reconstruction would go as follows. Carino obviously knew
whom to attack because he went right for Peter. Peter was probably
able to deflect the first blow from his head and onto his shoulder. If
the blow did strike his head, it was not the final crushing stroke that
appears on his skull today. After the first strike, Carino had to deal with
Domenico, to whom he quickly gave four wounds that later proved
fatal. Carino then finished Peter off with several hacks to the head.This
reconstruction is probable because all the early records stated that
Peter spoke after the initial attack.17 It seems that while Carino dealt
14

Letter of Romeo de Attencia, p. 17.Villa,“Processo,” p. 793.
Relazione della ricognizione del sagro corpo del glorioso san Pietro martire
dell’Ordine Predicatori in occasione della traslazione dell’arca (Rome: Nella stamperia di Girolomo Mainardi, 1736). Milan,Archivio di Stato, MS San Pietro in Barlassina, Box
C, Cart. L, no. 7.
16
“[I]n agnum utique lupus, ferus in mitem, in pium impius, furibundus in mansuetum, in modestum effraenus, profanus in sanctum, praesumit insultum, exercet conatum,
mortem intentat, sacrum illius caput impetens, et satiato sanguine justi ense, diris in
ipsum impressis vulneribus, non divertentem ab hoste, sed exhibentem se protinus hostiam (deo), et caesoris sustinentem in patientia truces ictus, [dimisit, spiritu petente
superna] in [ipso] loco passionis [occisum] (prostratum, se in necem dereliquit).”
Innocent IV, “Magnis et Crebris,” Bullarium Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum, ed. T.
Ripoll (Rome: Ex Typographia Hieronymi Mainardi, 1759), vol. 1, 229, with corrections
from Thomas Agni, Vita Sancti Petri Martiris,Toulouse: Bibliothèque Municipale MS 481,
fol. 36v. Bracketed passages are not in Agni’s manuscript. Passages in parenthesis are not
in the bull.
17
From Peter’s fractured skull, which is kept in Sant’Eustorgio, neurological medical
analysis suggests that no one who had been struck in the head the way Peter was could
have uttered any words. See D. Ferdinando Santagostino, S. Pietro da Verona martire
15

BY DONALD S. PRUDLO

7

with Domenico (as it is clear that the murderer assaulted him second),
Peter uttered,“In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum,”
“Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.” Although this fact
appears in many saints’ lives, the bull recorded that Carino and
Domenico independently asserted that Peter began to say the Apostles’
Creed: unusual last words in the history of martyrdom.18
It is here that Carino’s and Peter’s stories begin to diverge: one destined for a long career as a publicly venerated saint and the other now
a wanted criminal and pursued by both Church and state. Perhaps
stunned by what he had done, Carino failed to flee from the scene
immediately. Seeing the crime from a distance, a farmer ran to help and
apprehended Carino.19 How a farmer could subdue and capture an
armed man who had just brutally assaulted two Dominican friars is difficult to understand. Probably Carino was expecting aid after the commission of the deed. Perhaps he thought the farmer was there to help
him escape.20 Otherwise it seems improbable that a simple farmer
could accomplish such a feat, even with a “zeal for justice.”
The farmer handed Carino over to the civil authorities in Milan, who
placed him in the jail of the podestà, Pietro Avvocato. From decisions
made by the podestà during the following days we know that Carino
cooperated with the nascent investigation into Peter’s death.21 He laid
out the plan to the authorities, including implicating all of the main

domenicano (Milan, 1952).This is why I propose that the first blow was in the chest, or
only grazed his head. In this way the unanimous tradition (based on the eyewitness evidence of Brother Domenico and Carino) of the earliest sources is preserved and agrees
with the physical evidence.
18
Letter of Romeo de Attencia, p. 17 confirms that Peter began the “In manus tuas.”
Both Thomas Agni (Vita S[ancti] Petri Martyris Ordinis Praedicatorum, 5.39, 698) and
Jacopo da Varazze (Jacobus de Voragine), Legenda Aurea, ed. Giovanni Paolo Maggioni
(Florence, 1998), p. 426, follow the 1253 Bull of Canonization, Innocent IV, “Magnis et
Crebris,” 228–30, and add that Peter then said the credo:“Symbolum etiam coepit dicere
Fidei, cujus nec in hoc articulo defuit esse praeco, prout ipse nephandus [Carino], qui a
fidelibus captus fuit, et quondam Frater Dominicus, qui comes illius erat, et ab ipso lictore percussus, diebus aliquibus supervixit, postea retulerunt.” The assertion of independent confirmation in the earliest biography is telling evidence. Carino must have
given this evidence while initial investigations were made between April 6 and 16, 1252.
19
“Quidam agricola a longe videns scelus audacter cucurrit ad locum et quodam zelo
justitie in actorem sceleris inflammatus, ipsum cepit et ligavit, in suorum scelerum
funibus comprehensum . . .“ Letter of Romeo de Attencia, p. 18.
20
I thank Dr. Russel Lemmons for suggesting this possibility.
21
Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS A 227 inf., fol. 65, “[Sentence against Stefano
Confalonieri].”

8

THE ASSASSIN-SAINT

plotters, contrary to his impassioned promises to Manfredo. In the
meantime the charismatic Franciscan Archbishop Leo de Perego
whipped the city into a frenzy of devotion. About what happened next
the sources are unanimous: on April 16, 1252, ten days after the murder
of Peter, Carino “escaped” from the jail of the podestà.22 The city,
thrown into an uproar at the news of Peter’s death, now turned its
anger on the apparent ineptitude of the communal government. Leo’s
rousing sermons had not been in vain. Rumors began to spread that
wealthy Milanese Cathars had greased the palm of the podestà to
obtain Carino’s convenient escape. Though this conclusion appeared
logical at the time, other motives were also in play.The noble families
of the city (from whom Archbishop Leo descended) desired a greater
say in the government of the commune. The escape of Carino gave
them just the ammunition they needed to derail the administration of
the podestà—perhaps it was they who had spread the rumors or had
even sprung Carino themseves. Romeo relates that Leo gathered the
faithful behind a banner displaying his archiepiscopal cross and led
them to the palace of the podestà.The tone of the letter describes the
scene best:
not finding the podestà, they killed his warhorse, and plundered his whole
house and then going to the Palazzo Comunale where the podestà had fled
with his whole family, they shouted that they would burn the palace down
with everyone inside. . . .23

In the midst of all of this, Carino the murderer disappeared into the
countryside.
As events in the medieval period go, the days leading up to the
death of Peter of Verona are extraordinarily well attested by contemporary sources. Carino’s activity between April 3–16, 1252, is documented in detail. Unfortunately, this is the only period of his more than
sixty-year life that approaches solid documentary foundation. Only two
events are certain in the final forty years of Carino’s life—his conversion and his death.

22

Letter of Romeo de Attencia, pp. 20–21.
“[E]t non invenientes Potestatem ejus dexterarium occidentes, depredati sunt
totam domum, et inde ad palatium Communitatis venientes ubi Potestas fugerat et tota
familia Potestatis, Palatium ad comburendum, cum omnibus, qui ibi aderant populus
acclamabat . . . ,” ibid., pp. 21–22.The letter is unfinished in the manuscript.
23

BY DONALD S. PRUDLO

9

Carino the Penitent
The lack of documentary evidence for the remainder of Carino’s life
should give the historian pause. It was not until the sixteenth century
that Serafino Razzi, the Dominican humanist and gyrovague, compiled
a life of Carino.24 Not only did Serafino leave a short vita of Carino in
his book of Dominican saints; he also described in detail various places
associated with Carino’s cult, a powerful testimony in the absence of
earlier written records. Local historians of Forlì also corroborate the
historical memory of Carino in that city and record the continuation
of a cult in his honor.25 A Dominican named Francesco Merenda compiled a hagiographical life from local sources, but it offered little new
information.26 Although hard data about his life are difficult to find, the
fact of public veneration is well founded, and this in turn gives valuable clues to his biography.
After his suspicious escape from the jail of the compromised
podestà, Carino knew that Lombardy would not be safe for him any
more. He was right in that assessment, as the area turned quickly
against any remaining suspected Cathars, and the Church launched an
all-out offensive against them, resulting in the destruction of the town
of Gattedo in 1254 (the home of most of the conspirators).27 Faced
with few choices or places where he could work, Carino turned south,
traveling toward the Papal States. His exact route is unknown.
Dominican hagiographers speculated in the past that Carino wanted to
travel to Rome to seek a papal absolution.28 However, Peter was a wellknown preacher in Emilia and Tuscany, and neither would be quick to
welcome his murderer. In addition, he had also completed a very successful preaching campaign on the Adriatic coast in 1249.29 Peter’s cult
24
Serafino Razzi, Vite dei santi, e beati del Sacro Ordine de’ Frati predicatori, così
huomini, come donne (Florence: Nella stamperia di Bartolomeo Sermartelli, 1588), p.
80. For Razzi, see: Serafino Razzi, “Diario di viaggio di un ricercatore (1572),” ed.
Guglielmo de Agresti, O.P., Memorie Domenicane, Nuova Serie, 2 (1971), 33–53.
25
Paolo Bonoli, Istorie della citta di Forlì (Forlì: Cimatti e Saporetti, 1661), ad an.
1253, p. 80, who tells of the yearly exposition of Carino’s falchion and who strongly
argues for its authenticity, and Georgio Marchesi, Forolivii, civitatis celeberrimae, compendium historicum (Leyden, Netherlands: Petrus vander Aa, 1723), who reports about
the tomb.
26
Francesco M. Merenda, Vita del beato Carino da Balsamo (Forlì, 1938; repr.
Balsamo, 1965).
27
Malcolm Lambert, The Cathars (Oxford, 1998), p. 124.
28
“XII Novembre: Le B. Carino” in Année Dominicaine, p. 433.
29
“Liber Instrumentorum Communae Arminensis,” in L.Tonini, Rimini nel secolo XIII
(Rimini, 1862), pp. 528–32.

10

THE ASSASSIN-SAINT

was extremely popular among the towns near the sea, especially in
Cesena.30 Other factors must have motivated Carino, such as getting as
far away from Milan as possible to an area with a somewhat similar
dialect (i.e., not north to Germany or west to France).
Without friends or money Carino passed through Emilia-Romagna.
At length he came to Forlì. There, perhaps months of physical and
mental anguish manifested itself in a seemingly terminal sickness,
leading him to turn to the hospital of San Sebastiano, later run by the
Battuti Bianchi.31 The Dominicans, who had recently come to Forlì,
regularly visited the hospital and resided nearby. When the prior of
the local Preachers came to see the sick men, Carino, fearful of death,
was struck with remorse and made a full confession and received
absolution.32 The sincerity of the conversion apparently convinced
the prior. He also seemed to sense an opportunity because he permitted Carino to align himself with the Dominican convent in Forlì as
a penitent, after the sick man made a full and surprising recovery in
the hospital.33 Not only did the prior permit the application, but also
the conventual chapter approved the affiliation, and the prior of the
province later confirmed it.34 The order’s action is quite astounding
on the surface. Instead of handing Carino over for prosecution,
Dominicans at almost every level of government accepted his affiliation with the order.This warm reception was not unusual in the midthirteenth century. Rainerio Sacconi was a leader of the Cathars who
had converted and became a Dominican friar (indeed, it was he who
30
Augusto Vasina, Il medioevo, Storia di Cesena (secoli VI–XIV), ed. Biagio Dragi
Maraldi (Rimini, 1983), pp. 272–75. In addition, many miracles in Peter’s hagiography are
located in Cesena.
31
Bonoli, Istorie, p. 80.
32
A late hagiographical embellishment records that the prior was none other than
the brother of Peter of Verona! This seems highly unlikely as there is never any mention
in any of Peter’s records of family members converting with him from Catharism, much
less becoming Dominicans themselves. Indeed, all mention of Peter’s family ceases the
moment he was received into the order in Bologna in 1221. F. P. C. “La vendetta del
Martire,” Memorie Domenicane 26 (1909), p. 191 [Unfortunately many articles in that
old journal only give the author’s initials]. “XII Novembre: Le B. Carino” in Année
Dominicaine, p. 434.
33
It is interesting to note that a 1251 law enjoined priors who accepted new lay
brothers to inform their provincial superiors, though it does not mention lay penitents.
One wonders how the Dominican hierarchy reacted to the new affiliation (if the Forlì
prior even bothered with the new law).William A. Hinnebusch, O.P., The History of the
Dominican Order, 2 vols. (New York, 1965), vol.1, pp. 288–89.
34
G. R. Galbraith, The Constitution of the Dominican Order: 1216–1360 (New York,
1925), p. 115.

BY DONALD S. PRUDLO

11

was placed in charge of the murder trial following Peter’s death). One
conspirator, Daniele da Giussano, had sought refuge in Sant’Eustorgio
after the crime, and he too became a Dominican friar and inquisitor.
Such stories communicate much about Dominican life at the time,
and indeed about the practices of the early inquisition itself. Instead
of the bloodthirsty institution pictured in confessional history, an
image that recent historians are successfully challenging, there was a
practical preference for conversion in the early medieval inquisition.
Although Carino’s conversion story was recorded very late, there
seems little reason to doubt it. It fits with the picture of Carino living
a very long life as a conversus, and having what would have to be a
strong conversion experience.35
The friars of Forlì received Carino as a penitent probably around the
time that his victim was canonized in 1253. He spent approximately
the next forty years living the life of a penitent conversus, serving the
Dominicans in the convent and taking care of anything that needed to
be done.This usually included the humble tasks not done by the clerics, such as gardening. We do know that the convent at Forlì was
acknowledged for its strict observance and for its poverty.36 These
years are totally absent in the historical record—lost in the silence of
the cloister, only small traces are left. Besides Carino’s reputation for
obedience and humility there remains a bill-hook, the instrument used
by Carino when he worked outside tending gardens or harvesting.37
Whether it is the same bill-hook or falcastrum that he used to murder
35
From the first inscription on Carino’s tomb that calls him “conversi Comensis,” we
can tell that Carino was not formally a Dominican laybrother, but rather an affiliated lay
penitent. I thank Augustine Thompson, O.P., for pointing this out. Little work has been
done on lay penitents in the thirteenth-century Friars Preachers. What work has been
done is usually about women; see: Maiju Lehmijoki-Garner,“Writing Religious Rules as an
Interactive Process: Dominican Penitent Women and the Making of their Regula,”
Speculum 79.3 (July 2004), 660–87. Until a complete study of the Dominican penitents
of the thirteenth century appears, the standard reference will be: Augustine Thompson,
Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325 (State College, PA,
2005), pp. 96–140. For the office and role of lay brothers in the order see: Hinnebusch,
The History of the Dominican Order, vol. 1, pp. 288–90, and: P. F. Mulhern, The Early
Dominican Laybrother, Ph.D. dissertation, Université Laval, Quebec, 1940.
36
It produced three Dominican beati within 100 years: Carino, Jacopo Salomoni (d.
1314), and Marcolino Ammani (d. 1397), a considerable number for such a small and relatively unimportant convent.
37
“[V]eduto il coltello con cui fu ferito il glorioso san Pietro martire, portato a detto
convento [Forlì] dallo occisore Carino e con venerazione in drappo conservato in sagrestia. . .” Serafino Razzi,“Diario di viaggio di un ricercatore (1572),” Memorie Domenicane,
Nuova Serie, 2 (1971), 89.

12

THE ASSASSIN-SAINT

Peter is unknown but relatively unlikely.38 Tradition recorded that
Carino possessed an attraction for contemplation, a love for solitude,
and experienced periods of silent ecstasy, although these are common
topoi for saints affiliated with religious houses in the period. One event
significant for Carino occurred in 1269, when Jacopo Salomoni, a
nobleman tired of Dominican life in Venice, transferred to the Forlì
convent, where he remained until his death in 1314.39 Jacopo was
renowned as a spiritual counselor, and the hagiographical tradition
(that admittedly likes to draw attention to relationships between
saints) asserts that Carino was placed under Jacopo’s direction. In any
case it is certain that the two men knew each other and lived the
common life for more than twenty years.
Beginnings of Cult
Hagiographers generally accepted 1293 as the year of Carino’s
death.40 No agreement exists as to the exact date. Some propose April
7, others August 3, and still others November 12. April 7 seems least
likely, as it was the day after Peter’s death on April 6—the connection
appears too convenient. Dominicans accepted November 12 as
Carino’s unofficial feast, but that betrays no historical clue other than
sanctioned practice.41 Hagiographical legend recalls that Carino made
a general confession and, mindful of the gravity of his youthful crime,
requested burial in the field reserved for criminals, instead of the
priory’s cemetery. Respecting his wishes, the Dominicans buried their
humble penitent in unconsecrated ground.The people of Forlì would
38
I have revised the opinion expressed in my book on Peter, and consider that the
sword kept in Seveso may plausibly be identified with the murder weapon. It is unlikely
that Carino would have been able to reacquire the murder weapon after his incarceration and escape.
39
For Blessed Jacopo [Giacomo] see: Caecelia Desmond, Blessed James Salomoni:
Patron of Cancer Patients, Apostle of the Afflicted (Boston, 1971); P. D. M., Una gloria
Domenicana di Venezia, il B. Giacomo Salomoni (Venice,1939); R. Bagattoni,
L’apostolo di Forlì, ossia il Beato Giacomo da Venezia dei Frati Predicatori
(Forlì,1914); and T. Nediani,“I tempi e la vita del B. Giacomo Salomoni dei Predicatori,
Patrizio veneto (1235–1314),” Memorie Domenicane, 31 (1914), 45–50.
40
In this they are joined by the early modern historians of Forlì itself, who record the
year 1293, notably Marchesi, Forolivii, ad an. 1293. Odorico Rinaldi, a continuator of
Cardinal Baronius, casts a dissenting vote when he cites the year 1299 as Carino’s death
in; Odorico Rinaldi, Annales ecclesiastici ab anno quo definit Card. Caes. Baronius
M.C. XCVIII. usque ad annum M.D. XXXIV, 10 vols. (Rome, 1646–77), vol. 1, ad an. 1299.
As Marchesi was writing local history, and as the hagiographical tradition also adopts
1293, it seems the most likely possibility.
41
“XII Novembre: Le B. Carino” in Année Dominicaine, p. 423.

BY DONALD S. PRUDLO

13

not stand for this. Upon hearing about Carino’s place of interment the
town bought the criminals’ cemetery and deeded it to the Dominican
community.42 One could readily ask how the citizens had come to
know Carino. Lay penitents did not have the intense duties of clerics
when it came to solemn worship. They said their Paters and Aves
while the friars had to say the complete Divine Office in common.This
left them free to complete their tasks, which often were outside and in
closer contact with people outside the convent. Sometimes lay penitents did not even live within the community itself, but rather made
their living among the people of the local town. To judge by their
actions after his death, Carino made a favorable impression on his
fellow citizens.
Although no record remains of any miracles wrought by Carino,
the Dominicans removed his body from the criminals’ cemetery and
placed it in their sacristy.43 This was not enough for the people who
had purchased the cemetery for the Dominicans. They reportedly
petitioned that Carino be placed in a location accessible to the
people. So, the Dominicans removed his body from the sacristy and
placed it in a special chapel in the priory’s church. During the course
of the fourteenth century, the Dominicans placed Blessed Jacopo
Salomoni in the same tomb originally constructed for Carino. Later, in
1397, Blessed Marcolino Amanni died and was laid to rest on top of
Carino’s tomb. In the middle of the fifteenth century the Bishop of
Recanati, Niccolò Astis of Forlì, decided to elevate the relics of Bl.
Marcolino, and placed them in the same sepulcher with Carino.44
Finally the Forlì “trinity” was complete.
Evidence for Carino’s cult outside of Forlì is scarce, but his iconographical depiction was common. Very many artists (Fra Angelico,
Titian, and Bellini, to name a few) depicted Carino not as the humble
penitent but as the brutal peasant in the act of murdering Peter of
Verona. Carino hardly merited any remembrance in the iconographical
42
The (alas anonymous) commentator on the 1934 translation of Carino’s relics states
that authors “worthy of trust” claimed that the deed that presented the Dominican community with the cemetery was conserved in the archives of Forlì until the revolutionary
period of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately the old Memorie Domenicane lacks
both an author’s name or citations to documents consulted, and so tracing the story is
next to impossible.“La traslazione delle Reliquie del B. Carino,” Memorie Domenicane
52 (1934), p. 138.
43
Serafino Razzi, in the sixteenth century, declared that the time following Carino’s
death was “shining with miracles,” but he gives no examples.
44
“XII Novembre: Le B. Carino” in Année Dominicaine, 439.

14

THE ASSASSIN-SAINT

tradition as saint, but is well recorded as sinner. In only one work was
there any acknowledgment of Carino’s conversion, but it is a significant one. A woodcarving done in 1505 for the church of
Sant’Eustorgio in Milan (the church that houses Peter’s tomb) depicts
thirty-three Dominican saints. One of those bears the inscription
“Beatus Acerimus de Balsamo Petricida.”45 Carino thus merited at
least a little recognition in Peter’s own church.
It stood thus for over 250 years, with the three saints side by side in
the Forlì Dominican chapel. In 1658 the Dominicans considered that
they ought to do something more for their trio of beati.This decision
also may have come from the desire of the Fiorini family to patronize
the church in Forlì, as the Dominicans entrusted the financing of the
project to them.46 During the process they had to remove the bodies
to a safe place so that construction could commence.This presented
the opportunity for an official “recognition” of the relics.While preparing to open the old tomb and move the altar, the workers discovered
a painting of the three Dominicans, with Carino in the middle. Under
his picture was the inscription “Here lies the body of Blessed Carino,
penitent of Como.”47 When the tomb was opened the body of Blessed
Marcolino was on top. In another chamber underneath were the bones
of Carino, with a parchment affixed that unfortunately proved impossible to read. Upon recognition of the relics as Carino’s, the
Dominicans reinterred the bones in a wooden box closed with the
episcopal seal, and placed them with the remains of Blessed
Marcolino.
The construction of the chapel took five years, and was completed
in 1664. In that year the Dominicans solemnly translated the bones and
reinterred them in new marble sarcophagi, with Carino retaining his
traditional and honored position in the center of the two other saints.
Carved above the tomb is the odd image of Bl. Carino holding the head
of Peter of Verona, wounded by Carino’s blade. On the tomb was the
inscription, more verbose than the last:
45
“Blessed Acerimus of Balsamo, Killer of Peter.” Clearly this is the same person, in
spite of the corrupted name. Michele Caffi, Della chiesa di Sant’Eustorgio in Milano
illustrazione storico-monumentale-epigrafica (Milan, 1841), p.100.
46
“For the glory of God and of his Blesseds, for the sake of the piety of the town and
of the whole region towards the holy remains.” Permission of the Dominican Friars to
give the right of patronage in the new chapel to the Fiorini family, in “XII Novembre: Le
B. Carino” in Année Dominicaine, p. 439.
47
“Hic requiescit corpus Beati Carini conversi Comensis,” ibid., p. 440.

BY DONALD S. PRUDLO

15

Body of the beloved of God Carino of Balsamo
Dominican conversus
He rests and shall rest for eternity
within the altar dedicated to Blessed Marcolino
The year of Salvation 1664.48
Although it is clear that Bl. Marcolino was the primary object of devotion, in no way was Carino marginalized. Unfortunately, however, the
prediction of eternal rest within the tomb would not come to pass.
Carino’s Cult in the Modern Period
In the nineteenth century the Dominican order evinced a new
interest in the confirmation of its immemorial cults.49 This was mostly
due to a resurgence of historical interest at that time, as well as the
reconstitution of Dominican life and identity after the French
Revolution and Napoleon.The first step on this course was the movement to have Carino’s cult recognized. This cause began in Forlì in
1822, though the death of Pius VII interrupted the process. Further
political and military developments militated against the progress of
the cause. So difficult was the situation that on September 19, 1879, the
Dominican convent in Forlì was expropriated by the Italian government, which expelled the friars. Before the seizure of the property the
Dominicans made sure to secure their most precious possessions: the
remains of their three saints. Solemnly the Dominicans transported
them to the cathedral of Forlì, where they again lay side by side.
It appeared that interest in Carino was spreading beyond Forlì to the
larger Dominican order.The General Chapter of 1910 published an official list of causes submitted to the Sacred Congregation of Rites asking
for either solemn beatification or for confirmation of cult. It listed
Carino last among twelve candidates for confirmation.50 It does not
48
“Corpus Deo cari Carini a Balsamo/ Dominicani Conversi/ Intus in altari Beato
Marcolino dicato/ Requiescit requiescetque in aevum./ Anno salutis 1664,” ibid. Notice
the play on Carino’s name.
49
Pope Benedict XIV described this method as Equipollent Canonization, or the
confirmation of a public cult that already exists and is immemorial, without the need for
the process of formal canonization, and without the need to cite the presence of miracles. Benedict XIV, “De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione,” in
Opera Omnia, (Prati, 1839–47), vol. 2, pp. 49–120.
50
“Per la glorificazione della famiglia di S. Domenico,” Memorie Domenicane, 28
(1911), 38.

16

THE ASSASSIN-SAINT

appear that the Congregation took any further action, nor is there any
record of Carino’s being resubmitted by the Dominicans for consideration.51 In any case the order had developed a Mass and Office for him,
and it held them in readiness should confirmation be forthcoming.52
The most remarkable recent cultic activity in honor of Blessed
Carino took place on April 28, 1934.53 On that day the Dominicans
solemnly transferred Carino’s head from Forlì to his hometown of
Cinisello Balsamo. On that occasion the Archbishop of Milan, Idelfonso
Schuster (himself the object of a current beatification process), sent a
letter to the citizens of Balsamo. In it he compared Carino to Paul and
Mary Magdalene. Repenting from his errors, he finally expiated his sins
and took his place with him whom he had persecuted. Finally, Schuster
pointed to the Good Thief as the best example of the hopefulness one
should attach to even the most hardened criminal.54 The account of
the actual translation is a rather prosaic narration of everything that
happened on the journey from Forlì to Balsamo. The Dominicans
organized the translation like a pilgrimage, with people from Bologna,
Balsamo, Milan, and Forlì participating. First they took Carino’s head
from the cathedral to the convent of St. Dominic in Bologna, where it
was placed upon the tomb of the founder of the Dominicans, and they
exposed it for the veneration of the faithful for a whole day.The next
day the pilgrims celebrated a solemn high Mass in the Basilica of St.
Dominic in the Ambrosian rite—the rite with which Carino would
have been familiar from his youth in the Milanese diocese.They then
gave the reliquary to the citizens of Balsamo who, with their parish
priest, returned by train to Balsamo.There the political leaders of the
suburban town met them.The city received its son “with indescribable
enthusiasm, coming with torches, candles and banners,” evincing a
decidedly different attitude to the one Carino had fled from nearly 600
years before.55 They solemnly venerated and retained his head in the
Church of San Martino, the parish church of the town, where it
51
I have a letter from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints that states that it has
no record that the cult of Carino of Balsamo was ever approved formally.
52
P. F. C.,“La vendetta del martire,” Memorie Domenicane, 26 (1909), 193, n. 2.
53
April 28 became a day of devotion to Carino in the town of Balsamo. It is the day
before Peter of Verona’s feast in the pre-1969 calendar.
54
The short letter is reprinted in full in:“La traslazione delle reliquie del B. Carino,”
Memorie Domenicane 52 (1934), 138–39.
55
“L’ingresso in Balsamo avenne alle ore 23 [train schedules in Italy can be inconvenient, even for saints] tra un indescrivibile entusiasmo di popolo, venuto con fiaccole,
ceri e bandiere ad incontrare il Beato,” ibid., p. 140.

BY DONALD S. PRUDLO

17

remains today. It was in this manner that Carino, who had fled from
Lombardy as a murderer, finally returned to the scene of the crime.56
Questions about the Life and Cult
In retelling the story of Carino’s life several questions arise.The first
is whether Carino was actually a Cathar. This question must be
answered in the context of contemporary debates about the nature of
Catharism itself in thirteenth-century Italy. Many authors have contended that Catharism was largely a myth, a construction of the systematizing Dominican inquisitors.57 Others have pointed out the
extreme fluidity of identities in medieval Italy.58 These two approaches
question the elaborate reconstructions of Cathar hierarchies and sects
favored by Dominican historians of the middle of the twentieth century.59 Cathar hearers (Cathar sympathizers who were not perfects)
found many ways to conventionalize their religion so that they could
live side-by-side with Catholics.60 Current scholarship also suggests the
relative paucity of actual Cathars, maintaining that there were perhaps
as few as 750 avowed heretics (i.e., perfects) in northern Italy for the
period from 1260 to 1308, although this is after the crackdown on
Cathars that happened after Peter’s death.61
56
On November 4, 1964, the parish of Balsamo, with the approval of the
Congregation of Rites, acquired the rest of Carino’s remains and interred them in a place
of honor in the crypt of the Chiesa Nuova, where they rest today. Other relics of Carino
are in the Cathedral of Forlì, in the Basilica of San Domenico in Bologna, and in the
Seminary of San Pietro Martire in Seveso. Merenda, Vita del beato Carino, pp. 31–32.
57
Mark Pegg has recently argued that characterizations of Cathar belief are largely
idealized and intellectualized; see his “On Cathars, Albigenses and Good Men of
Languedoc,” Journal of Medieval History, 27:2 (2001), 181–95.
58
Notably Carol Lansing, Power and Purity: The Cathar Heresy in Medieval Italy
(Oxford, 1998), p. 82.
59
See Antoine Dondaine, O.P., “La hiérarchie Cathare en Italie,” Archivum Fratrum
Praedicatorum, 19 (1949), 280–312, and followed by Lambert, The Cathars. Much of
their data was taken from the Summa of the ex-Cathar inquisitor Rainerio Sacconi in
Antoine Dondaine,“Le Manual de l’Inquisiteur,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 27
(1947), 85–194. Sacconi’s Summa was translated in Evans and Wakefield, Heresies of the
High Middle Ages, pp. 329–45.
60
Lansing, Power and Purity, p. 83. Indeed more pervasive than outright heresy at the
time were different levels of indifference to the Church in general and to piety (especially in Italy); see Alexander Murray, “Piety and Impiety in Thirteenth-Century Italy,”
Studies in Church History, 8 (1972), 83–106.
61
Gabriele Zanella, “Malessere ereticale in valle padana (1260–1308),” in Gabriele
Zanella, Hereticalia: Temi e discussioni (Spoleto: Centro di studi sull’alto medioevo,
1995), p. 45.

18

THE ASSASSIN-SAINT

In spite of this evidence, it still seems clear that there was a Cathar
presence in northern Italy. It expressed strength in the first half of the
thirteenth century; it had its power bases (notably north of Milan and
around Verona), and it had many people who, while not perfected
heretics, were in various degrees sympathetic with them for various
reasons.The question remains whether Carino was a heretical sympathizer.Almost all the contemporary documents reacting to the murder
declare that he was a heretic, although they really have no direct evidence for this contention.Thomas Agni calls him “a certain one of the
believers of the heretics.”62 Concerning heresy, however, hagiography
casts a wide net. Later sources, especially in light of Carino’s conversion, are less sure. Some evidence suggests he was not a sympathizer.
He was not from Giussano, the hometown of the avowed Cathar sympathizers.The plotters knew this, and selected an outsider, whom they
very much wanted to remain in the dark about the details of the plan.
Rather than welcoming the prospect of killing an inquisitor, Carino felt
otherwise because of the target.The killer seemed more interested in
the money and in getting his friend to help him than in any personal
animus against Peter. No reference exists anywhere in Carino’s cult to
a conversion from Catharism, but rather only a repentance of his grave
sin.63 For these reasons I am inclined to place Carino among the impious rather than the heretical, and to give credit to the plotters for
hiring the “best” man to do the work at hand.
A further question was mentioned in passing above. When Carino
fell ill and made his confession in the hospital in Forlì, very late
hagiography claimed that it was Peter’s brother who was the prior.
The simplest explanation is that “brother” refers to a fellow
Dominican: a brother in religion.64 Even if one takes the late detail literally, however, no reference exists in Peter’s hagiography of his
having a brother, much less one who converted and became a
Dominican prior (conveniently at Forlì). Such a vignette serves really
a literary purpose—to dramatize the conversion of Carino and the forgiveness possible to a hardened sinner. If it was Peter’s brother who
forgave Carino personally, the effect of the conversion would be that
much more sensational. Unfortunately, not a whit of historical evi62
“Quidam de ipsorum hereticorum credentibus.” Thomas Agni, Vita Sancti Petri,
Toulouse: Bibliothèque Municipale MS 481, fol. 36v.
63
On the contrary, Peter’s hagiography is littered with references to his heretical
upbringing.
64
I thank the editor of The Catholic Historical Review, Nelson H. Minnich, for recalling Ockham’s razor to me on this point.

BY DONALD S. PRUDLO

19

dence attests to the literal interpretation, and it sounds much like
hagiographical embellishment.
Related to this question is the often repeated contention that
Carino’s name was actually Pietro, an assertion that is common in the
late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century hagiography. Clearly
Carino is a diminutive of Caro, which itself was a common name at the
time.The earliest document naming him, the murder inquiry of 1252,
records that Manfredo called him Carino. The name Carino also
appears on his tomb, and references to Pietro come only centuries
later.Two reasons may explain why one finds the different name.The
first could be a casual mistake that associated Pietro da Verona with
“Pietro” da Balsamo.The second is that perhaps Carino took the name
Pietro when he entered the penitential life, and the sobriquet stuck. In
any case, Caro was probably his real name.
One may certainly ask why the Church never canonized Carino.
First, by this period the papacy had largely succeeded in reserving canonization of saints for the whole Church to itself.65 This resulted from
both the growing awareness of the scope of papal infallibility and the
employment of canonization for political purposes. Second, the cost of
prosecuting a successful cause at the papal court was prohibitive, and
could take many years. Further, in response to this situation, many
places went on “creating” saints in the way that they had always done
so, by popular acclamation and episcopal translation. Forlì clearly
hailed Carino as a local saint, but no other town accorded him veneration. This local popularity secured him a lasting place in the city, but
effectively precluded his cult from spreading further. Neither time nor
money was available to promote Carino to a wider audience; the city
was quite content to keep Carino to itself. In any case, the Church recognized the validity of these local “canonizations,” and this served as
the primary means of officially confirming the cults of many of these
men and women over the last two hundred years. Carino, although
proposed for the honor, never received official confirmation.
One final question is perhaps the most perplexing. In Carino, the
promoters of Peter’s cult could have hit gold. Here was the murderer
of their saint, converted and doing penance for forty years, then dying
65
For this process, see André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages,
(Cambridge, 1997), pp. 22–84; also Eric Kemp, Canonization and Authority in the
Western Church (London, 1948), and Stephen Kuttner, “La Réserve papale du droit de
canonisation,” Revue d’histoire de droit français et étranger, 17 (1938), 172–228.

20

THE ASSASSIN-SAINT

in the odor of sanctity himself. Why was Carino’s tale not trumpeted
from the rooftops by Peter’s cultic partisans?66 Several reasons present
themselves.The majority of the hagiographical and biographical materials that preachers and writers drew upon to tell Peter’s story were
complete by the year 1270. Although such contemporary history is
extremely useful in telling Peter’s story, it tells us nothing about
Carino, who was then a simple lay penitent in an out-of-the-way
Dominican convent. Because preachers relied on the central hagiographical texts, notably Jacopo da Varazze’s Golden Legend, Carino’s
story never gained a widespread hearing. Further, Carino’s death
occurred during a period when Peter’s cult was well established
within its own zones of devotion. The “canon,” as it were, of official
sources about Peter’s life was closed. New information could raise
doubts of authenticity (notice the interminable debates over Francis’
stigmata). Not until the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries
would Peter’s cult change and expand, leading to his being named
patron of the Inquisition.67 Further, Carino’s cult was only active in
Forlì, and nothing among Peter’s hagiography records any cultic activity there; the two cults simply and somewhat astonishingly never overlapped. For all practical purposes, when speaking of Peter in art, literature, or hagiography, Carino is omnipresent. However, it is not Carino
the saint, but rather Carino the “minister of Satan.”
Conclusion
The story of Carino is a classic topos in the history of Christian
hagiography: the conversion of the hardened sinner and his transition
into a saint. Fleeing from the almost certain application of the death
penalty, Carino instead converted and lived the life of a holy lay penitent.The small scale of the cult belies the strength of the narrative.The
cities of Italy abounded with stories like that of Carino in the Middle
66
The nineteenth- and twentieth-century hagiography does make this connection,
but far too late to do either Peter’s or Carino’s cults any measurable good. One clever
(but late) hagiographical accretion has to do with the legend of Peter writing the word
credo with his blood at his martyrdom. Father Merenda suggested that the “credo” was
actually Peter’s acrostic prophecy meaning “Carinus Religiosus Erit Dominicani Ordinis,”
creative hagiography indeed! Merenda, Vita del beato Carino, p. 3.
67
It is perhaps why at this time (ca. 1505) Carino was included in the woodcarving
at Sant’Eustorgio, the only real evidence of cultic overlap. Interestingly, Carino’s cult
experienced a (smaller) parallel upsurge while Peter was becoming more popular; however, their cults still never quite connected. My thanks to Augustine Thompson, O.P., for
pointing this out.

BY DONALD S. PRUDLO

21

Ages, accounts of local sanctity that sometimes never made it beyond
the boundaries of the city itself. Devotion to Carino’s cult demonstrates how a small cult managed to survive in different periods. It was
only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that the Dominican
Order reawakened its memories of Carino and carefully orchestrated a
modest comeback, planting the cult in a place where it never seems to
have been before—in Carino’s hometown of Balsamo. Carino rests
there today in the parish church, the memories of April 6, 1252, not
lost, but transformed. In terms of the hagiographical language of martyrdom, defeat turns to victory. As a mute testimony, in the city that
gave birth to the brutal murderer today there exists a small and out-ofthe-way street in the center of town called Via Beato Carino, a modest
testimony to a small but not unsuccessful cult.

CATHOLIC MEN IN SUPPORT OF THE
WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT
IN ENGLAND
BY

ELAINE CLARK*

The struggle to secure equal citizenship for women involved the collective efforts of countless suffragists. Their resolve was unflinching
and helped to create a history that has been vividly told by English
historians. My purpose is not to retell this history, but to draw attention to a generally forgotten segment of the suffrage movement, one
that included a small but influential group of Catholic priests and
laymen who believed the political arena must become more inclusive. Mindful of religious bias, they developed a common strategy for
political action, encouraging fellow Catholics to participate in every
aspect of democratic political life.
Historians of religion know that Catholicism was never without critics in Victorian and Edwardian England. To a great many people, the
word Catholic meant parochial and reactionary; to others it evoked
“visions of a suffering and cowed laity at the foot of a dominant and
tyrannous priesthood.”1 In neither case were priests and parishioners
easily able to defend themselves, for they had little experience of political debate and their numbers were few. Although Irish immigration
had swelled the ranks of the Church, Catholics remained a small minority in England, numbering “scarcely one in twenty” at the close of the
nineteenth century.2 That many were poor and uninvolved in national
affairs was certainly true. It was equally true that the hierarchy wanted
to nurture and maintain a distinct Catholic culture in England rather
than call fellow clergy to political action.Yet, after 1900, it was no less
*Dr. Clark is a professor in the Department of Social Sciences in the University of
Michigan–Dearborn.
1
James Britten,“The Catholic Conference, 1900,” Month 96 (1900): 66. Also, see the
comments of Francis Zanetti at the annual conference of the Catholic Truth Society in
Blackburn and reported in Tablet, September 30, 1905, p. 541.
2
See sermon of the Rev. John Vaughan, preached in Chelsea and reported in Tablet,
February 19, 1898, p. 307.

22

BY ELAINE CLARK

23

true that a growing number of Catholics sought a wider acquaintance
with the public forum.This was particularly evident when they came
forward as speakers, writers, and participants in what would become
a great national agitation for women’s suffrage.
There was, however, a lingering suspicion in much of England that
the organized Church worked to hinder the women’s movement.Time
and again, angry voices insisted that ecclesiastical opinion reinforced
and reproduced the nineteenth-century assumption that inequality
was the natural order of God’s world.3 Catholic spokesmen were quick
to defend the church against the stereotypes of an older age, but the
problem faced by priests and laymen was, I think, more complicated
than this. Although various Catholic apologists—including Cardinal
Henry Edward Manning, Hilaire Belloc, and Wilfred Ward—sympathized with antisuffrage campaigns, others advocated electoral change.
Yet it is the former whose opinions dominate contemporary narratives.The latter were Catholic men of equally strong opinions and religious conviction, but they do not have notable places—indeed, they
have no place—in general histories of the suffrage era. Certainly there
is a case to be made for revisiting this era and affording a hearing to
those priests and laymen who, although unremarked and unremembered today, were as much part of the campaign for votes as betterknown male suffragists and Protestant churchmen.4
To remember these Catholic men is not simply to call to memory
a forgotten chapter of English history, important as it is. The shifting
fortunes and place of Catholicism in a largely Protestant country
matter as well. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Catholics
3
For fuller discussion, see Richard L. Camp, “From Passive Subordination to
Complementary Partnership: The Papal Conception of Women’s Place in Church and
Society since 1878,” Catholic Historical Review 76 (1990): 506–25. Also, William B.
Faherty, S.J., The Destiny of Modern Woman in the Light of Papal Teaching (Maryland,
1950).
4
Angela V. John and Claire Eustace, eds., The Men’s Share? Masculinities, Male
Support and Women’s Suffrage in Britain, 1890–1920 (London and New York, 1997).
Sandra Stanley Holton, Suffrage Days: Stories from the Women’s Suffrage Movement
(London, 1996), pp. 139–58, 183, 204. Martin Pugh, The March of Women: A Revisionist
Analysis of the Campaign for Women’s Suffrage, 1886–1914 (Oxford and New York,
2000, reissued 2002), pp. 256–64. Leah Leneman,“Northern Men and Votes for Women,”
History Today 41 (1991): 35–41. F. Montgomery,“Gender and Suffrage:The Manchester
Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, 1908–1918,” Bulletin of the John Rylands
University Library of Manchester 77 (1995): 221–39. Brian Heany, The Women’s
Movement in the Church of England, 1850–1930 (Oxford, 1988).

24

CATHOLIC MEN IN SUPPORT OF THE WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

felt more heavily handicapped than their Protestant neighbors
because of the legacy of three centuries of legal disabilities. Only with
the Emancipation Act of 1829 did Catholic men achieve the right to
serve in Parliament and occupy most governmental offices and military commissions. Even so, old resentments were slow to fade. In
1850, when the Catholic hierarchy was restored, opponents bitterly
complained of “papal aggression.” From this, it was a small step to
argue that “Catholicity”—grounded as it was in a universal church
with an international mission—neither enhanced political life nor
conformed to a national culture. By the later 1800s, pamphlets and
tracts deploring “popery” and “nunnery” had been scattered over
England in the tens of thousands. These caricatured Catholicism as
insufficiently English and perilously vulnerable to foreign influence.
Protestant polemicists concurred, claiming the papacy fostered
“divided loyalties” so that it was scarcely possible for a subject of the
queen to be at once patriotic and Catholic.5
Given the tenor of popular opinion, how Catholics related to and
participated in politics greatly mattered by the early 1900s. Catholic
women who were suffragists entered the political fray with skill and
resolve, becoming the first women not only in England but also anywhere in the world to organize a Catholic women’s suffrage society.6
In this association and in the larger suffrage movement, a small but
influential number of Catholic men found the opportunity to address
the question of equal citizenship. As supporters of female suffrage,
these priests and laymen knew electoral reform was not an exclusively
Catholic concern. Nor were they at all eager for coreligionists to create
a separate political party along confessional lines. Instead, they looked
for ways to make the political arena more inclusive so that women
might have a voice equal to men in the work of the state.
This is not to imply that female suffrage seldom provoked opposition in traditional Catholic circles. It often did.7 Yet certain bishops,
5
For detailed discussions of nineteenth-century Catholicism, along with extensive
bibliographies, see: John Wolfe, God and Greater Britain: Religion and National Life in
Britain and Ireland, 1843–1945 (London and New York, 1994); Nicholas Atkin and
Frank Tallet, Priests, Prelates, and People: A History of European Catholicism Since
1750 (Oxford, 2003);Vincent Alan McClelland and Michael Hodgetts, eds., From Without
the Flaminian Gate: 150 Years of Roman Catholicism in England and Wales,
1850–2000 (London, 1999).
6
Elaine Clark,“Catholics and the Campaign for Women’s Suffrage in England,” Church
History 73 (2004): 635–65.
7
Ibid., pp. 638–41.

BY ELAINE CLARK

25

priests, and laymen were far from impressed by antisuffrage rhetoric
and insisted that the political segregation of women was manifestly
unjust. In saying as much, they brought home the diversity of Catholic
opinion and made clear that the struggle for equal rights involved
deeds as well as words.What consequently became of concern was a
meaningful standard for action and debate. The suffrage work of
Catholic men provides perspective here, for they had a common strategy for political action. Mindful of the lessons of the past, they engaged
the political arena not on behalf of the organized church, but in
defense of the principles that they, as citizens, valued and embraced.
How, then, did suffragist priests and laymen make their convictions
known? And who among them led the way?
Catholic Support
Reform-minded Catholics were politically pragmatic and wise
enough to understand the danger of remaining captive to the popular
sentiment of the past. They refused to believe that religious bias and
prejudice were the only issues worth confronting. It was, in fact, a
more immediate and compelling challenge that they embraced and
made public in the later nineteenth century. A Catholic journal in
London took the lead. Soon after John George Snead-Cox became its
editor, the Tablet reversed its long-held antisuffrage stance and argued
in December 1888 that female suffrage promised to be an expedient
reform “in the direction of morality and religion,” as women represented a conservative and religious element in the country at large.
Reminding its subscribers that no woman was “unsexed because of the
ballot box and politics,” the Tablet asserted: “we have a kindness for
women’s suffrage.”8
During difficult times, Catholic suffragists never wavered in their
support of voting reform. According to them, a political woman was
not an “abortive man,” and to say otherwise was to mislead the public
and ignore the incongruities of election campaigns.9 The Tablet
thought it absurd that the “Ladies Liberal Foundation,” with Catherine
Gladstone as its president, went about London “teaching and instructing working men how they shall vote,” when William Gladstone, the
prime minister, was of the opinion “that in these political matters the
teachers are less capable than the taught.” For women “to canvass for
8

Tablet, December 8, 1888, p. 895; and July 16, 1892, p. 92.
“Notes,” Tablet, September 12, 1891, p. 92.

9

26

CATHOLIC MEN IN SUPPORT OF THE WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

votes,” but not have the vote themselves, was “a conundrum to which
no answer” seemed forthcoming, and equally perplexing was the argument linking military service to women’s enfranchisement.The Tablet
asked:“why select a particularly masculine function” and not establish
the “slightest connection” between it and the right to vote, then “turn
around and tell half the nation that it is unfitted to have any voice in
making the laws all have to obey?”10
Just as perplexing was the notion that women lacked an interest in
“good legislation.” According to the Tablet, the assumption defied
common sense because “as a nation we have irrevocably accepted the
view that those whose lives are lived close to the difficulty or the grievance are the best judges as to how it should be overcome or redressed,
and that those who wear the shoe had better be consulted as to where
it pinches.” In other words, political inclusiveness mattered in public
life. If the special interests of “unrepresented classes” were mishandled
or ignored, then the prudent remedy was to give the disenfranchised a
voice in parliamentary governance. The result would be salutary, the
Tablet insisted, noting the “better laws” and “better institutions” that
accompanied the enfranchisement of women in New Zealand,
Colorado, and Wyoming.11 That “ladies” in England were “still cruelly
denied” the parliamentary franchise was deplorable, the Tablet concluded in 1894.12
Of course, the Tablet never claimed to speak for all Catholics. Its
columns more often than not reflected a Conservative agenda and
addressed the political and social issues embraced by Tory leaders.Yet
editorial policy was far from static. Much as the Catholic Times did, the
Tablet championed an expanded electorate, while the Catholic
Herald, the Universe, and the Month suggested female suffrage represented the peculiar interests of a “shrieking sisterhood.”13 Undeterred
by Catholic critics, the Tablet stood its ground and from 1888 onward,
published letters from suffragists and antisuffragists alike; kept readers
informed of the Catholics active in the National Union of Women’s
Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), the Women’s Social and Political Union
10

“Notes,” ibid.,April 30, 1892, p. 685.
“New Zealand and Women’s Suffrage,” Tablet, November 18, 1893, p. 806.
12
“Notes,” ibid., December 22, 1894, p. 965.
13
Catholic Times, July 27, 1912. Women’s Library. London (hereafter WL) Press
Cuttings 2/SJA/2, p. 118. Catholic Herald, December 24, 1910, p. 6 and February 10,
1912, p. 4.“Votes for Women,” Universe, June 14, 1912. Press Cuttings.WL 2/SJA/L1, p. 45.
“Whither Un-Catholic Feminism Leads,” Month 121 (1913): 88–89.
11

BY ELAINE CLARK

27

(WSPU), and the Women’s Freedom League (WFL); printed the eloquent pleas of the poet and essayist Alice Meynell on behalf of
women’s rights; and steadily tried to bring Catholics to a better understanding of the suffrage movement.
The Clerical Response
By 1912, the Tablet’s advocacy of women’s enfranchisement had
spanned a quarter of a century. Suffragists were understandably grateful and certainly knew that women had “not many means of defending
themselves in the ordinary Press except through the grace of the
editor.”14 Newspapers in England were the recognized medium for
influencing public opinion, and this meant that the chances of bringing Catholic suffragists to public notice would have been slight without the help of Snead-Cox at the Tablet and Patrick Beazley at the
Catholic Times. Both men endorsed electoral reform, although the
Tablet remained the better-known journal and was more often identified among the country’s “oldest suffrage papers.”15 Yet to a certain
kind of reader, the editorial stance of the Tablet was disturbing.
Antisuffragists feared the public believed that what the Tablet supported also had the support of the whole Catholic body. A letter to
Snead-Cox in March 1912 complained: “I was told recently of a convert, who, when asked her opinion, said:‘O, I suppose that, now I am a
Catholic, I shall have to be a suffragist.’”16 The letter went to imply that
the friends of women’s suffrage were no more than “a small minority”
in the Catholic community. Even if this were the case, the Tablet
replied, “the principles of women’s suffrage” had been publicly
endorsed by respected prelates at home and abroad.17
Among them was a select group of bishops with a progressive view
of the demands of civil society. In supporting women’s suffrage, they
spoke not simply as priests but as citizens, counseling fellow Catholics
to be wary of those who equated political opinion with religious
dogma or confused purely political behavior with obedience to the
fundamental principles of Catholic doctrine. Orthodoxy mattered to
14
Blanche Smyth-Pigott to Catholic Herald, May 1, 1915, p. 4. Also see comments of
May Kendall reported in Monitor and New Era, November 11, 1911. Press Cuttings WL
2/SJA/L1, p. 11.
15
See comments of Joseph Clayton, “Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society: Inaugural
Meeting,” Tablet, June 17, 1911, p. 930.
16
E.S.H. to Tablet, March 16, 1912, p. 423.
17
“Notes,” Tablet, March 16, 1912, p. 403.

28

CATHOLIC MEN IN SUPPORT OF THE WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

the hierarchy but so, too, did the way people of faith engaged the political culture. The civic needs of Catholics, along with a desire to
strengthen the social fabric, led Herbert Vaughan, the cardinal archbishop of Westminster, to announce in May 1896: “I believe that the
extension of the Parliamentary Franchise to women upon the same
conditions as it is held by men would be a just and beneficial measure,
tending to raise rather than to lower the course of national legislation.”18 Not long afterward, when Tasmania enfranchised women,
Patrick Delany, the archbishop of Hobart, supported the measure, and
later recalled: “we Catholics saw no sinister results working in that
‘Feminist’ initiative.”19 Of similar mind was Patrick Moran, the Irishborn archbishop of Sydney. In 1909, he publicly disparaged antisuffragists, calling them “silly,” and insisting that the “woman who votes”
was “no longer a mere household chattel,” but a citizen “credited with
public spirit and intelligence.”20
In England as in Australia, Catholic interest in women’s suffrage
intensified when the clergy addressed the question from pulpits and
public platforms. This was notably the case in Manchester and
Liverpool, where Henry Day regularly lectured between 1908 and
1912. A Jesuit of strong opinions, he supported the enfranchisement of
women—as long as they were unmarried—and preached that insofar
as the Church was concerned, there was no “absolute equality in all
things—social, political, and domestic—between man and woman.”21
Although his was a provocative message, Day was never publicly criticized by his fellow priests, but his rhetoric of inequality was deplored
by Catholic feminists in letters to Catholic and secular newspapers,
including the Standard and the Manchester Guardian.22 Progressive
Catholics were concerned that the general public and particularly
those “outside” the Catholic community would take Day’s “personal
opinions as representing the theology and doctrines of our Church.”23
18

Tablet, May 2, 1896, p. 687.
Patrick Delany to Tablet, January 18, 1913, pp. 102–03.
20
Tablet, February 6, 1909, p. 226. For the text of Moran’s remarks, see Ave Maria 68
(1909): 279.
21
Sermon preached at Church of the Holy Name, Manchester. See “The Church and
Feminism. Fr. Day, S.J., On the Question of Sex Equality: Irreligion of the Revolutionary
Movement,” Catholic Herald, November 9, 1912, p. 3. Also, Tablet, November 9, 1912,
p. 738.
22
Christopher St. John to Manchester Guardian, November 5, 1912. Blanche SmythPigott to Standard, October 26, 1912. Press Cuttings WL 2/SJA/L1, pp. 78, 86–87. Alice
Meynell to Tablet, November 2, 1912, p. 704.
23
Blanche Smyth-Pigott to Manchester Guardian, November 6, 1912, p. 78.
19

BY ELAINE CLARK

29

Basil Maturin, a diocesan priest in London, occasioned the same
unease. Speaking to Catholics and Protestants in Liverpool and
Preston, he called the feminist movement “antireligious,” claimed that
the only “proper” place for women was the home, and insisted that the
government limit the parliamentary franchise to men until “hysterical”
women were no longer leading the suffrage movement.24
Admittedly his point of view found little favor among the growing
number of Catholics who were as committed to equal suffrage as they
were determined to meet the tests imposed by the modern condition.
To their way of thinking, respect for the private sphere of a wife and
mother never required indifference to the claims of the larger world.
Bishop Frederick William Keating of Northampton concurred.
Although he clung to the ideal of the “good mother” who lived “cloistered by domestic duties and affections,” his Lenten pastoral of 1912
also indicated that he understood the pervasive influence of the
modern economy. In his view, industrial demands undermined “timehonoured sentiment” about the home, with the result that the need to
earn a living was “as urgent as ever” for millions of married and single
women. Mindful of the workplace, Keating observed that “combination” was as important “for the female operative as for the male,” and
that “the ablest advocates of women’s cause” were in fact women
themselves.25
For Keating and reform-minded priests, expressions of support for
wage-working women in no way diminished traditional Catholic
thought. In the early 1900s the “calling” of a wife and mother was still
so much a Catholic ideal that Alice Meynell observed that there was
“no better career for the greater number of women.” As a feminist,
her brief was not against this “most happy calling”—she herself had
eight children—but against those who disregarded the many
“women who were at work unhelped by any man, the women who
24
Maturin was a longtime critic of the suffrage movement. See, Tablet, June 22, 1901,
pp. 982–83; October 29, 1904, pp. 714–15. For his antisuffrage remarks in Liverpool and
Preston, “The Feminist Movement: Fr. Basil Maturin on the Cleavage of Sex,” Catholic
Herald, November 4, 1911, p. 4.“Catholics and the Woman Suffrage Movement,” ibid., 11
Nov. 1911.“The Catholic Women’s League: Fr. Maturin and the Position of Women, ibid.,
February 24, 1912, p. 6. Also, Monitor and New Era, November 11, 1911. Press Cuttings
WL 2/SJA/L1, p. 11.
25
“The Emancipation of Women,” Catholic Herald, February 24, 1912, p. 7. The
bishop of Northampton, “Women’s Position and Work,” Tablet, March 23, 1912, pp.
451–52. For his later work, see Kester Aspeden,“Archbishop Frederick Keating and the
Catholic Social Movement, 1908–1928,” Downside Review 418 (2002): 11–32.

30

CATHOLIC MEN IN SUPPORT OF THE WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

have no husband to provide, who have virtually no church—no
time—for the praying, no children for the tending, and little meat for
the cooking.”To imply that every woman found solace and safety in
the home was to forget that many “had no home” or stoically suffered
“the mockery of a home.”26 Nor was Meynell the only Catholic commentator to say as much.Thomas Joseph Walshe, a diocesan priest in
Liverpool, shared her conviction that the conditions of women’s
work and welfare were “virtually ignored because women, unlike
men, had no individual and corporate value as voters.” Speaking at
Kensington Town Hall in June 1914, he reminded his London audience that “until women could take part in making the laws, there
would be no relief to their degradation.”27
Walshe was part of a small but vocal group of priests publicly supportive of votes for women during England’s prewar years. An energetic lecturer and preacher, he traveled back and forth from
Liverpool, delivering suffrage speeches in London, Brighton, Hastings,
and Hove. When his sister helped found the Liverpool branch of the
Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society (CWSS) in May 1913, he spoke at
the inaugural meeting, then during June joined eighty members of the
CWSS at a Sunday Mass in the city’s pro-cathedral.There he preached
a “suffrage sermon” and told the congregation he regretted “the discussion of political questions in the sacred edifice in which they were
present, but he would remind them that there were certain questions,
like education, which could not be passed over.” Another such question was the parliamentary franchise, and he wondered whether they
thought “the religious Orders of France would have been banished
from the country if the women of France had the vote”? Did they
think the recent collapse of the Catholic organization in Portugal
could have taken place if the women of Portugal had the effective
influence of the vote?”28
What mattered to Walshe was the collective influence that enfranchised women might someday exercise not only in the political arena
but also in “all the causes Catholics esteemed.” Education, temperance,
international peace, and a single moral standard for men and women
“would be better safeguarded,”he claimed,“if the women of England had
the vote.” Until this happened, he believed every Catholic had the duty
26

Alice Meynell,“A Tribute to Miss Abadam,” Tablet, July 27, 1912, pp. 125–26.
“The Clergy and the Suffrage: Liverpool Priest’s Views at London Lecture,” Catholic
Times, June 12, 1914. Press Cuttings WL 2/SJA/L3, p. 10.
28
“High Mass and a Suffrage Sermon,” Catholic Herald, June 21, 1913, p. 11.
27

BY ELAINE CLARK

31

on “religious grounds” to work in a “practical way” for equal suffrage.29
That Catholic priests “were not more in touch with the movement” he
found unfortunate, noting that many excused themselves on political
grounds and in the mistaken belief that the “woman question” was
merely “a question of party politics.”30 For him, it was essentially “a moral
question.”31 When Walshe was asked why he supported the cause, the
explanation given was that “he was a suffragist because he was a
Catholic priest, and believed that (women’s enfranchisement) would be
a benefit to religion, to morality, and to the amelioration of the race.”32
The sense of solidarity that priests such as Walshe shared with
England’s suffragists mirrored the broader view many progressive
Catholics took on national issues. In years past, the social action of
Catholics had been notably parochial—the parish church and the
parish schools absorbing time and energy—but by 1910, the women’s
movement seemed “more urgent than it used to be, because the
number of women-workers and solitary women is far greater than
before,”the Tablet explained.33 Wilfrid Carr,a secular priest in Liverpool,
thought much the same when, in 1909, he presided at a “suffragette
meeting” in Formby. Taking the platform, he said the issue of voting
rights mattered to him as a suffrage sympathizer, and “the question of
the dignity of women” concerned him “as a clergyman.”34 In his experience, women had contributed much to the public good in Liverpool
and elsewhere: “I have myself been the witness of women’s work in
connexion with the workhouses, and I have seen the vast improvement
in the lot of the poor since the tardy concession to woman to express
her wishes in the administration of the [poor] law.”35
In making a case for equal suffrage, Carr claimed he knew of no
moral law or principle of expediency why women should not have the
vote on the same terms as men. For him and his fellow suffragists, the
days were long gone by when Catholic women might find it necessary
to hold themselves aloof from the social and political life of England.
“Why shouldn’t a woman blaze a path for her own life . . . has she not
29
“Catholic Suffragists. Fr. Walshe, B.A., on the Women’s Claim: Convinced That the
Cause Is Sacred,” Catholic Herald, March 1, 1913, p. 2.
30
“The Clergy and the Suffrage, p. 10.
31
Father T. J. Walshe, “Apologia Pro Clero,” Catholic Suffragist, March 15, 1915, pp.
17–18.
32
“The Clergy and the Suffrage,” p. 10.
33
“Women’s Suffrage: A Set-Back,” Tablet, July 16, 1910, p. 81.
34
Tablet,April 17, 1909, pp. 624–25.
35
Wilfrid Carr to Tablet, May 1, 1909, p. 697.

32

CATHOLIC MEN IN SUPPORT OF THE WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

been trampled under foot in ages past and in the time we live,” asked
the Benedictine scholar and historian Francis Gasquet in 1914.36 To
redress past wrongs, Dominican Father Bede Jarrett advocated the
vote, and wrote in 1916 that the franchise represented a “positive
claim” for women to be wholly all that they were “capable of becoming.”37 Two years earlier, he had taken the podium at an international
conference of suffragists in London, telling the audience: “I am a
Catholic priest, but I do not come in that capacity. I keep that capacity
for the place which I consider God intended primarily it should be
kept. I am here to say [that] I sympathise very keenly with you and . . .
I support this movement.”38
Such clerical support never went unnoticed or unappreciated by
the CWSS. Headquartered in London and hard at work since 1911, the
CWSS gladly welcomed priests and laymen as associate members, provided that they did not vote for, or seek election to, the executive
committee. Cardinal Francis Bourne of Westminster initially seemed
uninterested in the work of the CWSS, but in 1913 reminded Catholics
that they were free “to admit or deny” the political expediency of
women’s suffrage.39 When individual priests supported the franchise,
they acknowledged doing so, not on behalf of the Church, but for personal reasons and with a willingness to see the political arena from
women’s point of view. By 1912, Jesuit Father Arthur Day of Preston
was as openly supportive of the political activity of women as his
fellow Jesuit and older brother, Henry Day of Manchester, was sharply
critical.40 Although frequently a public speaker, Henry Day lacked the
friendly appeal and popularity of his fellow Jesuit, Matthew Power. An
enthusiastic missioner and revered outdoor preacher, Power was a formidable and “early friend”of the CWSS in Manchester and Edinburgh.41
36
Gasquet’s interview with the New York Evening World was reprinted in the
Catholic Herald, February 28, 1914, p. 13. He was elevated to cardinal in May 1914.
37
Bede Jarrett, O.P.,“Persistive Constancy” Catholic Suffragist, April 15, 1916, p. 32.
38
“Women’s Suffrage: Fr. Bede Jarrett Supports the Movement,” Catholic Herald, July
11, 1914, p. 7.
39
Tablet, 8 Feb. 1913, p. 215. For the Cardinal’s relationship with the CWSS, see
Francis M. Mason, “The New Eve: The Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society in England,
1911–1923,” Catholic Historical Review 72 (1986): 620–38.
40
Catholic suffragists publicly lauded Arthur Day as “an early friend” of the CWSS; see
“Our Coming of Age,” Catholic Citizen, June 15, 1932, pp. 50–51.
41
At a meeting of the CWSS in Wimbledon in October 1912, Alice Abadam said:“In
opposition to Father [Henry Day] there is another sun in the Jesuit heavens—a Jesuit of
greater principles and power—I mean the great Father Power.” See Universe, November
2, 1912. Press Cuttings WL 2/SJA/L1, p. 84.

BY ELAINE CLARK

33

In London, too, the CWSS had notable clerical supporters. From the
start, they included Dom Gilbert Higgins, a member of the Austin
Canons at Shroud Greer and a preacher in the poorest districts of
London’s East End; Father Philip Fletcher, Master of the Guild of
Ransomers; Father P. J. Dowling, a Vincentian; Father Archibald HicksGowar, a secular priest in both the dioceses of Westminster and
Northampton, who in 1915 “claimed the distinction of being the first
Catholic priest” to chair a CWSS meeting in London.42 Father Herbert
Hall, a secular priest and chaplain at Westminster, identified himself as
“a staunch feminist,” as did Father William Kent of the Oblates of St.
Charles in Bayswater.43 Although Monsignor Alexander Gieswein
resided in Budapest and was a member of the Hungarian Parliament,
he frequently visited London, where suffragists called him “a true
friend.”As war threatened Europe, he told the CWSS “the future peace
of the world”required “women to take their full share in public life and
bring the spirit of the Christian family into the political sphere.” It was
“for this reason,” he said, that he was “an ardent feminist,” explaining
that “I became a suffragist because I was a pacifist, and I cannot separate the two.”44
The Laity
Of course, suffragist priests were neither the first nor the only
Catholic men to endorse political movements that made for social
progress. During the 1910s, the CWSS recognized that it owed “a debt
of gratitude” to Joseph Clayton as “the most prominent of our supporters among Catholic laymen.”45 A journalist and member of the
Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, he also chaired and addressed
meetings of the CWSS, and regularly produced pamphlets and
speeches appealing to Catholics to support votes for women. In doing
so, he argued it was unreasonable to assert that people of faith wished
to have no part in politics.To him,“women were the bulwark to pro42

WL 2/SJA. CWSS 4th Annual Report, 1915, p. 2.
Catholic Citizen, May 15, 1925, p. 39. At a dinner in honor of Father Hall, “his
long association with the CWSS,” was applauded; see Catholic Citizen, June 15, 1925,
p. 51. In 1932, Father Kent “claimed to have been a feminist when most (Catholic suffragists) were in their cradles”; see “Orbis Terrarum: Catholic Feminists,” Tablet, June
4, 1932, p. 738.
44
Tablet, August 5, 1922, p. 189. Catholic Citizen, July–August 15, 1922, p. 69; and
January 15, 1924, p. 3.
45
Leonora de Alberti,“A History of the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society,” Catholic
Citizen, October 15, 1928, p. 80.
43

34

CATHOLIC MEN IN SUPPORT OF THE WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

tect religion and morality,” and once they won the franchise, they
would cast their votes on the side of righteousness.46 With identical
conviction, Richard Bromage, the former Anglican vicar and Catholic
convert, insisted the nation’s women must occupy a political position
in no sense inferior to that of men. At a drawing-room meeting held in
his London home in 1912, he explained how he “had been interested
in the movement for forty years,” and felt it was “a great humiliation”
for husbands, brothers, and fathers to see wives, sisters, and daughters
“denied their rights as citizens.”47
Bromage understood, however, that the quest for citizenship was
contentious and involved tactics ranging from civil disobedience and
passive resistance to the far more belligerent actions of suffragettes. No
Catholic organization and certainly no spokesman for the Church
encouraged the actions of women engaged in stone-throwing,
window-smashing, and arson. Henry Day called militant methods “an
outrage on civilization,” and Bourne argued that “acts of violence”
resulting in harm to people and property “disgraced” the suffrage
movement.48 He urged his flock to “be ever on guard against any participation, direct or indirect, in any methods which are contrary to the
law of God.”49 Even so, not all Catholics felt impelled to distance themselves from protesting women or remain silent and unsympathetic to
actions not necessarily their own.
If, as many thought, there were various avenues to citizenship, then
organized protest was hardly an unimportant path for suffragists to
take. After Charlotte Despard, a well-known London Catholic and
joint secretary of the WSPU, was released from a fortnight in prison in
March 1907, the Tablet argued she had not lost “public respect”
because of her thwarted plan to present a petition to the prime minister. Until confronted by police, Despard and her fellow demonstrators had simply wanted to inform the government of how “women
would exercise the franchise to the benefit of their country and press
46

Tablet, November 11, 1911, pp. 794–95.
Ibid., November 9, 1912, p. 732.
48
For Henry Day’s remarks, see “Feminism and Its Evil Tendencies,” Catholic Herald,
October 26, 1912, p. 7. For Bourne’s comments, see his Lenten pastoral, Tablet, February
8, 1913, p. 215.
49
Bourne’s address to the Catholic Women’s League, Tablet, April 4, 1914, pp. 531–32.
“Cardinal Bourne and Militancy,” Catholic Herald, April 4, 1914, p. 16. For Catholic
involvement in militant protest, see Clark, “Catholics and the Campaign for Women’s
Suffrage,” pp. 647–48.
47

BY ELAINE CLARK

35

forward legislation affecting the home and the child.” In this, the
Tablet saw no “crime,” nor did the Catholic Herald, an antisuffrage
newspaper.50
Protest along “constitutional” lines seldom divided Catholic opinion
in the way that the rasher conduct of suffragettes did.“Women will do
well never to forget that in appealing to violence, they appeal to the
one form of argument in which they inevitably must be worsted,” the
Tablet remarked.51 As for the CWSS, it refused to employ confrontational tactics, but also declined to criticize or “sit in judgment on the
conscience” of other women, no matter what disturbances they
caused.52 Although censured by the Catholic press for too lenient a
stance, the CWSS resolutely pursued its own agenda and afforded
women as well as men a forum for open discussion. At the CWSS inaugural meeting in London in June 1911, Clayton concluded his remarks
by asking “if it were right to give women the vote, could it be refused
on the grounds that a window had been broken?”53 He had raised this
issue before, arguing in 1910 that the government’s refusal to countenance voting reform pushed many suffragists to “avow the necessity of
revolutionary methods,” with the result that since 1906, more than six
hundred women had gone to prison in the cause of female suffrage. In
his view, the daring and courage of militant groups, particularly the
WSPU, “startled the public, created an enthusiasm and generally
aroused the attention of a formerly indifferent parliament.”54
That militant demonstrations brought widespread publicity to the
suffrage campaign was certain. But what remained a contested issue
for Catholics was the counsel of various priests that “unlawful” protest
offended God and put participants at risk of sin.55 Lay bystanders were
not reluctant to join this discussion and sent letters to the Catholic
press, reprimanding the rank and file of the suffrage movement and
pleading with Catholic women to stay at home.“To my mind,” wrote
50

Tablet, March 9, 1907, p. 378. Catholic Herald, May 24, 1907, p. 5.
“Women’s Suffrage:A Set-Back,” Tablet, July 16, 1910, p. 81.
52
See comments of Kathleen Fitzgerald, Tablet, November 11, 1911, pp. 794–95.
“Catholic Women Suffragists: Interview with Chairman of London Society,” Catholic
Herald, April 19, 1913, p. 4. Blanche Smyth-Pigott to Tablet, June 27, 1914, p. 1025 and
June 20, 1914, p. 936.
53
Tablet, June 17, 1911, p. 930.
54
Joseph Clayton, Leaders of the People: Studies in Democratic History (London,
1910), p. 326.
55
“The Militant Suffragists,” Month 119 (1912): 427. “The End Does Not Justify the
Means,” ibid., 120 (1912): 93.
51

36

CATHOLIC MEN IN SUPPORT OF THE WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

Agnes Gibbs,“it is a double pity when Catholic women advocate votes
for women.”56 Her husband thought otherwise. A literary editor for the
Tribune, Philip Gibbs was an outspoken journalist and frequent witness to militant resistance in London. Describing the arrest and trial of
Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst in 1908, he praised “the amazing
courage and self-sacrifice of these suffragettes,” and disparaged the
claim that “Catholic women must necessarily hold aloof from the
struggle.” Even though he harbored reservations about appeals to violence and thought militant suffragists competed in a “terrible game,”he
urged fellow Catholics to remember that the “whole history of political liberty in this country is the record of law-breaking in order to
become law-making.”57
Like Philip Gibbs,Alice Meynell’s son, Francis, thought that efforts to
secure the franchise had been “absolutely unavailing until the fighting
organization” of the WSPU took to the street of London.58 Where the
two men differed was in whether to participate actively in the fray.
During a November 1911 suffrage demonstration in “forbidden territory just outside the House of Lords,” Francis Meynell shoved a policeman and was arrested, roughly marched to Scotland Yard, and fined five
pounds,“a large sum in those days.”The following spring, after militants
set fire to mail boxes in Oxford Street, Francis heard shopkeepers
insist that “the offending women should have their heads shaved.” He
was appalled and said so at a public meeting of West-End traders in the
Queen’s Hall. Later, he recalled:“I was the only speaker against the ruthless resolutions and finally the chairman insisted on knowing what
firm I represented. When I answered ‘Burns & Oates’ [a Catholic publisher], a contemptibly unimportant concern to that audience, there
were howls of derision.”59
As bothersome as anti-Catholic sentiment was in 1912, neither
derogatory remarks nor religious bias silenced Catholic opinion. For
many, the judicious voice of Alice Meynell provided a standard for
reviewing the suffrage campaign. Although Alice deplored “the criminal actions”of a small group of suffragettes who she thought inevitably
“prejudiced public opinion against a great cause,” she confidently
argued on behalf of the franchise and refused to disown protesting suf56

Agnes Gibbs to Tablet, July 25, 1908, p. 136.
Philip Gibbs to Tablet, October 31, 1908, pp. 695–96.
58
Ibid.
59
Francis Meynell, My Lives (New York, 1971), pp. 72–73.

57

BY ELAINE CLARK

37

fragists.60 The belief of some Catholics that “no Christian woman can
be a suffragette and remain a Christian” was a “grotesque dogma,”Alice
complained, adding, “I have a respect for the consciences that are
unlike my own.”61 The conviction that conscience mattered was
shared by Alice’s husband, Wilfrid, an editor, publisher, and literary
critic. He held strong views about the position of women in a world
controlled by men and chided those who punished suffragettes with
too heavy a hand. If gallantry still counted—and Wilfrid believed it
did—then what was required of “all men of chivalry” was a sense of
“homage to the women who worked in ways the most repulsive to
themselves for the emancipation of their sex.”62
The Catholic Men’s Share
Differing opinions of militancy notwithstanding, there always was a
Catholic presence in the suffrage movement. At the close of 1914,
when Europe was convulsed by war, the CWSS begged its members to
remain committed to voting reform so that “the position of women is
not worse after the war than it was before.”63 In 1915, the CWSS began
publishing the Catholic Suffragist and used this monthly journal to
discuss women’s work at home and abroad, all the while recording the
benefactors who helped the CWSS with contributions of cash. As
expected, women dominated the lists. Between the years 1913 and
1918, 91 percent of 624 donors were laywomen, 6 percent were
laymen, and 3 percent were priests. Although it still was unusual for
Catholic men to join a suffrage organization, the enfranchisement of
women was not as unimportant to them as critical bystanders implied.
Antisuffragists would have the public believe that even if a number of
Catholics endorsed female suffrage, “prominent Catholic clergy” did
not.64 But was this in fact the case?
After England entered the war, the CWSS continued to work for the
franchise and certainly knew if “prominent clergy” favored the cause.
Suffragists remembered that Vaughan had voiced his support in the
1890s. Before the war ended in 1918, they knew, too, that other distinguished Catholics had followed suit: the Dominican priors of
60

Alice Meynell,“A Tribute to Miss Abadam,” p. 126
Alice Meynell to Tablet, November 2, 1912, p. 704.
62
Viola Meynell, Francis Thompson and Wilfrid Meynell (London, 1952), p. 141.
63
WL 2/SJA. CWSS 3rd Annual Report, 1914, p. 4.
64
“Fr. John Wynne, Editor of Catholic Encyclopedia,” Catholic Herald,April 13, 1912,
p. 4.
61

38

CATHOLIC MEN IN SUPPORT OF THE WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

Haverstock and Hawkesyard; the abbot-president of the English
Benedictine Congregation; the vicar general of Southwark; the archbishops of Birmingham, Glasgow, and Liverpool; and the bishop of
Northampton.All advocated the franchise at a time when the country’s
memory of militant tactics made it “no easy matter for a Catholic priest
to identify himself” with the suffrage campaign.65 When Archbishop
John A. Maguire of Glasgow spoke on behalf of the franchise at the
annual meeting of the Catholic Truth Society in Manchester in 1916,
the CWSS “rejoiced” and later applauded “the splendid suffrage pastoral” he wrote in February 1917.66 In it, he said:“Unfortunately there
are women . . . content with small interests and narrow lives. . . . Some
of them even talk with contempt of other women, who devote themselves to public work to try to improve the condition of their fellow
women, and describe them as unfeminine, unwomanly.And by whom
are these terms used? . . . Mostly they come from the mouths of idle,
fashionable women, belonging to what they themselves with unconscious irony call the better class.”67
Maguire reserved his admiration for those women who, day after
day, labored in a workplace disrupted by war:“we cannot go into a railway station, enter a tram car, visit a munitions work without having
evidence not only of work but of efficient work.”68 What he and the
public invariably saw led “many to reconsider” women’s “duties,” and,
even more important, to think anew about “women’s rights.” In saying
as much, Maguire shared the convictions and expectations of long-time
suffragists. Together, they were persuaded that when political rights
were at issue, the struggle for equality was not solely a matter of female
labor in factories and industrial plants. Simply put, suffragists rejected
the argument that the parliamentary franchise should be a reward for
women’s productivity and good behavior. Instead, the Catholic
Suffragist stated: “the vote is a right and as such we claim and have
always claimed it.”69
The claim was partially satisfied by the Representation of the People
Act (1918), which enfranchised women over the age of thirty.
Nevertheless, the political inequality of the younger generation contin65
Catholic Citizen, May 15, 1919, p. 37. Leonora de Alberti,“A History of the Catholic
Women’s Suffrage Society,” ibid. November 15, 1928, p. 93.
66
Catholic Suffragist, November 15, 1916, p. 105; April 15, 1917, p. 28.
67
Ibid.
68
Ibid.
69
“Notes and Comments,” Catholic Suffragist, September 15, 1916, p. 85.

BY ELAINE CLARK

39

ued to trouble reformers, and for them the struggle for voting rights
was far from over. Both before and after 1918, suffragists thought that
the cause of electoral reform would be enhanced—at least among
Catholics—if Rome addressed the issue of women’s suffrage. “Should
the Church pronounce on the question now in dispute,” Delany had
written in 1913, “we, of course, shall know where we are.”70 Shane
Leslie was of the same opinion, telling the Tablet in 1913,“the Pope’s
apostolic blessing would help the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society.”71
Although the tragic events of war had displaced this concern, by 1919,
papal approval again occupied suffragists.At a January 1919 meeting in
London of the CWSS, the recording secretary noted: “Miss [Annie]
Christitch hoped shortly to be able to have an interview with His
Holiness . . . and speak to him about the work of the CWSS.”72 Several
months later, Christitch informed fellow suffragists of the private audience she had been privileged to have with Pope Benedict XV.
Conversing with him in French, she had explained the goals of
“Catholic feminists anxious for reform,” then respectfully asked
whether the object and activities of the Catholic Women’s Suffrage
Society “had the approval of His Holiness.”He replied,“Yes,we approve,”
and added,“we should like to see women electors everywhere.”73
As widely publicized as his statement was, not everyone appreciated the sentiment expressed. Some Catholics still disliked electoral
change, while others challenged the message Christitch conveyed. In
her telling, the Pope had voiced his “personal opinion” about the franchise and supported the entry of women into public life.74 The Tablet,
the Catholic Citizen, and La Femme Belge reprinted her remarks, but
the New York Times reported that Cardinal James Gibbons of
Baltimore not only disputed the claim that Benedict XV was a suffragist but also thought Christitch “had misconstrued”the Pope’s words.75
70

Tablet, January 18, 1913, pp. 102–03.
Tablet, January 25, 1913, p. 142.
72
CWSS Minutes Book, January 16, 1919.WL 2/SJA/A 1/3.
73
Annie Christitch,“Yes, We Approve (Words of the Holy Father to a Member of the
C.W.S.S.),” Catholic Citizen, July 15, 1919, pp. 51–52.
74
“Miss Annie Christitch,” The Lecture Guild Pamphlet (New York, n.d.). Christitch
Archives. Boston College. John J. Burns Library. MS 94–39. Folder 15.
75
A.C.,“An Audience with Pope Benedict XV,” Tablet, June 21, 1919, p. 782.“The Holy
Father and Women Electors,” Universe, August 1, 1919. Press Cuttings WL 2/SJA/L5, p. 41.
Catholic Citizen, July 15, 1919, pp. 51–52. For reference to La Femme Belge, November
1919, see “Notes and Comments,”Catholic Citizen, December 15, 1919, p. 93.“Neutral on
Suffrage: Cardinal Gibbons Denies Pontiff Has Indorsed [sic] Movement,” New York
Times, December 21, 1919, p. 10.
71

40

CATHOLIC MEN IN SUPPORT OF THE WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

Apparently there was no official record of Benedict’s position, and this
made it all the easier for critics to question Christitch’s version of
events.76 Even so, suffragists in England never doubted the integrity of
the woman many called “our little Servian friend.”77 Born and raised in
Belgrade by an Irish mother and Serbian father, Christitch was the
granddaughter of the former Serbian prime minister, a graduate of the
University of London, and a journalist whose friends in London introduced her as “a lady from the Balkans but possessed of the English
tongue . . . and fluent in French, Italian, German, Serb, Croat, Russian,
and even Gaelic.”78 During the war she and her mother served as
nurses on the battlefields of Serbia, helped the sick and destitute in
“the typhus-stricken districts of Valejvoi,” witnessed the disastrous
retreat of the Serbian people in the winter of 1915, defiantly resisted
the regulations of the army of occupation, endured terrible privations,
and were held as prisoners in Trsnik until released through “the good
offices of the pope [Benedict XV].”79
When Christitch later met the Pope in Rome, she was twenty-four
years old and certainly had no reason to misrepresent his views. Not
only was she committed to women’s rights, she also was resolutely
loyal to the Catholic Church and knew that her appeal to ecclesiastical authority was hardly unusual. Catholic suffragists in England had
often urged bishops and priests to support voting reform in the interests of “justice, morality, and religion.”80 Although there was no easy
way to measure the clergy’s response, the Catholic press paid close
attention to the public activity of coreligionists, and by 1918 had
reported the pro-suffrage speeches, sermons, and organizational efforts
76
Historians have noted that “the fame of Benedict’s remarks outstrips the evidence
for them.” Consequently the Pope is said to have “reportedly,”“apparently,” or “allegedly”
made pro-suffrage remarks to Annie Christitch. See, Stephen C. Hause and Annie R.
Kenney, “The Development of the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Movement in France,
1896–1922,” Catholic Historical Review 67 (1981): 27, n. 24; and Women’s Suffrage and
Social Politics in the French Third Republic (Princeton, 1984), p. 217. Richard L. Camp,
“From Passive Subordination,” p. 512, n. 18. Paula M. Kane, “‘The Willing Captive of
Home?’The English Catholic Women’s League, 1906–1920,” Church History 60 (1991):
352, n. 74.
77
Carrie Chapman Catt to Annie Christitch. Christitch archives. MS 94-39. Folder 2.
78
Ave Maria 60 (1905): 373–75. Cecilia Mary Young, “Women in the News: Annie
Christitch, Brilliant Daughter of Serbia,” Christitch Archives. MS 94-39. Folder 31.
79
Press Clippings of Elisabeth O’Brien Christitch. Christitch Archives. MS 93-39.
Folder 31.Also, see “Women in the News,” and “Undated Typescript,” Folder 31.
80
CWSS 1st Annual Report, 1912, p. 6. WL 2/SJA; Tablet, August 17, 1912, p. 259;
January 25, 1913, p. 139; June 14, 1913, p. 932.

BY ELAINE CLARK

41

of thirty-seven priests and thirty-eight laymen. Many of these seventyfive men had come of age during the Victorian era. As for their daily
lives in the 1910s, the spiritual endeavors of suffragist-priests were
much the same, but the work of laymen differed in kind. Nine were
journalists and authors, another was the headmaster of a London
school, one was a physician, one was a botanist at the British Museum,
and one was a Dockers’ Union secretary in Liverpool.
Admittedly, none spoke on behalf of the Catholic Church but supported the franchise for reasons as varied as those of most men in the
suffrage movement.81 What motivated some was the sense of civility
typified by Carr, who explained how “he had been brought up with the
feeling of chivalry implanted in his nature and would do anything that
would best promote the higher respect paid to women.”82 For others,
participation in the suffrage campaign sprang from the sympathy for
“women of the working classes” and an instinct of “benevolence
towards those who suffer wrong.”83 For still others, the demands of fair
play prompted a public commitment to political equality. In his memoirs, Philip Gibbs wrote:
I became a convinced supporter of ‘votes for women,’ partly because of theoretical justice . . . partly because of a sporting admiration—in spite of intellectual disapproval—of cultured women who went willingly to prison for
their faith, defied the police with all their muscular strength, and risked the
brutality of angry mobs. . . .84

As a journalist, Gibbs understood that every political movement had
a master narrative, and the campaign for women’s suffrage was no different. Although histories of the campaign invariably overlooked the
contribution of Catholics, the reason was not that national suffrage
organizations excluded Catholics as members or that that they were
without a suffrage organization of their own. The more telling issue
was that narratives of the women’s movement tended to discuss
enfranchisement in terms of gender and class but not religion. For
81

See, for example, Martin Pugh, March of Women, pp. 258–62.
“Suffragettes at Formby: A Priest in the Chair,” Tablet, April 17, 1909, pp. 624–25.
Also see, Fr. John P. Murphy, “The Chivalry of Wilfrid Meynell,” Universe, October 29,
1948. Press Cuttings.WL 2/SJA/L23, p. 1.
83
Sermon of Father Herbert Hall quoted in “Catholic Delegates at Geneva,” Catholic
Citizen, July 15, 1920, p. 56. See remarks of the Rev. William Brown reported in Tablet,
July 21, 1917, p. 91.
84
Philip Gibbs, Adventures in Journalism (New York and London, 1923), p. 215; also
see, The Pageant Years: An Autobiography (London, 1946), p. 127.
82

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CATHOLIC MEN IN SUPPORT OF THE WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

Catholics, this posed a problem of inclusion and political identity not
unrelated to the proscriptive legislation that had denied their forefathers a civic life during penal times. Mindful of the past, reforming
women argued in 1912 that although the “struggle for Catholic
Emancipation”had been addressed by Parliament in 1829,“many of the
arguments for the repression of Roman Catholics as a danger to the
state were of the same caliber as the antisuffrage arguments of today.”85
Knowing this, the CWSS gratefully acknowledged the support of
those priests and laymen who believed the time had come for their
countrymen to settle a question that had long divided them:Who was
a citizen? In making the case for equal voting rights, suffragist priests
noted the misconceptions and doubts that colored the public perception of both the women’s movement and Catholicism. Letters to the
Catholic press in 1912 made a similar point, arguing that critics regularly disparaged Catholics as forming a monolithic group and conveniently forgot that when two “princes of the Church”—Vaughan and
Moran—endorsed women’s suffrage, not all the faithful unquestioningly followed suit. Clergymen were, in fact, free to agree or disagree
with a cardinal on matters not affecting faith and morals, while the
laity were equally at liberty to accept or reject clerical opinion on
questions of “suffragism and feminism.”86
Few Catholics better typified this independence of thought than
William Francis Brown, the auxiliary bishop of Southwark.The scion
of a prosperous Dundee family, he had been ordained in 1886, and for
more than fifty years ministered to the inhabitants of a thickly populated area in southeast London. Whenever he was asked, “Where do
you live,” he bluntly replied, “in a slum.”87 Concern for his impoverished neighbors in Vauxhall led him to study the home life of workers
and to advocate legislation for the relief of malnourished schoolchildren.88 The plight of the young as well as the troubles of the working poor aroused in him a profound indignation at the persistence of
inequality and the pervasiveness of a double standard that con85
Julie E.Tomlinson to Manchester Guardian, October 24, 1912. Press Cuttings. WL
2/SJA/L1, p. 78.
86
Blanche Smyth-Pigott to Monitor and New Era, May 11, 1912. Press Cuttings. WL
2/SJA/L1, p. 42. See, too, her letter to Catholic Herald, May 11, 1912, p. 3; and to
Manchester Guardian, October 26, 1912. Press Cuttings WL 2/SJA/L1, p. 78.
87
William Francis Brown, Bishop of Pella, Through Windows of Memory (London,
1946), p. 53.
88
Tablet, September 13, 1919, p. 353.

BY ELAINE CLARK

43

demned an “immoral” girl, “while her seducer remain[ed] a
respectable member of society.”89 Committed to equal suffrage and a
unitary moral standard, Brown invited members of the CWSS to speak
at parish missions for women in Southwark, applauded the electoral
changes of 1918, and in 1928 celebrated with many others the extension of the parliamentary franchise to women at the age of twentyone and on the same terms as men.
During the summer of 1939, the seventy-seven-year-old Brown
reflected on the place of the suffrage movement in the past “century
of struggle.” Addressing a meeting of St. Joan’s Social and Political
Alliance, he emphasized the politics of electoral change and explained
that “although men got what they wanted and got it by violence, it was
a long time before women settled down to be violent too.” He
poignantly recalled “that poor lady [Emily Wilding Davison] who threw
herself in front of the King’s horse” at the Derby at Epsom Racecourse
in 1913, but reminded his audience that “when it did come to pass that
women got the vote, it was put down to all their usefulness during the
war.” Even so, he believed civil disobedience had played a notable part
in winning the vote from a reluctant governing class.With characteristic frankness, he observed that militancy “has to pave the way not only
into the kingdom of Heaven but also into kingdoms on earth,”and then
said:“However, those days seem to have gone by, and you have now settled down to citizenship and walking like ordinary people here, there,
and everywhere and no one is afraid you will do something.”90
Certainly no audience hearing these remarks could conclude that
Brown dismissed the history of women as unimportant.To recall past
events, as he did, was to notice that the pressures for women’s suffrage
had been slowly building in the Catholic community since the later
nineteenth century. If editors and journalists in London were among
the first Catholic men to speak publicly on behalf of the vote, by the
1910s an influential minority of clergy appeared equally outspoken in
supporting electoral reform. Each in his own way shared the convictions of long-time suffragists that “the political subordination of onehalf of the human race to the other” diminished society as a whole.91
Although Catholic men never figured as prominently in the suffrage
89
Rt. Rev. Monsignor Provost Brown,“The Church and Prostitution,” Dublin Review
170 (1922): 112.
90
“Honour to Our Chairman,” Catholic Citizen, June 15. 1989, p. 56.
91
Virginia M. Crawford,“Feminism in France,” Fortnightly Review 67 (1897): 531.

44

CATHOLIC MEN IN SUPPORT OF THE WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

campaign as Catholic women did, suffragist priests and laymen clearly
recognized the importance of cooperation in the cause of parliamentary reform.Yet they made no claims on behalf of the organized church
and chose instead to discuss the vote in terms of civic responsibility,
individual conscience, and justice. As the campaign for the franchise
gained momentum, their work brought into focus what the historian
Jeffrey Paul von Arx has called “a model for political engagement.”92
Simply explained, this model involved a standard for political activity that by the later nineteenth century had encouraged Catholics to
participate in civil and national life, not as “a group apart,” but through
existing institutions, committees, and political parties. When, in 1939,
the Italian priest and political organizer Luigi Sturzo recalled his “forty
years of political life”—including his work with Catholic suffragists in
England—he said, “there is no such thing as Catholic political action
but only Catholics who engage in political action either as individual
members of non-Catholic groups or as groups made up of Catholics.”93
Sturzo added that among Catholics,“political action is not carried on
in the name of Catholicism (which is an international religion) but in
the name of their particular programme and political system.”A quarter of a century later, Cardinal John Heenan reminded the Catholic
members of Parliament of an identical standard of political engagement.94 In doing so, he surely understood what the Catholic suffragists
of an earlier era had instinctively known. A meaningful indicator of
Catholic influence in England was seldom to be found in numbers
alone but rather in the constructive and informed participation of
Catholics in every aspect of democratic political life.

92
Jeffrey Paul von Arx,“Catholics and Politics,” in McClelland and Hodgetts, eds., From
Without the Flaminian Gate, p. 245.
93
Don Luigi Sturzo to Catholic Herald, November 11, 1939; also in People and
Freedom News Sheet, January–March 1939, p. 2. Sturzo’s support for women’s suffrage
in England was acknowledged in Catholic Citizen, January 15, 1925, p. 2. For a detailed
account of his later life, see Giovanna Farrell-Vinay, “The London Exile of Don Luigi
Sturzo (1924–1940),” Heythrop Journal 45 (2004): 158–77.
94
Von Arx,“Catholics and Politics,” pp. 249–50.

FROM AN INDEFINITE HOMOGENEITY:
CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA
BY

PHILIP GLEASON*
Antebellum Catholic colleges reflected what Herbert Spencer called
an “indefinite homogeneity” in that they were less clearly differentiated from other aspects of the life of the Church than they are today,
and their internal composition was amorphous in that they combined a mixture of functions later embodied in separate and distinct institutions. The discussion consists of four parts: (1) collegefounding from the 1790s to the 1850s, (2) the ways in which
colleges were immersed in the overall life of the Church, (3) the
“mixed” quality of their internal make-up, and (4) changes noticeable by midcentury that moved them toward a more restricted role
in the life of the Church and promoted their eventual development
into recognizably “modern” institutions of higher education.
According to Herbert Spencer’s famous definition of evolution, the
process is one by which primitive undifferentiated matter gradually
assumes more complex forms made up of specialized subunits interacting together in a pattern of interdependence.Thus the lowly, one-celled
amoeba represents the bottom level of a scale at the other end of which
homo sapiens stands as the capstone. Spencer’s definition is couched in
language that has baffled many a reader; to quote it in full would create
unnecessary problems.What is of interest here is the passage in which
Spencer says that in evolution “matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity.”1 It is this passage my title echoes, and if the essay is not to be as mystifying as
Spencer’s definition, a few words of explanation are required.

*Dr. Gleason is a professor emeritus of history in the University of Notre Dame.
1
Spencer’s definition is the following:“Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, during with the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained
motion undergoes a parallel transformation.” Quoted in Richard Hofstadter, Social
Darwinism in American Thought (Boston, 1955), p. 220, n.

45

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CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

First a disclaimer. I do not mean to argue that Catholic higher education developed according to a built-in law of nature, an inherent
principle that realized itself automatically in the course of history.2
Rather, the Spencerian language is intended to serve as a heuristic
convenience, a way of looking at developments that makes them
easier to grasp and remember. In other words, it provides a useful
handle on the phenomena to think of Catholic colleges as moving
from a situation of amorphous homogeneity in their earliest days to
their later state of complex elaboration and articulation with a
number of other social institutions. In more schematic terms, my
thesis can be stated as follows:
(1) American Catholic higher education began in a condition
that strikes us now as peculiarly amorphous and undifferentiated in that (a) the colleges carried on their work in a Catholic
matrix that linked them so closely with other facets of the life of
the Church that no sharp lines of demarcation separated them
from the larger religious organization striving to establish itself
in a new land, a situation that brought them into very close relations with the early bishops; and (b) the colleges themselves
engaged in educational activities that seem to belong properly to
several different types of schools.
(2) With the passage of time and the growth of the Church, a
twofold process of differentiation and specialization occurred in
which (a) the colleges took on a greater degree of autonomy and
detachment vis-à-vis the bishops; and (b) at the same time, the
colleges began the process of sorting themselves out internally,
distinguishing clearly between the secondary (preparatory) and
collegiate levels of instruction, separating the education of candidates for the priesthood from that of lay students, and eventually adding true university work in the form of graduate and professional schools.
Because most of 2b—the process of internal differentiation—took
place after the American Civil War, this essay will concentrate on show2
Systematic social Darwinists did hold this view. Thus, John Fiske wrote in 1874:“The
progress of society is a continuous establishment of psychical relations within the community, in conformity to physical and psychical relations arising in the environment,
during which the community and the environment pass from a state of incoherent
homogeneity to a state of coherent heterogeneity, and during which the constituent
units of the community become ever more distinctly individuated.” Quoted in Milton
Berman, John Fiske: The Evolution of a Popularizer (Cambridge, MA, 1961), p. 94.

BY PHILIP GLEASON

47

ing that the early Catholic colleges fit the first part of the thesis statement, and that by the middle of the nineteenth century, they were
beginning to move in the direction of the second part. But first, it is
necessary to provide a thumbnail sketch of Catholic college-founding
in the first five decades of the American Church’s existence, which I
date as beginning with John Carroll’s appointment as bishop of
Baltimore in 1789.
***
Listing the founding dates of colleges can be a problematic enterprise, as it can be difficult to ascertain when a college actually began—
or whether it was a “real” college.3 However, the 1790s mark a definite
beginning for Catholic higher education in this country. Georgetown
University (called at first an “academy”), which had been in the planning phase since the mid-1780s, opened its doors in 1791.4 In the same
year, a group of Sulpician fathers from France, seeking a haven from
revolutionary upheavals in their homeland, established St. Mary’s
Seminary in Baltimore.5 Neither institution prospered immediately, but
3
Edward J. Power, A History of Catholic Higher Education in the United States
(Milwaukee, 1958), pp. 28–31, discusses this problem.This book—and an expanded version by the same author, Catholic Higher Education in America: A History (New York,
1972)—are the only general surveys of the whole field. See also Power’s three-part
series, “Formative Years of Catholic Colleges Founded before 1850,” Records of the
American Catholic Historical Society (hereafter RACHS), 55–56 (1954–55), 24–39,
240–50, 19–34. Academies for women resembled men’s colleges in many respects, but
they have received little scholarly attention. Joseph G. Mannard,“‘Supported Principally
by the Funds of Protestants’:Wheeling Female Academy and the Making of the Catholic
Community in Antebellum Western Virginia,” American Catholic Studies, 114 (Spring,
2003), 41–79, is an excellent case study that cites much of the relevant literature, but see
also Mary J. Oates, ed., Higher Education for Catholic Women: An Historical Anthology
(New York and London, 1987); Nikola Baumgarten,“Immigrants as Democrats: Education
in St. Louis before the Civil War” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1993); and Tracy Schier
and Cynthia Russett, eds., Catholic Women’s Colleges in America (Baltimore, 2002). For
the overall development of higher education for women, see Roger L. Geiger, “The
‘Superior Instruction of Women’ 1836–1890,” in Geiger, ed., The American College in the
Nineteenth Century (Nashville, 2000), pp. 183–95.
4
Robert Emmett Curran, The Bicentennial History of Georgetown University: From
Academy to University, 1789–1889, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC, 1993); John M. Daley,
Georgetown University: Origin and Early Years (Washington, DC, 1957), and Joseph T.
Durkin, Georgetown University: The Middle Years (1840–1900) (Washington, DC,
1963).
5
Christopher J. Kauffman, Tradition and Transformation in Catholic Culture: The
Priests of Saint Sulpice in the United States from 1791 to the Present (New York, 1988);
Joseph W. Ruane, The Beginnings of the Society of St. Sulpice in the United States
(1791–1829) (Washington, DC, 1935).

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CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

both survived, and in 1799, Louis William DuBourg, a Sulpician who
had just finished a two-year stint as president of Georgetown, founded
St. Mary’s College in Baltimore. It too prospered in time, despite bitter
feelings on the part of Georgetown’s directors, who naturally resented
the appearance of a competing institution so close at hand. Bishop
John Carroll, the main founder of Georgetown, was less troubled by
that consideration than by the tension St. Mary’s College created
between two valued groups of his tiny force of clergymen. Nor were
the Sulpicians in Paris pleased by DuBourg’s action, because they
wanted to stick to strictly seminary education. The new college was,
however, tolerated because it was a fait accompli; because the seminary was languishing for want of students, leaving the Sulpicians little
to do in their chosen line; and because the college might serve as a
feeder for the seminary, which Georgetown had so far failed to do.6
Thus in the first decade of its history, Catholic higher education exhibited two features lamented by many a critic—proliferation of institutions and competition among them for support.
In the first decade of the nineteenth century, three new Catholic
colleges were established: Mount St. Mary’s at Emmitsburg, Maryland
(1807), like St. Mary’s in Baltimore, a Sulpician offshoot; the New York
Literary Institution (1809), a Jesuit offshoot from Georgetown; and St.
Thomas of Aquin (1809), a school for secular students opened by the
Dominican fathers in Kentucky as part of their recently established
American base of operations at the Convent of St. Rose.This might be
regarded as a moderate rate of proliferation, but the competitive element was stronger. Mount St. Mary’s, theoretically intended to be a
minor seminary preparing candidates for St. Mary’s Seminary in
Baltimore, admitted secular students in addition to ecclesiastical
prospects from the first, thus giving it an undesirable “mixed” character. Much worse, it soon undertook higher-level instruction in philosophy and theology—a departure that brought it into direct competition with its putative parent in Baltimore.This precipitated a lengthy
controversy between the two Sulpician institutions, as a result of
which John Dubois (founder of “the Mountain” and later bishop of
New York) and Simon Gabriel Bruté (principal professor of theology
at Mount St. Mary’s and later bishop of Vincennes, Indiana) both withdrew from the Society of St. Sulpice. Tension between the two insti6
For more on these matters, see Philip Gleason,“The Main Sheet Anchor: John Carroll
and Catholic Higher Education,”Review of Politics, 38 (October, 1976), 576–613, esp. pp.
605–10.

BY PHILIP GLEASON

49

tutions continued, however, for it was a function of the situation, not
of personalities.7
The New York Literary Institution had no close Catholic competitor,
but it lost out to a distant one when its future was sacrificed to
Georgetown’s in 1813.8 The Jesuits did not have enough men to maintain the two institutions and despite the protests of Anthony
Kohlmann, S.J., who had built the New York school into a very successful operation, they decided to preserve Georgetown. In view of the
Jesuits’ long association with Maryland and Carroll’s commitment to
Georgetown, the decision was understandable. It nevertheless constituted a serious setback to Catholic prospects in the metropolis of the
east. Almost three decades of fabulous growth passed before another
successful Catholic institution of higher learning could be established
in New York City.
The founding of St.Thomas of Aquin in Kentucky presaged the next
epoch of Catholic college-founding, since, aside from a school set up
by Bishop John England in Charleston in 1822, there were no additional foundations along the East Coast till around 1840.9 This rather
surprising hiatus can be explained by the sparse Catholic population
in some areas; in others, weak leadership and internal divisions hampered ecclesiastical development. Thus, Bishop Jean Cheverus of
Boston was an ornament to religion, but as late as 1817, he counted
fewer than a thousand Catholics (including Native Americans) in all of
New England, and only two priests besides himself. New York and
Philadelphia had much larger Catholic populations but, relatively
7
Kauffman, Tradition and Transformation, pp. 77–85; Ruane, Beginnings of St.
Sulpice, chap. 4, and pp. 231–61; Thomas F. O’Connor, “The Founding of Mount Saint
Mary’s College, 1808–1835,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 43 (1948), 197–209; and
Ronin J. Murtha,“The Life of the Most Reverend Ambrose Maréchal,Third Archbishop of
Baltimore, 1768–1828” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 1965), pp. 77–90.
Mary M. Meline and Edward F. X. McSweeny, The Story of the Mountain: Mount St.
Mary’s College and Seminary, Emmitsburg, Maryland, 2 vols. (Emmitsburg, MD, 1911),
is old-fashioned but a mine of information.
8
Francis X. Curran,“The Jesuit Colony in New York, 1808–1817,” Historical Records
and Studies (hereafter HRS), 42 (1954), 51–97 (reprinted in Francis X. Curran, The
Return of the Jesuits [Chicago, 1966], pp. 10–56); see also R. E. Curran, Georgetown, pp.
60–62, 70–71, and Daley, Georgetown, pp. 156–58, 176–81.
9
For St. Thomas of Aquin, see Victor F. O’Daniel, The Right Rev. Edward Dominic
Fenwick, O.P., Founder of the Dominicans in the United States (New York, 1932), pp.
105ff.; for England’s school, see Peter Guilday, The Life and Times of John England, First
Bishop of Charleston (1786–1842), 2 vols. (New York, 1927), 1: 334, and chap. 16.

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CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

speaking, they were no better supplied with priests, and, into the
1830s, both places experienced recurring disruptions over trusteeism
and schismatic movements.10
The situation in the west was more favorable in several respects.
Its early bishops were on the whole effective leaders, energetic and
temperamentally well suited to planting the Church in frontier conditions.11 Here Catholics were part of the charter group in the building of trans-Appalachian civilization. They moved into Kentucky in
the earliest migrations and were probably represented there in
roughly the same proportion as Catholics were present in the
Chesapeake region from which the state was first settled. In what
later became the states of Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, and
Louisiana, French Catholic settlements antedated the coming of the
“Americans.” And because the frontier lacked schools, Catholic initiatives in education usually enjoyed support from Protestants in the
surrounding area.
Kentucky was the first center of Catholic expansion in the west.12
After St. Thomas of Aquin (which closed in 1828) came St. Thomas
Seminary, founded by Bishop Benedict J. Flaget immediately on his
arrival in Bardstown in 181—in fact, he brought his seminarians with
10
Robert H. Lord, John E. Sexton, Edward T. Harrington, History of the Archdiocese
of Boston in the Various Stages of Its Development, 1604–1943, 3 vols. (New York,
1944), 1: 693–95; Richard Shaw, John Dubois: Founding Father (New York, 1983),
chaps. 11–15; Dale B. Light, Rome and the New Republic: Conflict and Community
in Philadelphia Catholicism between the Revolution and the Civil War (Notre
Dame, IN, 1996). It is interesting that in 1821, the schismatic “Hoganites” in
Philadelphia spoke hopefully of opening their own college and seminary. See Guilday,
England, 1: 402.
11
The best introduction to the subject is J. Herman Schauinger, Cathedrals in the
Wilderness (Milwaukee, 1952). See also Clyde F. Crews, An American Holy Land: A
History of the Archdiocese of Louisville (Wilmington, DE, 1987), and Robert F. Trisco,
The Holy See and the Nascent Church in the Middle Western United States, 1826–1850
(Rome, 1962).
12
Besides the works already mentioned, J. Herman Schauinger, Stephen T. Badin:
Priest in the Wilderness (Milwaukee, 1956); Columba Fox, The Life of the Right
Reverend John Baptist David (1761–1841): Bishop of Bardstown and Founder of the
Sisters of Charity of Nazareth (New York, 1925); and Thomas W. Spalding, Martin John
Spalding: American Churchman (Washington, DC, 1973), are important biographies.
See also, Robert J. Clancy, “Vital Administrative Problems of Catholic Schools in the
Diocese of Louisville Prior to the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore [in 1884]” (M.A.
thesis, Fordham University, 1952).The episcopal seat was transferred from Bardstown to
Louisville in 1841.

BY PHILIP GLEASON

51

him.The seminary spun off a college for seculars in 1819, St. Joseph’s
College in Bardstown; a third new institution opened two years later
when a priest of the diocese established St. Mary’s College near
Lebanon, Kentucky.
By this time, two areas previously included within the immense
orbit of Flaget’s evangelical zeal—which originally included an area
greater than that of France and Spain combined13—had received bishops of their own who lost no time in setting up additional colleges and
seminaries. Edward Fenwick, O.P., the founder of the Dominican Order
in the United States, made Ohio his missionary province from his
arrival in the west; in 1821, he was appointed first bishop of Cincinnati
with responsibility for the whole state and for the Michigan territory
as well. He struggled to train his own priests from the first, and by
1831, had a combination college and seminary in operation.14
Further west, Missouri, which Flaget had visited from time to time,
was made part of the Diocese of New Orleans under Bishop DuBourg,
a confirmed promoter of colleges from his days at Georgetown and
Baltimore. Consecrated in Rome in 1815, DuBourg spent a couple of
years in Europe recruiting priests, seminarians, and nuns for his
immense see, which included all the territory added to the United
States by the Louisiana Purchase. Among DuBourg’s most valuable
acquisitions were several members of the Congregation of the Mission,
a religious order founded by St.Vincent DePaul and popularly known
as Vincentians. One of this group, Joseph Rosati, was named first
bishop of St. Louis when the unwieldy New Orleans diocese was
divided in 1827. By that time, the Vincentians had long been active in
Missouri; as early as 1818, they opened a seminary at “the Barrens”
(now Perryville), an inauspiciously named settlement of transplanted
Kentucky Catholics some seventy miles south of St. Louis. St. Mary of
the Barrens quickly spun off a college as a feeder and supporting institution in the manner that had already become standard.15
13

So stated Stephen T. Badin in his Origine et Progrès de la Mission du Kentucky
(Paris, 1821), as translated in Catholic World, 21 (September, 1875), p. 827.
14
O’Daniel, Fenwick, pp. 306, 311–12, 355ff., 392ff. See also, Roger A. Fortin, To See
Great Wonders: A History of Xavier University, 1831–2006 (Scranton, 2006), and
Francis Joseph Miller, “A History of the Athenaeum of Ohio, 1829–1960” (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Cincinnati, 1964).
15
John E. Rothensteiner, History of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, 2 vols. (St. Louis,
1928), contains rich information on DeBourg and Rosati, as does Roger Baudier, The
Catholic Church in Louisiana (New Orleans, 1939). See also, Annabelle M. Melville,
Louis William DuBourg: Bishop of Louisiana and the Floridas, Bishop of Montaubon,

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CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

In 1819, DuBourg, who had made St. Louis his temporary headquarters, established a college in that city; four years later, he brought out
from Maryland a group of Belgian Jesuits to open a school for Native
Americans at nearby Florissant. That project failed to prosper, but in
1829, the Jesuits took over the college in St. Louis, which had fallen so
low as to disgust even the sanguine DuBourg. With the Jesuits in
charge, St. Louis University took firm root, becoming the center from
which a tremendous missionary and educational enterprise spread out
through the “middle United States,” to use the phrase of Gilbert J.
Garraghan, S.J., the historian of that epic undertaking. Before the Civil
War, Missouri Jesuits either founded or took over by invitation colleges
in Louisiana, Kentucky, and Ohio, and laid the foundation for others in
Milwaukee (Marquette University), Chicago (Loyola University), and
elsewhere. Indeed, Jesuit work as far away as California was at first
guided from St. Louis.16
Attempts at Catholic colleges in Louisiana were short-lived until the
Jesuits opened a school at Grand Coteau in 1837, but in neighboring
Mobile,Alabama, Bishop Michael Portier established Spring Hill College
(1830) as soon as he returned, newly consecrated, from a European
tour undertaken to recruit helpers for his undermanned diocese.17
As internal migrants and newcomers from abroad poured into the
west, these early colleges served as staging areas for the Church’s
expansion. Bishops plucked from the clergy of the first dioceses
always sought to create in their own sees the kind of educational institutions that existed in longer settled areas. In fact, many of the antebellum bishops, beginning with Carroll, had either taught in or
presided over a seminary or college before their elevation to the epis-

and Archbishop of Besançon, 1766–1833, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1986); Frederick J. Easterly,
The Life of the Rt. Rev. Joseph Rosati, First Bishop of St. Louis, 1789–1843 (Washington,
DC, 1942); and Stafford Poole,“The Founding of Missouri’s First College: St. Mary’s of the
Barrens, 1815–1818,” Missouri Historical Review, 65 (1970), 1–21.
16
Gilbert J. Garraghan, The Jesuits of the Middle United States, 3 vols. (New York,
1938), is monumental in scope, scholarly, and detailed in execution. See also William B.
Faherty, Better the Dream: Saint Louis, University and Community, 1818–1968 (St.
Louis, 1968).
17
For early efforts in Louisiana, see Baudier, Catholic Church in Louisiana, pp. 278,
293–95, 312; for Grand Coteau, ibid., pp. 328–29, and Garraghan, Jesuits, 3: chap. 33. For
Mobile, see Michael Kenny, Catholic Culture in Alabama: Centenary Story of Spring
Hill College, 1830–1930 (New York, 1931), and Oscar H. Lipscomb,“The Administration
of Michael Portier,Vicar Apostolic of Alabama and the Floridas, 1825–29, and First Bishop
of Mobile, 1829–1859” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 1963), esp. pp. 120ff.

BY PHILIP GLEASON

53

copate; they were thoroughly acquainted with such establishments
and convinced of their necessity. Hence, as diocesan organization
spread with the expansion of settlement, college founding kept pace
with these larger developments.
After 1840, new colleges multiplied so profusely that it becomes
impossible even to sketch their appearance. Edward J. Power, who
made a careful enumeration, lists sixty-five Catholic colleges established between 1841 and 1860.18 Among the more important of those
that still survive are Fordham (1841), Notre Dame (1842), Villanova
(1842), Holy Cross (1843), St. Vincent (1846), University of Dayton
(1850), Santa Clara (1851), Manhattan (1853), University of San
Francisco (1855), St. Bonaventure (1856), Niagara (1856), Seton Hall
(1856), St. John’s (Minnesota, 1857), and Boston College (1858).19
Massive Catholic population growth in the 1840s and 1850s led to
renewed new college-founding in the east. In addition to those
included in the listing above, there were others, such as St. Francis
Xavier in New York City (1846), and St. Joseph’s in Philadelphia (1851).
Moreover, all the leading men’s religious communities engaged in
higher education had at least one institution before the Civil War.The
Sulpicians, Jesuits, and Dominicans were first; besides their pioneering
efforts in Missouri, the Vincentians established what became Niagara
University near Buffalo in 1856; the Congregation of Holy Cross made
its debut at Notre Dame; the Augustinians arrived at Villanova (after
many years of parish work in Philadelphia); the Benedictines came to
Pennsylvania in the 1840s and to Indiana and Minnesota in the 1850s;
the Marianists entered the picture at Dayton; Manhattan College
became an important Christian Brothers school; and St. Bonaventure
marked a significant beginning for the Franciscans.
Despite a high institutional mortality rate, Catholic colleges were
clearly a well-established feature of the American educational scene
18
Power, History of Catholic Higher Education, Appendix A (pp. 255–32), lists men’s
colleges by date of foundation and gives a brief sketch of each.
19
Boston College illustrates the problem of dating college foundations. Power (p. 286)
gives 1858 as the date, but notes that only a prep course was offered until 1863, when
a charter was obtained. However, John McElroy, S.J., went to Boston in 1847 with the ultimate aim of opening a college there. Land was purchased for that purpose in 1853; the
building of the parish church and a day school was begun in 1857 or 1858, but the college itself did not actually open until 1864. See Gilbert J. Garraghan,“Origins of Boston
College, 1842–1869,” Thought, 17 (December, 1942), 627–56.

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CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

by 1860.We turn now to an examination of the nature and evolution
of these institutions.
***
As we look back into the past, the great historian Frederic W.
Maitland once observed,“the familiar outlines become blurred . . . and
instead of the simple we find the indefinite.” Elsewhere he stated that
to understand the origin of institutions as they presently exist, “we
shall have to think away distinctions which seem to us as clear as the
sunshine; we must think ourselves back into a twilight.”20 Maitland was
talking about the history of English law, but his insight applies equally
to the subject at hand, for in their early days, American Catholic colleges were not simplified and scaled-down versions of the institutions
we know today. They called themselves colleges (if not universities),
but they strike the modern eye as oddly misshapen and engaged in
activities that had little to do with higher education.
Equally unexpected is the discovery that the early bishops regarded
colleges as crucially important institutions.This was certainly not the
case in the twentieth century.True, recent concern over whether the
colleges and universities are losing (or have lost) their “Catholic identity,” has to some extent rekindled episcopal interest in higher education—especially since Rome began applying heavy pressure to deal
with the issue.21 Even so, the hierarchy’s commitment to Catholic colleges and universities today does not come close to that of the bishops
of the antebellum era. Why did they feel so strongly on the subject?
Answering that question highlights other differences between early
and modern Catholic colleges.
Nothing better illustrates the central importance the pioneering
bishops assigned to the college than the example of John Carroll and
Georgetown. Founding a college was Carroll’s first institution-building
20
Robert Livingston Schuyler, ed., Frederic William Maitland, Historian: Selections
from His Writings (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1960), pp. 96, 173–74. Henri de Lubac,
The Drama of Atheist Humanism (Cleveland and New York, 1963), p. 82, makes a similar point in writing that “progress consists in an increasingly clear distinction between
[. . . different aspects of things] at first perceived in a kind of chaotic unity.”
21
For an introduction to the issues, see Alice Gallin, ed., American Catholic Higher
Education: Essential Documents, 1967–1990 (Notre Dame, IN, 1992); Gallin, Negotiating Identity: Catholic Higher Education since 1960 (Notre Dame, IN, 2000), and Gallin,
ed., Ex Corde Ecclesiae: Documents Concerning Reception and Implementation (Notre
Dame, IN, 2006).

BY PHILIP GLEASON

55

project, and he regarded it as his most important undertaking. Indeed,
before he was raised to episcopal rank, Carroll wrote that the idea of
having a bishop in the United States was a corollary of the decision to
found a college. “About a year and a half ago,” he informed a newly
arrived priest in 1788,
a meeting was held of the Clergy of Maryland and Pennsylva[nia] on
their temporal concerns; and conversation devolving on the most effectual means of promoting the welfare of Religion it was agreed on to
attempt the establishment of a School and Seminary for the general education of Catholic youths, and the formation of Ecclesiastics to the ministry of Religion; and since the Ecclesiastics would want ordination, the
subject of Episcopacy was brought forward, and it was determined to
sollicit [sic] it.22

Carroll repeatedly stated that the college was the object nearest his
heart, the institution on which he rested his hopes for the future of the
Church in America. He was equally explicit about why he regarded the
college in this light: it would help to produce priests. Although he was
a cultivated man who had a genuine love of learning, those were not
the qualities that led him to struggle for the better part of a decade to
establish Georgetown and nurture it with fatherly solicitude until his
death in 1815. Rather, Carroll’s deep commitment to the college was a
direct function of his desperate need for priests. During Georgetown’s
first year of operation, Carroll avowed to three different correspondents his prayerful hope that “providence will attract many of the students of the college to the service of the church and that it will
become a nursery for the seminary [in Baltimore].”23 In the same year,
he reiterated that aspiration in his first pastoral letter, adding that such
priests would be “accustomed to our climate, and acquainted with the
tempers, manners, and government of the people, to whom they are to
dispense the ministry of salvation.”24
An institution that would help him build a native clergy—that was
enough for Carroll, who had to deal with many a troublesome “missionary adventurer,” and who was besieged throughout his years as a
22
John Carroll to William O’Brien, May 10, 1788, in Thomas O’Brien Hanley, ed., John
Carroll Papers (hereafter, JCP), 3 vols. (Notre Dame, IN, 1976), 1: 309. For fuller discussion, see Gleason,“Main Sheet Anchor.”
23
Carroll to Jean Hubert, January 20, 1792 (quotation); Carroll to Cardinal Antonelli,
April 23, 1792; Carroll to Charles Plowden,April 30, 1792. JCP, 2: 6, 27, 39.
24
Peter Guilday, ed., The National Pastorals of the American Hierarchy (1792–
1919) (rpt.,Westminster, MD, 1954), p. 5.

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CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

bishop by pathetic appeals for priests from every corner of his scattered flock. Only two months before his death, he wrote a line that
could serve as the leitmotiv of his episcopal career: “The dreadful
want of priests induced me to encourage every reasonable prospect
of multiplying them.”25 Among other expedients, Carroll was quite
prepared to skimp on the time seminarians devoted to “the finishing
of theological tracts,” noting very reasonably that “the education of
Cath[olic] clergymen . . . is much too tedious for the exigencies of this
country.”26
Carroll was merely the first among American bishops to grapple
with the frustrating problem of trying to meet the pastoral needs of a
burgeoning Catholic population with a totally inadequate number of
priests—and with a significant minority of unreliable vagrants among
the few available.Thus, Benedict J. Fenwick found only three priests in
the Diocese of Boston when, in 1825, he took over as the second
bishop of that see. Six years later, “daily chagrined by the dearth of
priests,” he lamented that he had not “the wherewithal to build a
Seminary.” After deciding that he could not expect “volunteers” to
come to him from without, Fenwick planned to “erect a College” to, in
his words, “lay myself the foundation of a good militia system to
secure a supply [of clergymen].”27
When Portier assumed responsibility for the region of Alabama and
the Floridas in 1826, he found only two priests in the whole territory—both subject to the jurisdiction from which they were on mission.28 Thus, his decision to make a college/seminary his first item of
business is hardly surprising. Eight years later, Bruté was scarcely better
off when he took the reins as the first ordinary of Vincennes. He had
two priests on loan from Flaget in Kentucky; one priest whom Rosati
intended to recall to St. Louis; and a fourth, Stephen T. Badin, a priest in
his mid-sixties doing freelance missionary work among the Native
25
Carroll to John Grassi, September 25, 1815, in JCP, 3: 360; for “missionary adventurers,” see Carroll to Francis Beeston, March 22, 1788, in JCP, 1: 292.
26
Carroll to John Grassi, November 30, 1813, in JCP, 3: 243–44.
27
John E. Sexton and Arthur J. Riley, History of Saint John’s Seminary, Brighton
(Boston, 1945), 30–33 (emphasis in original). Fenwick wrote in 1830 that a
college/seminary was “the thing I want most”; qtd. in Anthony J. Kuzniewski, Thy
Honored Name: A History of the College of the Holy Cross, 1841–1994 (Washington,
DC, 1999), p. 20.
28
Lipscomb,“Portier,” p. 70. Both of these priests left Portier’s diocese in 1827, ibid.,
pp. 101–02.

BY PHILIP GLEASON

57

Americans two hundred miles to the north.29 Like Dubourg and Portier
before him, Bruté promptly set out for Europe, where he recruited a
sizable group of missionaries, several of whom were seminarians
whose education he intended to complete in Indiana. Within four
years, he had a college/seminary underway at Vincennes.30 Of greater
significance for the future of Catholic higher education was the fact
that Bruté’s recruiting trip established a connection with the
Congregation of Holy Cross and planted the seed of missionary longing in the breast of Edward F. Sorin, the future founder of the University
of Notre Dame.31
Among the early bishops, the situation of Richard P. Miles was perhaps most parlous of all.A Maryland-born Kentuckian who joined the
Dominicans and attended St. Thomas of Aquin College, Miles was
named bishop of the new Diocese of Nashville in 1838. On arrival, he
found no priests in the entire diocese. After a year of ministering
single-handed to his tiny flock—three or four hundred Catholics scattered over 40,000 square miles—Miles finally received help when the
former rector of the seminary in Cincinnati came to lend a hand. Quite
understandably, Miles was eager to start a seminary of his own; at first,
there were only two students, but in due course, the seminary spun off
a college in which the seminarians acted as teachers.32
In these cases, college and seminary developed hand in hand, and
with the strongest kind of encouragement from the bishops.The college half of the arrangement was vital, not only because it funneled
clerical prospects into the seminary but also because it brought in
29
Mary S. Godecker, Simon Bruté de Rémur: First Bishop of Vincennes (St. Meinrad,
Ind.,1931), p. 229. Bruté described his situation to Bishop Frederic Rese in Detroit by
saying that his diocese had been created “en blanc,” and that he needed students for a
seminary. Bruté to Rese, March 4, 1835. University of Notre Dame Archives (hereafter
cited UNDA with the archival code designating the specific collection, which, in this
case, is CDET III-2-g).
30
Godecker, Bruté, pp. 253ff., 287–88, 356. Bruté died in June, 1839; a few months
later, his successor reportedly sold the college to the Eudist Fathers for $6,500; it had
fifty students and there was a seminary in a separate building. Joseph Rosati to Anthony
Blanc, November 23, 1839, UNDA-CANO V-4-I.
31
Marvin R. O’Connell, Edward Sorin (Notre Dame, IN, 2001), pp. 48–50, 53.
32
William S. Morris, The Seminary Movement in the United States: Projects,
Foundations, and Early Development, 1833–1866 (Washington, DC, 1932), pp. 48–49;
Victor F. O’Daniel, The Father of the Church in Tennessee, Or the Life, Times, and
Character of the Right Reverend Richard Pius Miles, O.P., the First Bishop of Nashville
(New York, 1926); Thomas Stritch, The Catholic Church in Tennessee: The
Sesquicentennial Story (Nashville, 1987), chaps. 2–3.

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CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

funds to support the seminarians. Indeed, England in Charleston and
Portier in Mobile intended to draw on college revenues for general
diocesan needs.33 More conventionally, the college was counted on to
maintain the seminary, as Rosati explained very clearly to his
Vincentian superiors, who were troubled by his establishment of a college for lay students at St. Mary of the Barrens. But the benefits did not
flow in one direction only; the college-seminary relationship was a
symbiotic affair, “the two establishments being intended to support
one another,” as the knowledgeable DuBourg put it.34 The seminary’s
contribution was in furnishing teachers and prefects (overseers of the
students’ behavior) for the college. As the seminarians drew no salary,
their attractiveness as faculty members was obvious.
Local support for Catholic colleges existed even in areas where
there were relatively few Catholics, for Protestants and those not affiliated with a church usually welcomed a college as an asset to their
community.35 There was nativist opposition, to be sure, and Lyman
Beecher’s widely circulated Plea for the West (1835) emphasized the
insidious role of Catholic colleges and academies in what he portrayed
as Rome’s campaign to subvert the republic.36 Yet nativism was a
33
Guilday, England, 1: 334, 337; Lipscomb,“Portier,” pp. 224–25. Concerning a school
he had founded earlier in New Orleans, Portier explained to Rome “that the institution
was important not only for the sake of instruction but because its income secured necessary funds for the mensa episcopalis [household of the bishop].” Ibid., p. 67.
34
Easterly, Rosati, 60–61; Baudier, Catholic Church in Louisiana, p. 294. In 1809, J. B.
David, a Sulpician who later served in Kentucky, acknowledged that college work was
contrary to the Society’s policy, but added,“. . . we are convinced more and more every
day that without the work of a college it would be impossible to have a seminary here,
having absolutely no other way of providing for the subsistence of the seminarians and
furnishing their education.” Melville, DuBourg, 1: 185.The historian of St. Mary’s College
in Baltimore writes that “the College actually saved the Seminary by carrying it through
the lean years when no tuitions at all were coming in [to the Seminary].” James J.
Kortendick,“A History of St. Mary’s College, Baltimore, 1799–1852” (M.A. thesis, Catholic
University of America, 1942), p. 47, emphasis in original.
35
Daniel Walker Howe is, I believe, mistaken in asserting that, being founded “in
advance of substantial Catholic immigration, these Catholic colleges aimed at winning
converts rather than serving an existing Catholic constituency.” Rather, their establishment and acceptance of non-Catholic students is better understood in terms of the complex of factors reviewed here. See Howe’s essay,“Religion and Education in the Young
Republic,” in Wilfred M. McClay, ed., Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person
in the American Past (Grand Rapids, MI, 2007), p. 393.
36
Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, 1835). Howe states (loc. cit., 393) that
Beecher was correct in interpreting the Catholic colleges “as an ideological challenge,”
but does not comment on the further implication that their founding was part of a plot
to subvert the republic. See also, Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1830–

BY PHILIP GLEASON

59

minor theme compared to the more positive reaction. Moreover, animosity expressed by an individual Protestant minister could easily be
mistaken for a broader groundswell of popular feeling. In 1836, for
example, the Jesuits in charge of St. Mary’s College in Kentucky
decided not to petition for a charter on account of an anti-Catholic
campaign mounted by a Presbyterian minister in nearby Bardstown.
But when a Catholic member of the state legislature initiated action
without consulting the Jesuits, the bill chartering St. Mary’s as a university passed unanimously in the lower house and with but one dissenting vote in the upper house.37
The fact that many Protestants sent their sons to Catholic colleges,
and their daughters to the academies for young women run by
Catholic sisters, testifies to the generally positive relations existing
between these institutions and their non-Catholic neighbors. This
widespread practice did, however, give rise to uneasiness on both
sides. For their part, conscientious Protestant parents could feel concern, as did Lucretia Clay, the wife of Henry Clay, when, in 1817, she
withdrew her son from Georgetown “lest he become a Catholic.”38
With the growth of nativist sentiment in later years, Protestant clergymen underlined the danger of Catholic proselytizing.Thus in 1835,
the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States
solemnly resolved that “it is utterly inconsistent with the strongest
obligation of Christian parents to place their children for education
in Roman Catholic seminaries [i.e., colleges and academies].” The
Jesuits in Kentucky responded to suspicions of proselytizing in the
colleges by adopting the rule that no student under the age of
twenty-one could be received into the Church without the permission of his parents.39
1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism (New York, 1938), pp. 125–26. For
nativism at St. Louis University, see Faherty, Better the Dream, pp. 95–105; for the situation at Holy Cross, see Kuzniewski, Thy Honored Name, pp. 70–76. Cecilia Meighan,
“Nativism and Catholic Higher Education, 1840–1860” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University,
1972), deals only with these two schools.
37
Francis X. Curran, “The Jesuits in Kentucky, 1831–1845,” Mid-America, n.s., 24
(1953), 234–35 (reprinted in Curran, Return of the Jesuits, p. 67).
38
Gilbert J. Garraghan, “John Anthony Grassi, S.J., 1779–1849,” Catholic Historical
Review (hereafter CHR), 23 (October, 1937), p. 280.
39
For the Presbyterians, see Thomas T. McAvoy, ed.,“Bishop Bruté’s Report to Rome in
1836,” CHR, 29 (July, 1943),pp. 230–31. For the Kentucky Jesuits, see Curran,“Jesuits in
Kentucky,” p. 231 (Curran, Return of Jesuits, p. 65). For a proselytization controversy in
California in the early 1850s, see Gerald McKevitt, The University of Santa Clara: A
History, 1851–1977 (Stanford, CA, 1979), pp. 42–43.

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CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

Although Catholic leaders in the antebellum period realized that,
as a practical matter, their colleges could not survive without
Protestant students, they too felt misgivings about the situation. In
fact, Benedict Fenwick, bishop of Boston, decreed from the outset that
the College of the Holy Cross was to be exclusively Catholic.40 Yet
Bruté, who had given much thought to the matter, pointed out that
religiously mixed colleges also had beneficial results. Although relatively few of the “great number of Protestant students” became converts, many more gained a better understanding of Catholicism.After
they left the colleges, some even “conduct[ed] themselves as so many
apologists of the faith, of the Church and its practices, and of the
clergy in whose care they [had] lived.”41 Dubois, Bruté’s old friend
from his days at Mount St. Mary’s, was even more positive. He agreed
that the prejudices of Protestant students were reduced, but added
that Catholic students also benefited from learning early (and under
Catholic auspices) to get along with Protestants, as they would have
to do in later life. Moreover, he pointed out, friendly associations
formed in the college years could very well prove socially or politically advantageous later on.42
For the most part, then, Catholic colleges were well received and
successful in attracting as many students as their meager facilities and
few teachers could handle. Initial building costs and later expansion
could weigh a place down with debt, and there was considerable attrition of the weaker schools over time. But the early bishops were amply
justified in prizing the colleges as institutions that nurtured vocations
to the priesthood; supported the training of seminarians; constituted
40
Kuzniewski, Thy Honored Name, pp. 21–22. For another bishop deeply concerned
over “our nondescript Catholic-Protestant colleges,” see S. J. Miller, “Peter Richard
Kenrick, Bishop and Archbishop of St. Louis, 1806–1896,” RACHS, 84 (March–September,
1973), pp. 31–32. For an extreme view of the disadvantages of religious mixing, see the
1837 document reproduced in Vincent M. Eaton,“Sulpician Involvement in Educational
Projects in the See and Province of Baltimore,” U. S. Catholic Historian, 2 (1982), pp.
77–78. Discussion of the subject at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884)
revealed continuing concern on the part of the bishops. Then and later, however,
Catholic institutions in the far west still needed Protestant students to survive. See
Francis P. Cassidy,“Catholic Education in the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore,” CHR,
34 (January, 1949), pp. 419–21; and McKevitt, Santa Clara, p. 146.
41
McAvoy, “Bishop Bruté’s Report,” p. 230; see also, Kenny, Catholic Culture in
Alabama, p. 77, and Garraghan, Jesuits, 3:125.
42
John Dubois to Benedict J. Fenwick,April 17, 1834,Archives of the Archdiocese of
Boston. Dubois was explaining his reasons for disagreeing with Fenwick on the subject
of exclusively Catholic colleges.

BY PHILIP GLEASON

61

centers of Catholic influence; and might even, for good measure, mitigate anti-Catholic prejudice.
The early bishops thus saw Catholic colleges as filling a vital need.
Those in authority over religious communities regarded them as even
more crucially important, since the college provided in many cases the
initial base on which the community depended for its subsequent
development. The Dominicans furnish a clear example. They did not,
in fact, specialize in college or seminary work once they were established, yet Edward Fenwick started with a college in mind when he set
out to plant the Dominican Order in the United States. John B. Purcell,
Fenwick’s successor as bishop (later archbishop) of Cincinnati, suggested the same approach to the Franciscans—in requesting them to
set up a stable foundation in his diocese, he recommended that they
begin with a college.43
Kohlmann was the most explicit in discussing the “foothold” function of a college. Explaining his strategy in founding the New York
Literary Institution, Kohlmann said that a college for boys was one of
three things “essentially necessary” if the Catholic religion was to
flourish in an area (the others, incidentally, were a sisters’ academy for
girls and an orphanage). Kohlmann also urged the Jesuit authorities to
set up colleges in Philadelphia and Boston as well, so that the Society
of Jesus could, as it were, take possession of those important cities
before other religious communities could do so.44 Writing almost
forty years later, the Jesuit superior in Missouri used the same argument in reference to California. There was talk of a railroad from St.
Louis to San Francisco, he informed the Jesuit General in 1849; when
that link was completed, “the importance to the [S]ociety of having
there a foothold, a college, is inestimable.”45 Other religious orders
seemed to act on this principle even if unstated, or perhaps not even
clearly perceived. The Congregation of Holy Cross, for example, did
43
Fenwick entered the Dominican Order in Belgium “with the express view of establishing it and a Dominican college in his native country for the education of youth the
preparation of young men for the priesthood.” O’Daniel, Fenwick, p. 111; see also, pp. 54,
83–84, 88–89. For Purcell and the Franciscans, see John B. Purcell to Bernardine
Castelfranco, October 4, 1858, UNDA-CACI II-4-n.
44
“Some Unpublished Letters of Father Anthony Kohlmann, S.J., HRS, 1 (1899). p. 76.
Curran, “The Founding of Fordham University and the New York Mission 1848–1850,”
Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 26 (1957), p. 294 (reprinted in Curran, Return of
Jesuits, p. 107.)
45
Garraghan, Jesuits, 2: 418.

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CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

not set out for Indiana with the idea of setting up a college in the
Diocese of Vincennes; yet within six months of its arrival, a college
had become the goal.A similar situation occurred with the Society of
Mary in the Diocese of Cincinnati.46
If the college is regarded as a generalized base for further expansion, it becomes more understandable that a good deal besides collegiate instruction went on in and around it. Notre Dame, whose
early history is well documented, illustrates this kind of diffuseness
quite strikingly. A short time after Father Sorin and his handful of
Holy Cross brothers arrived in November 1842, the tiny mission station founded earlier by Father Badin had become an all-purpose
center of Catholic life.47
Priests from Notre Dame attended to the pastoral needs of the faithful, including the Catholic Potawatomies, at a dozen scattered settlements as far away as Kalamazoo in Michigan. At Notre Dame, an extensive farm included marl-producing land that gave the community a
local monopoly of that commodity. Selling lots from the land holdings
later made Sorin a real estate developer; as the local Catholic population increased, a little village called Sorinville grew up between Notre
Dame and South Bend. In addition to running the farm and harvesting
ice from two lakes on the property in winter, Holy Cross brothers
operated a number of shops at Notre Dame, mostly for the domestic
needs of the community. Sorin acquired a printing press, although little
use was made of it; in 1865, however, Notre Dame began publication
of Ave Maria, a popular devotional magazine, from which a broader
religious publishing business developed.
Extensive apprenticeship training was carried on in the brothers’
Manual Labor School, which was begun originally for orphans whose
care Sorin undertook.A mile or so away, Holy Cross sisters, who were
46
John T.Wack,“The University of Notre Dame du Lac: Foundation, 1841–1857” (Ph.D.
diss., University of Notre Dame, 1967), p. 16; O’Connell, Sorin, chap. 6, esp. pp. 98–100;
John E. Garvin, The Centenary of the Society of Mary (Dayton, OH, 1917), pp. 101–04,
168 ff.; and Christopher J. Kauffman, Education and Transformation: Marianist
Ministries in America since 1849 (New York, 1999), chap. 2, esp., pp. 53–58.
47
The following description is based mainly on Wack,“University of Notre Dame”; see
Edward Sorin, The Chronicles of Notre Dame du Lac, trans. John M.Toohey, ed. James T.
Connelly (Notre Dame, IN, 1992);Thomas J. Schlereth, The University of Notre Dame: A
Portrait of Its History and Campus (Notre Dame, IN, 1976), pp. 1–33; and Arthur J.
Hope, Notre Dame: One Hundred Years, rev. ed. (South Bend, IN, 1978), chaps. 4–6.

BY PHILIP GLEASON

63

also under Sorin’s direction, established a successful academy for girls.
It developed in time into Saint Mary’s College, which continues to
flourish as a Catholic women’s college. Novitiate programs for nuns,
brothers, and priests were soon under way. Colonies of sisters and
brothers, sometimes accompanied by a priest, were dispatched to
teach in parish schools or direct orphanages in distant cities such as
New Orleans, Cincinnati, and New York. Seminarians from various dioceses were accepted for training along with candidates for the Holy
Cross community.
In the midst of this buzzing confusion, the college occupied a central place. But it was so interwoven with the whole web of activities
that it blended into a species of “indefinite homogeneity” with other
aspects of Catholic religious energy. Planted so early in a region that
was just beginning to grow, and guided by a man of immense energy
and rare talent as a promoter and entrepreneur, Notre Dame exhibits
the phenomenon more vividly than many other Catholic colleges.
Indeed, as late as 1918, Notre Dame struck a visiting churchman from
England as “rather [more] a colony than a college.”48 Yet a similar situation can be seen in the early days of Mount St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg.
Even eminently urban places such as Fordham and Seton Hall were
located in the country when founded; they had their own farms and
shared the Catholic outpost character, although to a lesser degree.
***
Just as the early colleges were only fuzzily differentiated from other
aspects of Catholic life, their internal composition and operation
exhibit an analogous mixed-together quality. The term “mixed” college
is most often applied to places that accepted candidates for the priesthood as well as lay students, but that was only one aspect of the
“mixed” nature of these institutions.
As previously noted, the willingness of Protestants and other nonCatholics to attend Catholic colleges made for more diverse enrollments
than was the case in the late nineteenth century, or in the first three
quarters of the twentieth. At Georgetown, Protestants accounted for
about one-third of the student body in the antebellum decades; at midcentury, the same was true of St. Joseph’s College in Bardstown.
48
F.W. [Frederick William Keating], bishop of Northampton,“Impressions of Catholic
America,” Dublin Review, 164 (April, 1919), pp. 171–72. See McKevitt, Santa Clara, p.
98, for a similar remark about that school in 1870.

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CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

Concerning the Midwestern Jesuit colleges as a whole, Garraghan wrote
in 1938 that “the proportion of non-Catholic students . . . was often far in
excess of what it is today.”49 Eager for students, Catholic colleges
accepted anyone they could attract. Their prospectuses routinely contained language to the effect that, although the college was under
Catholic auspices, nothing would be suffered to offend the conscience
of Protestant students—although for the sake of uniform discipline, they
were usually required to attend religious services.50 The latter provision
naturally gave rise to resentment and occasional defiance on the part of
Protestant students.51 Indeed,at least one bishop—Peter R.Kenrick of St.
Louis—considered the practice “morally wrong as it either offers violence to conscience, or generates [religious] indifferentism.”52
Complications of this sort no doubt contributed to the feeling,
expressed more frequently after midcentury, that it would be desirable to accept only Catholic students. However, there were other
factors as well. The most fundamental was demographic, for it was
only the rapid increase of the Catholic population that made such a
policy at all feasible, and then only in the older settled areas. More
immediately relevant as a catalyst was the midcentury eruption of
nativist feeling, as educational issues—especially Bible-reading in
the classroom and efforts to obtain public funding for Catholic
schools—were central to Protestant-Catholic conflict in the 1840s
49
Garraghan, Jesuits, 3: 125; for precise percentages at Georgetown by decade, see R.
E. Curran, Georgetown, pp. 410, 412, 414, 415; the figure for St. Joseph’s is derived from
the college’s manuscript “Register of Students 1848–1861,” in the Archives of the
Missouri Province, Society of Jesus, of which a microfilm copy is available in UNDA-MPIC
reel 28. McKevitt, Santa Clara, pp. 40, 90, says half the students were Protestants in Santa
Clara’s early years.
50
An early prospectus for Mount St. Mary’s put it this way: “The Catholic Religion
alone is professed, but without encroaching upon the liberty of conscience of those children [sic] who should profess another, although attendance to the Divine service and
the customary exercises can by no means be dispensed with.” Prospectus accompanying Bruté to William Gaston, April 12, 1825, UNDA-CDCH/5. For Georgetown’s first
prospectus, see R. E. Curran, Georgetown, p. 26.
51
In 1850, eighteen Protestant students withdrew from St. Joseph’s, Bardstown, after
unsuccessfully protesting the requirement that they attend religious services; see
Garraghan, Jesuits, 3: 306–07. For other examples, see Wack,“University of Notre Dame,”
p. 324, and Nelson J. Callahan, ed., The Diary of Richard L. Burtsell, Priest of New York:
The Early Years, 1865–1868 (New York, 1971), p. 146.
52
Kenrick went on to point out the inconsistency of objecting to religious mixture
in the public schools, but allowing it in Catholic colleges. See Peter R. Kenrick to John
B. Purcell, March 27, 1843, quoted in Miller,“Peter Richard Kenrick,” RACHS, 84 (1973),
p. 36.

BY PHILIP GLEASON

65

and 1850s.53 Parochial schools were the main focus of controversy,
but nativism spilled over into higher education when, in 1849, the
legislature of Massachusetts refused to grant a charter to the College
of the Holy Cross. Ironically, the college’s Catholics-only admission
policy, although it obviated the proselytizing issue, was regarded as
disabling because it made Holy Cross too sectarian to deserve official recognition from the Commonwealth.54 This action—widely
and indignantly reported in the Catholic press—embittered the
atmosphere and reinforced a defiantly go-it-alone attitude on the
part of Catholic educators. Mount St. Mary’s, which had long admitted Protestants, announced a Catholics-only policy in 1851, thereby
earning the blessing of the militantly Catholic New York Freeman’s
Journal.55 Bishop Purcell of Cincinnati also wrote in approbation of
“your experiment of having none but Catholic boys,” and Bishop
Martin J. Spalding of Louisville had earlier expressed himself along
the same lines. Neither of these prelates was enforcing a strict
Catholics-only admission policy in their own dioceses, but their
statements reflected the worsening interreligious climate.56
The college-seminary arrangement noted earlier constitutes
another kind of mixed-togetherness.As the Sulpicians were available
in Baltimore to accept students when they were ready for higher
ecclesiastical studies, Georgetown began as a school for lay students
only. But when tensions arose between the ex-Jesuits and the
Sulpicians, Georgetown proceeded to add work in philosophy that
the Sulpicians had previously understood was reserved to them as
the first stage of strictly seminary work. After the partial restoration
53
For a recent and wide-ranging discussion, see John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and
American Freedom: A History (New York, 2003), introduction and chap. 1.
54
Kuzniewski, Thy Honored Name, pp. 21–22, 70–76. Holy Cross is generally considered the first college to adopt a Catholics-only policy; however, Power, History of
Catholic Higher Education, 266, notes that St. Mary’s College in Wilmington, DE, did so
as well. It opened as a parish school in 1839, added college classes in 1847, and closed
in 1868.
55
New York Freeman’s Journal, August 9, 1851. A few years later, the president of
Mount St. Mary’s reported that enrollment stood at 170 boys, adding “(thank God! all
Catholics)”; see John McCaffrey to John B. Purcell, July 11, 1855. UNDA-CACI II-4-m.
56
For Purcell, who had earlier been president at Emmitsburg, see Meline and
McSweeny, Story of the Mountain, 1: 474–75; for Spalding, see the letter reproduced in
Garraghan, Jesuits, 3: facing p. 304. Although Protestants still attended St. Xavier College
in Cincinnati, Purcell required the Marianists to restrict attendance to Catholics at St.
Mary’s (later the University of Dayton), which they opened in 1850. See Kauffman,
Education and Transformation, p. 58.

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CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

of the Society of Jesus (which took place in America in 1805),
Georgetown provided theological training for Jesuit seminarians
(“scholastics,” in Jesuit parlance).This was but the first of a series of
ad-hoc arrangements that continued until 1869, when Woodstock
College opened is doors as a “central scholasticate” for all the
American Jesuits.57
Official Sulpician policy strongly opposed the mixed college/seminary. But as previously noted, St. Mary’s College in Baltimore began as
an adjunct to the seminary; Mount St. Mary’s was a mixed institution
from the outset. Indeed, Mount St. Mary’s continued to operate as a
combined college/seminary until the very recent past—the longestlived survivor of the type that dominated the Catholic scene until the
middle of the nineteenth century. By that time, increasing Catholic
numbers and greater institutional stability made it possible to establish
“free-standing” seminaries, i.e., those accepting clerical prospects
only.58 The same combination of factors—numerical growth and institutional stability—finally enabled the Sulpicians to do in 1848 what
they had long desired: open a successful petit séminaire.The fact that
eighteen years elapsed between their acquisition of the property on
which it stood, and the actual opening of St. Charles College in Ellicott
City, Maryland, indicates just how difficult it was to make minor seminaries a reality.59
The use of seminarians as teachers in the colleges made sense for
the reasons noted earlier, but it clearly reinforced the intermixture of
the two kinds of institutions. However, this practice—and the occa57

Carroll and most of the other priests connected with Georgetown in its early years
were “ex-Jesuits” because the Society of Jesus had been suppressed by papal decree in
1773.That status was not fully rescinded until 1814; see Gleason,“Main Sheet Anchor,”
pp. 576–77, 602–10. For Jesuit seminary training, see Gilbert J. Garraghan,“The Project of
a Common Scholasticate for the Society of Jesus in North America,” Archivum
Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2 (1933), 1–10; and Edmund G. Ryan,“An Academic History
of Woodstock College in Maryland (1869–1944): The First Jesuit Seminary in North
America” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 1964).
58
Joseph M.White, The Diocesan Seminary in the United States:A History from the
1780s to the Present (Notre Dame, IN, 1989), chap. 3; see also, Philip Gleason,
“Boundlessness, Consolidation, and Discontinuity between Generations: Catholic
Seminary Studies in Antebellum America,” Church History, 73 (September, 2004),
583–612.
59
See Kauffman, Tradition and Transformation, pp. 122–23, and John J.Tierney,“St.
Charles College: Foundation and Early Years,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 43 (1948),
294–311.

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BY PHILIP GLEASON

sional use of other older students as teachers60—which resembles the
contemporary use of graduate students as teaching assistants, probably
seems to us more reasonable than the bewildering mixture of instructional levels and the accompanying mélange of little boys, adolescents,
and mature young men who composed the student bodies of antebellum Catholic colleges.61 Georgetown’s first student, William Gaston
(later a prominent judge in North Carolina), was only twelve years old
when he came to the college; he grew six inches in his first year there.
The future cardinal, John McCloskey, was a year younger when he
entered Mount St. Mary’s. Spring Hill College in Mobile even advertised
that no student over twelve would be admitted, but that restriction
lasted only a few months.62
Anecdotal evidence of this sort abounds, but student registers from
the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and St.
Joseph’s College in Bardstown, Kentucky, provide material for a statistical analysis of the situation in those two institutions (see Table 1).63
TABLE 1.
Number and Age at Entry of Students at Two Catholic Colleges
School
and Period
Covered

Number Age 12
of
& Under
Students
(%)

Age
13–14
(%)

Age
15–16
(%)

Age
17–18
(%)

Age
19+
(%)

Holy Cross
1842–1853

401

115
(28.7%)

119
(29.7%)

87
(21.7 %)

45
(11.2%)

35
(8.7%)

St. Joseph
1848–1861

905

171
(18.9%)

180
(19.9%)

271
(29.9%)

188
(20.8%)

95
(10.5%)

60
Martin J. Spalding, future bishop of Louisville and archbishop of Baltimore, taught
mathematics at St. Mary’s College in Kentucky while still in his early teens. See John L.
Spalding, The Life of the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore (New
York, 1873), pp. 23–25.
61
Catholic institutions were not unique in this regard; see, for example, Geiger,
American College, pp. 88–89. R. E. Curran, Georgetown, p. 342 n. 26, reports, however,
that Catholic colleges enrolled larger numbers of very young students than non-Catholic
schools. For the ages of Georgetown students in the antebellum years, see ibid., pp. 28,
69, 168–69.
62
J. Herman Schauinger, William Gaston, Carolinian (Milwaukee, 1949), pp. 8, 11;
Meline and McSweeny, Story of the Mountain, 1:101; Kenny, Catholic Culture in
Alabama, pp. 70, 71.
63
The statistics are derived from student registers of the two schools; that for Holy
Cross is in that institution’s archives; that for St. Joseph’s is identified above at n. 49.

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CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

These figures show that more than a quarter of the students who
enrolled at Holy Cross in the first decade or so of its existence were
twelve years of age or younger on entering the “college,” while only
about a fifth were close to what is now the normal age for beginning
undergraduates. Perhaps because it was an older school (founded in
1819), St. Joseph’s had somewhat fewer really young entrants at midcentury, as well as a significantly higher proportion who started their
college work at seventeen or older. But the overwhelming majority of
its students, too, were at the age level of today’s middle- and high-school
students.Although age levels crept upward over time, this situation persisted throughout the nineteenth century. Indeed, a careful survey of
Catholic colleges published in 1916 showed that prep-level students
still outnumbered true “collegians” by two-to-one at that late date.64
To serve the age range of its clientele, the old-time Catholic college
offered elementary courses such as spelling, penmanship, and basic
English grammar, as well as more demanding college-level work. Very
few students finished the whole course of studies; many left after only
a year or two, and the insistence of parents that their sons learn practical skills led to the introduction of “commercial” or “scientific” programs that bypassed the classical languages. But classical learning
remained the ideal, especially among the Jesuits, and students who did
complete the full classical course of studies received a thorough
grounding in Latin and some acquaintance with Greek. They also
received solid doses of mathematics, natural science, and philosophy.65
Even at the better schools, however, the wide range in the age of students and in the levels of instruction offered made for an amorphous
hodgepodge that seems strange to modern eyes.
The elementary character of many of the courses obviously facilitated the use of seminarians or older boys as teachers, and makes it
more understandable that one man could be credited with setting up
a college single-handedly—as seen in the case of Father William Byrne
64
See “Report on the Attendance at Catholic Colleges and Universities in the United
States,” Catholic Educational Association Bulletin, 12 (August, 1916), 5–19.
65
In the two general histories cited in n. 3, Power is highly critical of the education
provided by the old-time Catholic college.Their course offerings did not, however, differ
greatly from those of the “multipurpose colleges” described by Geiger. See Geiger,
American College, pp. 127–52, esp. 138–39. For details on the education offered at two
Catholic colleges, see R. E. Curran, Georgetown, pp. 189–202, and Philip Gleason,“The
Curriculum of the Old-Time Catholic College: A Student’s View,” RACHS, 85 (March–
December, 1977), 101–22, which deals with Holy Cross.

BY PHILIP GLEASON

69

at St. Mary’s in Kentucky. Even so, the conventional judgment that
these institutions were not “really” colleges at all requires some qualification.True, they were not what we now understand colleges to be,
but neither were they entirely different from other American “colleges”
of the antebellum era, virtually all of which had their own “prep”
departments.66 But more important, early Catholic educators were
working with a different model of collegiate education from the one
that became standard in the United States.They conceived of the “college” along the lines of the French lycée or the German Gymnasium—
that is, a college was understood to be a boys’ school in which students
in their early teens took a six-year course of studies covering what
today would be considered as secondary and lower-level college
work.67 The Jesuits were particularly committed to this organizational
model, as it was built into the Ratio Studiorum (plan of studies) they
had been following since the late 1500s.Their loyalty to the tradition
made it more difficult to adjust to the American pattern, something not
fully achieved until the first decades of the twentieth century.68 For the
period under consideration here, however, its European derivation
helped to give the old-time Catholic college its amorphous, “mixed”
quality.
***
By the middle decades of the nineteenth century, changes become
discernible that point in the direction of a more “coherent heterogeneity” in Catholic higher education. Much remained as it had been,
but a certain differentiation of function was also beginning to emerge.
Although the shift has not been studied in detail, its general outlines
are clear enough.
The numerical growth and institutional stabilization already mentioned were basic to the newly emerging pattern.The Catholic population shot up from approximately 600,000 in 1840 to between 2.5
and 3 million in 1860. The tidal wave of immigration responsible for
66
For prep students in other colleges, see Geiger, American College, p. 131, and
Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University: A History (New York, 1962),
pp. 281–82. Elsewhere, Rudolph comments on the “remarkable degree” to which
Catholic institutions resembled “any other denominational colleges.” Ibid., p. 514.
67
In setting up Georgetown, Carroll clearly followed the pattern of the Jesuit schools
he knew in Europe; see Gleason,“Main Sheet Anchor,” esp. pp. 591–98.
68
See Kathleen A. Mahoney, Catholic Higher Education in Protestant America: The
Jesuits and Harvard in the Age of the University (Baltimore, 2003), esp. chap. 5, and
Philip Gleason, Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the
Twentieth Century (New York, 1995), pp. 5–6, 29–32, 51–61.

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CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

such growth brought monumental problems, to be sure, but the
Church’s institutional structure was able to absorb the shock.69 Poor as
the immigrants were, their very numbers, along with the accumulating
resources of the older-settled Catholics, made things possible that
could not have been done if Catholics had remained numerically
weak. New ecclesiastical jurisdictions multiplied, and impressive
cathedrals were erected in several cities, including the cornerstone of
the most imposing of all, St. Patrick’s in New York, being laid in 1858.70
Distinguished converts like Orestes Brownson and Isaac Hecker invigorated Catholic intellectual life, and the number of Catholic newspapers and magazines tripled in the two decades before the Civil War.71
In respect to clerical education, the first successful minor seminary
opened in 1848, and free-standing seminaries were poised to displace
the older college-seminary model.These stronger, free-standing institutions often served more than one diocese, thus facilitating the shift
from local seminaries of the “mixed” variety.72 To the extent they no
longer needed college/seminaries, the bishops had less reason to concern themselves with college education as such.
Something else that served to weaken episcopal interest in the colleges was the fact that religious orders were increasingly taking over
responsibility for collegiate education. This development was by no
means unwelcome to the bishops—although the diocesan clergy
sometimes complained.73 Bishops had been eager from the beginning
to get religious communities to operate their colleges, or to found
69
For Catholic growth and the mentality accompanying it, see Robert F. Hueston, The
Catholic Press and Nativism, 1840–1860 (New York, 1976), pp. 33–41, 48–51, 158–61.
For a brief but sophisticated discussion of Catholic population statistics, see the entry by
Patricia Wittberg in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier
and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN, 1997), pp. 287–89.
70
The number of dioceses, archdioceses, and vicariates increased from sixteen in
1840 to forty-six in 1860, and Hueston, Catholic Press and Nativism, p. 161, reports that
“[b]etween 1850 and 1854 at least fourteen dioceses either completed cathedrals or had
them under construction.”
71
There were seven Catholic newspapers and magazines in 1840 and twenty-one in
1860.The invigoration of intellectual life included a sharp critique of Catholic seminary
education by Brownson’s Quarterly Review; see Gleason, “Boundlessness, Consolidation, and Discontinuity,” pp. 588–92.
72
Thus twenty of the twenty-one dioceses formed up to 1843 made some sort of provision for clerical education locally, but only four of the twenty-three formed between
1847 and 1857 attempted local seminaries; see White, Diocesan Seminary, pp. 63, 65.
73
See, for example,Thomas Spalding, Martin John Spalding, p. 16.
74
The French Jesuits at St. Mary’s in Kentucky were importuned to open colleges by
the bishops of Cincinnati, Dubuque, Vincennes, Nashville, Natchez, Little Rock, Pitts-

BY PHILIP GLEASON

71

them where none existed.74 But only after 1840 did the increasing
availability of religious communities allow the movement to gain
momentum. The process is clearly observable in the Ohio-Mississippi
valley where the Jesuits took over a number of colleges originally
established by bishops. In Kentucky, both the colleges founded under
diocesan aegis passed for a time into Jesuit hands: St. Mary’s from 1832
to 1846; St. Joseph’s from 1848 to 1868. Edward Fenwick’s college in
Cincinnati, called by him the Athenaeum, became St. Xavier College in
1840 when Fenwick’s successor prevailed on the Jesuits from St. Louis
to accept it. St. Louis University itself was, in a sense, refounded by the
Jesuits, but they had inherited DuBourg’s old St. Louis College. Further
south, the Jesuits were the third religious order to operate Portier’s
Spring Hill College. In the east, the Jesuits acquired Holy Cross and
Fordham, both of which began under episcopal auspices.
The growth of the Jesuits, which allowed them to assume responsibility for so many colleges, was matched by the appearance of new
religious communities on the educational scene. As noted earlier, the
Congregation of Holy Cross, the Augustinians, the Marianists, the
Benedictines, the Christian Brothers, and the Franciscans all entered
the picture in the 1840s and 1850s. Still other groups, such as the
Eudists and the Fathers of Mercy, entered college work in these years
but without lasting success.75 Because these religious orders had their
own chains of command, their colleges were not under the immediate
the authority of the bishops, nor so closely tied to other dimensions of
Catholic life over which the bishops presided.To the extent that this
occurred, the boundary between higher education and the general life
of the Church was becoming more clearly defined.
The displacement of the college from the forefront of episcopal
burgh, and Charleston. Ultimately, they left Kentucky to take over the struggling college
that became Fordham University. F. X. Curran, “Jesuits in Kentucky,” 223–46 (rpt. in
Return of the Jesuits, pp. 57–80).
75
In 1852, Bishop John J. Chanche of Natchez told Archbishop Anthony Blanc of New
Orleans that the Eudists had failed dismally in running a college in his diocese and said
that he (Chanche) was the third bishop whom they had made fools of. One such bishop
was Celestine de la Hailandiere of Vincennes, who had warned Chanche against the
Eudists. Chanche to Blanc, February 21, 1852, UNDA-CANO VI-1-c. The other bishop
whom the Eudists disappointed in college work was Portier of Mobile; they came to him
from Vincennes, but left before the year was out. Before that, Portier had a bad experience with the Fathers of Mercy, who had charge of Spring Hill from 1840 to 1842. See
Lipscomb,“Portier,” pp. 243–44, 237–42, and Kenny, Catholic Culture in Alabama, pp.
102–09.

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CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

concern was massively reinforced by the emergence of the parochial
school as the key educational institution and the centerpiece of strife
between Catholics and Protestants.The bishops had, of course, taken
passing note of lower-level schools from an early date, but it was only
when so-called “common schools” became a widespread phenomenon
that they really began to emphasize parochial schools and to seek a
share of tax money for their support. The failure of Bishop Hughes’s
epic struggle for public funds in New York (1840–42) was the first
major landmark in this development.Two years later, the issue of Biblereading in public schools was deeply implicated in the anti-Catholic
rioting that broke out in Philadelphia; in the early 1850s, unsuccessful
campaigns in a half-dozen states to win a share of the school fund
fueled the nativist Know-Nothing movement.76 Because the “common
schools” were steeped in a generically Protestant religiosity, many
Catholic leaders regarded them as proselytizing agencies. Not all held
this position with equal fervor, but there were enough atrocity stories—children ridiculed for their faith, expelled for staying out of
school on holy days, and so on—to persuade many bishops that public
schools were a proximate danger to the faith of Catholic youngsters.77
The resulting campaign to provide parochial schools obviously
required the recruitment of teaching personnel.That need was met—
in what must have seemed providential manner—by the fabulous
growth of religious sisterhoods. A striking feature of the Catholic
revival of the nineteenth century was the formation of new religious
communities to which unprecedented numbers of young women
were attracted. As the parochial school campaign took shape at mid76
Vincent P. Lannie, Public Money and Parochial Education: Bishop Hughes,
Governor Seward and the New York School Controversy (Cleveland, 1968); Austin
Flynn,“The School Controversy in New York, 1840–1842 and Its Effect on the Formation
of Catholic Elementary School Policy” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 1964);
Vincent P. Lannie and Bernard C. Diethorn, “For the Honor and Glory of God: The
Philadelphia Bible Riots of 1844,” History of Education Quarterly, 8 (Spring, 1968),
44–106; Billington, Protestant Crusade, pp. 292–95. Hueston, Catholic Press and
Nativism, p. 179, notes that the “widespread and seemingly coordinated Catholic crusade against the new public school system,” along with a strident emphasis on parochial
schools, was “a prime cause for the revival of nativism in the 1850’s.”
77
For the best known atrocity story, see Lord, Sexton, and Harrington, Archdiocese of
Boston, 2: 587–600; Howard R.Weisz, Irish-American and Italian-American
Educational Views and Activities, 1870–1900 (New York, 1976), pp. 97–123, gives other
examples of tension and ill treatment. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom,
pp. 7–11, 38–42, 112–22, sets the school question within the larger context of clashing
Catholic and liberal worldviews.

BY PHILIP GLEASON

73

century, the number of religious sisterhoods active in the United States
grew by leaps and bounds. In 1840, there were fifteen such communities and just over 900 individual sisters; twenty years later, the corresponding figures were sixty-six communities and more than 5,000 sisters. Not all of these nuns were engaged in teaching, but that became
the sisters’ primary field of activity. Bishops eagerly sought them out to
staff the parochial schools.78
Although much fewer in numbers than the sisters, religious brothers were also in great demand, especially as some of the orders of nuns
were unwilling to teach boys in the upper grades—the Sisters of Notre
Dame de Namur, to cite an extreme case, did not admit boys above the
fourth grade until 1922.79 Although a few religious brothers had
appeared earlier on the American scene, no community established
itself permanently until after 1840.As the parochial school movement
developed over the next twenty years, nine such religious orders took
up their work in this country.80 The Christian Brothers, who eventually established colleges of their own, were the best known, but the
case of the Holy Cross brothers is particularly revealing as a barometer
of the shifting interests of the bishops vis-à-vis colleges.
As was also true of the Marianists in Ohio, the bishop who recruited
the Holy Cross community to Indiana was primarily interested in getting teaching brothers.81 Sorin accompanied the brothers as their
chaplain and religious superior, not as the potential founder of a college. Indeed, he had to move his base of operations two hundred miles
from its original location near Vincennes before he could establish a
university. Although Sorin continued to build up the brothers and
expand the scope of their activities, all that took place within the
larger framework of the multifaceted colony that Notre Dame quickly
became. By 1858, a later bishop of Vincennes accused Sorin (among
78
For statistics, see George C. Stewart, Jr.,“Women Religious in America, Demographic
Overview,” in Glazier and Shelley, Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, pp.
1496–98; for a brief narrative treatment, see Karen Kennelly, “Women Religious in
America,” in ibid., pp. 1489–96.
79
See Mary Ewens, The Role of the Nun in Nineteenth-Century America (New York,
1978), pp. 124–28.
80
Harold A. Buetow, Of Singular Benefit: The Story of Catholic Education in the
United States (New York, 1970), p. 117. Bishop Dubois spoke feelingly of the need for
teaching brothers as early as 1830; see “The Diocese of New York in 1830,” HRS, 5
(1907–09), p. 227.
81
For the Marianists, see Kauffman, Education and Transformation, pp. 53, 56.

74

CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

other grievances) of neglecting the brothers and directing his energies
toward “the building of a college, whose utility was questionable. . . .”82
Sorin’s version of the exchange is the only evidence we have, and he
may have exaggerated the bishop’s disenchantment with colleges.
Even so the episode is highly suggestive of the diminished place colleges held in the thinking of the Catholic hierarchy at the end of the
antebellum era.
These changes—free-standing seminaries taking over the colleges’
role in the education of priests; semi-autonomous religious communities increasingly responsible for their direction; and parochial schools
displacing them as focal points of episcopal concern—converged to
set the colleges apart from the episcopally centered matrix of Catholic
life more distinctly than they had been before.Thus by midcentury, the
“indefinite homogeneity” that had hitherto characterized American
Catholic higher education began to move in the direction of differentiation and specialization. The process was largely confined to the
external relations of the colleges—that is, their place within the larger
framework of Catholic life. Internally, they still had a long way to go in
clarifying and rearranging the different levels of instruction they
offered.Yet one feature of their traditional mixed quality—the combination of college and seminary education—was already on its way out.
As pressures from the larger American academic world mounted in the
late nineteenth century, Catholic colleges continued to take on a more
“coherent heterogeneity.” Today, it requires an effort of the imagination
to recapture their original amorphousness, but doing so deepens our
understanding of the complex history that has shaped Catholic higher
education in the United States.

82
See Sorin, Chronicles, pp. 200–13 (quotation, 203), and O’Connell, Sorin, pp.
403–11.

REVIEW ARTICLE
_______
MORE LIGHT ON VATICAN COUNCIL II
BY

JARED WICKS, S. J.*
Carnets conciliaires de Mgr Gérard Philips, secrétaire adjoint de la
Commission doctrinale. Texte néerlandais avec traduction français et
commentaires. Edited by Karim Schelkens. [Maurits Sabbebibliotheek,
Faculteit Godgeleerdheid, Instrumenta theologica, 29.] (Leuven: Peeters,
2006. Pp. xxvii, 180. €44 paperback.)
Lettres conciliaires 1962–1965. By Dom Helder Camara.Translation directed
by José de Broucker, 2 vols. (Paris: Éditions du Cerf. 2007. Pp. 1170. €98
paperback).
Il vescovo et il concilio. Modello episcopale e aggiornamento al Vaticano II.
By Massimo Faggioli. [Istituto per le scienze religiose—Bologna, Testi e
ricerche de scienze religiose, nuova serie, 36.] (Bologna: Il Mulino. 2005. Pp.
476. €32 paperback.)
Un concilio per il mondo moderno. La redazione della costituzione pastorale “Gaudium et spes” del Vaticano II. By Giovanni Turbanti. [Istituto per
le scienze religiose—Bologna, Testi e ricerche di scienze religiose, nuova
serie, 24.] (Bologna: Il Mulino. 2000. Pp. 829. €51.65 paperback.)
This report continues what began in late 2006 in a first installment that surveyed recent scholarly work on Vatican II and then treated in detail three
recent books on the Council.1 Here I present four works: first, two editions of
personal accounts by Council participants, and, second, two major monographs tracing the genesis of Vatican II documents—namely, Christus
Dominus, on the pastoral office and ministry of bishops, and Gaudium et
spes, on the Church’s response, framed by the centrality of Jesus Christ, to
issues presented by major developments and problems in the modern world.2
*Father Wicks is writer-in-residence in John Carroll University, University Heights,
Ohio.
1
“New Light on Vatican Council II,”The Catholic Historical Review, 92 (2006), 451–70.
2
I will review three more recent works on Vatican II in a subsequent number of the
2008 volume of The Catholic Historical Review. These are Gilles Routhier, Vatican II.

75

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MORE LIGHT ON VATICAN COUNCIL II

The Personal Vatican II Notes of Gérard Philips
Vatican II specialists and former Louvainians of a certain age, but few
others, know of the systematic theologian G. Philips (1899–1972).3 But the significance of his contribution to Vatican II is hard to exaggerate. He had been a
member of the Preparatory Theological Commission from 1960 to 1962 and
guided the writing of the chapter De laicis in that commission’s schema De
ecclesia.4 However, Philips had little influence on that text’s chapters on the
Church militant as visible society, Church membership, the episcopate, ecumenism, and Church-state relations. Later he heard from Cardinal Suenens that
leading members of the Council’s Central Preparatory Commission had
sharply criticized these chapters of De ecclesia when they reviewed them in
May and June 1962.
As the Council began, Philips was a peritus of the Belgian bishops and
resided with several of them at the Belgian College, along with other experts
from Louvain, such as Gustave Thils, Willem Onclin, and Charles Moeller. The
bishops had received a booklet of seven draft texts, although De ecclesia had
not yet been printed and distributed. But during the Council’s first weeks,
October 15–31, 1962, Philips carried out Suenens’s bold request that he compose the initial chapters of an alternative schema on the Church, with an outline of further chapters.5 He worked in his room at the Belgian College, while
Herméneutique et réception (Saint-Laurent, Québec: Fides, 2006), Melissa J. Wilde,
Vatican II. A Sociological Analysis of Religious Change (Princeton and Oxford:
Princeton University Press, 2007), and Henri de Lubac, Carnets du Concile, ed. Loïc
Figoureux, 2 vols. (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2007).
3
See Jan Grootaers,“Gérard Philips: la force dans la faiblesse,” in Actes et acteurs à
Vatican II, Biblioteca Ephemeridum theologicarum Lovaniensium, 139 (Leuven: Peeters,
1998), pp. 382–419, which updates an earlier essay,“Le rôle de Mgr G. Philips à Vatican
II. Quelques réflections pour contribuer à l’étude du dernier concile,” in Ecclesia a
Spiritu Sancto edocta. Mélanges théologiques. Hommage à Mgr. Gérard Philips. Biblioteca Ephemeridum theologicarum Lovaniensium, 27 (Gembloux: Duculot, 1970), pp.
343–80.
4
For background, see G. Philips, The Role of the Laity in the Church (Chicago: Fides,
1957), and Pour un christianisme adulte (Tournai: Casterman, 1962).
5
See Joseph Komonchak,“The Initial Debate about the Church,” in Vatican II commence. Approches Francophones, ed. É. Fouilloux, Instrumenta theologica, 12 (Leuven:
Bibliotheek van de Facuteit der Godgeleerdheid, 1993), pp. 329–51, giving Philips’s initial outline on pp. 335–36, based on Y. Congar’s diary entry after Philips visited him on
October 18.Y. Congar, Mon journal du Concile, ed. É. Mahieu, 1 (Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 2002),
pp. 120–21. Congar thought the Belgian initiative was premature, but he agreed to work
with Philips and others, such as K. Rahner, J. Lécuyer, and H. de Lubac, whom Philips
intended to consult for suggestions for his text. In his personal notes, Philips also mentions contributions by J. Ratzinger, O. Semmelroth, Marcos McGrath, L. Cerfaux, and W.
Onclin. Philips’s initial outline of a revised De ecclesia is given in English in History of
Vatican II, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph Komonchak, 2, The Formation of the
Council’s Identity (Maryknoll and Leuven: Orbis and Peeters, 1997), pp. 282–83, n. 3.

BY JARED WICKS, S. J.

77

quietly gathering suggestions from reform-minded periti whom Suenens had
recommended. This alternative text was ready for use, but known to only a
few, when the Preparatory Commission’s De ecclesia was distributed on
November 23 and came up for evaluation in the Council aula December 1–6.6
The Council debate of early December showed that the Preparatory
Commission’s schema was not an acceptable ecclesiological base-text. On
January 23, 1963, the Commission for Coordinating the Council’s Labors, a
directorate created by Pope John XXIII, sealed the demise of the first De ecclesia and instructed the Doctrinal Commission to prepare another schema that
should treat “the mystery of the Church,”—that is, its place and role in God’s
saving work—before aspects of the Church as a visible society.Various groups
of bishops and periti were already at work in this direction.7 But when an
ecclesiological subcommission of seven Doctrinal Commission members met
on February 26, it chose the Philips draft as the basis of further work, while
specifying that the other proposed drafts should be reviewed for elements to
integrate into Philips’s base-text.8 Also, Philips was to oversee and coordinate
this review and the development of his text, first by a group of periti, who
worked February 26 to March 4, 1963, and then by the Doctrinal Commission
in deliberations, March 5–13, leading to approval of the first part of a new
Schema de ecclesia.9
6
G. Ruggieri sketches the Philips draft in Alberigo-Komonchak, History, 2: 298–304.
The late November form of the Philips draft, beginning Concilium duce Spiritu Sancto,
is column 2 in Constitutionis dogmaticae Lumen Gentium Synopsis historica, ed.
Giuseppi Alberigo and Franca Magistretti (Bologna: Istituto per le Scienze Religiose,
1975),pp. 3–192. J. Komonchak treats it in “The Initial Debate,” pp. 348–51.
7
Among others, Karl Rahner and several German periti prepared a text that the
German episcopate discussed in Munich on February 5–6, 1963, and submitted as its
proposal for a new draft De ecclesia. For the text: Acta synodalia . . . Concilii
Oecumenici Vaticani II, 6 vols. in 35 parts (Vatican City:Vatican Polyglot Press, 1970–99),
I/4, pp. 608–38. Günther Wassilowsky studied its genesis and theological content in
Universales Heilssakrament Kirche, Karl Rahners Beitrag zur Ekklesiologie des II.
Vatikanums. Innsbrucker theologische Studien, 59 (Innsbruck-Vienna: Tyrolia, 2001),
especially pp. 277–356.
8
Jan Grootaers relates this development in his chapter on Vatican II’s “second preparation” (January–July 1963) in Alberigo-Komonchak, History, 2: 359–514, at 391–405. In
the Coordinating Commission, Card. Suenens, knowing well Philips’s draft, had formulated the motion calling for a new De ecclesia. In the Doctrinal Commission, the ecclesiological subcommission had Cardinal Michael Browne, O.P. (Curia) presiding, with
Cardinals König (Vienna) and Léger (Montréal) as members, along with Bishops Parente
(Curia), Charue (Namur), Garrone (Toulouse), and Schröffer (Eichstätt).
9
The text went out to Council members in May 1963, containing Chapter I (on the
Church as mystery from the Triune God, on biblical images of the Church, and on levels
of belonging), and Chapter II (on the Episcopate as succeeding the Apostolic collegium
in its ministerial munera, assisted by priests and deacons). The commission added
Chapters III-IV on the Laity and on Religious Life in May as a second part, which was
then mailed to the Council members in July 1963. Chap. IV of this draft had a new

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This account of Vatican II history indicates the significance of the publication of Philips’s Carnets conciliaires. These personal notes begin with twentyfour pages set down during his Holy Week retreat of April 1963 as a day-by-day
record of his Council activity from October 12, 1962, to March 15, 1963. Philips
wrote in Flemish, but the recent edition gives a French translation, along with
a French introduction by Leo Declerck; an index identifying persons named by
Philips; and annotations directing the reader to documents mentioned by
Philips, which are now in his Vatican II papers kept by the Leuven Centre for
the Study of the Second Vatican Council.10
For Vatican II history, a note in this work relates that on October 13, the
Council’s first working day, the Cardinal Secretary of State,Amleto Cicognani,
discussed with Suenens the idea of drawing up an alternative De ecclesia—
which Suenens asked Philips to do two days later.11 Philips’s diary entry about
the Doctrinal Commission meeting of March 8, 1963, relates how Father
Sebastian Tromp, S.J., secretary of the commission, raised a fundamental objection to the new schema, but when Philips answered the objection, Cardinal
Ottaviani agreed with Philips, paying no further attention to Tromp’s difficulty.
From that moment on, Ottaviani ended numerous exchanges with the directive that Philips should revise the text in line with the remarks of the commission members12—a Vatican II turning point of some significance.
The new edition tells of the interior side of Philips’s service at Vatican II. In
October 1962, he was not at ease in drafting, more or less secretly, a text to
replace the draft of the Preparatory Commission, and it was painful to have the
existence of his text revealed to all in the aula on December 1, 1962, by
Ottaviani who interpreted it as a subversive action. Looking back, Philips was
amazed at how he, who, for some, was a traitor to the Preparatory
Commission, came to have a central role in preparing the Council’s doctrinal
text on the Church.As a centrist, he knows the “right” or the “left” sometimes

beginning, originating from G. Thils, on the call to holiness of all in the Church, from
which in time Chap. IV of Lumen gentium developed.
10
On the Centre: Karim Schelkens,“The Centre for the Study of the Second Vatican
Council in Leuven,” Ephemerides theologicae Lovanienses 82 (2006), 207–31, which
tells of forty-seven boxes of Philips’s Council papers now in the archive. The guide to
this collection is Inventaire des papiers conciliaires de Monseigneur Gérard Philips,
secrétaire adjoint de la commission doctrinale, ed. L. Declerck and W. Verschooten.
Instrumenta theologica, 24 (Leuven: Peeters, 2001).
11
Carnets conciliaires, p. 157, n. 16, from a letter of Card. Suenens. This fact concerning Philips’s alternative schema sows an initial doubt about the accuracy of the
notion captured in the title of R. Wiltgren’s book, The Rhine Flows into the Tiber: A
History of Vatican II (New York: Hawthorn, 1967), and about its thesis on the dominant
influence at Vatican II of the German group of progressive theologians and bishops.
12
Carnets conciliaires, pp. 100–01. Philips attributes his growing credibility to his
own facility in Latin and to his experience in negotiating the formulation of proposals
and amendments during his years as a senator in the Belgian Parliament.

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79

will be disturbed about his work; however, he believes that God is leading him
along this path, and he must avoid dictating from above.“What is at stake is not
to force the ‘right’ to capitulate, but to make the text equally acceptable to
them, so they don’t have a sense of being defeated.”13 The Carnets include
Philips’s reflections on the theological approaches that were clashing, both (a)
the conservative attachment to propositional formulations and to juridical
specifications of powers, of those suspicious of modernism in more recent
proposals; and (b) a conviction, which he shared, that doctrine can be deepened by drawing on early sources and thus be made more lucid, for a more
vital evangelization and living of faith.14
Philips saw his drafting work as the promotion at a fundamental level of an
ecclesiology of communio, while moderating the presence of juridical elements, which however are necessary for affirming a real episcopal authority in
the Church and for combining episcopal collegiality with the legacy of Vatican
Council I on papal primacy.15
Late in the Council’s second working period of 1963, the Doctrinal
Commission elected Bishop A.-M. Charue of Namur its second vice president
and Philips its adjunct secretary.Thus Charue and Philips joined the praesidium of the commission, with Cardinal Ottaviani (president); Cardinal Browne,
O.P. (first vice president); and Father Tromp (secretary)—giving Philips a role
in planning the commission’s further work leading to the major texts, Lumen
gentium, Dei Verbum, and Gaudium et spes.
Philips’s new responsibility made his composition of personal notes more
sporadic, but he took time to record his efforts as he redrafted the eventual
final chapter of De ecclesia on the Blessed Virgin Mary.16 This work occasioned
13
Carnets conciliaires, p. 99. At one point of the March 1963 revision on the Church
as Body of Christ, Y. Congar prepared a good new draft-paragraph, but Philips retyped
and reworded it so he could present it as his own: “If those on the ‘right’ think it’s from
Congar, they’ll react with too much mistrust.” Later, in early August 1964, Philips wrote
how his efforts toward peace between the two sides brought criticisms from both:“Ma
non la paix à tout prix. En tout cas, je n’ai rien dit ou défendu que je ne considérais pas
comme vrai.” Carnets, p. 124.
14
Philips gave classic expression to this in “Deux tendances dans la théologie contemporaine,” Nouvelle Revue théologique, 85 (1963), 225–38.
15
Philips had been teaching on the Church as communion since the 1930s at the
Liège Major Seminary and then in the Louvain Theology Faculty. See Grootaers,“Gérard
Philips: la force dans la faiblesse” (n. 3, above), pp. 385–87. But for Philips, a Catholic “distinctive mark” is the effort to unite from a deeper perspective communio and juridical
structures. Carnets conciliaires, pp. 123–24. Later, he insists that an “affective” collegial
solicitude by bishops, if left without juridical rules, would leave collegiality doctrine
incomplete. Note of August 14, 1964; Carnets, pp. 128–29.
16
Usually, Philips had the oral and written interventions of the Fathers broken down
according to their relevance for each paragraph of the draft under discussion. At the

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several personal notes on the developing text and on a well-integrated theology of Mary’s place in God’s plan of salvation.17
Philips’s notes give several accounts of the struggles over episcopal collegiality, amid which Philips sought to let Chapter III of De ecclesia reflect the
views of the Council majority. But the minority proved tenacious and was
effective in pleading with Paul VI, which led to inserting several reaffirmations of papal primacy in a text on the episcopate, which, however, helped
gain the morally unanimous backing needed for this dogmatic text.18 Philips
took special care with a chronicle, set down on November 16, 1964, of the
two weeks during which he composed successive redactions of a Nota praevia to explain how papal primacy was protected as the Doctrinal
Commission handled the modi submitted by the Fathers on De ecclesia,
Chapter III.19
For this edition, with its further notes on the genesis of Gaudium et spes
and Dei Verbum, we must be cordially grateful to K. Schelkens and L. Declerck,
who give us pages that Philips composed in close proximity to major doctrinal developments at Vatican II.

Belgian College, these sections were typed onto note cards, which Philips gave to periti
as bases of the initial revision of the schema in the light of the number and quality of
the proposals of Council members. When the revision came before the commission,
Philips could defend the revisions by reference to the cards he brought to the meeting.
But on Mary in the eventual Chap.VIII of Lumen gentium, the main revision fell outside
the foreseen schedule, and Philips did most of the work himself.
17
Carnets conciliaires, pp. 116, 119, 120–21, 124 (Suenens’s passion for Mary lacks
ecumenical sensitivity), 128, 130 (Suenens’s September 17, 1964, attack on the draft as
minimalizing Mary), p. 131 (Suenens’s discourse quickly forgotten), pp. 143, 144–45, and
147–48.
18
Carnets conciliaires, pp. 115, 123, 128–29, 130, 131, 132 (How to win over ca. 300
opponents of the draft Chap. III?), 134–35, 141 (with only forty-six votes against the
revised Chap. III: “Le Pape a attient son objectif, à savoir gagner la minorité.” Only ten
voted non Placet at the final vote on November 19, 1964, on the complete Lumen gentium.), and p. 142 (Philips reads Lumen gentium six months later, finding it generally
pleasing but imperfect in Chap. III, where the insertions on the primacy obscure the
communio ecclesiology.).
19
Carnets conciliaires, pp. 134–35 (a global review), 136–39 (day-by-day from
October 30 to November 16, adding that periti Ratzinger and Congar were speaking
against the Nota praevia). On this chapter of Vatican II history, see J. Grootaers,
Primauté et collégialité. Le dossier de Gérard Philips sur la Nota explicative praevia
(Lumen gentium, Chap. III). Biblioteca Ephemeridium theologicarum Lovaniensium, 72
(Leuven: Peeters, 1986). Philips’s own major work is L’Église et son mystère au IIe
Concile du Vatican. Histoire, texte et commentaire de la constitution, 2 vols. (ParisGembloux: Desclée, 1967).

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81

The Nightly Letters of Dom Helder Camara from
Vatican II’s Four Periods
As Vatican II began, Dom Helder Pessoa Camara (1909–99) was a titular archbishop, auxiliary to the cardinal archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, general secretary
of the Conference of Bishops of Brazil, and one of the two vice presidents of
CELAM. In mid-March 1964, Paul VI appointed Dom Helder archbishop of
Olinda and Recife in impoverished northeast Brazil. His new responsibility
intensified his already notable activity as promoter of world-level dialogue
between the developed and underdeveloped worlds as he networked with
many Council participants and began his outreach as lecturer in Rome and
Western Europe. In late 1963, Camara became an elected member of the Vatican
II Commission on the Lay Apostolate, and he served on the Mixed Commission
responsible for the Pastoral Constitution, Gaudium et spes.
In Rio, Dom Helder had gathered disciples and collaborators in the “Family
of St. Joachim” to which, each night during Vatican II, he wrote a prayerful and
instructional narrative of his and the Council’s activities, leaving this firsthand
documentation in 293 letters.20 These relate many activities of the Brazilian
episcopal conference gathered in Rome during the Council.21 Also, beyond
registering the impact on Dom Helder of the decisive conciliar events, the letters are informative on two informal but influential groups at Vatican II of
which Camara was a regular and active participant, “The Church of the Poor”
and “The Conference of Delegates.”22
The French version of Camara’s Lettres conciliaires translates the
Portuguese edition begun in 2004. Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, who, at Vatican
20
A shorter but comparable collection is that of 201 letters from Rome by Cardinal
Giacomo Lercaro to his young disciples in Bologna, Lettere dal Concilio 1962–1965, ed.
G. Battelli (Bologna: Ed. Dehoniani, 1980), which reports, amid much else, on interactions
among the four Council Moderators and between them and Paul VI.
21
See José Oscar Beozzo, “Le Concile Vatican II (1962–1965). La Participation de la
Conférence Épiscopale du Brésil—CNBB,” Cristianesimo nella storia 23 (2002), 121–96,
and A Igreja do Brasil no Concilio Vaticano segundo (São Paulo: Ed. Paulinas, 2005).
22
H. Raguer gives concise accounts of the initial activities of the two groups in
History of Vatican II (as in n. 5, above), 2: 200–03 and 207–09. On the first group, see D.
Pelletier, “Une marginalité engage: le groupe ‘Jésus, l’Église et les Pauvres,’” in Les
Commissions Conciliaires à Vatican II, ed. M. Lamberigts, C. Soetens, and J. Grootaers,
Instrumenta Theologica, 18 (Leuven: Bibliotheek van de Faculteit Godgeleerdheid,
1996),pp. 63–89.The group of delegates (of episcopal conferences) met once weekly at
Domus Mariae for exchanges and for developing proposals to submit to the Council
leadership, including John XXIII and Paul VI. See Jan Grootaers,“Une forme de concertation épiscopale au Concile Vatican II: La ‘Conférence des Vingt-deux’ (1962–1963),”
Revue d’Histoire ecclésiastique, 91 (1996), 66–112, and in Actes et acteurs à Vatican II
(as in n. 3, above), pp. 133–65. Grootaers’s RHE version adds ten pages of documents prepared by this group during Council Periods I and II.

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II, coordinated both the secretariat of the French bishops and the Conference
of Delegates, composed the preface to the French edition; José de Broucker
tells of the published and unpublished works of Dom Helder; and the accomplished historian of the Council, Étienne Fouilloux, offers a dense review and
appreciation of the letters in his Postface. L. C. Luz Marques gives a biographical note on Dom Helder and offers explanatory notes on the letters.
The letters tell much about the intense continuing education program carried out by Vatican II periti, especially by the late-afternoon conferences given
for bishops in the auditorium of Domus Mariae, where Dom Helder and
numerous Brazilian bishops lived during Vatican II’s four periods.23 In 1962,
Camara told his addressees that the episcopates working with the greatest
assurance are those who brought to Rome their own periti and who rely on
them. These theologians are truly men of the Church and hard working, but
Dom Helder can also be critical, as when he judged that the 1962 alternative
schema of K. Rahner and J. Ratzinger, De revelatione Dei et hominis, lacked
the lucidity and grace found in French theology. Also, Rahner’s conference on
Mary in late October 1963 was disappointing because, in parts, he offered
pamphleteering instead of instruction. But Camara appreciated most of the
conferences, with special delight in those of C. J. Dumont, O.P., on the
Orthodox Churches, and of O. Cullmann, who offered a notable encounter
with the Reformation tradition.24
A notable part of Dom Helders’s nightly vigils was his reading and annotating of books that he digested in his letters before sending the volumes to the
community in Brazil. During the Council, he appropriated the contents of
some eighty books, most all in French.To prepare for the liturgy discussion in
1962, he obtained works by A.-G. Martimort, C. Vagaggini, and J. Hofinger. For
theological updating of himself and “the family,” he worked through H. de
23
On the Domus Mariae and the ninety-one conferences held there during the
Council’s working periods, see Beozzo,“La Participation de la CNBB” (as in n. 21, above),
pp. 133–46. A Brazilian peritus, Antonio Guglielmi, coordinated the invitations and
scheduling of these lectures by many leading figures among both Council members
(including Cardinals Bea, Lercaro, Ruffini, and Suenens) and periti (including Martimort,
Küng, Vogt, Häring, Rahner, Ratzinger, Schillebeeckx, Congar, Lebret, Le Guillou, and
others).
24
Lettres conciliaires, p. 121 (Rahner-Ratzinger heavy and “Germanic”), p. 124 (episcopates strengthened by their periti), p. 276 (Rahner poor on Mary), pp. 307–09
(account of conference of C. J. Dumont), pp. 381–83 (Cullmann’s moving talk to a hall
packed with bishops of Brazil, Peru, Hungary, several African nations, and even a few
from Spain). Besides Cullmann, Camara established friendships with other observers
such as H. Roux, M. Boegner, and M. Lackmann. After Cardinal Heenen attacked the periti
on October 22, 1964, Camara wrote that the hierarchical church would be impoverished
without them, for “À l’heure difficile de faire et refaire les schemas, ils sont là. . . . Nous
avons ici des experts dont s’honorerait tout grand Concile de n’importe quel Siècle d’or”
(p. 669).

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83

Lubac’s Catholicisme (1937), Philips’s Pour un christianisme adulte, the collaborative volume Découverte de l’oecuménisme, J. Hamer’s L’Église est une
communion, P. Grelot’s Sens chrétien de l’Antique Testament, L. Bouyer’s Le
Bible e l’Évangile (recommended by Congar), German expositions in
Questions théologiques aujourd’hui, the Period II Council speeches (edited
by Y. Conger, H. Küng, and D. O’Hanlon), and works of K. Rahner translated in
Mission et grâce. For his own and his disciples’ spiritual deepening, he annotated and sent on A. Peyriguère’s Laissez-vous saisir par le Christ; H. U. von
Balthasar’s Le Coeur du monde; L. Évely’s C’est toi, cet homme; R. Schutz’s
L’Aujourd’hui de Dieu; J. Maritain’s edition of Journal de Raïssa; and R.
Guardini’s Le Message de Saint Jean. Dom Helder informed and nourished his
own specific concerns for the overall direction and teaching of Vatican II with
increasing intensity over the working periods, by reading works such as
P. Gauthier’s Les Pauvres, Jésus et l’Église; Congar’s Pour une Église servante
et pauvre; J.-Y. Calvez’s Église et société économique; A. Dondeyne’s La foi
écoute le monde; P. Fraine’s Une terre pour les hommes; J.-M. Paupert’s Pour
une politique évangelique; L.-J. Lebret’s new edition of Dimensions de la
charité; and several works of social-economic analysis of Latin America by F.
Houtart.Thus, Dom Helder’s experts, who aided Vatican II, included many who
were not present in Rome but who still exerted influence by their books.
For understanding the events and teaching of Vatican Council II, the letters
of Camara contribute numerous details that fill out standard historical
accounts.Twice he remarked that “the apologists of immutability” actually help
the cause of reform because their interventions in the aula are exaggerated,
unattractive, and lack psychological sensitivity for the hearers. But a recurring
theme is his hope and prayer that the minority will not be embittered because
defeated, but will come over with conviction to affirm the Council’s renewal
of teaching and practice. A precious item is that in late September 1964,
Ottaviani invited R. Schutz and M.Thurian to attend his Sunday Mass, asking the
brothers of Taizé to pray that he be given light and grace to accept what
Vatican II is coming to be. Later, Ottaviani went for supper to the apartment of
the Taizé brothers and prayed Compline with them from the Taizé breviary.25
The letters of this edition relate much that students of Vatican II will know
already, but they will encounter here the notable intensity of one bishop’s participation, which was exultant at the end of Period I (1962) but deeply troubled amid the corporate malaise of the final, shadowed week of Period III of
1964.26 Dom Helder never spoke during a General Congregation, but the let25
Lettres conciliaires, pp. 102 and 313 (the intransigents help us); pp. 277, 305, 359,
535, and 787 (may no one be soured by losing out to the majority); pp. 600 and 763
(Ottaviani with Schutz and Thurian, who related the Cardinal’s words, “Je ne veux en
aucune manière pécher contre la lumière.”).
26
Lettres conciliaires, 185–86 (twenty-four reasons for the Magnificat Dom Helder
sings on December 8, 1962) and pp. 757–78 (on November 15–21, 1964), including this

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ters tell of his incessant communication around his network of contacts (L. J.
Suenens repeatedly, Loris Capovilla, M.-D. Chenu, R. Etchegaray, P. Gauthier,
J. Guitton, I. Illich, M. Larraín, and L.-J. Lebret) through four conciliar periods.
The letters describe something of the “para-Council” by giving the outline and
extended passages of Camara’s public conferences during the Council, both on
the event itself and on the encounter of rich and poor peoples, for human
development, in speeches in Rome, Geneva, Bern, Paris, and Amsterdam.
Three interesting events attested in Dom Helder’s letters are not mentioned
in ordinary works of Vatican II history. First, he composed a striking text
shortly after Period I ended and sent it out in French and English in January
1963 to a number of bishops under the title “Exchange of Ideas with Our
Brothers in the Episcopate.”27 Camara’s prophetic and visionary charism
expresses itself here in a systematic program for Vatican II that aims to transform the Church’s governance, social programs, catechesis, and ministry, with
these sections:
I. Completing Vatican I [through active and coordinated Episcopal
Conferences] (pp. 2–4)
II. The Dialogue of the Century [between rich and empoverished
nations]28 (pp. 4–7)
III. Revision of Catechetics [by basic education, especially over the radio]
(pp. 7–10)
IV. We and Our Clergy [especially the example of episcopal simplicity]
(pp. 10–13)
V. Practical Conclusions about the Laity (pp. 13–15)
VI. A New Meeting with Poverty (pp. 16–18)

note on p. 775 regarding the liturgy for the promulgation of Lumen gentium, Unitatis
redintegratio, and Orientalium ecclesiarum, “Pourquoi la Basilique ne vibrait-elle pas
comme on pouvait l’espérer? D’ou venait la tristresse subtile qui s’infiltrait, tenace?”. He
was sad for Paul VI, who is too intelligent, noting on p. 776:“Il sait trop de choses pour
être intuitif et simple.”
27
I use the 24-page, single-spaced, mimeographed English text deposited at the
University of Notre Dame Archives among the Vatican II papers of Cardinal John
Dearden of Detroit (CDRD 6/13). I am grateful to the archives for a copy of this text and
for permission to cite from it. On this, see Lettres conciliaires, pp. 189–90 (the section
on poverty published in The New York Times, but contested by Cardinal Spellman), p.
258 (Camara discussed his proposal with Cardinal A. G. Meyer of Chicago), and pp.
268–69 (I-DOC wanted to publish the text in five languages). In September 1965, Camara
began another text, which would be a “white book” for the bishops of the world (if Paul
VI approved), on the wounds afflicting the Church because its leadership has fallen into
the grinding wheels of using great sums of money (Lettres conciliaires, pp. 781–82, 785).
28
Late in the Council, on November 19–20, 1965, Dom Helder recounted how the
first two topics of his “Exchange” were in fact being realized in spite of difficulties.
Lettres conciliaires, pp. 1056–58.

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85

VII. A Closing Worthy of Vatican II [interreligious presence, music, dance]29
(pp. 18–22)
VIII. After-Council, as Important as the Council (pp. 22–24)
Second, Dom Helder’s letters add to the existing account of a meeting convened on November 15, 1963, by Pope Paul VI with the directing bodies of
the Council (presidents, moderators, Coordinating Commission, and Secretary
General P. Felici). For the meeting, the Moderator senior in age, Cardinal
G. Lercaro, prepared a comprehensive and optimistic report on the work of
the Council to date.30 What Camara adds, in his letter of November 16–17, is
that the meeting was the scene of a sharp clash between some of the presidents and the moderators, of which echoes resounded in the aula on
November 16.The verbal violence left the Pope “perplexe et très affecté.” The
next night, Camara related that Suenens had confirmed that the summit meeting had been difficult, adding that Cardinal Siri had attacked Lercaro’s version
of Council developments so forcefully that Paul VI was left “stupéfiat. Il n’a
preque pas parlé.”31 This detail sheds light on both the complex internal governance of the Council and the relations of Paul VI with other components of
its leadership.
Third, Dom Helder’s letter of October 23–24, 1965, tells about what
Suenens told him confidentially regarding problems connected with the section on marriage and the family in Schema XIII on the Church and the modern
world. Suenens had discussed birth control with Paul VI and urged the Pope to
keep open the possibility of a renewed teaching moving beyond Pius XI’s prohibitions in Casti connubii (1931). Suenens was so insistent that Paul VI at one
point told him to imagine himself in the Pope’s place and then to write the
declaration that before God he thought proper. If Suenens did this, Paul VI
promised to study the text “on his knees.” Suenens set to work with Bishop
29
Camara does not tell his readers that members of the group “The Church of the
Poor” prevailed on him to give up promoting his plan for this multimedia closing of the
Council. Pelletier,“Le groupe ‘Jésus, l’Église et les Pauvres’” (as in n. 22, above), p. 71.
30
Lercaro’s relatio is given in Acta synodalia (as in n. 7, above), II/1, pp. 101–05. On
it and its diffusion, see J. Famerée in History of Vatican II (as in n. 5, above), 3: 158–60.
31
Lettres conciliaires, pp. 341, 347, adding, apparently from Suenens, that the meeting ended without making any progress.The minutes given in Acta synodalia,V/2, pp.
25–29, record the responses of nineteen cardinals to the Lercaro report, but say nothing
about an intervention by Cardinal. Siri, who had become one of the Council presidents
as Period II began. In a letter of November 18, Lercaro told that all those attending the
meeting approved its contents, with only one participant expressing some reservation
(“uno solo con qualche riserva”). Lettere dal Concilio (as in n. 20, above), p. 222. The
biography of Siri depicts him as one not at all likely to keep silent at important meetings
and adds references to his perplexity over interventions at the meeting by Cardinals
Alfrink and Döpfner and over Paul VI’s weak and inept chairing. In Genoa, on Dec. 31,
1964, he gave a lecture to correct what for him were skewed accounts of Period III of
Vatican II. Benny Lai, Il Papa non eletto (Bari: Laterza, 1993), pp. 214–15.

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J. M. Reuss of Mainz, the Louvain moral theologian Victor Heylen, and the
Belgian College Rector Albert Prignon. Suenens showed the completed text to
Camara, who assured his disciples that it was “a masterpiece” of Christian
instruction. Furthermore, Suenens requested that Camara contact various
bishops, asking for their appeals to Paul VI that the Pope leave the birth-control question unaddressed during Vatican II.32
Thus the published letters of Dom Helder Camara add not only to the store
of significant, firsthand reporting on many aspects of the Council, but also they
invite interpreters to take more account of voices from the global South and
the concerns they raised at Vatican II.

Bishops as Pastors in the Universal Church and
Their Particular Churches
The most recent scholarly study of a single Vatican II document is Massimo
Faggioli’s monograph on Christus Dominus, on the pastoral office of bishops,
a text that greatly engaged the Fathers of Vatican II but has to date received
little concentrated attention in studies of the Council.
Faggioli’s research went far beyond the published Acta of Vatican II’s preparation and four periods to carry out methodical study of the papers of the
preparatory and conciliar commissions De episcopis, accessible in ten boxes
in the Vatican Archives. Beyond that, many unpublished papers of Vatican II
participants contribute to Faggioli’s work, both those gathered in copies in the
Bologna Istituto di scienze religiose and others preserved in Paris; Louvain-laNeuve; Leuven; Munich; and even Cincinnati, Ohio (papers of Archbishop Karl
Alter). Such an effort to grasp and set forth the genesis and content of a Vatican
II document shows clearly the possibilities of the present historiographical situation in contrast with the setting of those who wrote early commentaries on
the Council’s decrees.33
32
Lettres conciliaires, pp. 951–52. The journal kept by Albert Prignon, rector of the
Belgian College, records events of October 12–31, 1965, concerning birth control.
Journal conciliaire de la 4e Session, ed. L. Declerck and A. Haquin, Cahiers de la Revue
théologique de Louvain, 35 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Faculté de Théologie, 2003), pp. 148–94,
including Paul VI’s commissioning Suenens on October 18 (pp. 174–76); work on a special text for Suenens by Prignon,V. Heylen,A.-G. Martimort, B. Häring, P. Delhaye, Bishop
J. Reuss, and P. de Locht; and Suenens’s presentation of the text to Paul VI on October 26
(pp. 191–92).The text of V. Heylen’s contribution is now given in J. Grootaers & J. Jans,
eds., La régulation des naissances à Vatican II: une semaine de crise. Un dossier en 40
documents.Annua nuntia lovaniensia, 43 (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), pp. 74–78.
33
Christus Dominus, on episcopal ministry, was treated in the supplement to
Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, 2nd ed., by Klaus Mörsdorf, translated in
Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler, 5 vols. (New York:
Herder and Herder, 1968), 2: 165–97, and more amply by W. Onclin and others, in La
charge pastorale des Évêques, Unam Sanctam, 71 (Paris: Cerf, 1969).

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87

Faggioli sketches the 1959 situation in which the future Council Fathers
had little preparation for thinking theologically about the episcopate in the
universal Church; about the significance of the local church; and about their
lateral relations in regions, nations, or the universal Church. But the episcopate soon emerged as a major topic amid the theological ferment and discussion that followed John XXIII’s January 1959 announcement of the coming
Council.34 Forty-four episcopal conferences existed at the time, but these
functioned with quite different methods and at different levels of intensity.
What the world’s Catholic bishops did want to discuss, as shown in their
responses to the 1959 inquiry about topics for the Council, were the obstacles they met in governing their dioceses, e.g., the institution in some lands
of irremovable pastors, the exemptions from episcopal jurisdiction enjoyed
by religious orders, the interference of papal nuncios (especially in Latin
America), and the frequency with which diocesan bishops had to ask the
Holy See for faculties to take needed pastoral actions.The main issue de episcopis in proposals by future Council members was the dismantling of barriers by more ample concession of the faculties needed for effective diocesan
governance by local bishops.
Other topics appeared rarely, such as collegial sharing by the episcopate in
responsibility for the universal church, which was raised in 1959 proposals by
N. Jubany (auxiliary, Barcelona), A.-M. Charue (Namur), and B. Alfrink (Utrecht).
Several responses called for a doctrine of the episcopate to complete Vatican
I’s definitions on papal primacy, e.g., the input by the conference of West
German bishops, by P. Veuillot (Angers, future coadjutor of Paris), and by
Cardinal O’Hara of Philadelphia, who spoke of the collegium of the world’s
bishops.The Analyticus Conspectus (1960) of proposals gathered in 1959–60
from the future Council Fathers also listed twenty-six responses calling for
episcopal retirement at an age to be determined.
The Congregations of the Roman Curia presented proposals for Vatican II
in early 1960, when many suggestions of the diocesan ordinaries were already
known. The Concistorial Congregation, predecessor of the Congregation on
34
The book of Archbishop Emile Guerry, L’évêque (Paris:A. Fayard, 1954), stood alone
in pre-Vatican II literature on the episcopate in the universal church, the diocesan
bishop’s ministry of teaching, sacramental celebration, and pastoral governance, and the
responsibilities being assumed by le corps épiscopal in France. But the episcopate
became central in works of 1960–63, such as Le concile et les conciles (ParisChevetogne, 1960), with a biblical-patristic essay on collegiality by B. Botte and a dense
conclusion by Y. Congar with a section on collegiality in the Church. Other contributions
soon followed, such as J. P. Torrell, La théologie de l’épiscopat au premier concile du
Vatican (Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 1961); K. Rahner and J. Ratzinger, The Episcopate and the
Primacy (New York: Herder and Herder, 1962), giving essays of 1959–60; L’épiscopat et
l’église universelle, ed.Y. Congar and B. Dupuy (Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 1962); and J. Colson,
L’épiscopat catholique. Collégialité et primauté dans les premièrs siècles de l’église
(Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 1963).

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Bishops, proposed action on new norms regarding episcopal conferences,
diocesan boundaries, and the exemption of religious. But the Congregation
held that the Council was not competent to deal with nuncios or with procedures for selecting bishops, since these were exclusively matters of the Holy
See. It is also “not opportune” for the Council to issue any new doctrinal teaching on the episcopate. Despite the many requests by bishops for greater liberty
of action, the Consistorial Congregation wanted the Council to institute a “permanent visitor”in every nation, who, on behalf of the Holy See, would regularly
inspect each diocese.
Still, the preparation of Vatican II featured, above all, proposals to facilitate
the bishop’s free and authoritative work in his diocese. The initial trajectory
was toward new canonical conditions of ministry by the individual bishop in
his diocese, not toward any recognition of the episcopate as a collegial body.
But the latter concern, arising from the schema De ecclesia, was destined to
gain controlling influence over the Council’s work concerning bishops.35
In mid-1960, John XXIII instituted the Preparatory Commission on Bishops,
including the following as members: Bishops Guerry, Veuillot, Suenens (then
auxiliary of Malines), and Krol (auxiliary of Cleveland); Canon Fernand Boulard
of Paris; and Father F. Cappello of the Gregorian Canon Law faculty. Bishop
Luigi Carli of Segni, eventually a tenacious opponent of collegiality, joined the
commission in April 1961. Cardinal Marcello Mimmi, head of the Consistorial
Congregation, presided until his death in March 1961, when Cardinal Paolo
Marella took over leadership of the Preparatory Commission and afterward
served as president of the Conciliar Commission de episcopis during the
Council itself.36
When Vatican II opened in October 1962, this commission had completed
seven practically oriented schemas on these topics: (1) the rationalization of
diocesan boundaries, (2) norms for episcopal conferences, (3) relations
between bishops and parish pastors, (4) relations between bishops and the
35
Faggioli, Il vescovo e il concilio, pp. 37–49 (survey of episcopal vota), pp. 50–52
(Consistorial Congregation), pp. 55–59 (vota of future members of the conciliar
Commission on Bishops), pp. 60–63 (the Analyticus Conspectus), and pp. 63–66 (the initial trajectory), inserting on pp. 53–55 a report on contributions to the preparation by
theologians, such as U. Lattanzi and M. Maccarone of the Lateran University, who
defended the origin of episcopal powers by the concession of them from the Pope.
36
Faggioli, Il vescovo, pp. 67–70 (the twenty-four members and twenty-seven consultors of the Preparatory Commission). Cardinal Mimmi (born 1882) had been bishop of
Crema, Bari, and Naples, before becoming head of the Consistorial Congregation in 1957,
after A.G. Roncalli, then in Venice, declined the post. Boulard was a well-known exponent
of the sociological study of religious practice and church ministries. Marella (born 1895)
had served as apostolic delegate in Japan and Australia and then succeeded Roncalli as
nuncio in Paris 1953–59, before coming to Rome as archpriest of St. Peter’s and member
of the Consistorial Congregation (Faggioli, Il vescovo, p. 90).

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89

Roman Curia, (5) auxiliary and coadjutor bishops, (6) relations between the
bishop and the ministries of religious in the diocese, and (7) the care of souls.
The last-named draft was voluminous, first on the bishop’s general pastoral
responsibilities and then on care for particular groups, such as migrants,
sailors, tourists, and persons exposed to dangers posed by communism.
After the Preparatory Commission on Bishops first met in November 1960,
Boulard was able to insert into an initial draft, over objections from Krol, the
topics of a set age for episcopal retirement and the institution of a diocesan
pastoral council, while the consultor N. Jubany prepared a passage on pastoral
coordination by a national episcopal conference. Members Guerry, Veuillot,
and Morcillo Gonzalez (Saragossa) argued for laying down a doctrinal foundation for the descriptive account of episcopal ministry. They were joined by
E. Florit (Florence), who formulated a fundamental principle regarding relations of a diocesan bishop to the Holy See—namely, that once a bishop takes
canonical possession of a diocese, he has, by divine law, all the faculties needed
for his pastoral ministry. The faculties are not granted by the Pope but are
intrinsic to the bishop’s office, excepting only those that, for the good of the
whole Church, the Holy See has reserved to itself. But in subsequent meetings
of the commission, Carli attacked this principle for falling into the erroneous,
or even heretical, position of the Synod of Pistoia (1786, condemned by Pius
VI in 1794 for neglecting papal authority).37
After it prepared texts on bishops and their ministry in 1960–62, the
Preparatory Commission’s work met numerous objections when the texts
came before the Central Preparatory Commission, with its many ranking cardinals, between February and June 1962. Few of the latter welcomed the texts on
bishops with a simple placet, while many expressed reservations with votes
placet iuxta modum. Cardinals Bea, Döpfner, Frings, Liénart, Alfrink, and
Montini, along with the Melchite Patriarch Maximos and Archbishop D. Hurley,
criticized the schema on bishops and the Curia for weakness on the episcopate,
with Bea declaring the text simply wrong in saying the Pope is the auctor of
the episcopal office. The Central Commission’s Subcommission on Mixed
Matters worked to realize the Central Commission’s desires for revisions during
summer 1962 and Vatican II’s First Period. By December 3, 1962, it had com37
Faggioli, Il vescovo, pp. 74–81 (initial commission meeting of November 1960), pp.
81–89 (meeting of February 1961, with Florit’s principle on p. 83). Before the second
meeting, the Consistorial Congregation had listed the faculties it would grant to bishops,
which occasioned Florit’s doctrinal proposal. In the third meeting of April 1961
(Faggioli, pp. 90–94), a heated dispute broke out over episcopal faculties, raising the
accusation of “Pistoianism,” but Carli found himself the only defender of this charge
against the other members. Also in April, a draft on pastoral care by Morcillo González
was judged too voluminous for Council action and so would have to serve in a postconciliar Directory, while the commssion would draft a succinct statement on the
bishop’s ministry of word, sacrament, and pastoral governance, with treatment of his collaborators in ministry.

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bined the seven partial texts into two drafts: (1) Schema decreti de episcopis ac
de dioceseon regimine, and (2) Schema constitutionis de pastorali episcoporum munere deque cura animarum, with the latter even after condensation
still made up of 198 paragraphs.The last phase of work on these preparatory
texts left a strong accentuation of ecclesiastical centralization with very little on
episcopal collegiality. After the turn of Vatican II to pastoral and doctrinal
renewal during Period I, in October–December 1962, the draft texts on bishops
were already in dissonance with the Council’s central movement.38
The year 1963 proved dramatic for Vatican II’s work on bishops. In January,
the new Coordinating Commission assigned the schemas on bishops and pastoral care to the oversight of Döpfner, who spoke for this directorate in mandating a reorientation of the schema on bishops, toward deepening its ecclesiology, rooting it in the emerging theme of collegiality, and affirming the
principle of a bishop’s inherent,not papally conceded,faculties for pastoral governance in the local church. But Marella responded with evasions, even four
times postponing plenary meetings of the Commission on Bishops. Carli guided
the spring 1963 work of Rome-based experts in touching up the schemas—but
not revising then as mandated by Döpfner for the Coordinating Commission.
The Coordinating Commission chose not to confront Marella, but in late
March 1963, it approved, without enthusiasm, the revised schemas for distribution to Council members and so for discussion during Vatican II’s Period II.
The Council’s orientation votes of October 30, 1963, made clear that the
Constitution De ecclesia would affirm episcopal collegiality, which meant that
the decree on episcopal ministry would have to draw certain consequences
from this. Then the November 5–15 aula debate on bishops and diocesan governance put on record several topics that had to enter revised texts on bishops: an episcopal senate or synod aligned with the Pope for the universal
Church, inherent episcopal faculties recognized not conceded, episcopal conferences coordinating pastoral work in nations or regions, and especially a doctrinally enriched vision of the bishop’s ministry in the local church.39
38
Faggioli, Il vescovo, pp. 113–33, especially 116–17 on objections raised in the
Central Preparatory Commission by future Council leaders, and pp. 129–33, on the two
texts resulting from combinations made by the Central Commission’s Subcommission
on Mixed Matters.
39
Faggioli, Il vescovo, pp. 147–50 (Döpfner’s mandated changes, including dismemberment of the schema on pastoral care, with most sections destined to postconciliar
directories), 150–58 (Marella’s evasions and Carli’s slight revisions), and pp. 186–229 (in
the aula, nine days on episcopal ministry).The opening day of debate, November 5, was
extraordinary in that five members of the Commission on Bishops spoke against their
own commission’s schema. But an early vote accepted the text as a basis (1610 placet
vs. 477 non-placet), largely because its chapters provided openings for the major revisions that many saw as needed. Faggioli related in detail the work of an informal group,
“Évêque de Vatican II,” which began in 1962 to produce short papers on episcopal ministry that, in time, influenced the 1964 major revision on bishops.“Quelques thèmes de

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91

The November 1963 debate also made it imperative to restructure the
Commission on Bishops. Five subcommissions were formed for revising the
text in the light of the many comments offered. Subcommission I effectively
took charge, with Coadjutor Archbishop Pierre Veuillot of Paris as Relator and
canonist Willem Onclin of Louvain as secretary.40 The previous leaders became
the minority, with Carli proving tenacious in opposing key changes, both in the
commission and in appeals to higher authorities. Early 1964 brought the insertion into the schema on bishops and pastoral governance of a section from De
cura animarum on the bishop’s pastoral ministry in his particular church.
Procedurally, the commission began functioning normally, with the periti
examining observations made by Council members and formulating draft modifications, which the responsible Subcommissions reviewed before the revised
text came before the whole commission. After the commission met in plenary
session on March 3–13, 1964, a revised text, De pastorali episcoporum
munere in ecclesia, was ready that cohered well with De ecclesia, Chap. III,
and that had incorporated, albeit with moderation, topics proposed to remedy
lacunae in the 1963 schema. The revised schema went out to the Council
members in late April 1964, so that they could prepare to discuss its new sections early in Period III.41
A four-day debate then brought several proposals for stronger statements
on an episcopal senate or consilium, as a counterweight to the Curia, and on
episcopal conferences. Léger spoke incisively of the profile of a diocesan

réflexion sur le modèle d’évêque post-conciliaire,” Revue des sciences religieuses 76
(2002), 78–102.
40
On the new leadership: G. Gilson and J. Robin, Cardinal Pierre Veuillot, chrétien,
évêque (Paris, 1968), and J. Grootaers,“Willy Onclin et sa participation à la rédaction du
décret ‘Christus Dominus,’”in Actes et acteurs à Vatican II (as in n. 3, above), pp. 420–55.
P.Veuillot had behind him ten years’ service in the Vatican Secretariat of State, where he
had become a good friend of Monsignor G. B. Montini, now Pope Paul VI.
41
Faggioli, Il vescovo, pp. 230–38 (the commission’s new structure and procedures),
pp. 235–77 (work of periti, esp. W. Onclin), pp. 278–95 (review by Subcommissions,
approval by plenary), and pp. 295–321 (navigating toward distribution amid obstacles
posed by Carli and Marella). Because the dogmatic text De ecclesia stated prominently
the collegial responsibility of bishops, with and under the Pope, for the universal
Church, the revised schema on bishops, sketched on pp. 262–70, gave precedence to
this, both in its new Prooemium and in Chap. I on the mission of bishops with regard
to the universal church. Chap. II described the bishop’s ministry as diocesan pastor, but
went on to treat coadjutor and auxiliary bishops, parish pastors, religious, and diocesan
boundaries. Chap. III then took up episcopal conferences, while not defining their composition and authority too precisely. The concrete role of the bishop in his diocese, in
teaching, sacramental life, and pastoral governance, did not emerge with a sharp profile,
as will be lamented by a group of Polish bishops in October 1964 (Faggioli, p. 360, who
notes on p. 367 that this was not remedied in Christus Dominus, because events constrained the commission to engage itself on other fronts related to the universal church
and episcopal conferences).

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bishop as demanded by the contemporary world, while Bishop Agnello Rossi
spoke for eighty-seven Brazilian bishops to ask for a definition of the diocese.
The latter proposal developed into Christus Dominus, no. 11, with its theological definition of the particular church, confided to the bishop and his presbytery, which is assembled by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel and
Eucharist, and in which the Una Sancta Catholica et Apostolica Christi
Ecclesia is truly present and operative.42
Under Archbishop Veuillot and Professor Onclin, the commission worked to
meet the different desires emerging from the debate in a textus emendatus
presented to the Fathers on October 30, 1964, for voting soon after. Four days
of caucusing and circulation of analyses ensued, with Carli and his associates
criticizing the revised schema for even mentioning episcopal collegiality, and
majority leaders such as Cardinal Frings asserting that the revised schema was
weak on the episcopal college in relation to the exercise of papal authority
and the activity of the Curia.As a result, on both Chapters I and II, more than
850 Fathers voted placet iuxta modum, and these, because they were more
than one-third of those voting, forced the commission to introduce further
revisions, especially aligning it more closely with De ecclesia / Lumen gentium, before these chapters would stand approved.43
In meetings later in November 1964, the modi proposed by large numbers
of Fathers were introduced into the text, but voting in the aula on these revisions was postponed to Period IV. But when Vatican II reconvened in
September 1965, no. 5 of the schema, formulating a desire for the creation of
a permanent episcopal consilium, had been overtaken by Paul VI’s institution
motu proprio of the Synod of Bishops, with its different types of meetings.At
the behest of Veuillot, the commission decided not to drop no. 5 of the
schema, but instead to reword it as an affirmation regarding what the Pope had
created—that is, a body representative of the whole episcopate and expressive
of its participation in his pastoral solicitude for the universal church.44
42
Faggioli, Il vescovo, pp. 339–62. In the debate, thirty-nine Fathers spoke, while fiftyeight written comments came into the commission. For Léger’s intervention, see Acta
synodalia (as in n. 7, above), III/2, pp. 219–22, and for Bishop Rossi’s proposal, Acta synodalia, III/2, p. 228.
43
Faggioli, Il vescovo, pp. 362–85, on the events, including the revisions and the decision to leave final action to Period IV. Before the vote, the minority had urged that De
ecclesia / Lumen gentium was not yet promulgated, and so its citation in the schema on
bishops had to remain provisional. For the majority, four modi were prepared at the
Belgian College and backed by Frings and his peritus J. Ratzinger, which would
strengthen the episcopal college. For glimpses of the activities and strategy surrounding
the vote, Faggioli uses to good effect the diary entries of Y. Congar, Mon Journal du
Concile (as in n. 5, above), 2; 235–39. Faggioli, Il vescovo, pp. 385–88, summarizes the
complex situation of the once more revised schema as Period III ended.
44
Faggioli, Il vescovo, pp. 380–81 (Commission work selecting modi for introduction
into the text), pp. 403–17 (on Döpfner’s proposal of a permanent episcopal consilium,

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93

The reworded no. 5 and the other modifications of the schema on bishops
came up for votes on September 30 and October 1, 1965, with huge majorities
approving thirteen particular changes and then, globally, each of the three
revised chapters.45
But the passage to a final vote on the complete modified text included six
days of tension caused by Paul VI’s passing on to the commission on
September 28 fourteen further modifications, some regarding points of style
but others on particulars related to doctrine.These seem to have come to the
Pope from Carli and Siri, through Archbishop Samoré. But after the
Commission on Bishops deliberated in plenary session on Sept. 30, when
voting on modi had already begun, Veuillot and Onclin asked Paul VI not to
insist on the changes, since the commission saw them either as unnecessary
or, when acceptable, as only able to be introduced by an extraordinary, even
embarrassing, vote of the Fathers directly on “papal amendments.” On October
3, the Pope’s theologian, Bishop Carlo Colombo, ended this tense moment by
communicating to Marella that Paul VI left the commission free to introduce
the changes or not.
On October 6, 1965, the Fathers approved the complete and finally revised
text on bishops, by 2167 votes of placet against only 14 non placet. Paul VI
promulgated it as Christus Dominus, Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops
in the Church, in Vatican II’s seventh Public Session on October 28, 1965.46
In his concluding remarks on the genesis of Christus Dominus, Faggioli
rightly draws attention to the momentous change of perspective that occurred
in 1963, namely, from treating the ministry of the bishop-in-diocese, to another

while Samoré in the Secretariat of State was working up Paul VI’s concept of the Synod;
the motu proprio of September 15, 1965, followed by reactions both in the commission
and across the span of Council members and periti, e.g., positive words from Lercaro,
Küng, the Conference of Delegates, and some observers, with reservations about the
Synod’s relation as an advisory body to the Pope from G. Alberigo and certain observers).
The evaluations of Paul VI’s Synod can now be expanded by two passages in Camara’s
nightly letters. On September 15–16, he was positive because of the role of episcopal
conferences in selecting members, but by September 24–25, he had turned critical, e.g.,
because the instituted Synod was not an instrument of the episcopate’s collegial share
in supreme pastoral authority, but an advisory body convened when the Pope wanted to
bring it together. Also, the Synod could render less urgent the reform of the Curia and
replacement of the present Secretary of State. H. Camara, Lettres conciliaires, 2: 797–99
and 830–32.
45
Faggioli, Il vescovo, pp. 422–24, on the votes approving the commission’s decisions
on modi, e.g., with 1999 placet / 15 non placet on revisions of Chap. I, 2090 placet / 26
non placet on revisions of Chap. II, and 2039 placet / 20 non placet on revisions of
Chap. III.
46
Faggioli, Il vescovo, pp. 425–33, on the modi passed on by Paul VI, and pp. 434–38,
on the final vote, promulgation, and provisions for enacting the Decree’s provisions.

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concern, namely, treating the episcopate-as-college. The schema on bishops
was swept into the wake of the Dogmatic Constitution De ecclesia to promote
its aim of restoring equilibrium to Catholic ecclesiology, which had been left
skewed by Vatican I’s legacy on papal primacy and infallibility. Vatican II
accepted the task of completing Vatican I by “calling the Pope in” from his isolated post as supreme pastor. Lumen gentium, in Chap. III on the episcopal
college, effected this, albeit imperfectly, and Chap. I of Christus Dominus gave
it a loyal echo. In both cases, the energetic minority of those loyal to papal prerogatives exerted influences on the texts that rendered them less forceful.
But Christus Dominus did speak in Chap. II, nos. 11–21, of the local ministry of the bishop, but without a doctrinal or pastoral impact comparable to
what the Council of Trent’s reform decrees, focused on bishops, effected in
early modern Catholicism.47 On issues raised, especially from November 5–15,
1963, such as reforming the Roman Curia, retirement of aged bishops, and
Episcopal Conferences, Christus Dominus had mixed results, in part because
of the prudence of Veuillot and Onclin, but mostly because Chap. I of the document was the site of several battles requiring energetic action. Also, the criteria of the selecting bishops received little attention, leaving this work, for
Latin Catholicism, in the hands of nuncios, the Curia, and the Pope.
Still, the genesis of Christus Dominus, presented amply and intelligently by
Faggioli, remains for students of Vatican II a process, extending from 1959 to
1965, which occasions numerous valuable insights into the Council.

Vatican II’s Culminating Document,
the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes
From the mid-point of Period III in 1964 until Vatican II’s conclusion in
early December 1965, the concerns of a large number of Council participants
focused on “Schema XIII,” a new type of conciliar document, which aimed to
address significant problems causing anxiety throughout the human family.
The schema underwent major revisions under the pressure of the evaluations
and proposals that emerged during two periods of aula debate over draft versions, first, on fifteen days in October–November 1964 and then on fourteen
47
A theological critic of Vatican II’s privileging of the college and the universal
church over a bishop’s ministry in a particular church is Hervé Legrand, O.P., in various
essays, for example,“Les évêques, les Églises locales et l’Église entière,” in Le ministère
des évêques au concile Vatican II et depuis, ed. H. Legrand and C.Theobald (Paris: Ed.
du Cerf, 2001), pp. 201–60. More recently, Gilles Routhier has treated this problematic,
from the perspective of the whole corpus of Vatican II documents, in an analysis that
brings out the concern for the Church’s catholicity as it is realized in regional groups of
dioceses in different cultural settings. See his remarks on a “multipolar” ecclesiology in
“Beyond Collegiality: the Local Church Left Behind by the Second Vatican Council,” plenary lecture, June 7, 2007, at the 62nd Annual Convention of the Catholic Theological
Society of America, now published in the 2007 CTSA Proceedings.

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95

additional days in September–October 1965. Each time, the responsible commission with its periti had to rework the text in the light of the members’
many oral and/or written interventions.As the Council neared its conclusion,
votes were taken on each part of the schema on November 15, 16, and 17,
1965, resulting in many affirmative votes with reservations and accompanying
amendments. This led to final revisions and to the text accepted in closed session on December 6, 1965 (Placet, 2111 votes; Non placet, 251; Invalid votes,
11), and then promulgated the next day by Paul VI after final voting in public
session (Placet, 2309; Non placet, 75, Invalid votes, 7).
Giovanni Turbanti,an associate of Giuseppe Alberigo in the Bologna research
institute, carried out during the 1990s extensive and taxing research on the
complex conciliar itinerary of Gaudium et spes. Even though his monograph
came out in the year 2000, I present it at this late date both because of its singular value among Vatican II studies and the scarcity of reviews that go into
detail.48 The special importance of the Pastoral Constitution lies in the way in
which, in this text,Vatican II added with all desirable clarity a decisive characteristic to the profile of its own identity. In Gaudium et spes, the Council broke
through to speak consistently with its own voice in relation to the world at
large.To sense this, one has only to ponder no. 3 of Gaudium et spes, on the
Church’s “solidarity, respect, and love for the whole human family,”which shares
a noble vocation and in which God has planted “a divine seed.”49 From this
basis, there follows an effort at dialogue about the problems that trouble many,
that is, about the human place in the universe, the meaning of human work and
efforts, the destiny of nature and humanity, and the issues of marriage and the
family, culture, economic life, political activity, and war and peace.
As Turbanti recalls in his conclusion,Vatican II’s work leading to the Pastoral
Constitution saw different basic orientations become successively prevalent.A
series of drafts of 1961–62 by the Preparatory Theological Commission (De
deposito fidei pure custodiendo, De ordine morali, De ordine sociali)
expressed the magisterial intent, already present in papal encyclicals, to correct erroneous views underlying what was perceived as a civilizational decline
in the modern era and to counteract these views with true doctrines of natural and revealed law. At the same time, however, the Preparatory Commission
48
G. Routhier gave due attention to Turbanti’s work in his 2003 bulletin on Vatican II
studies: Laval théologique et philosophique 59 (2003), 583–606, at 590–95. Routhier
raises an important critical question, not perceived by Turbanti, about the predominance, and even exclusiveness, of northern European bishops and periti at crucial stages
of the elaboration of the Pastoral Constitution, which by its nature called for contributions for the “other worlds” of Catholic life and thought in the mid-twentieth century.
49
This is “epideictic” discourse. On Vatican II’s characteristic genres, style, and vocabulary, especially its adoption of the epideictic rhetoric of congratulation, reconciliation,
and encouragement, see John W. O’Malley,“Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?”Theological
Studies, 67 (2006), 3–33, especially 24–31.

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on the Lay Apostolate was drawing up a schema sketching, among other
things, principles to confidently guide lay social action in dealing with the
world’s problems, seen as fields of constructive lay action.50 As Vatican II
opened, John XXIII steered the Council away from condemning errors and
toward expressing the perennial meaning of Christ in a fresh manner that
would be attractive and beneficial to families, nations, and the whole world. In
January 1963, a first notion of a new type of document took considerable inspiration from the universal view of God’s saving action expressed in the widely
circulated alternative schema of November 1963, De revelatione Dei et
hominis, by Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger. As work progressed, Suenens
called together theologians, including Gérard Philips and Yves Congar, in
September 1963, who worked out a new text on the Church in the modern
world, based on its mission of evangelization and service.51
Gaudium et spes owes much to the warmth and optimism of John XXIII,
especially in Mater et Magistra (May 1961) and Pacem in terris (April 1963).52
But Paul VI contributed to the Pastoral Constitution’s orientation toward dialogue with the world as a respected partner through his opening discourse of
Period II (September 29, 1963) and his Ecclesiam suam (August 1964). As
work progressed in 1964–65, the input of French bishops and periti gave
prominence to the problem-oriented “Jocist” method (See–Judge–Act), privileging an inductive, phenomenological reading of the human condition and of
anxious questions raised by problematic situations.53 In 1965, Bishop Karol
50
In the comprehensive preparatory schema on the lay apostolate, Part IV, Section 2,
treated lay social action concerning the family, education, the condition of women in
work and social life, the economic order, the right order of society, science and art, technology, politics, and promoting right relations between peoples and nations.This outline
is given by Thomas Gertler in Appendix 1 of his study of the Christology of the Pastoral
Constitution, Jesus Christus—Die Antwort der Kirche auf die Frage nach dem
Menschsein, Erfurter theologische Studien, 52 (Leipzig: St. Benno Verlag, 1986), p. 400.
51
This “Malines schema” remains interesting because of its theological depth, even
though it did not enter directly into the schema prepared for Period III of 1964. It is
given as Annex 2 in M. del Carmen Aparicio Valls, La Plenitud de Ser Humano en Cristo.
La Revelación en la “Gaudium et spes,” Tesi Gregoriana, Serie Teologia, 17 (Rome:
Editrice Pont. Univ. Gregoriana, 1997), pp. 239–50. On the working sessions of its
authors, especially the redactional work of G. Philips, see the diary notes of Y. Congar,
Mon Journal du Concile (as in n. 5, above) 1: 394–99.
52
The early redactors of the schema sensed at times the differences between their
initial work and the high standard set in both content and tone by John XXIII’s social
encyclicals.The letters of Camara, reviewed earlier in this article, record how he urged
several times during 1964 that the schema on the church in the modern world should
speak to the world in the engaging way Pope John had done in Mater et Magistra and
Pacem in terris.
53
Philippe Bordeyne’s recent study of Gaudium et spes treats the Constitution as an
attentive response to troubled human questioning over disturbing aspects of modern
life: L’homme et son angoisse. La théologie morale de “Gaudium et spes,” Cogitatio
fidei, 240 (Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 2004).

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Wojtyla successfully brought into the mix the theme of the church’s institutional “presence” in the world and society (Gaudium et spes, Part I, Chap. IV),
while German critics became effective advocates of having the document take
greater cognizance of human fallibility and sin, when speaking at key points
(e.g., nos. 10.2, 22, 32, 38, 45) out of the Church’s own treasure of faith in the
redemptive work of the Incarnate and Risen Lord, Jesus Christ.
It is no small achievement of Turbanti to have charted this succession of
guiding orientations, beginning from scattered seeds collected in the 1959–60
canvas of future Council members and of theological faculties about topics
and themes to take up at Vatican II. Naturally, his work also describes with
admirable patience and tenacity a huge number of detailed contributions to
the successive drafts of the schema. I will now call attention to only important
moments in the document’s genesis.
The history of Gaudium et spes as we know it began with an insight
gained, well away from public notice, in late December 1962.54 This came in
the form of a first glimpse of the structure of the future Pastoral Constitution
by Bishop Franz Hengsbach (Essen) and Father Johannes Hirschmann, S.J. (St.
Georgen, Frankfurt), who were respectively a member and a peritus of the
Council’s Commission on the Lay Apostolate. They had been mandated to
abbreviate the chapter on lay social action inherited from the Preparatory
Commission on the Lay Apostolate.55 But they also had in hand a list, distributed late in Period I, of the twenty schemas provisionally constituting
Vatican II’s agenda. On the list was the title of a late product of the
Preparatory Theological Commission, De ordine sociali et de communitate
gentium, which had not yet been distributed in Council.56 Hengsbach and
Hirschmann had also been impressed by the Liturgy schema, amply discussed and favorably received in Period I, which combined general principles and norms of reform with specific directives applying the principles in
the different areas of liturgical worship. This structure on liturgy suggested
to them a new schema that would first give doctrinal principles taken from
the theological schema of social doctrine, before passing on to applications
in major areas of social action already treated in the schema of their commission, that is, the family and education, the economic and social order, culture, political life, and the international community. Hengsbach proposed the
title, De praesentia efficaci ecclesiae in societate humana et in commu54
Turbanti, Un concilio per il mondo moderno (as listed at the head of this review
article), pp. 70–84 (on the preparatory theological schemas on social issues and on the
preparatory schema on the lay apostolate) and pp. 170–79 (on the insight of Bishop
Hengsbach and peritus Hirschmann, including on pp. 177–79 the letter of the former to
Cardinal Julius Döpfner, in which Hengsbach sketches the contours of a new text).
55
See note 50, above.
56
The list, distributed on December 5, 1962, is given in Acta synodalia, I/1, pp. 90–95,
with the title of a text on the social and international order listed as no.VII.

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nitate gentium. From this moment, the Pastoral Constitution began its
complex but momentous itinerary through the procedures of Vatican
Council II.57
Another major moment, much later in the genesis of Gaudium et spes, is
one at which one can only be amazed over the coordinated work of the large
number of Vatican II participants contributing to the final revisions of the
Pastoral Constitution.58 As it had drafted and revised its text in 1964, the
Mixed Commission on Schema XVII (soon Schema XIII), had gained autonomy from its two commissions of origin, so that its successive texts could go
directly to the Coordinating Commission and then to Paul VI for approval of
distribution to the Council fathers. In the wake of a week-long consultation
at Ariccia, the precise structure of the future document began to emerge from
the welter of proposed changes in the version discussed in the aula in
October–November, 1964.59 After Ariccia, groups of bishops and periti, coordinated by the Mixed Commission’s central subcommission, prepared revised
chapters of a text for the decisive Period IV of Vatican II.60 By June, the first
57
Turbanti relates (pp. 182–98) the Lay Apostolate Commission’s acceptance of the
Hengsbach-Hirschmann concept in mid-January 1963 and then its approval, along with
different proposed emphases, by the Vatican II directorate, the Commission for
Coordinating the Labors of the Council (including Cardinals Döpfner, Urbani, and
Suenens, with four others), in its meetings of January 21–27, 1963. The latter commission’s updated Vatican II agenda of late January listed in the last place “Schema XVII, De
ecclesiae principiis et actione ad bonum societatis promovendum,” which would be
the responsibility of a mixed commission to be formed by members and periti of the
Council’s Doctrinal and Lay Apostolate Commissions.
58
Early in 1965, from January 31 to February 6, the working meeting at Ariccia to
review and sketch the revision to be made in light of the aula discussion of
October–November 1964, included no fewer than eighty-seven persons (thirty bishops,
thirty-five periti, seventeen lay “auditors,” two secretaries, and three staff persons). The
lay persons were active contributors to the subcommissions.The February 2 diary entry
of Y. Congar at Ariccia has become famous, which noted the uncanny impact of Wojtyla
when he proposed to take account of how others, such as Marxists, were giving worldshaping answers to the questions and problems of the modern world.“Sa personnalité
s’impose. Il rayonne d’elle un fluide, une attirance, une certaine force prophétique très
calme, ma irrécusable.” Mon Journal du Concile (as in n. 5, above), 2: 312.
59
The 1964 text is given in Acta synodalia (as in n. 7, above), III/5, pp. 116–42
(Prooemium and Chapters on the human vocation, the Church’s dedication to service,
Christian activity in the world, and the main tasks for Christians of this age) and pp.
147–200 (5 Adnexa for postconciliar work on the human person in society, marriage
and the family, the promotion of culture, the economy, and international relations and
the promotion of peace).
60
Bishop Emilio Guano of Livorno chaired the Central Subcommission, which was
significantly influenced by Bishop Jacques Ménager (Mieux) and Archbishop Gabriel
Garrone (Toulouse). The redaction of spring 1965 was in fact a revision of drafts done
at and after the Ariccia meeting by the particular subcommissions responsible for each
chapter. The main writer of the whole text was Professor Pierre Haubtmann of Paris

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revised text of 1965 was prepared, approved, and sent to the Council members for their study and reactions.61
The Mixed Commission responsible for the schema made ready for intense
work during Period IV, since many new sections of the June 1965 version
needed to be scrutinized by the whole Council in open debate. In fact, 160
members spoke between September 21 and October 8, with several speaking
in the name of conferences and other groups of bishops, to which were added
many more written animadversiones on the schema.Thus, hundreds of proposals had to be collected, organized in relation to the schema’s paragraphs,
and evaluated for introduction into the text destined to come back to the
assembly for voting and final revision before the Council’s end on December
7, 1965.
For this work of revision under heavy pressure of time, the Mixed
Commission formed itself into ten subcommissions, made up of fifty-two
Council members and some eighty-three periti.62 In the midst of this sizable
group, the key persons were the subcommission (S/C) presidents and the
periti serving each S/C as secretary:
Central S/C: Garrone (acting president), Haubtmann (secretary);
S/C 2 (Human Condition): M. McGrath, C.S.C. (pres.), J. Medina (secy.);
S/C 3 (Human Person): J.Wright (pres.), O. Semmelroth, S.J. (secy.);
S/C 4 (Human Activity): G. Garrone (pres.), P. Smulders, S.J. (secy.);
S/C 5 (Contribution of the Church):A.Ancel (pres.), A. Grillmeier, S.J. (secy.);

(Institut catholique), assisted by J. Hirschmann (Frankfurt), Charles Moeller (Louvain),
and Robert Tucci (Rome, Civiltà cattolica), with Philips having a supervisory role. On
Haubtmann, see P. Bordeyne,“Pierre Haubtmann au Concile Vatican II. Un historien et un
théologien de l’inquiétude contemporaine,” Ephemerides theologicae Lovanienses 77
(2001), 356–83.
61
This text, in 106 numbered paragraphs, went to the members in June 1965 and is
given in Acta synodalia, IV/1, pp. 435–515. It introduced two major structural changes
over the text discussed in 1964. A tone-setting survey of the human condition in the
modern world was inserted (to become Gaudium et spes, nos. 4–10) between the
Prooemium and the four chapters of doctrine in Part I.Also, the previous Adnexa were
now in the schema, as an ample Part II, a change that, however, brought with it occasions
for sharp clashes over what Council members would agree to having the Pastoral
Constitution say about the ends or purposes of marriage, the means of implementing
family planning, modern warfare (“total war”), and nuclear weapons.
62
Turbanti gives the membership of the subcommissions: Un concilio per il mondo
moderno, pp. 632–34. Nine subcommissions were responsible for the individual chapters of the schema, while a central subcommission oversaw the work with a special
care for consistency and a common language. Bishop Guano had contracted hepatitis
in May 1965, and Paul VI had asked Archbishop Garrone to chair the central subcommission.Then in mid-October, Philips had to retire from Council work because of a cardiac condition.

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S/C 6 (Marriage): J. Dearden (pres.),V. Heylen (secy.);
S/C 7 (Culture):W. Moehler, S.A.C. (pres.),63 B. Rigaux, O.F.M. (secy.);
S/C 8 (Economic Life): F. Hengsbach (pres.), E. Lio, O.F.M. (secy.);
S/C 9 (Political Life): B. Lászlo (pres.), A. Guglielmi (secy.);
S/C 10 (War and Peace): J. Schröffer (pres.), H. de Riedmatten, O.P., R.
Sigmond, O.P., and D. Dubarle, O.P. (secretaries).
Even before debate opened on September 21, the Central Subcommission
prepared itself to make further revisions in the light of forcefully argued proposals coming from the German bishops, especially to render firmly the
Constitution’s acknowledgment both of human sin and of Christ’s saving
work.64 On the second day of aula debate, M.-D. Chenu, O.P., gave a lateafternoon lecture at the Dutch Documentation Center, which was an impassioned theological commendation of the revised schema, and which Turbanti
sees as swaying a number of heretofore undecided Council members in the
direction of favoring the Pastoral Constitution.65 Late in the debate, Paul VI’s
eloquent discourse before the United Nations (October 4) confirmed those,
such as Lercaro, who held that the moment was ripe for stronger words,
spoken out of evangelical optimism, against war and the arms race.66
The responsible subcommissions functioned well in further developing
selected passages, especially in Part I of the schema, in the light of the inter63
Wilhelm Moehler (Superior General, Pallottine Fathers) replaced Guano as president of S/C 7.
64
Turbanti, pp. 635–38. K. Rahner’s negative judgments were, according to O.
Semmelroth, not accompanied by constructive proposals for revision (Turbanti, p. 696,
n. 201). But in mid-October, J. Ratzinger brought a text to P. Haubtmann that expressed
some of the German preferences and contributed to the short “Christological credo” of
Gaudium et spes, no. 10, paragraph 2. P. Bordeyne tells of this development in “Pierre
Haubtmann au Concile Vatican II” (as in n. 60, above), pp. 361–62. See the appreciation
of this text by T. Gertler, Jesus Christus—Die Antwort der Kirche (as in n. 50, above), pp.
107–14.
65
Turbanti, pp. 643–51. The text, “Une constitution pastorale de l’église,” is in M.-D.
Chenu, Peuple de Dieu dans le monde (Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 1966), pp. 11–34. For an analysis, see Christophe Potworowski, Contemplation and Incarnation. The Theology of
Marie-Dominique Chenu (Montréal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press,
2001), pp. 156–66.
66
Turbanti, pp. 678–86, relates the debate on Part II, Chap. 5, of the schema, concluding with an account of Card. Lercaro’s written submission of a text, composed by
G. Dossetti, favoring an evangelical forthrightness on peace and war—which many at
Vatican II, especially the American and German bishops, were not ready to espouse. A
wide-ranging study of this phase of Vatican II by J. Komonchak draws attention to fissures, such as this one, which appeared late in the Council between groups that earlier
had stood together in the majority favoring the Council’s doctrinal developments and
reform impulses regarding worship and practice.“Le valutazioni sulla Gaudium et spes:
Chenu, Dossetti, Ratzinger,” in Volti di fine concilio, ed. J. Doré and A. Melloni (Bologna:
Ed. il Mulino, 2000), pp. 115–53.

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101

ventions.The Council Fathers received the textus recognitus on November 12
and 13, a text manifesting considerable responsiveness to their proposals.Then
followed the votes and the treatment of amendments submitted with the votes
Placet iuxta modum.67 This led to further refinements, including a differentiated inclusion of modi coming from Paul VI concerning marriage and the
means of lawful family planning.68
Together with the Council Fathers, Pope Paul VI gave to the world Vatican
II’s Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes on December 7, 1965, along with
the shorter but related Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis humanae.
On this day Vatican II gave proof that it had become in large measure the new
type of Council desired by John XXIII, a council of pastoral reform to benefit
the whole world.The promise of John’s Mater et magistra and Pacem in terris
reached a high level of fulfillment. Historically, the day also signaled an end to
the Catholic Church’s century-long singing of litanies of lament over developments in the modern world, which Vatican Council I had expressed in 1870 in
the Prologue attached to its Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Dei Filius.69
With Gaudium et spes, a new era in the Church-world relation opened, with
the Pastoral Constitution casting a loving gaze on the world’s citizens, while
speaking out of a renewed Christian vision of human dignity, society, and creativity (Part I) and opening a respectful exchange (Part II), in a spirit of service and solidarity, on the great and troubling problems of the human family.

67
Turbanti,p. 734, offers a table of the results of voting on November 15, 16, and 17.
In his memoir-interview on his own activity at Vatican II, Bernhard Häring tells of having
prepared ca. 50 modi that numerous bishops, especially those of his Redemptorist order,
handed in as their own with votes Placet iuxta modum. Most were accepted into the
final paragraphs of Gaudium et spes, especially for no. 16 on moral conscience. Meine
Erfahrung mit der Kirche (Freiburg–Basel–Vienna: Herder, 1989), pp. 78–79.
68
Turbanti, pp. 743–59.The Pope’s authority also provided backing for declining to
follow the many modi calling for a renewed and explicit condemnation of communism,
which had been promoted by Bishop Luigi Carli and the Coetus internationalis
patrum. For this omission, appeal was made to John XXIII’s specification of the positive
pastoral aim of Vatican II, to the preference that the Council not pursue political aims,
and to the desire not to further endanger Catholic life in lands under communist domination (Turbanti, pp. 726–30 and 759–60).
69
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. N. Tanner, 2 vols. (London: Sheed and
Ward, and Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 2: 804–05.

REVIEW ESSAYS
_______
RECENT WORKS ON THE EARLY MODERN HISTORY
OF SPANISH MUSLIMS
BY

FABIO LOPEZ-LAZARO*
Between Christians and Moriscos: Juan de Ribera and Religious Reform in
Valencia, 1568–1614. By Benjamin Ehlers. [The Johns Hopkins University
Studies in Historical and Political Science, 124th series (2006), volume 1.]
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2006. Pp. xviii, 241. $45.00.
ISBN 0-8018-8322-9.)
Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614. By Leonard Patrick Harvey. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. 2006. Pp. xiv, 448. $25.00 paperback. ISBN 0226-31964-4.)
From Muslim to Christian Granada: Inventing a City’s Past in Early Modern
Spain. By A. Katie Harris. [The Johns Hopkins University Studies in
Historical and Political Science, 125th series (2007), volume 1.] (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2007. Pp. xxiv, 255. $50.00. ISBN 9780-8018-8523-5.)
These three books tell us that Spain’s Muslim remnants were conquered
three times: first militarily, with the fall of Granada in 1492, then theologically
when rebellions led to policies of forced conversion (1500, Granada; 1526, rest
of Spain), and finally macro-politically, after the 1568–1570 Alpujarras rebellion
proved neither military control nor parish reform were defeating crypto-Islam.
Harvey’s broad chronological coverage of the Muslim side is complemented by
the younger scholars’ detailed analysis of Christian perspectives. Harris’s analysis of the Sacromonte lead tablets forged between 1588 and 1595, for example,
illustrates their role in Granada’s self-Christianization, while Harvey understands them as strategies for “New Christian/crypto-Muslim” survival, attempts
to raise the self-esteem of a downtrodden elite, and an effort “to salvage something from the shipwreck of Spanish Islam” (p. 267). Taken singly, each work
makes a necessary Moriscological addition; together, they testify to the sophistication of an important subfield in early modern Iberian history.
*Dr. Lopez-Lazaro is assistant professor of History in Santa Clara University in Santa
Clara, California.

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BY FABIO LOPEZ-LAZARO

103

Ehlers’s is a complex study of Valencian archbishop Juan de Ribera’s transformation from enthusiastic advocate of Christian lay spirituality to confirmed enemy of the newly converted Moriscos. He concludes that antiIslamism did not cause the archbishop to adopt expulsion; but rather, he was
influenced by a combination of missionary frustration, episcopal cynicism,
and a nationalist conviction that Spain could ill afford a fifth-column presence
(Ribera conflated religious and political loyalty). The more Ribera achieved
success in promoting a renewed Tridentine emphasis on the Eucharist
amongst Old Christians, the more crypto-Muslim ridicule drew lines in the
sand. Ribera’s initial position also succumbed to anti-Castilian Valencian rejection of Habsburg centralization (Harvey concurs, p. 258). Old and New
Christians originally hoped that Ribera would rule with “benign neglect
rather than leadership” (Ehlers, p. 39), but when the regional nobility blackmailed Moriscos by turning a blind eye to their Islamism, they scuppered
Ribera’s initial plans to tolerate slow conversion.
“Subnational” regionalism also played a significant part according to Harris
in the mostly immigrant Granadan city council’s promotion of the Torre
Turpiana tablets and Sacromonte relics as authentic, in the face of “persistent
challenges” from Madrid and Rome (p.133). However, unlike the Valencian
nobility, who acquired no legitimacy by supporting Moriscos, Harris’s council
acquired “some of the historical continuity” the city lacked as a Muslim capital, a feat accomplished for them by the tablets revealing that Granada’s firstcentury Christian converts had been Arabs (p. 135).The differences between
Granada and Valencia explain why Philip III did not reject the tablets (precisely
in 1609, the year of expulsion) and why Granadans refused to accept their
condemnation as forgeries by Pope Innocent XI in 1682. Additionally, the
Morisco problem in Ehlers’s Valencia was ruralized, whereas Harris’s Granada
tablets were deeply imbedded in the urban politics that contemporary Latin
civic panegyrics fostered.
In Ehlers’s strongly political reading, Philip III’s decision to expel the
Moriscos responded to the political weakness caused by the truce that year
with the heretical Netherlands. Harvey agrees, noting pre-1609 council discussions of mass murder, exile to Newfoundland, euthanasia, and castration; but he
believes Philip III and Lerma chose expulsion mostly because the Peace with
Holland allowed Spain to concentrate the necessary military personnel.
Although Harvey’s longue-durée study conforms to Ehlers’s conclusion that the
measures taken between 1492 and 1609 were not part of “an unfolding royal
policy” (p. 16), Harvey, unlike Ehlers, stresses that the Catholic monarchs
adopted Muslim exclusion at least as early as 1497 during negotiations for a
Portuguese marriage alliance (this critique of Mark D. Meyerson’s thesis is still
not completely convincing). Both Harvey and Ehlers acknowledge that a key
shift in Valencia occurred in 1525 when Charles V retracted his 1518 oath to
protect Moriscos’ autonomy by upholding the legality of the forced conversion
imposed on Valencia’s Mudéjares by the Germanía rebels in 1521.This act met

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with Morisco proclamations of historic loyalty and outraged disbelief. Ehlers’s
adept interpretation of the evidence proves that guarantees allowing Valencian
Muslims forty years to undergo conversion placed them as “New Christians”
under the Inquisition’s scrutiny (this matches Harvey’s interpretation, p. 105):
what ensued—haphazard conversion, crypto-Islam, and Inquisitorial and aristocratic exploitation of Moriscos’ weakened social position—fueled Ribera’s
advocacy of a policy of expulsion after 1582. Reading Ehlers, Harvey, and Harris
together, then, suggests Philip II’s decision not to expel the Moriscos after the
Alpujarras revolt was political.The contemporary discovery of the Arabic tablets
made Granada’s immediate Muslim past valuable to Spain by proving that it was
important to the development of early Christian episcopal and dogmatic life.
Harris states that Granada’s immigrant and New Christian elites took the
Muslim Sacromonte and transformed it in line with the devotional spirit of
saints and relics,“encouraged by the Tridentine Church” (p. 153). In contrast, at
the same time Archbishop Ribera in Valencia was working to disallow analogies
between Morisco lay practices, which his advocacy of lay spirituality, iluminismo, and veneration of relics and saints might ironically highlight. Whereas
Philip II allowed such disparate policies to develop in Granada and Valencia,
Philip III’s minister Lerma did not. Ehlers suggests we resist the temptation to
characterize the historical trajectory of Muslim fortunes from “Reconquest to
forced baptisms to expulsion” as “a simple downward progression” (p. 13).
Likewise, Harvey believes that expulsion was not inevitable (although “inexorable”?), even though his argument that by 1580 Christian-Muslim tensions on
the peninsula were “polarized” beyond reconciliation points to inevitability.
Christians demanded “sincere” conversion but suspected—correctly,—that
most Muslims were, unsurprisingly, insincere converts (pp. 231–39).
The question remains whether Tridentine lay spirituality and Habsburgsponsored episcopal intrusion into local affairs did not “create” much of post1520s Morisco religious behavior. To what degree did a syncretistic Morisco
culture emerge? For Harvey, crypto-Muslim leaders “had to perform the nearimpossible feat of crippling intellectual contortion”—at times, outright
deception—“involved in remaining creatively distinct and yet keeping their
creativity a secret” (p. 203). “Arévalo,” the most prolific of crypto-Muslim
authors according to Harvey, borrowed freely from Thomas à Kempis’s
Imitatio Christi and the Castilian bestseller, La Celestina, but wrote that the
vast majority of crypto-Muslims “simply got by with a simple belief and a
simple faith,” which, “they thought, would suffice to save them” (p. 184).
Arévalo’s “clumsy embroidery” (p. 179) of religious beliefs and practices
aimed at bolstering a rapidly eroding community consensus. Harris adduces
evidence from sermons, urban histories, and civic rituals indicating that the
discovery of the lead tablets perpetuated the Sacromonte’s “meaningful”place
in previous “Muslim sacred geography” in a regional “immigrant Christian
cult” (p. 118), combining “the culture and concerns of Granada’s vulnerable
Morisco remnant with the religious idiom of the immigrant majority” (p. 27).
When the tablets quoted the first-century St. Cecilio, bishop of Granada,

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105

saying,“I testify that there is no other god but God and you [Jesus] are his true
spirit” (p. 30), they were clearly calquing the Muslim profession of faith
(
). In a contrast of emphasis Harvey takes the tablets
as a crypto-Muslim political strategy aimed at subverting triumphant
Christianity through a deft Islam- and Arab-affirming infiltration (“entryism”
[p. 268]). The centrifugal syncretism inherent to Harvey and Harris’s otherwise different interpretations explains why both the Papacy and Muslim leaders in North Africa, centripetal officials, anathematized the tablets. To what
degree did medieval Andalusi Islamic orthodoxy survive in sixteenth-century
Spain? Clearly, Morisco society molded itself dialectically vis-à-vis Valencian
and Granadan episcopally-driven Tridentine Catholicism (not just “in opposition to Christianity” as a whole, as Ehlers maintains [p. 34]). Harvey concludes
that “Spain’s Muslims” had a “very European” culture, which, although partly
“inherited from the East,” shared “many aspects of the common culture of the
lands where they were born.” Such were the makings of an uncomfortable
syncretism for both inquisitors and muftis (pp. 98, 136–38, and 178). Many
Moriscos must have rediscovered their “Muslimness” as a result of
Inquisitional inquiry. What was the rationale of Moriscos in Buñol, only
twenty-five miles from Valencia, when they built a clandestine place of worship “in the manner of the mosques they had seen in the kingdom of
Granada”? (p. 30). The question is not simply how Moriscos “found ways to
perpetuate their faith in the absence of the formal institutional structures
characteristic of Islamic communities located within Muslim polities” (Ehlers,
p. 34), but why amnesia about Islam set in so quickly and so selectively in
some parts and how, in others, we have evidence of a rebirth of “Islamicness.”
Muslims in Spain is simply the best synthesis of Moriscology available, the
sum of Harvey’s fifty years of accumulated wisdom. A scholar of aljamiado
texts, Harvey naturally stresses that Morisco realities must be reconstructed
not through archives but through “what they themselves wrote, their own
underground literature” (p. viii). Harvey’s explanation of how fear of contamination and profound religious convictions characterized both Muslim and
Christian attitudes fleshes out Harris’s and Ehlers’s more one-sided approach.
No consistency in state policies emerges from Harvey’s analysis: an anti-Muslim
policy contradicted the crown’s special tax revenue interests as well as nonemigration laws; internal migration within Castile at first was outlawed for
Granadans, then enforced forty years later. However, such inconsistency
worked for as well as against both (crypto)-Muslims and New Christians.What
systematically fueled arguments for the expulsion of Muslims “even though
they were peaceful and might be living quietly” (p. 57), in Harvey’s view, was
the fear that poorly converted Muslims would contaminate Old Christians (sixteenth-century Granadan women took to wearing full-body veils—“almalafa”
<milhaf or hā’ik—as a fashion statement regardless of their religion [p. 72]).
Harvey’s two-sided approach allows for a more sympathetic understanding of
Archbishop Ribera’s dilemma as presented by Ehlers and suggests Harris’s
reading of Granada’s civic life underestimates fracture lines symptomatic of

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RECENT WORKS ON THE EARLY MODERN HISTORY OF SPANISH MUSLIMS

what we might term disvivencia, the mutual definition of communities
through opposition.
Harvey’s work thus delves deeply into social history. The 1504 fatwa issued
by a mufti in Oran offered Spanish Muslims solutions to their predicament
that justified dissimulation, taqiyya, as a permanent crypto-Islam within
Catholicism. Christian institutional pressure placed Moriscos in the line of fire
of socially anxious parish priests and theologically astute inquisitors. Because
washing was necessary for Muslim prayers, one nobleman in 1514 recommended that his parishioners arrive at church “decently unwashed” (p. 53).
Muslims negotiated their legal infractions by paying fines. Ironically, the legal
homogenization of Moriscos within the Castilian and Aragonese crowns after
1526 produced unforeseen problems for advocates of conversion, counterproductively driving crypto-Muslims “to renew their networks” of Islamic solidarity, a process that Harvey believes reached its apogee after the 1571 defeat
of the Alpujarras rebels (pp. 73–78, 242).
Reading the three books cross-textually reveals many unanswered problems as well as establishing some clear guidelines for further research.
Christian prelates overestimated Morisco irreligiosity as anti-Christian cryptoIslam and underestimated the fragmented and impoverished spirituality of
most of them.The currency of cultural “Europeanness” among Moriscos, which
Harvey stresses, means they were not as “inoculated with ideological antibodies” to Christianity as he later argues—most people cannot distinguish dogma
from custom easily. Geographic isolation from fellow Muslims, compounded
by the diplomatically justified lack of Mamluk, Sa‘adian, or Ottoman support,
sealed the Moriscos’ loss of communal solidarity (“many of them were afraid
of one another” [p. 280]). It is unconvincing to argue alongside Harvey that
Christian attitudes changed between 1500 and 1609 sufficiently to countenance expulsion of Muslims because “Christendom no longer felt so exposed
to retribution from the Islamic world” (p. 294).Why were Philip II and Philip
III not as concerned as Ferdinand and Isabella that ill treatment of Spain’s
Muslims would result in retaliatory Ottoman attacks on their Christian millets?
Muslim state leadership failed the Moriscos during the 1582–1609 crisis.
Conversely, one wonders how Harvey can argue that the Ottomans trusted
that Christian-tainted New Christian Morisco immigrants would “strengthen
the reliably Sunni element in southeastern Turkey” (p. 357), as Harvey is conscious of the recent work by Francisco Márquez Villanueva demonstrating that
conversion-assimilation in Spain actually succeeded. Given that emigration
away from territories ruled by non-Muslims was concertedly enjoined by
Muslim leaders and systematically practiced before forced conversion became
a reality in the early 1500s, the question remains:Whatever possessed 300,000
Muslims to stay in the Christian monarchs’ kingdoms?
Harris picks up the thread of significant events since 1609 (Harvey’s and
Ehlers’s essential terminus ad quem). The “once-despised Muslim past” has

BY FABIO LOPEZ-LAZARO

107

now resurfaced as an important symbol for modern Granadans. From “long-lost
patents of nobility and certificates of baptism” in seventeenth-century
Granada, the forged tablets, returned to the city by the Papacy in 2000, now
function within the “plurality of pasts” that modern Granada officially celebrates. But St. Cecilio (whose existence in earliest Christianity the tablets
proved along with the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception) “remains
Granada’s patron saint” (pp. 157–58).

THE GERMANS AND THE PAPAL PENITENTIARY:
REPERTORIUM POENITENTIARIAE GERMANICUM
BY

THOMAS M. IZBICKI*
Verzeichnis der in den Supplikenregistern der Pönitentiarie Eugens IV. vorkommenden Personen, Kirchen und Orte des Deutschen Reiches 1431–
1447. Edited by Ludwig Schmugge with Paolo Ostinelli and Hans Braun.
[Repertorium Poenitentiariae Germanicum I.] (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer
Verlag. 1998. Pp. xxv, 166. €28.63.)
Verzeichnis der in den Supplikenregistern der Pönitentiarie Nikolaus’s V.
vorkommenden Personen, Kirchen und Orte des Deutschen Reiches
1447–1455. Edited by Ludwig Schmugge with Krystyna Bukowska and
Alessandra Mosciatti. [Repertorium Poenitentiariae Germanicum II.]
(Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. 1999. Pp. xxix, 364. €56.00.)
Verzeichnis der in den Supplikenregistern der Pönitentiarie Calikts III. vorkommenden Personen, Kirchen und Orte des Deutschen Reiches 1455–
1458. Edited by Ludwig Schmugge and Wolfgang Müller. [Repertorium
Poenitentiariae Germanicum III.] (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. 2001.
Pp. xxiii, 354. €54.00.)
Verzeichnis der in den Supplikenregistern der Pönitentiarie Pius’ II. vorkommenden Personen, Kirchen und Orte des Deutschen Reiches 1458–
1464. Edited by Ludwig Schmugge, Patrick Herperger, and Béatrice
Wiggenhauser. [Repertorium Poenitentiariae Germanicum IV.] (Tübingen:
Max Niemeyer Verlag. 1996. Pp. xxxvi, 534. €79.00.)
Verzeichnis der in den Supplikenregistern der Pönitentiarie Pauls II. vorkommenden Personen, Kirchen und Orte des DeutschenReiches 1464–
1471. Edited by Ludwig Schmugge, Peter Clarke, Alessandra Mosciatti,
Hildegard Schneider-Schmugge, and Wolfgang Müller. [Repertorium
Poenitentiariae Germanicum V.] (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. 1996. Pp.
xxxvi, 534. €122.00.)
Verzeichnis der in den Supplikenregistern der Pönitentiarie Sixtus’ IV. vorkommenden Personen, Kirchen und Orte des Deutschen Reiches 1464–
1471. Edited by Ludwig Schmugge, Michael Marsch, and Wolfgang Müller.
[Repertorium Poenitentiariae Germanicum VI.] (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer
Verlag. 2005. 2 vols. Pp. xxxvii, 948 and vii, 468. €198.00.)
*Dr. Izbicki is the Humanities Librarian of the Archibald S. Alexander Library of
Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

108

BY THOMAS M. IZBICKI

109

German relations with the Roman Curia in the fifteenth century most often
are considered in terms of proposals for reform of the Church in “head and
members”together with the related issue of papal versus conciliar power.These
issues are political, large scale, and easy to document. Other approaches, however, are possible. The German community in Rome, which included some of
Italy’s earliest printers, has been studied.1 More recently, Ludwig Schmugge and
his several colleagues have opened up a rich vein of material, the Supplication
Registers of the Papal Penitentiary, found in the Vatican Archives.2 This series of
repertoria for successive pontificates gives us insights not found in the negotiations of princes or the writings of theologians, canonists, or humanists. The
work done by Schmugge and his associates fits into a more general pattern of
study of the Penitentiary, including the work of scholars such as Filippo
Tamburini, David d’Avray,Wolfgang Müller, Peter D. Clarke, and Patrick Zutschi.3
The Penitentiary dealt with such mundane concerns as marriage dispensations, the effects of illegitimacy, and absolution of excommunication and other
censures.These favors or graces affected large numbers across all of Western
Europe, from Iceland to the eastern borders of Poland.4 A broader spectrum of
the population of any region was affected by these supplications and their
curial responses than happened with almost any other branch of the Curia.
Consequently anyone from the humblest Christian to one of the best-known
musicians of the Renaissance may appear as a suppliant seeking a dispensation
or pardon.5 (The registers are particularly useful for the study of medieval
women of lesser social status.6 ) The Penitentiary was also a sensitive agency
when reforms were proposed. Fees or “taxes” paid for documents received
might be regarded as simoniacal.7 These “writer’s” fees had become shared by
many, including the Cardinal Penitentiary, not just the scriptores who drafted
1
Clifford W. Maas and Peter Herde, The German Community in Renaissance Rome,
1378–1523 (Rome, 1981).
2
Ludwig Schmugge, “Cleansing on Consciences: Some Observations Regarding the
Fifteenth-Century Registers of the Papal Penitentiary,” Viator: Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, 29 (1998), 345–61.
3
Recent work on the Penitentiary can be traced back in time at least to Gene A.
Brucker,“Religious Sensibilities in Early Modern Europe: Examples from the Records of
the Holy Penitentiary,” Historical Reflections / Réflexions historiques, 15:1 (1988),
13–25. Individual studies are too numerous to list here.
4
See, for example, the samples published in Filippo Tamburini, Santi e peccatori: confessioni e suppliche dai Registri della Penitenzieria dell’Archivio Segreto Vaticano, ed.
Attilio Agnoletto (Milan, 1995).
5
Pamela F. Starr, “Rome as the Centres of the Universe: Papal Grace and Music
Patronage,” Early Music History 11 (1992), 223–62.
6
Ludwig Schmugge,“Female Petitioners in the Papal Penitentiary,” Gender & History,
12 (2000), 685–703.
7
This concern had appeared during the Great Schism according to Charles H.
Haskins,“The Sources for the History of the Papal Penitentiary,” The American Journal
of Theology, 9 (1905), 421–50.

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THE GERMANS AND THE PAPAL PENITENTIARY

them. Moreover, there were financial “composition” fees received as part of a
pardon granted, and these too could look simoniacal.8 Consequently, Nicholas
of Cusa made it a particular focus of his proposed reform of the Curia.9
The Repertorium Poenitentiariae Germanicum begins with the pontificate of Eugenius IV (1431–1447), and, to date, covers those of five successors:
Nicholas V (1447–1455), Calixtus III (1455–1458), Pius II (1458–1464), Paul II
(1464–1471), and Sixtus IV (1471–1484).Thus it records the period from the
end of the reign of Martin V (1418–1431), at the close of the Great Western
Schism, through the Conciliar Crisis, the restoration of at least nominal papal
supremacy with the collapse of the Council of Basel (1431–1449), and the earliest decades of Renaissance Rome.10 Each volume covers a pontificate, and the
entries (many summarized but some quoted at length) are numbered sequentially. Extensive indexes by Hildegard Schneider-Schmugge and Ludwig
Schmugge give access to the contents of each volume from a variety of perspectives, including names, places, and key Latin terms. All volumes use extensive systems of abbreviations, making each volume more a calendar of the registers rather than an edition. One notes too that the approach to what is
German is broad-based, covering sees from Trieste on the Adriatic to those on
the Baltic. This approximates the extent of the Holy Roman Empire, not the
more restricted compass of modern Germany.
The format of these volumes is very nearly uniform. Each provides introductory material, extracts, or summaries from the registers, and indexing. Only
the slim volume for the reign of Eugenius IV lacks a division of the material
into categories of graces conferred.That volume begins with brief remarks by
the head of the German Historical Institute in Rome and by the editors. The
Introduction discusses the registers employed (ASV Sacra Poenitentiaria volumes 2 and 2bis). Next it lists the letters of the Cardinals Penitentiary, Giordano
Orsini and Niccolò Albergati successively. Then it lists other curial officials,
especially the Minor Penitentiaries, who appear in the registers. The
Introduction concludes with a concordance of the registers with the fifth
volume of Bullarium Poloniae.11 There follow tables of abbreviations for sees
8
Wolfgang P. Müller,“The Price of Papal Pardon—New Fifteenth-Century Evidence,”
in Päpste, Pilger, Pönitentiariae: Festschrift für Ludwig Schmugge zum 65. Geburtstag,
ed. Andreas Meyer, Constanze Rendtel, and Maria Wittmer-Butsch (Tübingen, 2004), pp.
457–81.
9
Morimichi Watanabe and Thomas M. Izbicki,“Nicholas of Cusa:A General Reform of
the Church,” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church: Essays in Memory of
Chandler McCuskey Brooks for the American Cusanus Society, ed. Gerald Christianson
and Thomas M. Izbicki (Leiden, 1996), pp. 175–202. Other reform proposals are noted in
n. 19.
10
J.A.F. Thomson, Popes and Princes, 1417–1517: Politics and Polity in the Late
Medieval Church (London, 1980).
11
Bullarium Poloniae, vol. 5, ed. Irena Sulkowska-Kuras and Stanislas Kuras with
Maria Kowalczyk,Anna Wajs, and Hubert Wajs (Rome-Lublin, 1995).

BY THOMAS M. IZBICKI

111

and for terms commonly used.The extracts and summaries from the registers
number only 775, covering eighty-six pages in double columns.The extensive
indexing covers names, places, patron saints, religious orders, dates of registration of documents, and terms employed. Few scholars index so small a set of
sources nearly that thoroughly. The sparsity of dates of registration between
November 1432 and February 1438, also the inclusion of documents from
1432 among later documents registered, raises the question whether we lack
a register or whether curial business dried up even before Eugenius was
expelled from Rome in 1434.The presence of a curia at the Council of Basel
even before its break with the pope in 1438–1439 also may have provided an
alternative fount of graces for the Germans closer to home.12
Beginning with the reign of Nicholas V the registers are divided into categories of graces granted.This volume covers the registers listing concessions
de diversis formis and de defectu natalium et de uberiori (ASV SP volumes
3 and 4). The former register covers occasional petitions for favors like permission to attend Sunday Mass at a monastery rather than in a parish church
(no. 771); but it also covers crimes reserved to the Holy See, like striking a
cleric (e.g., no. 853). Some were important for legal reasons, like absolution of
a person who wounded a priest in self-defense (no. 782). Others had spiritual
consequences too, absolving penitents, lay or clerical, guilty of sexual
offenses. The latter register is concerned with more routine business, especially absolution from the effects of birth on the “wrong side of the blanket,”
from birth to a cleric or religious or even from a marriage contracted within
prohibited degrees of consanguinity, affinity, or spiritual affinity. A first grace
de defectu natalium might require subsequent permissions de uberiori
gratia, especially for a cleric of illegitimate birth desiring to advance his
career by holding an additional benefice. Both removed “irregularity” contracted through a defect of birth.13 These records are more terse than those
for “diverse graces,” and they need to be read with a close eye to the terminology explained in the table of abbreviations.The Introduction, as in the previous volume, notes the curial personnel involved, including the form some
used in signing documents.This volume also has an interesting note on “composition” for graces received, a topic that was sensitive in its day because it
might smack of simony.
The reign of Calixtus III (from ASV SP volume 5) shows an increase in registered grants compared to that of Nicholas, approximately 560 per year, com12
On the Penitentiary of the Basel Curia, see Daniel Rutz,“Incipit formularius, quo
utebantur minores penitenciarii sacri concilii Basiliensis,” in Päpste, Pilger,
Pönitentiariae, pp. 483–98.
13
Wolfgang Müller, “Pardons for Sexual Misconduct: Ordinary Routine and Papal
Intervention in the Later Middle Ages,” in The Roman Curia.The Apostolic Penitentiary
and the “partes” in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Kari Salonen and Christian Krötzl (Rome,
2003), pp. 171–81.

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THE GERMANS AND THE PAPAL PENITENTIARY

pared to 348. The categories also increase in numbers. De diversis formis
remains, but the concessions covering defects of birth divide into de defectu
natalium and de uberiori. New categories, de matrimonialibus and de
defectu etatis, appear. The concessions for matrimony are numerous, mostly
concerned with dispensations from impediments to contracting nuptials.
Those for defect of age, not just lack of sufficient years for ordination or reception of a benefice but for other impediments, like a damaged eye (no. 2075),
are fewer.The introduction largely follows the format of those preceding, but
it gives greater attention to “composition” as it is recorded in the registers. It
also lists a letter of the Cardinal Penitentiary, Domenico Capranica, to the
bishop of Tortona concerning the absolution of a priest (p. xv).
The recorded concessions by the Penitentiary to German petitioners reach
record numbers in the reigns of Pius II and Paul II (4028 and 4603 respectively).The record from the Piccolomini pontificate runs to six volumes, one
for each year of his pontificate (ASV SP volumes 7 through 11 and 13). New
categories were added for de declaratoriis, de promotis et promovendis, de
sententiis generalibus, de confessionalibus perpetuis, and de confessionalibus in forma “Cupientes.” These are added to the existing categories of de
matrimonialibus, de diversis formis, de defectu natalium and de uberiori.
Concessions de declaratoriis reflect statements that a penitent made about
cases reserved to the apostolic see14 and the response of the Cardinal
Penitentiary or his substitute together with any further instructions for the
handling of that case. (These, being very individual, are quoted at length.)
Graces once covered by the rubric de defectu etatis are covered by the larger
category de promotis et promovendis.The category de confessionalibus perpetuis involves concession to a believer of a perpetual right to choose a confessor other than one’s own parish priest. (This long-standing issue particularly
involved friars who might hear the confessions of the faithful, despite the strictures of canon law requiring confession to the pastor, especially in the Easter
season.) These concessions were so routine as to require no more than the
briefest summary. Concessions de sententiis generalibus and de confessionalibus in forma “Cupientes” permitted parish priests to absolve their parishioners of general sentences of excommunication that otherwise would have
had to be referred to Rome. All these new categories represent a refinement
not just of record keeping but also of the Penitentiary’s ability to intervene in
the lives of clergy and laity alike at the local level, usually in response to
demands from the recipients of these graces.15 (This refinement in record
14
For an exploration of recorded cases involving violation of interdict, see Peter D.
Clarke,“The Records of the Papal Penitentiary as a Source for the Ecclesiastical Interdict,”
in Päpste, Pilger, Pönitentiariae, pp. 411–33.
15
These divisions are discussed in greater detail in Ludwig Schmugge, Patrick
Herperger, and Béatrice Wiggenhauser, Die Supplikenregistern der päpstlichen
Pönitentiarie aus der Zeit Pius’ II. (1458–1464) [Bibliothek des Deutschen
Historisches Instituts in Rom, 84] (Tübingen, 1996).

BY THOMAS M. IZBICKI

113

keeping can be attributed to Cardinal Filippo Calandrini, a half-brother of
Nicholas V, whom Pius had made Cardinal Penitentiary.16 )
The volume of recorded graces for the reign of Paul II is as high as for that
of his predecessor. Nine volumes of registers are calendared (ASV SP volumes
12 through 19). The Introduction gives us the usual information on practice
and personnel. It also lists several letters of Calandrini.The types of concession
recorded are the same except for the absorption of the category de confessionalibus in forma “Cupientes” is absorbed into the category de sententiis
generalibus. The number of concessions remains large, averaging about 657
per year.Those concerned with marriage, defects of birth, and the choice of a
confessor remain numerous and, usually, the most routine in their natures.The
Penitentiary by the reign of Paul II seems to have routinized the records for all
but the most unusual cases.
The reign of Sixtus IV saw something of a decrease in the number of concessions the Penitentiary granted to German clergy and laity. The average fell
from 657 per year recorded to 534.This is closer to the average for the reign
of Calixtus, but they are numerous enough cumulatively to fill fourteen
annual volumes of registers (ASV SP volumes 20–33). The categories
employed are those of the registers of Paul II’s pontificate. Letters of
Calandrini and his successor, Giuliano della Rovere, papal nephew and the
future Pope Julius II, are listed.
Together, these registers create an impression of numerous Germans, clergy
and laity, having recourse to Rome to meet their individual needs for pardon
and dispensation.This impression needs to be checked against other evidence
from elsewhere in Europe.Work is being done on other regions, including the
peripheries of the Continent.Thus we can check not just on Germany but also
on places such as Denmark and Iceland, which did petition the Penitentiary
occasionally despite their distance from Rome and their smaller populations.17
A study of the records from the reign of Pius II suggests that large, centrallylocated countries had frequent recourse to the Penitentiary in the fifteenth century; but the patterns of graces sought vary by region and by diocese within
region.Thus Germans had recourse to the Penitentiary during the Piccolomini
pontificate as the second largest group after the French. Although some countries show a particular need by category of grace, as the French dominated the
16
Kirsi Salonen, “The Penitentiary under Pope Pius II: The Supplications and Their
Provenance,” in The Long Arm of Papal Authority: Late Medieval Christian Peripheries
and their Communication with the Holy See, ed. Gerhard Jaritz,Torstein Jørgensen, and
Kirsi Salonen (Budapest, 2005), pp. 11–21 at pp. 11–13.
17
See, for example, Per Ingesman, “Danish Marriage Dispensations: Evidence of an
Increasing Lay Use of Papal Letters in the Late Middle Ages,” in The Roman Curia. The
Apostolic Penitentiary and the “partes” in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 126–57;Agnes S.
Arnórsdóttir, “Icelandic Marriage Dispensations in the Late Middle Ages,” ibid., pp.
161–69.

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THE GERMANS AND THE PAPAL PENITENTIARY

categories concerned with reserved cases, the Germans appear frequently in
every major category. Petitions to overcome the effects of illegitimacy make up
the largest group of requests by Germans, but the regions of the Empire loom
large in every category of grace conceded.18 Further study may changed reveal
patterns of petitions across longer periods, but this evidence shows how much
research can be done with the registers of the Penitentiary.
The Penitentiary is a well-documented arm of the Roman Curia. Its procedures have been studied, and documentary evidence of its operations has been
published, as well as proposals for its reform.19 Nonetheless, there is room for a
brief look at the personnel, especially the Minor Penitentiaries.Were they longserving functionaries or just short-term workers? The princes of the Church
who served as Cardinal Penitentiary in this period were few: Niccolò Albergati
(1438–43), Giovanni Berardi da Tagliacozzo (1443–49), Domenico Capranica
(1449–58), Filippo Calandrini (1458–76), and Giuliano della Rovere (1476–
1513).20 The Minor Penitentiaries, however, did much of the real work. Those
who served Nicholas V and some of his successors from their places at the
Vatican basilica can be enumerated, and their “prior” sometimes can be identified. Names tend to repeat in two or more pontificates. Paulus de Roma, for
example, is recorded in the volumes for Calixtus III, Paul II, and Sixtus IV. This
almost certainly means that he served Pius II as well. Johannes Institoris, an
Augustinian Hermit, served both Paul II and Sixtus IV. This evidence is fragmentary, but it suggests that a Minor Penitentiary might serve at St. Peter’s for a
decade or more. Enough of the named Minor Penitentiaries are listed as frater
to suggest that they were friars, trained to hear confessions and judge cases of
conscience.At least in the reign of Innocent VIII, the Minor Penitentiaries were
drawn from different regions to deal with cases arising from those regions.21
They were served by scribes and correctors to draft letters, and they dealt with
procurators for the persons submitting supplications. This suggests a close
circle of familiar faces, but the listing of other curial officials involved in cases
(auditors of the Rota among them) suggests that this was not a sealed world,
cut off from the rest of the Roman Curia in dealing with supplications from all
parts of Christendom.The possibility exists that procurators “shopped” for the
curial venue most hospitable to their clients’ cases and purses.
Scholars interested in other parts of Christendom would benefit from the
development of similar tools, providing deeper insights into the lives of laity
and clergy as they interacted with the Roman Curia.
18

Salonen,“The Penitentiary under Pope Pius II,” pp. 16–21.
Emil Göller, Die päpstliche Pönitentiarie von ihrem Ursprung bis zu ihrer
Umgestaltung unter Pius V, 4 vols. in 2 (Rome, 1907–11). Reform proposals are listed at
vol. 1, pt. 2, pp. 132–40, 144–46.
20
Della Rovere was elected pope as Julius II in 1513.
21
According to Göller, Die päpstliche Pönitentiarie , vol. 2, pt. 2, pp. 136–37, the division at the death of Innocent VIII in 1492 were Upper and Lower Germany, Hungary,
Poland and Slavonia, France, Spain, Italy, and the British Isles (Anglia, Ybernia et Scotia).
19

BOOK REVIEWS
_______
General and Miscellaneous
God’s Joust, God’s Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition. By John
Witte, Jr. [Emory University Studies in Law and Religion.] (Grand Rapids,
Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2006. Pp. xiv, 498.
$30.00 paperback.)
This, the latest and widest-ranging of Professor Witte’s explorations of the
overlapping realms of law, theology, and history, is engaging, thoughtful, and
respectful of the different intellectual and religious traditions with which he
deals. It covers three distinct topics, human rights law, the American churchstate relation, and family law. For each, Witte uses the same methodology. He
examines the contributions of the various religious traditions, Catholic,
Protestant, and as far as he finds them applicable, Orthodox, Jewish, and
Islamic. He relates all these to the contribution of the secular Enlightenment
tradition, and tries to develop a synthesis that will allow today’s Christians to
live in love and peace with their neighbors. His conclusions are decent,
humane, and ecumenical, and his treatment of debatable questions is very fair
to both sides. Among other valuable discussions, he has a thorough and sympathetic account of the attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church and the postCommunist Russian government toward evangelizing initiatives from Western
Europe and America, and an enlightening examination of the legislative history
of the religion clauses of the First Amendment.
But he has fallen into a few historical gaffes. On page 300, for instance, he
says that the Tametsi decree of the Council of Trent made parental consent a
requirement for marriage. It did not. Rather, it provided that although the marriage of minors without parental consent should be discouraged, it was not
invalid. Parental consent has never been required, or supposed to be required,
for the marriage of adults. On page 234, he says,“In Church of the Holy Trinity
v. United States, the Court refused to uphold a federal law forbidding contracts
with foreign clergy, a vital issue for Catholic clergy.”The federal law in question
did not forbid contracts with foreign clergy; it forbade contracts with foreign
workers generally.The Court did not refuse to uphold it; it refused to apply it.
The lawfulness of making contracts was not a vital issue for Catholic clergy,
who (unlike the Anglican priest involved in the Holy Trinity case) are generally assigned to their positions rather than contracted for. Such errors of
detail—and these are not the only ones—may seem trivial in a work as broad
in scope as this. But they undermine confidence.As the author sweeps across
many centuries and several disciplines, many different readers will find him
115

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BOOK REVIEWS

covering some subjects with which they are familiar, and many subjects with
which they are not. If they find mistakes on things they know about, they may
begin wondering how far they can trust him on other things.
In his account of the development of human rights,Witte is curiously neglectful of natural law, which he seems to think only the Orthodox have made
central to their doctrine on the subject (p. 91). In fact, Roman Catholic,
Protestant, and Enlightenment versions of natural law have all played important parts in the development, and it was Jacques Maritain’s appropriation of
the Roman Catholic tradition that made possible his crucial role in the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There are other places as
well in which Witte seems to slight one or another of the relevant categories.
For instance, he takes up “the repeated clashes between Protestants and
Catholics over separationism” in the United States (pp. 230–37) without considering the basic ecclesiological difference between the two traditions. For
Protestants, the common Christianity of a people did not have to have a
common institutional or liturgical manifestation. Hence, it was easy to separate
the Christian Commonwealth from any such manifestation. For Catholics, on
the other hand, Christianity was inseparable from its institutional and liturgical
manifestation. Hence, to separate church and state was to marginalize religion.
This difference, while it was seldom fully articulated, was central to the debate.
In the introduction to this book,Witte sets forth movingly his understanding
of his vocation:“The challenge of the Christian historian is to search within the
wisdom of the ages for some indication of the eternal wisdom of God (p. 4).”
That is indeed the challenge, and I am grateful to Witte for articulating it so well.
But in taking it up, we must pay good heed to Sir Herbert Butterfield’s warning:
We may believe in some providence that guides the destiny of men and we
may if we like read this into our history; but what our history brings to us
is not proof of providence but rather the realization of how mysterious are
its ways, how strange its caprices—the knowledge that this providence
uses any means to get to its end and works often at cross-purposes with
itself and is curiously wayward. (Herbert Butterfield, The Whig
Interpretation of History [London, 1931], p. 23.)
Witte has written a good and reverent study of the ways of God in the legal
history of the West, but he has sometimes made those ways less complicated
than in fact they are.
University of Notre Dame

ROBERT E. RODES, JR.

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Herrschaftspraxis und soziale Ordnungen im Mittelalter und in der frühen
Neuzeit. Ernst Schubert zum Gedenken. Edited by Peter Aufgebauer and
Christine van den Heuvel. [Veröffentlichungen der Historischen
Kommission für Niedersachsen und Bremen, 232.] (Hannover: Hahnsche
Buchhandlung Verlag. 2006. Pp. 591.)
The late Ernst Schubert, Professor for the History of Lower Saxony at the
University of Göttingen, served simultaneously as the Director of the Historical
Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen. This collection of thirty-one
essays, gathered originally for a sixty-fifth birthday Festschrift, is published
now as a memorial volume upon the untimely death of the honoree.The book
is divided into five sections: aside from two appendices listing the dissertations
directed by Schubert and his published works, the other sections arrange the
contributions into four loose thematic groupings that reflect Schubert’s own
research interests and agenda: i.e., the constitutional and social history of the
late medieval Holy Roman Empire, especially the dialectic between
local/regional and imperial history, exemplified particularly by cases from the
North German realm. Chronologically, the essays range from the Carolingian to
the nineteenth century, mirroring the expertise of a professor of
Landesgeschichte in the German universities: narrow geographic focus à la
longue durée.
A first group of seven essays discuss the theme “King and Empire.” Four of
these deal with the Middle Ages: Heinz Thomas analyzes the flag symbolisms
of Emperor Heinrich VII’s journey to Rome; Frank Rexroth analyzes the forced
abdication of Adolf von Nassau using the Dominican Chronicle of Colmar;
Beate Schuster discusses a work by the twelfth-century writer Odo of Deuil, a
pupil of abbé Suger, on the morality of the model ruler; Bernhard
Schimmelpfennig surveys the German Pontificale to discuss the image of the
German ecclesiastical princes. Peter Aufgebauer’s contribution, on the problem of calendar precision and Easter liturgy, is particularly instructive, in that
he traces the discussion from Roger Bacon in 1267 to the Gregorian calendar
reform of 1582. The interplay between regional and imperial politics is
expertly analyzed by Gerd Steinwascher in his study of the relationship
between the county of Oldenburg and the Emperor from the early sixteenth
to the mid-seventeenth centuries. A similar theme is echoed in Christine van
den Heuvel’s contribution on the politics of Hannover and the imperial election of 1764.
Another seven essays constitute the second section “Princes and Subjects.”
The two articles by Heinrich Schmidt and Hajo van Lengen focus on the
Friesian region in the fifteenth century;Wilhelm Janssen analyzes the conflict
between the ecclesiastical enclave of Xanten and the Lord of BronkhorstBatenburg in the late fourteenth century; Dieter Brosius analyzes the relationship between territorial lord and urban jurisprudence, using the court records
of the territorial town Dannenberger in the sixteenth century; Werner
Buchholz argues for the strong resistance to the Protestant Reformation in

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Sweden between 1527 and 1617, a religious innovation imposed from above
with the aim to expand royal power; Günther Scheel interprets the ceremonies
associated with the visit of the Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwering to
Hannover in 1679; and Rudolf Endres offers a study of the late seventeenthcentury planned town St. Georgen.
The cohesion of Section Three is somewhat strained by the large number
of essays (ten) included and the diversity of topics. Under the rubric “Social
Order” Hans-Werner Goetz reflects on the concept of “foreignness” in the
Middle Ages; Hedwig Röckelein discusses the enfeoffment of women;
Albrecht Eckhardt surveys the development of towns in medieval Oldenburg;
Brage Bei der Wieden traces the formation of a lower nobility in North
Germany from the Middle Ages to the sixteenth century; the Latin text of the
miracles of the Virgin at Kublingen in 1291 (in Brunswick) is edited and annotated by Sabine Graf;Wolfgang Petke offers tidbits of sources on pilgrims’ letters from the late Middle Ages; Jürgen Petersohn studies a noble fraternity in
late fifteenth-century Pommerania; Gerhard Streich discusses the forsaking of
clerical status by the high nobility in the Middle Ages, usually to rescue a
family line from biological extinction; Helmut Maurer gives a dense description of the background to the Stühlingen peasant uprising of 1524; and Stefan
Brüdermann offers an amusing portrait of the famous Enlightenment professor, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, in his daily life in Göttingen. Under
“Historicity and Communication” the reader will find a final cluster of seven
essays, the first subgroup of four with a strong focus on early modern
Hannover: Peter Burschel writes on several letters of the Electress Sophie von
Hannover; Hermann Wellenreuther analyzes the significance of the Revelation
of St. John for the personal union between Hannover and Britain; Manfred von
Boetticher analyzes the writings and travels of Baron von Münchhausen; the
theme of travel is again taken up by Klaus Mlynek in his piece on the journey
by balloon of Jean-Pierre Blanchard in Hannover.The final three essays of the
volume offer broad reflections: Karl Heinrich Kaufhold offers a revisionist
picture of the economic development of the Kingdom of Hannover;Thomas
Vogtherr comments on the theme of Emperor and Empire in the writer
Ricarda Huchs’s German History; and Carl-Haus Hauptmeyer ponders the
future of regional history.
Pennsylvania State University

RONNIE PO-CHIA HSIA

Negotiating Darwin: The Vatican Confronts Evolution, 1877–1902. By
Mariano Artigas,Thomas F. Glick, and Rafael A. Martínez. [Medicine, Science,
and Religion in Historical Context.] (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns
Hopkins University Press. 2006. Pp. x, 326. $50.00.)
In this book attitudes toward “evolutionism,”extending to the highest levels
of the Church, are examined with reference to the published works of six
Catholic authors: Raffaello Caverni, Dalmace Leroy, John A. Zahm, Geremia

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Bonomelli, John C. Hedley, and St. George Jackson Mivart. Artigas, Glick, and
Martínez found that the Holy See adopted a reactive rather than a proactive
response to evolutionism, taking action only when published works were
brought to its attention.The ecclesiastical authorities in Rome, mindful of the
“shadow of Galileo,” were extremely careful to be seen to respect the rightful
autonomy of science (pp. 281–82).Therefore, no public condemnation of evolutionary theory issued forth from Rome. Instead, the authorities sought to persuade offending authors to issue public retractions. The institutional church
could thus impede the acceptance of evolution among Catholics and at the
same time retain the option of changing its stance if it thought it prudent to
do so.
Negotiating Darwin is a well-researched and insightful study of the Holy
See’s response to evolutionism from 1877 to 1902. However, a number of critical observations can be made. In the case of Zahm we read that he did not
issue a retraction of the controversial views he expressed in Evolution and
Dogma (pp. 17, 197, 235, 278).This is certainly true in the context of his letter
to Alfonso Maria Galea. But, in a broader context, it does not seem quite so
accurate because we read that, in response to the prohibition by the
Congregation of the Index, communicated through his Superior General, Zahm
“submitted in a praiseworthy manner and repudiated his book” (pp. 157–58,
188).This would seem to qualify as a private rather than a public retraction—
but a retraction nevertheless.
The authors, quite rightly, draw the attention of their readers to distinctions
in status and function between the Holy Office and the Congregation of the
Index. However, we are also informed of the interconnections between the
two Congregations, which, in turn, are important for understanding the internal politics of the Vatican. It was not uncommon for the Holy Office to act
against an author by instructing the Index to prohibit his work. In the six cases
examined here, Artigas and his co-authors found that they were “. . . decided
almost in totality by the Congregation of the Index”although they found “some
participation by the Holy Office” (pp. 8–9).The involvement of the Holy Office
seems to be understated here, considering its role in the cases of Zahm (pp.
141–42) and Mivart—although in the latter case evolutionism was not the central issue. It is highly significant that when Zahm’s Evolution and Dogma was
being scrutinized in the Holy Office, on May 6, 1897, that five of the seven cardinals of the congregation at that meeting were also members of the Index.
Consultors could also work for both congregations, as did the Jesuit, Michele
De Maria. In view of this degree of overlap in personnel, and the supreme
status of the Holy Office among the congregations of the Holy See, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this congregation—if only in an informal
sense—played a very important role in most of the six cases above.
In their examination of the status and influence of the Jesuit journal, La
Civiltà Cattolica, the authors observed that it may have had access to privileged information but that it was “not privy” to those internal workings of the

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Vatican’s bureaucracy which were subject to strict codes of secrecy (p. 28).
But it seems that rules of secrecy were not always maintained (p. 170). The
authors found no evidence that the Jesuits at La Civiltà Cattolica exercised
“direct influence” on decisions made by the Index. However, they do not seem
to rule it out absolutely when they state,“This might well be unimaginable. . .”
(p. 274).There are a number of references to incomplete information or documentation in Negotiating Darwin (pp. 141, 188, 201). It may be that more
dust-covered documents await discovery in the deep recesses of the archives
of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith or elsewhere, and that these
will shed further light on the labyrinthine machinations of the Vatican’s
bureaucracy. In the meantime, it can be reasonably inferred that the Jesuits at
La Civiltà Cattolica were manipulated, and were willing to be manipulated, by
high-ranking reactionaries in Rome for the purpose of protecting the Church
against “rash” ideas deemed inimical to the faith.
University College, Cork

DON O’LEARY

The Cambridge History of Christianity, Volume 9: World Christianities c.
1914–2000. Edited by Hugh McLeod. (New York: Cambridge University
Press. 2006. Pp. xviii, 716. $180.00.)
Surveys of Christianity in the Modern Era are difficult to write and seldom
attempted.This volume in The Cambridge History of Christianity series offers
a superb overview of major movements, events, and challenges that impacted
Christian churches in the twentieth century.The editor, Hugh McLeod, professor
of church history at the University of Birmingham, has assembled an outstanding group of scholars who address specific eras, denominations, or ecclesiastical
issues in creative and insightful ways. McLeod’s introduction suggests that two
“central themes” of the book focus on the fact that Christianity developed a
worldwide presence during the twentieth century even as its European base
experienced multiple crises politically and religiously. He notes that by century’s
end, the churches’ power bases continued to be in the West (though shifting),
and in spite of declines in Western secular societies, churches still exerted extensive influence. Essays explore these dynamics with particular attention to war,
interfaith relationships,liberation movements,and changes in technology.Of particular importance are the chapters that explore the development of Christianity
outside the West, materials often not found in a single volume.
Part I explores “Institutions and Movements” including the papacy, ecumenism, colonialism/missions, Pentecostal/Charismatic movements and the
growth of large independent Christian groups in Africa and Asia. The latter
chapter, written by Allan Anderson and Edmond Tang, offers important distinctions between groups, noting, for example, that Chinese “house churches” are
no monolithic movement, but reflect varying theological and liturgical differences. Part II surveys “Narratives of Change” that include chapters on the
impact of the wars, the development of Christianity inside and outside the

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West, and the rise of postcolonial identities in “mission” churches. Chapters on
Christianity in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia are particularly helpful
in distinguishing varying expressions of Christian belief and practice in specific regions. Part III details various issues related to “Social and Cultural
Impact” that include liturgical developments Catholic and Protestant, relations
between Christians and Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus, along with
debates related to sexuality, gender, economics, science, film, and the arts. Pirro
Markkola, research fellow at the University of Tampere, Finland, provides two
particularly insightful chapters dealing with “Patriarchy and Women’s
Emancipation” and “The Church as Women’s Space.” She rightfully observes
that in spite of some more positive response to women in ministry,“the willingness of Protestant churches to recruit female clergy should not be exaggerated” (p. 560), a sobering reality as the twentieth-first century moves along.
The chapter on “African Christianity: From the World Wars to
Decolonization,” written by Ogbu U. Kalu, is a particularly significant contribution to the volume, detailing the “ambiguities” of the missionary movements
and certain endeavors that extended colonialism implicitly and explicitly. Kalu
writes that after World War I “bush schools”became a “means of evangelization,
rivalry, civilization, legitimization of colonial industrial policy, expansion into
rural areas and domestication of Christian values” (p. 204).The essay examines
the confrontation of cultures as missionary and indigenous churches
responded to the African world. Kulu notes that there were only sixty-one
African bishops out of 2500 at Vatican Council II. More recent appointments
have extended that number significantly.
Roswith Gerloff’s chapter on the “African Diaspora in the Caribbean and
Europe” is likewise insightful in part because this region of the world is often
overlooked in survey texts and because of the materials it presents. As a
Baptist, I was particularly grateful for the attention given to the black missionary George Liele and the work of the anti-slavery British Baptist missionary
William Knibb, a pioneer in the efforts to stop the British slave trade. Gerloff’s
description of the Pentecostal Apostolic movement in the islands is also
intriguing.
In a chapter on Christianity’s crisis in the West, Hugh McLeod suggests that
“there are reasons for doubting” that Europe is a post-Christian region, and he
offers a variety of sound reasons for his assertion. Nonetheless, his basic statistical data is daunting as he documents the decline in attendance (and interest) in matters religious across the European landscape. His conclusion seems
to be that while religion continues to occupy influence in the public square,
it is much less significant in the daily lives of individuals.
The book has some difficulties. Using multiple authors with multiple topics
inevitably creates a more encyclopedic approach to complex issues and
chronology. Likewise, chapters offer not only surveys of basic material but also
provide helpful sources that may point readers to further and more extensive

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study. Inevitably, certain issues or individuals are neglected. McLeod’s chapter
on “role models,”for example, begins with a reference to men and women who
have been public or private mentors across the twentieth century but then
shifts to references—Martin Luther King, Jr., Bishop Tutu, Jimmy Carter—that
highlight males. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, for
example, would have been a valuable addition to that chapter.
Nonetheless, the work is an extremely helpful introduction to significant
elements of world Christianity as it developed throughout the past century. It
documents the problems and promise of Christianity across the twentieth
century.
Wake Forest University Divinity School

BILL J. LEONARD

Katholiken in den USA und Deutschland: Kirche, Gesellschaft und Politik.
Edited by Wilhelm Damberg and Antonius Liedhegener. (Münster:
Aschendorff Verlag. 2006. Pp. viii, 393. €24.80.)
At the time of the Second Vatican Council, Germany exercised a powerful
attraction for Americans seeking doctorates in Catholic theology. German theologians like Karl Rahner, Hans Küng, Walter Kasper, Joseph Ratzinger, and
Johann Baptist Metz all counted Americans among their students. Today the
tide runs in the other direction. Astonished at full churches in the United
States, and impressed with the vitality of American parish life, German
Catholics now come in increasing numbers to the United States to investigate
a level of religious practice inconceivable in Germany today.
One of those impressed by American church life is the German businessman, Dr. Karl Albrechts, whose Aldi supermarkets can be found on both sides
of the Atlantic. His generous grant provided funding for a conference in Berlin
in May 2004, at which reports on church life in Germany and the United States
were given by eighteen experts from both countries. Delivered in English, the
papers have now been translated into German and are published in this
volume. Several of the presenters report on the situation in the other country—a happy example of two-way cooperation and enrichment.
Despite their great differences, Catholics in both Germany and the United
States share elements of a similar history. In both countries Catholics are a
minority, suspected by the majority from the mid-nineteenth century to the
eve of the Second Vatican Council of owing primary allegiance to the Roman
pontiff. German Catholics responded to this challenge by forming a flourishing milieu consisting of numerous Catholic organizations including a
political party.American Catholics lived largely in a self-imposed ghetto, dismantled by Vatican II’s opening to the world, and by the entry of increasing
numbers of American Catholics into their country’s social, cultural, and educational mainstream.

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In other respects church life in the two countries is dissimilar. American
parishes and other church institutions have always been voluntary associations, founded and supported by their members.This imposes heavier financial
burdens than those borne by Catholics in Germany, whose parishes, church
buildings, and other institutions are provided “from above,” and supported
generously from public funds. The need for self-support gives American
Catholics a greater sense of ownership than those in Germany. Paradoxically,
however, the Catholic Church in Germany has been, since Vatican II, more
democratic than that in the United States. Germany’s National Synod from
1972 to 1975, with both lay and clerical representation and enjoying legislative
and not merely advisory power, is inconceivable in this country. Parish councils and diocesan pastoral councils are found throughout Germany. In the
United States their existence depends on the local pastor or bishop.
Also dissimilar is the educational system in the two countries. Schooling,
from kindergarten to university, is a state monopoly in Germany. Home-schooling, a small but flourishing feature on the American educational scene, is forbidden by law in Germany under penalty of heavy fines or imprisonment.The
German state accommodates Catholic interests through church-supervised
religious instruction for Catholic students in state schools, and by public support for state regulated Catholic schools, including the faculties of Catholic
theology at the state-supported universities. Of special interest for German
readers is the flourishing system of adult catechesis in the United States (the
Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults), still in its infancy in Germany.
The book will be of greater interest for German readers than for Americans.
The view of American Catholicism which it presents is colored by the selection of American presenters. They include such well known authorities as
Andrew Greeley, Margaret and Peter Steinfels, and Leo O’Donovan, S.J.
Unfortunately missing are others no less distinguished who could have presented a more balanced picture: Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and
George Weigel.
Archdiocese of St. Louis

JOHN JAY HUGHES

Macht, Moral und Mehrheiten. Der politische Katholizismus in der
Bundesrepublik Deutschland und den USA seit 1960. By Antonius
Liedhegener. [Jenaer Beiträge zur Politikwissenschaft, Vol. 11.] (BadenBaden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft. 2006. Pp. 509. €69, paperback.)
The political scientist and historian Antonius Liedhegener, who teaches at
the University of Jena, compares the political roles of Catholicism in the
United States with the Federal Republic of Germany from 1960 until the present day.The book (a second thesis, Habilitation, in political science) is a mine
of information, full of knowledgeable insights and useful data. Liedhegener’s
approach combines the theoretical perspectives of political science with the

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methodologies of contemporary history, making use of archives, a variety of
documents and interviews. The author describes the changing structures of
the post-Vatican II Church, the reorganization of the bishops’ conferences and
lay organizations, and researches the possibilities of both national churches to
exert influence on public policies.Arguing against approaches that predict the
diminishing role of religion in the political process due to individualization
processes, he claims that the Church has been a relevant political actor during
the last years.
The book is organized in four parts. In the introductory chapter, the author
loosely follows Easton, Almond, and Parsons’s structural functionalism of the
1950s and 1960s, although without really clarifying why it is useful to pursue
such a systems approach. Instead, he briefly touches on Fowler’s preconditions
for political success of religious organizations (p. 35).Thus, the theoretical and
methodological perspectives are, in my opinion, not sufficiently clarified and
demarcated from competing theoretical and methodological approaches (e.g.,
organizational, quantifying or network) which also claim to measure political
influence. However, the dense empirical descriptions of developments over the
last forty-five years more than compensate for this first impression.
The first part discusses the external framing of both churches, i.e. the legal
parameters, the dynamics of the world Church, typical patterns of modernization in both countries but also the origin and dissolution of the Catholic
milieux. The second part convincingly sheds light on changes within the
Catholic Church and their affiliated Catholic organizations, and especially
focuses on the growing internal conflicts within both churches using a wide
array of data. In this part of the book, Liedhegener also presents a fresh comparative look at church attendance rates and religious commitment. In the third
part inner political processes are spotlighted, such as decision-making within
the Church, the question of the Catholic vote and which Catholic organizations
are politically influential in both countries (pp. 250 ff.). In the last part
Liedhegener presents two case studies illustrating where both churches tried to
gain influence on political issues: abortion and social policies.
In conclusion (pp. 442 ff) the author gives a brief theoretical synopsis of
the internal and external conditions needed for political influence and success. On an empirical level he concludes that German Catholicism had a
greater success in influencing the debate and policies about abortion than its
American counterpart due to differences in the organization of (party) politics
(p. 388). In principle, even though both Catholicisms are characterized by
internal conflicts, the German Catholics have a more established organizational mechanism of coordination and decision-making (p. 438). In America,
however, tactics of direct political lobbying are more advanced (pp. 305 ff).
The differences in both national versions of Catholicism show a remarkable
resemblance to general differences in the social and political organization of
both countries. Thus, Liedhegener’s valuable study, which should be read by

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everybody interested in contemporary political Catholicism, shows striking
similarities between the Catholicisms but also—and this is not surprising—
how much Catholics’ collective actions are shaped by their respective institutional environment.
FRANK ADLOFF

Free University of Berlin
Ancient

L’Anticristo, Volume I: Il nemico dei tempi finali: Testi dal II al IV secolo.
Edited by Gian Luca Potestà and Marco Rizzi. [Scrittori Greci e Latini.
Fondazione Lorenzo Valla.] (Milan: Arnaldo Mondadori Editore. 2005. Pp.
xxxviii, 582. €27,00. ISBN 88-04-54478-3.)
This excellent publication is the first volume in a series of three. It presents the most important texts on Antichrist from the second, third, and fourth
centuries. It is announced that volume two will deal with texts from the fifth
to the twelfth centuries, and the final volume will present the prime sources
on Antichrist from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Potestà and Rizzi
have written a general introduction in which they treat the conceptual framework in which the concept of Antichrist originated. The bulk of the volume
consists of patristic texts in Greek or Latin with an Italian translation and
annotations.The texts are presented in four parts.The authors rightly choose
to consider the work of Irenaeus as the moment in which Antichrist came to
be considered as the one and only eschatological opponent of Jesus Christ.
Part One (“Antichrist before Antichrist”) deals with references to Antichrist in
the period before Irenaeus: 1 and 2 John, Polycarp’s Philippians, and—a
remarkable choice—Celsus’ The True Word.This last text does not mention
Antichrist, but does give an interesting perspective on developing Christian
thoughts in the second half of the second century. Part Two (“The Invention
of Antichrist”) consists of texts by Irenaeus (relevant sections from Against
Heretics) and Tertullian (Prescription against Heretics, Against Marcion, the
Resurrection of the Flesh). By this choice the editors of the volume point out
the importance of the last decades of the second century for the growth of
the Christian Antichrist myth. Part Three is entirely dedicated to Hippolytus,
and offers the texts of his On Christ and Antichrist, relevant sections from
the Commentary on Daniel, and the Benediction of Moses. It is here that an
“antichristology,” as the authors call it, comes into existence. Part Four (“The
Enemy of the Last Days in the 3rd and 4th Century”) presents texts from
Origen (Against Celsus, Commentary on the Gospel of John, and Latin fragments of his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew), Cyprian (Letters, To
Fortunatus),Victorinus of Pettau (parts of his Commentary on Revelation),
Commodianus (Instructions, Carmen Apologeticum), and Lactantius (sections from the Divine Institutes). The authors/editors of this volume have
made a fine selection of early Christian texts on Antichrist. Of course, they
have had to make a selection, and the texts they have chosen are indeed the

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most important witnesses to the development of the concept of Antichrist.
Other sources might have been included, but the most important texts are
readily available in this volume.This is the most important point of the series:
for the first time the prime witnesses for the tradition of Antichrist in the early
Church are collected and presented in one volume. Every single author is presented by a brief, but accurate introduction. The translations are annotated
and the comments are helpful. It is certainly to be hoped that the series will
become available in an English version as well in order to find a larger readership. One personal regret of this reviewer is that his name is cited by the
authors in a somewhat exotic version.
Protestantse Theologische Universiteit Kampen

BERT JAN LIETAERT PEERBOLTE

Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy. By G. E. M. de Ste. Croix.
Edited by Michael Whitby and Joseph Streeter. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press. 2006. Pp. xii, 394.)
Geoffrey de Ste. Croix, who died in February 2000, was one of Oxford’s
most unusual and most prolific dons. He received his academic training at neither Oxford nor Cambridge, but in London. He was an articulate Marxist, an
historian equally at home in fifth-century Greece and late antiquity, a tennisplayer at a near-professional standard, a passionate devotee of Wagnerian
opera, and a militant atheist. His huge books on the Peloponnesian War and on
the class struggle in antiquity dwarfed the meager output of most of his
Oxford contemporaries (with the signal exception of Sir Ronald Syme), and his
university lectures, after he became a Fellow of New College in 1953, were
among the few that students found exciting and rewarding. He was as comfortable with economic theory as with theological disputation.
At his death de Ste. Croix left masses of unpublished papers. He was, as this
reviewer knows from personal experience, always overflowing with ideas
about problems across the entire range of ancient history and well into the
Middle Ages. He wrote ceaselessly—long and learned letters as well as drafts of
articles and books. He talked as illuminatingly as he wrote. Because he had
been raised in the obscure sect of British Israelites, who promoted a wholly
literal interpretation of the Bible, de Ste. Croix had almost total recall of
Scripture, and he loathed it all. His work on Christianity and martyrdom is
remarkable in being profoundly well informed, fierce in its convictions, innovative, and polemical. Some of his previously published papers have
deservedly had a tremendous influence, particularly the ones on the Great Persecution (Harvard Theological Review, 47 [1954], 75–113) and on the causes
of persecution of the early Christians (Past and Present, 26 [1963], 6–38). It
was in the latter paper that de Ste. Croix first expounded his views on what
he called “voluntary martyrdom,” to explain the behavior of those who deliberately put themselves in the way of death by persecution.The present volume
contains a hitherto unpublished paper on this controversial theme.

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Although de Ste. Croix’s anti-Christian prejudice is apparent everywhere in
what he wrote, his papers continue to be well worth reading for their incisive
and original contributions. One can only welcome the decision of the Oxford
University Press to issue a volume of his work, both published and unpublished, on persecution and martyrdom. In fact, the Educational Foundation of
the National Bank of Greece had already had the same idea and brought out in
2005, in modern Greek, a valuable volume of several of the papers in the
Oxford volume, with a substantial introduction by Dimitris Kyrtatas.
Michael Whitby is the editor of the Oxford collection, but because of
administrative responsibilities at his university he prudently assigned much of
the work to a graduate student, Joseph Streeter. It is a pleasure to report that
Streeter’s introduction is outstandingly good, offering a balanced assessment of
de Ste. Croix’s achievement together with a thoughtful and comprehensive
survey of current scholarly debates about persecution and martyrdom. Streeter
has also provided useful supplementary notes to several of the articles.Whitby
himself has furnished excellent introductions and supplements for the papers
on the Council of Chalcedon and early Christian attitudes to property and slavery. The volume as a whole is a bracing reminder of a formidable and muchmissed scholar.
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

G.W. BOWERSOCK

Konzilien und Synoden im spätantiken Gallien von 314 bis 696 nach
Christi Geburt. Teil 1: Chronologische Darstellung; Teil 2: Zusammenschau
wichtiger Themenkreise. By Josef Limmer. [Wissenschaft und Religion:
Veröffentlichungen des Internationalen Forschungszentrums für Grundfragen der Wissenschaften Salzburg, Band 10.] (Frankfurt: Peter Lang. 2004.
Pp. iv, 463; iv, 375. $128.95 paperback. ISBN 3-631-53303-9.)
These seemingly thorough volumes are tedious in a manner that only
German handbooks can achieve, with their numbered and sub-numbered
paragraphs ensuring that no concession to mere readability impinges upon
the exposition of evidence and firm, unambiguous conclusions. The first
volume begins with definitions of ecumenical, provincial, and local councils
and synods, surveys their history in the Roman and post-Roman periods, and
proceeds to a massive, council-by-council, canon-by-canon exposition of
every Gallic council and synod between Arles in 314 and Auxerre between
692 and 696. Preambles and epistles are sketched and subscription lists are
given in full. Each canon is translated (or at times closely paraphrased) and
each translated council is followed by summary analyses and excurses on
major points at issue, be they disciplinary or theological. The occasional
excursus treats the non-conciliar evidence for important figures involved
with a particular council or synod, for instance Avitus of Vienne and Caesarius
of Arles.The volume concludes with a useful summary index of conciliar deci-

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sions, lemmatized by topics.Throughout, the material is presented accurately,
but it is very much a summary of evidence; novel interpretation is entirely
absent, as are any interpretative grey areas, and the author knows nothing of
Anglophone scholarship, which might have helped with the disputed
chronologies of some councils and would certainly have given nuance to the
summary of controversies over heresy and monastic discipline. The second
volume, slightly shorter, rehearses the same information contained in the first
volume, but does so according to long, thematic sections on bishops, priests,
monks and nuns, the laity, slaves, Jews, heretics, and other social questions,
and the liturgy and sacraments. Each of these thematic sections is based
exclusively on the primary evidence of the canons; modern scholarship is virtually invisible, and it is not until one reaches the final section that one understands why that is the case. Limmer’s last twenty pages disclose the real purpose of the whole, enormous exercise, which has not, in fact, been to provide
a new analytical history of the Gallic church councils. On the contrary, he has
set out to compare the special concerns and solutions of the Gallic church in
late antiquity with those of today’s Catholic Church.The brevity of this final
section undermines whatever it might have been intended to achieve, but we
do learn that the author regards modern Halloween as a living relic of paganism and strongly approves of excluding women from the diaconate and
priesthood. There is, to be sure, a long and honorable tradition of seeking
answers to today’s disciplinary conundra in the teachings of the fathers and
the canon law of the early Church. If such explorations are to make a scholarly contribution, they need a far greater awareness of the modern literature
than the present book shows. For the exhaustive summary and indexing of
canons in the first volume, Limmer’s book has some value as a work of reference, but it adds nothing to what we already know of the Gallo-Roman and
Frankish church.
University of Tennessee–Knoxville

MICHAEL KULIKOWSKI

Lo Spirito soffia nel deserto: Carismi, discernimento e autorità nel monachesimo egiziano antico. By Fabrizio Vecoli. [Scienze e Storia delle Religioni,
Vol. 6.] (Brescia: Morcelliana. 2006. Pp. 279. €20,00 paperback.)
The subject of spiritual gifts has been of interest to many students of early
Egyptian monasticism; this book is best read as a work of synthesis within this
tradition of study. It draws on a range of Greek sources (though with a strong
focus on the Life of Antony and the First Greek Life of Pachomius) and on a
very wide range of both older and more recent scholarly literature, particularly in the first chapter, which is a survey of Egyptian monastic writings in
Greek. Since the theme of the book has its starting point in the Greek word
charisma and other terms denoting spiritual gifts, Coptic sources are only
occasionally referred to, though the Letters of Antony and Ammonas are used
in their extant versions.

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The Life of Antony dominates chapter two, the longest.The first part of the
chapter examines discernment of spirits in the Life and concludes (p. 60) by
underlining its similarity to pagan religious practices in a situation of religious
diversity (which is invoked throughout the book, but especially on pp. 167–76
of chapter five).The next main part is on charisms as the fruit of ascetic purification. Finally, discernment and other spiritual gifts are viewed more widely,
including the character of Antony’s authority as a spiritual father (pp. 88–90)
and the way in which it was inherited by his successors.
Chapter three considers how Pachomius’ spiritual gifts and authority functioned in the koinonia which he founded, with some attention (like other
Pachomian scholars) to the further development of the community after his
death. Little use is made of the Pachomian monastic rule, even though its existence was surely an important factor in the koinonia’s distinctiveness.
The shorter fourth chapter is mainly about the Historia Monachorum in
Aegypto and the Lausiac History.These are seen as reflecting a later stage of
hagiographical writing, in which spiritual gifts such as discernment, healing,
and prophecy were linked to the monastic way of life almost as a guarantee
(p. 162).
The fifth chapter is a synthesis. It comes to the perhaps unsurprising conclusions that Antony’s charisms were directed more toward the needs of the
Church and society (pp. 180–82), Pachomius’ toward the maintenance of the
holiness of the koinonia (p. 185).The final pages (pp. 187–97) discuss the role
of Christian holy men (there is no distinct mention of holy women) in the general context of late antique religion and society.The conclusion, again unsurprising, is that Christians took on many of the roles of pagan holy men and
strengthened and radicalized them, becoming a third locus of authority in society alongside the figures of the emperor and the bishop.There is a brief overall conclusion and an appendix on occurrences of the word charisma in the
Bible, early Christian texts, and Egyptian monastic texts in Greek.
While scholars will find it worthwhile to persevere with this book, its discussion of so many historical questions and its review of such a large body of
critical studies makes it difficult—and not, for this reviewer, just because of the
linguistic barrier—to identify just where its own original contribution lies. For
those who are not quite fluent in Italian an English summary of such a complex and detailed work would have been helpful.
London

GRAHAM GOULD

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Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late
Antiquity and the Middle Ages. By Israel Jacob Yuval.Translated by Barbara
Horshav and Jonathan Chipman. (Berkeley: University of California Press.
2006. Pp. xxii, 313. $49.95.)
Yisrael Yuval’s provocative study of the polemical interaction of Judaism
and Christianity grows out of his determination to re-imagine the nature of
medieval European Judaism. Yuval’s book promises a lively exploration of
Jewish-Christian interaction, but the book’s structure and topics make it difficult to appreciate fully this polemical dynamic between two religious cultures.
That Judaism was affected by other cultures does not really seem shocking, but
Yuval is arguing against what had been, or what he imagined was, an
entrenched traditional attempt to sanctify the uniqueness of Jewish history.
Even if he has created something of a straw man with this dichotomy, his book
would have been useful if it had elucidated ways in which this history of influence between the religions had functioned. Unfortunately, the book’s structure
makes it difficult to explore and appreciate fully this polemical dynamic
between the two religious cultures.
First, Yuval confuses competition with influence. His discussion of how
early Judaism used the image of Esau as a way of indicting Christianity certainly shows that Jews were aware of and perhaps even threatened by
Christianity.They were using the images of the biblical tradition to assert the
primacy of Judaism as the true religion. It is not clear, however, how this
polemical competition actually affected the internal evolution of Judaism.The
threat of Christianity, particularly as it became an imperial religion, may have
forced rabbinic culture to evolve as Seth Schwartz has recently argued. In this
case, Jews were responding to the visible success of Christianity and its role
in society rather than rhetorical images.
It is frustrating that Yuval turns away from the issue of polemical exchange
to discuss the nature of vengeance and redemption in Jewish liturgical material. I do not understand how this section helps him establish evidence of
Christian influence on Judaism. That Jews could imagine that redemption
depended on or at least involved vengeance over their enemies seems independent of a particularly Christian environment. (Yuval seems to suggest a
parallel development of this idea of redemptive vengeance in Crusading theology, but there is no exploration of how, if at all, this idea traveled between
Jewish and Christian culture.)
Yuval then moves from the discussion of vengeance to the origins of the
blood libel, which is equally frustrating since this material also seems as if it
doesn’t really belong in the book.Yuval has already published well-known articles in Hebrew from which this discussion is drawn.The argument here is that
the actions of Jews who martyred themselves or killed their families during the
First Crusade attacks in the Rhineland were notorious among Christians
(something he cannot prove) and that this reputation for bloodthirstiness gal-

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vanized Christians to imagine that Jews were capable of other violent crimes
against Christians.Yuval’s thesis has been criticized elsewhere.What is relevant
for this review is that the issue of the blood libel’s origins has nothing to do
with the question of Christian influence on Judaism. Given the tenuousness of
the evidence supporting his position, it is very difficult to imagine the blood
libel origins as Judaism somehow influencing Christianity.
Yuval does conclude with a discussion of competing Jewish and Christian
interpretations of Passover. He makes clever linkages between Passover and
Easter as a way to see Passover as an extended polemic against Christian ideas
about the incarnation. But he often goes too far, and ignores the problems with
his own evidence. The most significant example of this is when he tries to
make the burning of leaven into a self-conscious attack on the Eucharist. It may
have occurred to some Jews that there was a polemical value in what they
were doing, but there is no evidence that this became the underlying interpretation of the ritual. Nor is there any real evidence that this is how Christians
saw it. He cites only one rabbinic text that took note of Christian reactions, and
that text explicitly states Jews do not have to worry when they burn the
leaven because Christians are aware of the commandment. Furthermore, if the
burning of leaven stimulated such Christian anxiety, references would surely
have appeared in the disputation literature or other general indictments of the
Talmud. Despite these problems,Yuval has certainly forced us to think about
how intimately Judaism and Christianity are linked in the worlds of medieval
Europe. Scholars will be grateful to Yuval for this effort even if they disagree
with his conclusions.
Trinity College, Hartford

JONATHAN ELUKIN

Barbarian Tides: The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire. By Walter
Goffart. [The Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press. 2006. Pp. x, 372. $69.95. ISBN 0-8122-3939-3.)
The Roman Empire is being assassinated by barbarians once more.The present barbarians are the products of a process called “ethnogenesis,” invented
and promoted in Vienna in the 1970s and 1980s, while the old flames of the
Völkerwanderung have been further fanned by the combined tone and content of Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire (2005) and Bryan Ward
Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (2005), both of which
appeared too late for Goffart’s Barbarian Tides. Even so, Goffart’s new book
may be considered a partial antidote to them, as it attempts to redefine the
“Migration Age” and cut it free at last from German nationalism.This book consolidates and brings together under one roof two related threads of argument
which he has gradually developed over almost three decades now: (1) exposing the cultural, nationalist, and historiographical presuppositions involved in
modern understanding of the impact of the barbarians, including “ethnogene-

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sis”; (2) identifying the mechanisms for accommodating the different tribal
groups onto Roman territory in the fifth and sixth centuries. Rather than a sustained process of invasion and violent confrontation involving successive
waves of tribes forced out of their homelands, Goffart has proposed a more
contingent and complex process of integration of barbarian soldiers into the
Roman army and aristocracy. Barbarians were more concerned to take advantage of the empire than destroy it. His views were originally expounded in
Barbarians and Romans: The Techniques of Accommodation (1980). In
Barbarian Tides he devotes a chapter to revisiting his previous book in the
light of its numerous critics and his own reconsideration of details (Chapter
6). Accordingly, he reinforces his essential thesis that in Gaul and Italy in particular barbarians were settled on Roman soil by being given a share of tax
income rather than land.
The bulk of the book, however, is devoted to critiquing the embedded historiographical notions of “Germans” and other confected tribal histories. The
picture Goffart offers (Chapters 1 and 2) is a Roman world in which various
barbarian tribes had always been settled.They bore different names, but all had
short histories based on short communal memories. Another chapter (7)
shows convincingly that the modern notion of “Germans” and a unified
“Germanic world”is a cultural and political artifact, so “the G-word must be dispensed with” (p. 222). Much of the ground contested by Goffart and his critics
is based on archaeological definition of different cultures, but more especially
on interpreting the texts previously treated in his Narrators of Barbarian
History (1988) where he demonstrated the inadequacy of reconstructing
Gothic, Frankish, and Lombard origins and traditions on the basis of Roman literary perspectives. Now he reformulates the literary problem (Chapter 3) and
reiterates the fact that the most significant text, the Getica of Jordanes, cannot
be deployed as a receptacle of folk memory (Chapter 4). Its picture of Gothic
history was a recent invention set down in Justinian’s Constantinople,
although a doubt lingers over Goffart’s dismissal of oral traditions and enduring memories. Finally, Chapter 5 provides an example of how an alternative
narrative for the years 400–20 might be constructed.This is a useful model and
worth emulating for later periods. Goffart’s new book is buttressed by a characteristic command of often complex texts, forensic skill, and readability, plus
a fine index. It also engages robustly with critics and doubters. As with all his
previous books, Barbarian Tides is stimulating, challenging, and designed for
impact. It simply cannot be ignored. Students of any era could benefit from
watching up close how a master scholar deals with a perennial but disputed
historiographical theme.
Sydney, Australia

BRIAN CROKE

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133

Giovanni Climaco: La Scala del Paradiso. Edited and translated by Rosa Maria
Parrinello. (Rome: Paoline Publications. 2007. Pp. 638. €48,00.)
Less than three decades ago, one would not have expected the ascetical
writings of John Climacus, the seventh-century hermit and abbot of the Sinaite
desert, to comprise sufficient and appropriate grounds for academic study and
translation.Yet, only over the past three years, there have been two distinct and
distinguished editions in the Italian language alone—both of them from the
region of Turin. In 2005, the monastic community of Bose published an introduction and fresh translation of The Ladder of Divine Ascent, which over the
centuries has proved influential within both religious and lay circles.This year,
Rosa Maria Parrinello, who lectures in Byzantine literature and specializes in
monastic history—and particularly in issues related to spiritual direction in
Palestinian and Sinaite monasticism—at the University of Turin, has produced
another significant translation of this early classic text. The book is part of a
series on Christian Readings of the First Millennium, which has introduced
seminal texts from both East and West.With the exception of Athanasius’ Life
of Anthony (volume 20), this translation of John Climacus (volume 41) is the
first monastic treatise of early Egypt, Palestine, and Sinai.
The unique contribution of this book—beyond the fine translation and
research—lies in the substantial introduction (pp. 9–185) as well as in the
comprehensive indices (of names and themes as well as of scriptural and
patristic references). The translation includes the introductory letters or prologue to The Ladder (pp. 195–98) and the concluding letter or Treatise to the
Shepherd (pp. 525–49). The text is embellished with rich notes referring to
patristic sources, while the appendices of terms (pp. 553–84) and themes (pp.
585–90) offer an analytical study of fundamental and critical aspects of this at
once traditional and original masterpiece of monastic literature.The introduction includes chapters with biographical material (without offering any new
information or insights into the dates of the Sinaite author), together with a
detailed exploration into textual editions and monastic life on Mt. Sinai. The
first appendix examines such monastic terms as: accidia, eros, philautia,
amerimnia, anachoresis, body and flesh, heart, deification, discernment, tears
and mourning, silence and stillness, toil, apatheia, gluttony, insensitivity, parrhesia, martyrdom, repentance, prayer and the Jesus Prayer, fear, remembrance
of death, remembrance of God, renunciation, rest, pride, xeniteia, theology,
humility, vainglory, and nepsis. The second appendix contains helpful discussions of the spiritual “alphabet” cited in monastic texts, such as the Ladder of
John Climacus and the Letters of Barsanuphius and John; it also describes the
nuances of such terms as “cenobium” and “community” as well as the ascetic
regulations regarding food and drink.
In many ways, the work produced by Parrinello constitutes the culmination
of numerous scholars, editors, and translators that have preceded (from the
translation in two volumes by Trevisan, published in Turin in 1941), while at
the same time providing a synthesis of the secondary sources that have

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appeared in recent years. It is an important complement and fitting completion of invaluable work hitherto on The Ladder.
JOHN CHRYSSAVGIS

Brunswick, Maine

Medieval
Die Lebensbeschreibungen Bischof Burchards von Würzburg: Vita
Antiquior—Vita Posterior—Vita Metrica. Edited by Desirée Barlava.
[Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in
usum scholarum separatim editi, LXXVI.] (Hannover: Verlag Hahnsche
Buchhandlung. 2005. Pp.viii, 277. €30,00.)
Burchard is one of those important but shadowy figures who dot the
eighth-century historical landscape. He was an Anglo-Saxon, possibly of noble
birth, and perhaps educated at Malmesbury. It is remotely possible that he was
related to Boniface. He was on the Continent by 738 and was named the first
bishop of Würzburg in 741 or 742, most likely by the Carolingian mayor of the
palace Carloman on Boniface’s nomination. He participated in a series of
important church councils in the 740s, and visited Rome at least twice, in 748
as Boniface’s envoy and in 751 as Pippin’s.Although the Christianization of the
land around Würzburg was initiated by Kilian and possibly advanced by
Willibrord, there was much work for Burchard to do. On the left bank of the
Main, at the foot of the Marienburg, Burchard founded a monastery dedicated
to Mary and Andrew. Erecting a monastery in support of a bishopric was a
fairly typical Anglo-Saxon measure. The Life of Gregory of Utrecht says that
Burchard died before Boniface, who was murdered in 754. His date of death
may be February 2, 753.
The vitae expertly edited in this volume—on which, more below–tell only
some of this and never follow strict chronological order. Consequently, one
must use Boniface’s correspondence, other saints’ lives, conciliar records, and
various narrative sources to piece together an account of Burchard’s eventful
life. Unlike many people in the orbit of Boniface and Willibrord who received
roughly contemporary vitae, Burchard did not. His three vitae are late and of
very limited value as historical sources.
Barlava’s is the first complete edition of all three vitae. The vita antiquior
was edited by Canisius, Mabillon, Brea, and Holder-Egger on the basis of different manuscripts; all manuscripts were collated for this edition. The vita posterior has never before been edited and printed fully, largely because its first
book repeats the vita antiquior.The vita metrica was first printed in 1741,
but Barlava’s is the first critical edition.
The vita antiquior was probably composed in conjunction with the translation of Burchard’s relics to the monastery of St. Burchard in 986. The text

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bears sufficient similarity to the Passio Maior Kiliani that some have supposed that the two texts were written by the same author. This might have
been Stephen of Novara. St. Gall, Reichenau, and Würzburg have been named
as places where the text was written.The author of the vita posterior seems
to have been an “E” who wrote on behalf of Abbot Pilgrim and the monks of
St. Burchard. “E” appears to have been Ekkehard of Aura. Abbot Pilgrim was
probably abbot of St. Burchard from 1130 to 1146 and Ekkehard was in
Würzburg between 1108 and 1113. Quite possibly Pilgrim became abbot well
before 1130.The vita metrica was written by John of Lauterbach from Erfurt
in about 1350.
The vita antiquior made very little use of known sources. Much of what
it says, for example that Burchard was noble, may be hagiographical topoi. In
preparing the vita posterior Ekkehard used the vita antiquior, the Passio
Kiliani, the Life of Boniface, the latter’s correspondence, and Anglo-Saxon
sources, for example Bede. As a result the text has virtually no independent
historical value. Nevertheless, Ekkehard seems to stress the legitimacy of
Würzburg’s foundation and Burchard’s enthronization as well as Burchard’s
“public” activities: missions to Rome, founding bishoprics, elevating Kilian’s
relics, and founding a monastery, for example. The vita metrica, written in
rhymed hexameters in versus concatenati (verses with alternating end and
internal rhymes) possesses no independent historical value. Barlava provides
precise details on all surviving manuscripts, earlier editions, and relevant
scholarship.
The two prose vitae can inform today’s reader about issues that were
important in certain moments of Würzburg’s history in the late tenth and early
twelfth centuries. What is more, they reveal aspects of the state of the hagiographical genre in those same times. Sadly, the texts add nothing to our knowledge of Burchard’s own world.
University of Notre Dame

THOMAS F. X. NOBLE

De presbiteris criminosis: Ein Memorandum Erzbischof Hinkmars von
Reims über straffällige Kleriker. Edited by Gerhard Schmitz, [Monumenta
Germaniae Historica, Studien und Texte, Band 34.] (Hannover: Hahnsche
Buchhandlung. 2004. Pp. xii, 124. €20,00.)
Watching scholars edit early medieval canon law is a bit like watching men
walk on the moon. In an alien world, they bounce about where gravity does
not securely hold.Although from afar almost indistinguishable in their special
suits, they are individuals with their own special responses to their environment and task; yet they do not have normal communication with earthlings or
even each other. And they are heroes. The moon-walker Gerhard Schmitz
brings to us important juridical material from the latter part of the ninth century, and he does so with élan. His edition of archbishop Hincmar’s De presbi-

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teris criminosis combines innovative and conservative editorial practices.This
is thus a work important both to historians of the Carolingian era and also to
editors striving to represent professional (as opposed to literary) medieval
texts, for which the weight of sources and variant readings is uncertain in the
lunar gravitational field.
Schmitz’s discussion of Hincmar’s arguments regarding the legal processes
applicable to accused clerics is in itself a great contribution to our understanding of Carolingian episcopal authority and early medieval legal proceedings. Like so many early medieval juridical writings, De presbiteris survives as
an anonymous and undated compilation of excerpts from a mixture of legal
sources, with no explication of the circumstances of its composition.
Authorship, occasion, and meaning must be deduced.Accepting the long-held
ascription of the text to Hincmar, Schmitz chooses in his study to concentrate
on the text’s context, intent, and import.
Schmitz’s initial detailed examination of the text’s title opens the question
of the text’s nature.While summative titles, often supplied by early modern editors, imply that little texts such as De presbiteris had a somewhat static and
normative quality, in their original context they were more likely untitled
briefs for arguments about what, in the proponent’s view, should be normative, but in fact might not be.After inviting us to imagine De presbiteris criminosis as an untitled schedula, such as that mentioned in the reference to “alia
schedula” in Hincmar’s brief entitled (by the editor Jacques Sirmond) De
iudiciis et appellationibus, Schmitz proposes that the text was written not
long before 877 (when De iudiciis was composed); he then reconstructs the
possible precipitating events for the composition of De presbiteris. Again his
method is to use other texts to supply missing data in a speculative, but prudent, triangulation of circumstances and references. Drawing especially upon
Flodoard’s reports of priests accused of crimes, Schmitz conjectures that direct
appeals to Rome by priests seeking to evade the disciplinary power of their
bishops or the more normal judicial forum of an ecclesiastical council must
have frustrated Hincmar; even more frustrating were Roman interventions
based upon incomplete and one-sided pleas. In Schmitz’s view, De presbiteris
was Hincmar’s “memorandum” to the Roman See that there should be limits to
such appeals.
Schmitz’s lively recapitulation of cases noted in the historical record usefully belies the common scholarly lament that we have no surviving traces of
Carolingian trials. Furthermore, by presenting evidence from other legal
briefs, from councils of the same period, and from Flodoard’s historical
account, Schmitz circumvents a disconcerting aspect of Hincmariana: its
exceptional quantity and quality. Hincmar’s opinions create their own monumental isolation; they continued to be cited in the classical canon law of
Gratian and later canonists; hence it is difficult to keep Hincmar’s works situated in a context of jurisprudential training, debate, and action that must have

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had other participants, now usually invisible to us. Schmitz shows us a technically sophisticated jurist and his presumed audience at work. Here are carefully selected citations of Roman law (the Breviarium Alarici, the Codex
Theodosianus, the Epitome Iuliani, the Sententiae Pauli) integrated with
the decrees of church councils, the opinions of popes, and biblical precepts.
Even if addressed to a transalpine audience, the depiction of an appellate
system stands as a counterweight to romantic descriptions of oral, communal,
consensual modes of conflict resolution.
Equally important as the historical vision Schmitz sets forth is his editorial
stance.This is one of the first editions of medieval jurisprudence to reject the
objective of recovering an ur-text, and instead to attempt representation of a
“living” text that was subject to change and correction, and that possibly drew
upon multiple exemplaria during its composition.As Schmitz states explicitly
(pp. 15, 42), it is simply incorrect to apply an analytical process that presumes
a “Vorlage—Verarbeitung—Rezeption” model. In this instance, Schmitz notes,
Hincmar’s habit of referring to his own compositions further complicates the
question of the manuscripts through which sources are transmitted and mediated.There is thus no attempt to construct a stemma, and this surely marks a
turning-point in history of that most scientifically-oriented curia of editing, the
Monumenta Germaniae Historica. At times, however, the edition seems to
revert oddly to the proposition that the most important task is to establish
which particular manuscripts Hincmar used in composing De presbiteris.
Schmitz’s main text is essentially a transcription of the brief’s representation
in ms. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek-Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Phill. 1769 (saec. IX,
prov. Rheims), a manuscript Schmitz privileged because of its age and provenance. The apparatus criticus records the deviations from the Berlin manuscript found in two other manuscripts, one of the eleventh century (Paris,
Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 18221) and a sixteenth-century paper copy (Basel,
Universitätsbibliothek, O II 29 nr. 6) of a seemingly often illegible exemplar,
and in the edition printed by Busaeus. Since the variant readings are not
intended to reveal the data used by the editor in the reconstruction of an
authorial text, the rationale for providing them must be either to allow readers
to construct their own “editions” of the text, or to supply data for some future
identification of a closely related manuscript.
The problem confronting editors who might seek to follow in Schmitz’s
footsteps is that there are no meaningful filters for the selection of data to be
represented, and so every jot and tittle goes into an overburdened apparatus.
If more widely copied texts are thus presented, editors, their typesetters, and
possibly their readers will perish in the face of thousands of undifferentiated
variants flowing across the page in very tiny print. But what principles can be
developed for discriminating between significant and insignificant variants? A
less scrupulous editor than Schmitz might have chosen to reduce the apparatus considerably.At least half of the variant readings are from the Basel manuscript, which in a traditional edition might simply have been set aside as an

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unhelpful witness. The unexceptional quality of many of those variants is a
problematic consequence of Schmitz’s consciously impartial editing style. Is it
likely that the numerous notes detailing slight and common orthographic variations (such as “auctoritas” for “autoritas,”“parochia” for “parrochia,”“Ihesu” for
“Iesu,”“definiunt” for “diffiniunt,”“Coelestinus” or “Caelestinus” for “Celestinus,”
etc.) will one day lead to discoveries? Or are these precisely the sorts of variations that disappear in the transmission of “living” texts, because scribes so
readily, even automatically, standardized them? Can anyone in the Middle Ages
spell Chalcedon? If readers seek to gain an impression of the stability or volatility of the text in the course of transmission, the array of seemingly trivial information obscures that impression. If the intended reader is one of the few specialists likely to need every grain of moon-dust for scientific analysis of a
particular manuscript’s composition, then the apparatus shows such extraordinary generosity that one might wonder if the editor is moonstruck. Of
course, were any of the extant manuscript witnesses to be destroyed, our gratitude to the editor would be unbounded. But must that possibility be the
editor’s tormenting burden?
Schmitz’s study and edition of this juridical exposition thus are exciting
stages of a grand adventure in exploration, executed boldly but also to an
admittedly unfamiliar, even mysterious destination. His work deserves attention from historians and debate from editors, as we proceed through the tenuous illumination of a moonlit Carolingian past.
University of Kentucky

ABIGAIL FIREY

Europa in costruzione. La forza delle identità, la ricerca di unità (secoli IX–
XIII).Edited by Giorgio Cracco, Jacques Le Goff, Hagen Keller and Gherardo
Ortalli. [Istituto trentino di cultura.Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, Quaderni 69:Atti della XLVI settimana di studio,Trento 15–19
settembre 2003.] (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino. 2006. Pp. 484. €32,00.)
This volume includes most of the papers given at a conference held in
2003 by the Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento.A brief summary of the
others can be found in the chronicle of the conference in Quaderni
Medievali, 57/1 (2004), pp. 155–67. Giuseppe Albertoni also wrote a dossier
by the same title, but also subtitled “Fatti, documenti, interpretazioni,” which
was published by the Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, and which is
available mainly online from Reti Medievali: http://www.storia.unive.it/_
RM/didattica/strumenti/Albertoni.html, p. 145.
Overall this information is not included in the book, and, as there is little
to describe its structure, it might be useful to turn for guidance to the original conference. For instance, thematically, the contributions reflect the conference strands to which they had belonged.After the introductory paper of
Hagen Keller and a historiographical one by Giorgio Cracco, the papers of

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Jacques Le Goff, Herwig Wolfram, and Walther Pohl discussed the theme
“Europa meticcia” (Mixed Europe?).Tilman Struve and Ovidio Capitani examined “Unities sought,” respectively the Renovatio Imperii and Reformatio
Ecclesie.The papers of Joachim Ehlers, Giuseppe Sergi, and Xosé Luis Barreiro
Rivas pertained to “Rising political identities,” the first examining the comparison between what became France and Germany, and the other two
respectively Italy and Spain. Hubert Houben, Nora Berend, and Sverre Bagge
examined the “Advent of new peoples,” respectively Normans, Hungarians,
and Scandinavians. Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Michael Toch, and Tilman Nagel
looked at “External influences,” respectively Byzantine, Jewish, and Muslim
ones. Gert Melville and Thomas Zotz examined “Loca of identity and
unity,”with the former looking at monasteries, convents, and churches, while
the latter examined princely courts.The contribution of Michel Pauly on markets and fairs was rightly moved to this section in the book (at the conference
it pertained to “Unities sought”). Hagen Keller and Franco Cardini examined
“Singular and plural,” respectively “La scrittura e le scritture” (literacy?) and
“religion-religions.”
Unfortunately the book lacks a conclusion that brings the numerous and
various contributions together, even if there was a round table at the end of
the conference, which was also attended, apart from the speakers, by Peter
Brown, who in 2003 published the second edition of a related work entitled
The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Adversity, A.D. 200–1000.
Indeed, Western Christendom dominates these conference proceedings as
well, above all for what concerns the drive toward unity (it is interesting to
note that the conference took place at the height of the debate on the proposed European Constitution and on the inclusion in it of references to
Christianity, which, however, is not mentioned in the book). In effect,Western
Christendom brought together a group of diverse populations which was
coming to dominate most of the continent and, as the Scandinavian and
Hungarian cases show, not necessarily by military conquest. Western
Christianity introduced its diverse population to common social practices and
brought the adoption of Latin as the common intellectual and governmental
language, which also made available a common corpus of literature, especially
a religious one at the beginning.Yet such bridges could then serve also for lay
ideas as well (however, there is very little or no reference to canon law or to
the Ius Commune).
Religious institutions also provided a backbone of coordination.This is particularly the case with the Roman Church,especially after the Gregorian Reform,
but also with the network of monasteries and convents. The legacy of the
Carolingian Empire was fundamental in many ways (with the adoption of the
Caroline script among others), but after its fragmentation the Empire never succeeded in escaping the inconsistency between its universal (Western Christian)
and its particular character, especially with the further growth of Western
Christendom much beyond the borders of the Empire.The rift between the West

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and Byzantium was exacerbated by the increasing alienation of the latter from
these trends (Byzantium tried to create its own commonwealth).
Yet, Christianity also played a fundamental role in consolidating monarchies
and regnal identities as well. This is particularly relevant when considering
Pohl’s and Wolfram’s critique of traditional conceptions of ethnicity. Not only
did Western Christendom expand to include new populations, but, in the
process, greatly contributed to transforming them into peoples, as is made evident by the Scandinavian, Hungarian, and Spanish cases, while the abovementioned characteristics of the Empire made such developments more complex in its territories.A similar relation between unity and diversity can be seen
inside the Church, with the monastic orders, for instance. However, one is left
wondering how unique Western Christendom was in this.
That Western Christendom was the focus of the conference is confirmed
by the fact that the papers on Byzantines, Jews, and Muslims pertained to the
conference strand on external influences. Muslims are mainly examined concerning cultural influences (the works of Nagel and Cardini partly complement each other). Toch examines Jewish internal identities and the role of
Jews in Christian sources.Yet the volume does not contain studies of Muslim
identities in Spain and Sicily. Other issues of current relevance are just hinted
at, such as, how religious division mattered outside intellectual speculation
and how diversity inside kingdoms influenced regnal identities. For instance,
cross-religious alliances were not unheard of, and Houben mentions that
internal diversity probably played a role in preventing Southern Italy from
developing a regnal identity comparable to that of England, despite the presence of a strong monarchy. Other valuable examples are cited in the works
of Toch and above all of Berend.
Overall, since it is the proceedings of a conference, this volume does not
have the organic unity of a monograph, especially given the lack of a conclusion, but, even if some areas are left uncovered, it displays an impressive range
of knowledge on very numerous and diverse topics and geographical areas.
Indeed, it certainly reflects the usual high standard of the publications of the
Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, and it is certainly extremely helpful
for anyone approaching these issues.
University of Cambridge

GIANLUCA RACCAGNI

Salvo Burci. Liber suprastella. Edited by Caterina Bruschi. [Fonti per la storia
dell’Italia medievale.Antiquitates,15.] (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il
Medio Evo. 2002. Pp. xxxvii, 528. €98.00 paperback.)
This work, purportedly written by a layman in Piacenza in 1235 against
local Cathar and Poor Lombard heretics, is well known to historians through
the extracts published by Döllinger and later by Ilarino da Milano as well as the

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small excerpt translated into English by Wakefield and Evans.An edition of the
whole substantial work (it runs to 424 pages) is long overdue, and Caterina
Bruschi has provided one of a very high standard.
From the outset it is apparent that Liber Suprastella is not quite what we
thought it was. In her introduction Bruschi challenges the idea that it was written in response to a heretical book entitled Stella (“The Star”), arguing instead
that the true title was probably Asinthium or “Wormwood” referred to in the
Apocalypse. Its lay origin has always made this work particularly interesting to
historians, and Bruschi’s archival research reveals that there was indeed a Salvo
Burci from a family of Piacenzan notaries as well as a Monaco de Cario, in
whose house the book was supposedly written and who may have been
Burci’s patron. Even so Bruschi is surely right to stress Burci’s links with the
Dominican friars. The abbreviated scriptural references are reminiscent of professional preaching manuals, and the reference to “fratres karissimi mei”
(p. 64) hints that Burci had in mind a specific audience, perhaps of friars or a
lay fraternity.
Bruschi’s edition enables us to identify Burci’s primary concerns.Although
the whole work is written as a debate with various heretical groups, especially
the Poor Lombards and the Cathars known as Albanenses, much of the subject
matter is the practical theological issues of pastoral care.These issues such as
sanctity of marriage, oath taking, and the status of civil authority were also current within orthodox debate. Burci begins his assault on heretics by attacking
their views denying the sanctity of marriage.This was particularly an issue in
Italy, which was noted for its secret marriages and minimizing of ecclesiastical
involvement in the process. The Fourth Lateran Council had outlawed secret
unions, and Italian bishops were trying to enforce marriage as a sacrament
taking place in church.
The edition demonstrates that Burci’s celebrated passage on Cathar belief
in two principles is brief in comparison with the longest sections of the book,
which are concerned with oath taking and the use of the temporal sword.The
implicit threat to civic authority and economic life by a refusal to swear hovers
around Burci’s emphatic denunciation of the practice. Given the Italian communal context, it is perhaps expected that he would argue in favor of effective
and divinely sanctioned temporal authority; however, the tone is often crisp
and pragmatic:“men, that is malefactors, do not fear bishops and priests spiritually because [such] men are not spiritual” (p. 258). Instead he advocates the
use of the secular powers to introduce a fear of bodily vengeance. In dealing
with heresy, this is not a blueprint for inquisition procedure, but Burci is interested in a two-track approach of robust preaching against heretical doctrine
and secular punishment of the obdurate.
There is also evidence of the tensions between wealth and spirituality
which bedeviled all spiritual movements of that century. In a careful chapter
on “the good rich”Burci justifies the possession of wealth, firstly saying that the

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rich could be saved by good works and then justifying the possession of
wealth by stating that although the rich have a duty to help the poor in times
of shortage, in times of abundance they are allowed to possess their riches.
Dr. Bruschi is to be greatly congratulated for making available a text which
will continue to offer insights into thirteenth-century Italian communal life as
well as the religious dissenters of the day.
University of Glasgow

ANDREW P. ROACH

The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245–1246. By Mark
Gregory Pegg (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2001. Pp. x, 238.
$35.00.)
William Blake had no use for a vision that was general and not focused on
the particular, or, as he put it, on “Minute Particulars.” Among the many fine
qualities of Mark Pegg’s book is its clear focus on the concrete particulars of
culture in the thirteenth-century Lauragais. This clarity of focus shows first in
the definition of subject matter. The book centers on the record of one inquisitorial campaign, in 1245–46, in which 5,471 men and women were summoned
to Toulouse for interrogation. Apart from a brisk, necessary chapter on the
“Albigensian Crusade,” Pegg devotes his attention with fair consistency to the
records of this inquisition. Occasional asides make clear that he knows the
broader picture, but it does not distract him from his sustained exploration of
this sustained event. On a deeper level, the interest in concrete particulars
extends to Pegg’s conception of both the object and the exercise of history. In
a more conventional history, his subjects would be known as Cathars and
would be defined chiefly by a set of dualistic dogmas. On Pegg’s account, they
are known chiefly as bons omes, bonas femnas, and crezens—particular kinds
of individual, those who radiate perfection and those who absorb it through
the conventions of contact and homage that punctuated village life. Pegg’s task
is not to distill his subjects’ beliefs so much as to unfold the fabric of life in
which those beliefs were implicated. He does so superbly.
The subtitle might lead one to expect a book dealing mainly with the
inquisitors, Bernart de Caux and Jean de Saint-Pierre. It does not. This is not a
study in the manner of James Given, who has devoted his attention largely to
the workings of inquisitors and their agents. Pegg does explain how the
inquisitors worked, and he appropriately warns that they and their thirteen
assistants did not represent “a fully functioning self-perpetuating institutional
‘Inquisition.’” Clearly the inquisitors are crucial agents in the story, but the
narrative in which they act is mainly that of the villagers, whose habits of life
are disrupted and overturned by their inquisition. Before the Crusade, the
bons omes and bonas femnas had circulated openly, but afterward their
movements were clandestine, and the inquisition of 1245–46 sealed the transformation, creating a world in which, as the inquisitors insisted, every move-

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ment and encounter could be fraught with significance, a world in which
people were always looking over their shoulders. Another book might be
written about changes among the inquisitors; this is one about profound
change among their subjects.
I happen to have read Pegg’s book on a return flight from Europe, during
which a stranger seated near me did his best to impress me with William
Manchester’s vision of a tediously changeless medieval world. When I
demurred, my companion demanded to know my qualifications.As quickly as
possible I buried my nose in Pegg’s book, and immediately my eyes fell on his
fine critique of the “surprisingly common” view of the medieval countryside
and its beliefs as unchanging. On the next page I read his quotation from W. H.
Auden, suggesting that conversation with strangers may well be stifled with
the words “Medieval Historian.” That didn’t quite work. Still, carrying Pegg’s
book on a trans-Atlantic flight or elsewhere could always provide an excellent
corrective to anyone’s image of a stagnant medieval peasant culture.
Northwestern University

RICHARD KIECKHEFER

Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval
Europe. Edited by R. N. Swanson. [Brill’s Companions to the Christian
Tradition,Vol. 5.] (Leiden: Brill. 2006. Pp. xii, 360. $124.00; €95,00.)
Since indulgences were arguably the keystone of later medieval religious
practice and certainly at the heart of Luther’s attack on the entire penitential
and sacramental system, it is odd indeed that they have not elicited more systematic attention from scholars. The standard work, R. N. Swanson says,
remains Nikolaus Paulus’ three-volume Geschichte des Ablasses im Mittelalter,
originally published in 1922–23 and reprinted in 2000, and recently supplemented in part by the study of collective indulgences by Alexander Siebold,
Sammelindulgenzen. Ablassurkunden des Spätmittelalters und der
Frühneuzeit (2001).This is not quite correct, for if one consults the germane
bibliographical entry in the third edition of the Oxford Dictionary of the
Christian Church (1997), one encounters such formidable names as Henry
Charles Lea, Bernhard Poschmann, and Karl Rahner; yet it remains true that in
the last half-century or so indulgences have not loomed as large as one might
expect, partly perhaps because so many great scholars have gone before.
To remedy this defect, therefore, Swanson, a distinguished scholar of late
medieval religion, has assembled this collection of thirteen highly diverse
essays to which he has provided a succinct, if incomplete, introduction (pp.
1–9).The authors and their contributions are as follows: Robert Shaffern,“The
Medieval Theology of Indulgences” (pp. 11–36); Giovanna Casagrande,
“Confraternities and Indulgences in Italy in the Later Middle Ages” (pp. 37–63);
Charles Caspers,“Indulgences in the Low Countries, c. 1300-c. 1520” (pp. 65–
99); Eva Dolezalova et al.,“The Reception and Criticism of Indulgences in the
Late Medieval Czech Lands” (pp. 101–45); John Edwards, “ ‘Espana es difer-

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ente’? Indulgences and the Spiritual Economy in Late Medieval Spain” (pp.
147–68); Alastair Minnis,“The Construction of Chaucer’s Pardoner” (pp. 169–
95); Anne Hudson,“Dangerous Fictions: Indulgences in the Thought of Wyclif
and His Followers” (pp. 197–214); R. N. Swanson, “Praying for Pardon:
Devotional Indulgences in Late Medieval England” (pp. 215–40); Diana Webb,
“Pardons and Pilgrims” (pp. 241–75); Norman Housley, “Indulgences for
Crusading, 1417–1517” (pp. 277–307); Falk Eisermann, “The Indulgence as a
Media Event: Developments in Communication through Broadsides in the
Fifteenth Century” (pp. 309–30); and David Bagchi, “Luther’s Ninety-Five
Theses and the Contemporary Criticism of Indulgences” (pp. 331–55).
Since one cannot possibly comment on all these essays, I shall confine myself
to a few observations here. In the “Introduction” Swanson notes that, curiously,
indulgences figured very little in later medieval pastoral and sermon literature, a
lacuna which Peter Dykema discovered while researching this subject and
which caused him to abandon a projected essay for this volume. Robert
Shaffern’s discussion of the theology of indulgences, especially in the period
1175–1260, is useful, but he fails to situate his specific contribution within the
historiographic tradition, to appreciate the mess created by Pope Urban II’s
vague promises offered at Clermont in November 1095, which the “crown
lawyers” (the theologians and canonists) then had to clean up, or to underscore
the novel elements involved in the full emergence of indulgences, including the
fateful connection with money. Caspers’ study of indulgences in the Low
Countries is rich with concrete examples of the system in action at its best (e.g.,
indulgences for the poor [pp. 95–97]) and at its most distorted (the three-year
“dike” indulgence obtained by Charles V in 1515, which yielded 53,445 ducats
for St. Peter’s in Rome and 75,000 for the dikes [pp. 83–86]).This essay complements nicely the kind of information to be found in the extremely important but
little-known work by Paulus, Indulgences as a Social Factor in the Middle Ages
(1922), to my knowledge the only work of Paulus ever translated into English.
Swanson’s own contribution to this collection endeavors to investigate
devotional indulgences in England that were not connected with money. Not
only is this notoriously difficult to do; Swanson’s good intention here to underscore the importance of indulgences “untainted” by money is, ironically, probably vitiated by the prominent title he chose for this book, which can only
cater to and reinforce everyone’s worst (mis)impressions of late medieval
indulgences in operation, being “sold” everywhere to generate revenue for all
conceivable purposes. Here the complexity of reality is revealed in another
way by Norman Housley, the great historian of crusading in the later Middle
Ages. He finds that although in the century before the Reformation the preaching of indulgences indeed focused largely on raising funds, there were, nevertheless, quite unexpectedly at least three occasions in which significant personal participation was instead both the target and the achievement: the relief
of Belgrade in 1456, Pope Pius II’s very effective preaching of his crusade in
1463-64 (but then scotched by his death), and the defense of Hungary by an
army of peasant crusaders in 1514.

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Although Luther has long been hailed for using the printing press as a way
of spreading his views (so much so that Mark U. Edwards called his
Reformation the first successful media campaign in history [Printing,
Propaganda, and the Reformation (1994)]), Falk Eisermann wishes to set that
achievement in a larger perspective by showing that it was promoters of indulgences who vigorously used the printing press for their purposes by printing
mostly broadsides and thereby paved the way for Luther. Developing an insight
suggested by Berndt Hamm in 1996, Eisermann adduces an impressive array of
evidence to support this contention.While it is possible that Nicholas of Cusa
himself planned to print letters of indulgence as early as 1452, they certainly
were published no later than 1454–55.They were also routinely issued in both
German and Latin and provided much work for publishers. (I remember once
coming upon beautiful German and Latin copies of such an indult in the
Staatsarchiv in Basel). Cardinal Raymond Peraudi was an especially effective
exploiter of printing in his indulgence campaigns in Germany in 1488–90 and
1502–04. Printers in turn capitalized on these possibilities and created their
own “products” (as one would now say in our totally capitalistic society). One
particularly vivid example is the Ablässe und Heiltümer von Köln, a guide to
the relics and indulgences available in Cologne published by Johannes Kölhoff
the Elder in 1492, no less than seventy-six pages long! In short, just as Luther
himself acknowledged that he did not create a common German language in
his translation of the Bible into German (as the ineradicable myth would have
it) but used the chancery German ubiquitous since the fourteenth century, he
might well have confessed that it was the “sellers” of indulgences who showed
him how to use the printing press to disseminate his counter-message, which
in the final essay David Bagchi fully contextualizes in the evolution of his own
thinking and the replies of his critics.
LAWRENCE G. DUGGAN

University of Delaware
Early Modern European

The Front-Runner of the Catholic Reformation:The Life and Works of Johann
von Staupitz. By Franz Posset. [St Andrews Studies in Reformation History.]
(Burlington,Vermont:Ashgate Publishers. 2003. Pp. xxii, 398. $104.95.)
Franz Posset’s 2003 book on the life and works of Johann Staupitz is ambitious and provocative. The book is written with the premise that Johann
Staupitz, the Vicar-General of the Augustinian Order in Germany in the time of
Martin Luther, whose mentor and spiritual father he became, has been underappreciated in the story of the sixteenth-century Reformations. Staupitz was
not only a forerunner, argues Posset against previous studies, but rather he was
the front-runner of the Reformation. Furthermore, in terms of theological originality, he was on a par with Martin Luther.
Going as far as to ask, “Is Staupitz the Reformation?” Posset answers, “Yes
and no.”Yes because “he is an exponent of what is usually associated with the

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Reformation theological principles of ‘grace alone, faith alone, and Scripture
alone.’ No, because he was not a proponent of nationalistic German antiRoman politics.” He was a “critical thinker,” but he “remained loyal to the
church” (p.1, also p. 373). Nevertheless, “All in all, without Staupitz and his
reform efforts there probably would not have been the Reformation in
Germany as we know it” (p. 379).
These statements are based on observations on, first, the close mentoring
relationship between Luther and Staupitz and their shared spiritual concerns,
and, second, the “five Staupizian axioms”: Staupitz’ recorded sermons (e.g.,
Advents sermons in Nuremberg 1516, Tübingen sermons on Job 1497/98,
Advents sermons in Munich 1518) reveal a definite scripture-based theology,
Christo-centric spirituality (surrounding the Sweet Savior), and a doctrine of
unmerited salvation through divine grace alone, through faith alone, and resulting in good works (p. 376).
In addition to highlighting the merits and sweetness of Staupitz’ theology
that indeed justifies for him the title of a reformer, Posset points out that
throughout his career, the preacher also assumed a role of a reformer in practice as well: he acted upon his vision for reform of the religious life of the
friars, of spirituality and pastoral care of his time, and of the university education in Wittenberg.
One of the many contributions of the book is that it brings to daylight the
significant place of Johann Staupiz in the many currents of medieval theology
and pastoral practice. Staupitz is presented as an innovative voice in monastic
and devotional theology, as well as in other fronts. The book clearly demonstrates not only his formative influence on the young friar Luther—even characterizing Luther as “Staupitzian” (p. 373)—but also does justice to the genius
of Staupitz’s own theology of grace, including his insights into predestination
and undeserved justification. In Posset’s treatment Luther’s initial reformatory
discoveries seem perhaps less original.
Posset offers a painstakingly detailed study of Staupitz’ role as the reformer
in the Augustinians Order and in the landscape of late medieval monastic theology and follows Staupitz development as a “Sermonizer,”“Reformator,”“friend
of Humanists,” and an extraordinary provider of pastoral care.The intimate lasting friendship between the men is carefully examined and the role of Staupitz
uplifted from the shadow of Luther, with an attempt to explain where and how
the two men eventually parted ways—if they did. The two theologians obviously differed in respect to their eventual attitudes toward the papacy, the
binding of monastic vows, and, most of all, their actual involvement in ecclesial reforms. One became disassociated from the Catholic Church and emerged
as a leader toward practical changes leading into formation of new confessional groups, whereas the other focused on spiritual renewal within the
Catholic tradition and remained an observant in regard to the call for wider
institutional reforms. One has been credited—or blamed—as the Reformer,

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whereas the other played a lower-key yet significant pioneering role through
his areas of expertise: preaching and Seelsorge.The fact that Staupitz eventually resigned from his office (1520) in order to avoid action against his colleague and for reasons of theological integrity speaks volumes.
Clearly, to understand Luther and the Reformations, one needs to pay attention to voices like Staupitz and the spiritual and theological climate as inclusively as possible. Staupitz, in Posset’s treatment, offers an important window
to both Catholic spirituality of the time and to the German Reformations,
Catholic and Protestant. It convinces in uplifting Staupitz as the reformminded, preaching theologian of God’s grace; it is less convincing in placing
Staupitz in the frontline with Luther in terms of the revolutionary actual
changes that catapulted from Luther’s public action.
Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg

KIRSI STJERNA

La Nativité et le temps de Noël, XVII e–XX e siècle. Edited by Régis Bertrand.
(Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence. 2003. Pp. 254.
€24,00 paperback.)
The two-thousandth anniversary of the date traditionally celebrated as the
birth of Jesus offered the opportunity for European scholars from a variety of
disciplines to gather in Aix-en-Provence to examine the Nativity and
Christmastide in the modern and contemporary periods. The sixteen papers
collected in this volume introduced by Régis Bertrand are organized around
three major themes: the spiritual expansion of devotion to the birth and childhood of Jesus, particularly after the Council of Trent; the ways in which these
events and personages were depicted in statuettes, pictorial representations,
and theatrical presentations; and the variety of traditions (both Christian and
pagan) that have marked the celebration of the Nativity across Europe until
the present.
The feast of the Nativity appeared in the course of the fourth century when
the Church in the West began to celebrate the “birthday of Jesus”on December
25 while the Church in the East did so on January 6. Despite the fact that
ancient sources favored July 25 as the more accurate date, the two feasts—
which were initially undifferentiated in content—gradually became distinct as
Christmas and the Epiphany. Evidently the church fathers preferred the former
dates because they supplanted pagan feasts already held at the time of year.
Twelfth-century monastic reforms introduced into the celebration of the
Nativity a new emotional sensibility that focused on the vulnerability and
poverty of Jesus as an infant. Francis of Assisi was especially important in
accentuating the dual nature of Jesus and hence his accessibility to humans
whose suffering he had shared.The representation of the Nativity as a crèche
including realistic and picturesque figures also helped spread the new devotion beyond the clerical world and contributed to the formation of a more

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emotional “religion of the heart.” Scholars consider this innovation as crucial
to Catholicism in the early 1500s because it stressed the humanity of Jesus in
contradistinction to the severe and vengeful God portrayed by Luther.
The initial essays examine the early spread of devotion to the Holy Family
and note that Ignatius of Loyola in the sixteenth century already accorded a
critical role to the contemplation of Jesus’ incarnation, birth, and childhood
during the first three days of his Spiritual Exercises.These scholars emphasize,
however, the decisive role of Teresa of Avila, whose reformed convents of
Discalced Carmelites extended devotion to the Infant Jesus throughout early
modern Europe. Silvano Giordano’s examination of the Carmelite friars of
Prague, for example, shows how this devotion expanded beyond the city to
other religious houses in Central Europe during the eighteenth century. In the
last decades of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the cult of the
Infant of Prague spread rapidly among the faithful, assisted in large part by the
use of molded plaster and metal to make statuettes affordable for every home.
The second group of essays concentrates on the evolving iconography that
made representations of the Nativity, Infant Jesus, and Holy Family emotionally
and visually appealing and contributed to the strong Marian piety of the nineteenth century. Theatrical presentations of the Nativity appeared in the eighteenth century and have remained popular to this day. But scholarly analysis of
Christmas plays staged from Provence to Poland suggests that their religious
message was gradually diluted as they increasingly mirrored the growing trend
toward more intimate family celebrations.
Just as profane figures still stand alongside sacred personages in today’s
Nativity scenes, non-Christian (or pagan) elements have always been present
in the celebration of Christmas.The third group of papers focuses on the various ways that religious authorities over the centuries have confronted and
compromised with the inventive practices and evolving expectations of their
flocks to arrive at a syncretic set of rituals and gestures that they still considered more or less “orthodox.” In an insightful and prophetic selection,
Jacqueline Lalouette describes how fin-de-siècle Parisians belonging to the
movement “La Libre Pensée” devised alternative Christmas celebrations that
focused on the family and the common man. In their “Fêtes de l’Enfance” children still exchanged gifts, dressed in costumes, and sang traditional Christmas
songs from their provinces; however, they also sang patriotic songs specifically
written for “Noëls républicains.” Later, between the World Wars, the
Communists likewise celebrated “Noëls rouges” by staging plays that were not
only anticlerical but also anticapitalist in content. Religious authorities
denounced these festivals, which they regarded as “neo-pagan” cults of nature
because they revived ancient rites celebrating the winter solstice.The festivals
also retained non-Christian elements such as Yule logs and Christmas trees,
which the Catholic clergy had long suspected of being either pagan or
Protestant in origin! Lalouette concludes that these alternative celebrations
enjoyed very limited success, not least of all because many freethinkers themselves feared the emergence of a lay religion.

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This early movement toward Christmas’s dechristianization foreshadowed
the widening trend toward secularization in our own day. This insightful collection of papers nonetheless reminds us that perhaps this is only the latest
chapter of an ongoing process in which religious authorities constantly negotiate the “true” meaning of Christmas with members of the community who
seek to reinvent and redirect this festival to serve their own needs.As the last
authors in the volume observe, contemporary regions like Bavaria and Alsace
perhaps unconsciously have chosen Christmas as the occasion to reinforce the
solidarity of civil society and/or celebrate regional identity by dressing in distinctive provincial costumes, performing traditional dances, eating regional
dishes, and singing carols in patois. These regions are not alone in their efforts
to preserve or revive their much-cherished customs—if for no other reason
than to meet tourists’ expectations and benefit the local economy. Finally,
engaging in traditional rituals can also be another way to resist the seductive
Americanization of Christmas, which has threatened to turn it into primarily a
“Fête de Consommation.”
University of Texas at Arlington

STEVEN REINHARDT

Das Papstzeremoniell der Renaissance. Texte—Musik—Performanz. By Jörg
Bölling, [Tradition-Reform-Innovation: Studien zur Modernität des
Mittelalters, Band 12.] (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 2006. Pp. 330. $62.95
paperback.)
In the modern period, matters of ceremony are matters of power.The papacy
around 1500 is a very good example of this. Extremely power-conscious popes,
such as Alexander VI and Julius II, regularly had strong disputes with their ceremonial masters, Johannes Burckard and Paris de Grassi.This was particularly the
case when these ceremonial masters attempted to push through ideas about
appropriate representation, which, for whatever reason, their employers often
rejected.To be more precise,ceremonial goings-on of all forms,be it in the Sistine
Chapel or at other papal locations loaded with meaning, were carefully planned
operations, which say a lot about the self-appraisal of the official and even about
the importance of the office itself and its traditions. But what exactly do they
say? To decode the semantics of the sacred acts in their entirety was possible
even in the time in which the events took place only for a small group of initiated people. But nevertheless, for a much wider circle, the stage, props, as well
as the manifold olfactory and auditory effects must have been, at least generally,
understandable. It is a complex, multi-disciplined exercise to attempt to identify
and piece together the meaning of these acts after nearly half a millennium.The
author seeks to locate the basis for such a reconstruction in a knowledgeable
piece of research, which is carefully bolstered with evidence. One focus of his
interest lies on the basic texts of the ceremonies. Painstaking comparison of
texts, combined with sharp analysis of sources, unveils Augustinus Patritius
(besides Burckard and de Grassi) as one of the great “directors” of papal rites. In
addition, the musical dimension of performances of this kind is investigated in

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depth. Over the course of the decades in question, music developed a steadily
more important role. Increasingly well-educated (and better paid) musicians
interpreted a repertoire which gradually developed a standard character. Rome
in this case was everything but an exception. Music, in general, gained a high
status at the Italian courts, above all at Ferrara.
However clearly thorough the work discussed here may be, it is rare that it
goes beyond stating the situation or considering the material.To put this differently, the papal ceremonies are conceivable as “event” but not as an instrument for winning prestige. And the big question remains totally unanswered:
what relationship existed between the developing formalization of the ceremonies and the increasingly crass departures from the norms made by the
popes? This is despite the fact that hypotheses present themselves. One could
suppose that the need for a colorful ceremony would be all the greater if the
popes distanced themselves from the interests and requirements of the office
through extreme nepotism, corruption, and the waging of wars.This would be
analogous to the great frescoes of the time, which are probably approximated
best by the celebratory Masses held in the Sistine Chapel as “living images.”To
conclude, this piece of work is full of facts and details, but is a little short in
conclusions. It will provide a sound basis for future investigations to build on.
Université de Fribourg, Switzerland

VOLKER REINHARDT

Paralella cosmographica de sede et apparitionibus dæmonum. Liber unus.
By Federico Borromeo. Edited by Francesco di Ciaccia. [Accademia di San
Carlo, Fonti e studi, 5.] (Rome: Bulzoni Editore; Milan: Biblioteca
Ambrosiana. 2006. Pp. 228. €18,00 paperback.)
The virulent outbreak of the plague in Milan between 1629 and 1631 stands
out for the extraordinary climate of panic it engendered.The Milanese not only
sought to explain the epidemic conventionally as a form of divine punishment,
but were also gripped by suspicions of demonic malfeasance.This led, notoriously, to the prosecution, torture, and brutal execution of two citizens suspected of having poisoned wells, doors, and walls with contagious substances.
The case came to figure prominently in Pietro Verri’s Enlightenment pamphlet
against torture and gained further notoriety through Alessandro Manzoni’s nineteenth-century rendition, La storia della colonna infame.
Caught in the middle of the crisis was Milan’s archbishop Federico
Borromeo (1595–1631).The learned ecclesiastic’s response to the plague, in
word and deed, was conflicted. In his public statements, he acknowledged his
belief in divine as well as diabolical influence, but he also searched for naturalistic explanations, especially in his tract De pestilentia (1631). The crisis
was a test for a humanist and church leader who, at a time in which demonic
fears peaked across Europe, had long thought and written about the issue.
One result was the treatise Paralella cosmographica de sede et apparitionibus dæmonum, which is now made available in a useful new edition by

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Francesco di Ciaccia. The book offers three versions of the text: the manuscript draft in Italian, the Latin version printed in 1624, and the editor’s Italian
translation of the latter, enriched with annotations. The edition is published
in a series of the Accademia di San Carlo, based at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana
in Milan, which has done much in recent years to renew scholarly interest in
the work of Federico Borromeo.
The Paralella cosmographica (thusly spelled) displays the same ambiguity of
Borromeo’s later reflections on the plague.On the one hand,as Di Ciaccia rightly
stresses in his introduction, Borromeo examines accounts of demonic activity
with scholarly detachment and acumen, along with a fine understanding of how
false news and rumors come about. On the other, he does not doubt the reality
of demons, and he accepts reported interventions if he trusts the source. Most
interesting about this treatise, however, is its premise and organizing principle,
namely, that demonic activity is conditioned by place, time, and other material or
immaterial circumstances. Borromeo thus pursues his inquiry from cosmological, geographic, and ethnographic perspectives. To document his analysis, he
mines sources ranging from classical antiquity to his own day, and he includes
Asia,Africa, Scandinavia, and the Americas in his discussions of how landscape,
the natural environment, cultural characteristics, and other factors affect the
demonological universe. In contrast, Borromeo leaves questions arising from his
distinctions between Christianity and other religions, and among true faith,
heresy, and superstition, largely unexamined and thus unresolved.
Miami University

WIETSE DE BOER

La Venerable M. María de Jesús de Ágreda y la Inmaculada Concepción: El
proceso eclesiástico a la “Mística Ciudad de Dios.” By Benito Mendia,
O.F.M. †, and Antonio M.Artola Arbiza, C.P. (Ágreda, Spain: Monasterio de la
Concepción. 2004. Pp. 350. paperback.)
Over the past decade or so, there has been increased interest in the seventeenth-century Conceptionist nun and mystic, the Venerable Mary of
Ágreda. She is well known for her long friendship with king Philip IV of Spain,
her mystical bilocations to the New Mexican frontier, and, above all, her
enormous biography of the Virgin Mary, Mystical City of God. This book
sparked enormous controversy in part because of the support it lent to the
doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which did not become part of official Church dogma until the nineteenth century.The Spanish Inquisition took
some interest in Mary of Ágreda and her book during her lifetime; the book
was placed on the Index for a time and was condemned by a number of theologians. The nun was eventually able to rise above her critics and has continued to be an important figure in the religious histories of both Spain and
the American Southwest. Her major written work has also been the object of
sustained interest and appreciation. Supporters on both sides of the Atlantic
continue to press for her beatification.

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This work by Fathers Mendia and Artola Arbiza was published to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the definition of the Immaculate Conception and
to highlight Mary of Ágreda’s contributions to this doctrine. Although the
authors do describe some of the content of the Mystical City of God, including
the elements that had sparked controversy,the main focus is the very convoluted
history of the book in its relationship to the opinions and decisions of religious
authorities in Spain, France, and Rome.The eighteen chapters progress chronologically with the most emphasis being placed on two crucial debates on the
orthodoxy and value of Mary of Ágreda’s work: the condemnation by the
Sorbonne and the Judicium of Pope Benedict XIV. The authors contextualize the
constant volley between approbation and censure that plagued the work by discussing how it became a lightning rod for debates not only about the
Immaculate Conception, but also between Thomists and Scotists about the interpretation of private and public revelation in general.At the same time, negative
decisions by the Holy Office and the Pope were nearly impossible to overcome.
Thus, for the authors, the definition of the Immaculate Conception as
dogma in 1854 was central to the fate of both Mystical City of God and the
cause for Mary of Ágreda’s beatification. The definition removed some—
though not all—of the controversy surrounding the book, but was not enough
to reignite positive interest on the part of Rome. It was not until collaborations
during the twentieth century between Spanish and American supporters of
the nun and her work that any real progress was made. However an official reexamination of the book during the 1990s did not lead to Vatican approval or
a reopening of her cause for beatification.
This work by Mendia and Artola Arbiza, though historical in nature, is
intended as an ardent defense of the value and importance of Mystical City of
God and, by extension, the cause of Mary of Ágreda.While the authors openly
reveal their bias in favor of the nun and her work, the book is a testament to
the complicated processes involved in the Church’s decisions surrounding the
orthodoxy of religious writings and the promotion of controversial figures.
Kalamazoo College

KATIE MACLEAN

Bossuet à Metz (1652-1659). Les années de formation et leurs prolongements.Actes du Colloque international de Metz (21–22 mai 2004). Edited
by Anne-Élisabeth Spica. [Recherches en littérature et spiritualité, Vol. 10.]
(Berne: Peter Lang. 2005. Pp. xviii, 350. $64.95.)
Bossuet. Le Verbe et l’Histoire (1704–2004). Actes du colloque international
de Paris et Meaux pour le troisième centenaire de la mort de Bossuet.
Edited by Gérard Ferreyrolles. [Colloques, congrès et conférences sur le
classicisme, 8.] (Paris: Honoré Champion. 2006. Pp. 432. €70,00. ISBN 27453-1389-4.)
In 1904, the bicentennial of the death of Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, the
“Eagle of Meaux,” was lavishly commemorated by the publication of momen-

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tous editions of his correspondence and of his oratory works; a hundred years
later, his memory was honored in two major conferences, one in Paris and
Meaux, and the other in Metz. The choice of the venues was dictated by
Bossuet’s career: after studies in Paris, he spent seven years in the northeastern
city, returned to the capital as tutor of the Dauphin, later becoming bishop of
Meaux, from which city he exerted his influence as “the Oracle of the French
Church.”As the two symposiums were carefully planned and coordinated, they
should be reviewed concurrently; they provide a valuable assessment of the
present state of scholarship related to this major historical figure.
The years spent by Bossuet in Metz, a diverse city recently (1648) annexed
to the kingdom of France, were for the young cleric “formative years,” as most
of what came to be considered his personal concerns and contributions took
shape at that time. It was there that he developed his talent as a preacher, that
he engaged in religious controversy with Protestants, became interested in
Judaism, and established the first elements of his political philosophy. These
are the four themes developed in the two days of the conference. The Paris
symposium was also divided into four parts: Philosophy, History,Theology, and
Spirituality, Rhetoric and Literature; the third day, appropriately meeting in
Meaux, dealt with the “reception of Bossuet.” In all, forty-one scholarly papers
were presented, with the expected brief and erudite remarks by the mayor of
Meaux, the bishop of the diocese, and the Chancellor of the French Academy.
The first thing that emerges from this collection of engaging papers is that,
excepted the dean of Bossuetistes, Thérèse Goyet, an earnest participant in the
discussions, and Jacques Le Brun, who wrote their doctoral dissertations
respectively on Bossuet and continued to examine other facets of his life and
thought, all participants addressed some angle of his rich personality through
the prism of their own research. For instance, Joseph Bergin, author of an
exhaustive study of the French episcopate, considered him within that particular group (“Bossuet dans l’épiscopat de Louis XIV,” Colloque de Paris-Meaux,
pp. 105-14), or Jean-Louis Quantin, currently investigating themes in religious
controversy, presented a very convincing examination of the theme of communion under one species (“Bossuet et la communion sous une espèce,”
Colloque de Metz, pp. 163–86). This very valid approach contributed to a
better perception of a singular author in the context of his time.
Another conclusion is the present pre-eminence in interest and quality of
the literary, especially rhetorical, approach to Bossuet’s work; Hélène Michon
(“Bossuet: un art de la controverse,” Colloque de Metz, pp. 117–32) and JeanRobert Armogathe (“Bossuet, orateur sacré. La rhétorique de la prétérition,”
Colloque de Paris-Meaux, pp. 257-69) are the best among an excellent crop.
Does this mean that nothing remains to be done regarding the great man
himself? Hardly, as J. Le Brun expounded (“Un siècle de commémoration,”
Colloque de Paris-Meaux, p. 21): if the quest for lost letters or manuscripts has
been disappointing, an important number of Bossuet’s works, published after

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his death, still need critical editions, on the model of the one he provided for
Bossuet’s Politique (“La Politique de Bossuet: les débats autour de sa publication d’après des documents inédits,” Colloque de Metz, pp. 277–89).This is the
prerequisite for a renewed assessment of his thought, one that needs to be
considered within the intellectual context of his time, as J.-L. Quantin’s brilliant
evaluation (“Bossuet et l’érudition de son temps,” Colloque de Paris-Meaux, p.
65–103) amply demonstrates.There is therefore plenty of work to be accomplished before the next anniversary, in 2027.
Two memorable events for those who attended them are preserved in these
collected papers, of great significance for all interested in religious culture in
the age of Louis XIV. Clearly many were revised for their publication, taking into
account the valuable exchanges that followed their presentation. It is to be
regretted, however, that these discussions were not recorded and published, as
they also represented an essential component of this collegial encounter.
The Catholic University of America

JACQUES GRES-GAYER

Emblemata Sacra: Emblem Books from the Maurits Sabbe Library,
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven [Exhibited in the] Francis A. Drexel
Library, Saint Joseph’s University. With a Preface by Joseph F.
Chorpenning, O.S.F.S. Introduction by Rob Faesen, S.J., and Catalogue of the
Exhibition by Ralph Dekoninck, Agnès Guiderdoni-Bruslé, and Marc van
Vaeck. (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press. 2006. Pp.xiv, 103.
$45.00 paperback.)
This volume could be described as an exhibition catalogue, but to do so
would seriously undersell a scholarly study of the early modern use of printed
images within Catholic spirituality, and in particular of their exploitation by
the Society of Jesus for both meditational and devotional but also for pedagogic purposes.The main body of the text is contributed by leading specialists
in these areas, Marc van Vaeck from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and
Frank Dekoninck and Agnès Guiderdoni-Bruslé from the Université Catholique
de Louvain.
In the preface Joseph Chorpenning, from Saint Joseph’s University Press,
explains that the year 2006 commemorated three significant dates for the
Society of Jesus—the 450th anniversary of the death of its founder, Ignatius
Loyola (1491–1556), and the 500th anniversary of the births of Ignatius’s
first two companions, Francis Xavier (1506–52) and Peter Faber (1506–46).
In celebration of these anniversaries, Saint Joseph’s University organized the
remounting in the Francis Drexel Library of an exhibition of some seventy
devotional emblem books and allied works from the Maurits Sabbe Library
of the Faculty of Theology of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven which had
been mounted in Leuven in 2005 to complement an international conference on “Emblemata Sacra”: Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Illustrated

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Religious Literature. This present volume is based on the catalogue of that
exhibition.
The Maurits Sabbe Library is, as Rob Faesen explains in his introduction,
particularly rich in Jesuitica, and this emphasis is reflected in the works discussed here, which are virtually all by Catholic, and predominantly by Jesuit
writers, although some non-Jesuit writers, such as Augustin Chesneau and
Abraham à Sancta Clara, both Augustinians, are also included. Protestant
emblematists, however, hardly figure here. (Cramer, for example, is mentioned
only twice, while Montenay and Bèze figure not at all.) The works described
are primarily those published in the Netherlands (mainly Antwerp) and in
France (mainly Paris).
The main part of this volume is divided into a number of sections, the first
of which (contributed by Dekoninck) focus primarily on the use of emblematic images for meditational purposes, but particularly interesting here is the
section on the circulation of images demonstrating that not only were engravings originally designed to illustrate Bibles used subsequently in meditational
emblem books, but engravings designed originally for emblem books (such as
those of Hugo, Vaenius and Nadal) could also thereafter be re-used in Bibles.
The central sections on “Emblems of Divine Love,” “Heart Emblems,” “The
Emblematic Drama of the Soul,”and “Emblems of the Saints”are contributed by
Guiderdoni-Bruslé, after which the focus changes from devotional to the pedagogical and commemorative exploitation of emblems in the final sections, in
which Van Vaeck discusses their use in Jesuit colleges in the Netherlands. In
“Commemorative Emblem Exhibitions”he discusses seventeenth-century manuscript compilations of emblems created by students to be displayed annually
around the college, as a visible testimony to the rhetorical skills inculcated in
them by the Jesuit educational program, while in “Dispersed Images:
Recuperating Illustration Material” he examines the way in which engraved
images originally designed for books were also printed in individual sheets and
bought by students to incorporate into dictated lecture-notes. The work concludes with a brief section by Guiderdoni-Bruslé on “Theological and
Theoretical Foundations of the Emblem” focusing on the Theologica symbolica of the German Jesuit Maximilian van der Sandt.
The work is lavishly illustrated and includes a solid bibliography. Slightly
surprising is the small attention paid to the prolific and influential seventeenth-century French Jesuit emblematic theorist and practitioner, ClaudeFrançois Menestrier, and to studies by Judi Loach on Jesuit emblematic theory
and practice. An eccentricity of the preface is that the same piece of text is
often reproduced twice—in the preface itself, and again in the caption to the
relevant illustration, often on the same page. These however are minor quibbles about a scholarly work which should be of interest to all those interested
in Early-Modern Catholic spirituality.
University of Aberdeen

ALISON SAUNDERS

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The Low Countries in the Sixteenth Century: Erasmus, Religion and Politics,
Trade and Finance. By James D.Tracy. [Variorum Collected Studies Series,
808.] (Burlington,Vermont:Ashgate Publishing Company. 2005. Pp. xii, 346.
$124.95.)
One of the most prolific, versatile, and creative historians of the sixteenthcentury Netherlands, and more generally of Renaissance and Reformation
Europe, is undoubtedly James Tracy. Having begun his long career with a dissertation, and then a book, on The Politics of Erasmus (1978), he became interested in the history of the Habsburg Netherlands as the backdrop to the great
humanist’s thinking, which eventually resulted in a monograph on the political and religious history of the county of Holland before the Revolt, Holland
under Habsburg Rule (1990).While working in the archives at The Hague, he
became interested in Holland’s public debt system, which apparently predated
England’s famous “Financial Revolution” of the 1690s by at least one century
and a half. This resulted in a long article (republished in the volume under
review) and another book, A Financial Revolution in the Habsburg
Netherlands (1985). Professor Tracy’s interest in financial matters was broadened in a study of Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War (2002), which
focuses on the ways the emperor paid for his wars in Europe and North Africa.
As director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Early Modern History
he also became involved with the history of long-distance trade, editing two
volumes on the rise, and the political economy, of merchant empires in the
early modern world (1990, 1991). In the meantime he continued to publish on
Erasmus (Erasmus of the Low Countries, 1996), and produced a textbook on
Europe’s Reformations 1450–1650 (1999). His latest book The Founding of
the Dutch Republic came out in January 2008, focusing on how the province
of Holland largely on its own paid for the initial stages of the Revolt, thereby
safeguarding its own vital interests at the expense of the peripheral Dutch
provinces. In between, he dabbles with fields as diverse as the correspondence
of Justus Lipsius (thus combining his interests in early Dutch Humanism and
sixteenth-century Dutch politics), and relations between the Low Countries
and the Ottoman Empire.
Unsurprisingly, James Tracy’s research over many years has resulted in a
great number of articles in various journals and volumes of conference papers.
Fourteen of these have been published in the present volume of essays. Its
structure reflects the author’s interests: there is a section on “Erasmus” (five
essays), a section on “Religion and Politics in the Low Countries” (four essays),
and a section on “Finance and Trade: Netherlands Perspectives” (five essays).
Two essays have been published previously in The Catholic Historical Review
(“Erasmus and the Arians” and “With and Without the Counter-Reformation”).
Since many of these essays have been published in various journals and volumes not readily available, this volume will undoubtedly find a wide readership.All papers in this volume have retained their original pagination, as is customary in Ashgate’s Variorum series.While this practice undoubtedly facilitates

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the retrieval of references, the bewildering variety of lay-outs and type-sets has
resulted in a volume less handsome than the author deserves, for a price that
may be called rather stiff.
University of Amsterdam

HENK VAN NIEROP

A Poisoned Chalice. By Jeffrey Freedman. (Princeton: Princeton University
Press. 2002. Pp. xvii, 236. $32.95. ISBN 0-691-00233-9.)
Jeffrey Freedman has written an engaging microhistory of an alleged
poison plot in late eighteenth-century Zurich. On September 12, 1776, as many
as 1200 parishioners were crowded into Zurich’s cathedral to partake in Holy
Communion. It happened to be the Day of Prayer and Repentance, one of only
four occasions in the reformed liturgical calendar scheduled for the Lord’s
Supper. As the wine was distributed, however, communicants found it murky
and foul-tasting. The wine was quickly exchanged and the sacrament proceeded without further incident, but the authorities suspected poisoning.
Once rumors of poisoning circulated in Zurich—though not before—
numerous communicants claimed that they had taken ill. Local doctors and
chemists performed chemical analyses of the tainted wine. Chemistry at this
time, however, like medicine, was considered a “dirty,” inexact science, as
opposed to “pure” Newtonian physics. It relied on subjective evidence of the
senses—smell, texture, taste—rather than objective mathematical calculation.
Despite the revolution in chemical understanding brought about by Lavoisier at
this time, in Zurich the analyses relied on traditional methods. Though one
analysis was inconclusive, two others did find poison—though not the same
poison: one identified arsenic, the other mercury. But neither arsenic nor mercury was present in high enough concentrations to cause serious harm; a pair
of doves fed the tainted wine showed no symptoms.Though rumors of deaths
from poisoning abounded in Zurich and abroad, the official investigation found
that no deaths could be blamed on the poisoned wine. Nonetheless, the government took the poisoning as a “fact” and launched a criminal investigation.
The incident almost immediately became a cause célèbre, both in Zurich,
where the highest government officials conducted the investigation, and in the
wider German-speaking world, where the affair was publicized in the press.
Freedman’s reconstruction of the investigation as it played out in Zurich and
in the German press sheds light on particularities of the German
Enlightenment, the Aufklärung, and raises questions about the authority of
science, the nature of evidence, the clashing world views of orthodox clergy
and proponents of the Aufklärung, the role of the “public sphere,” as well as
fundamental religious and philosophical problems debated by leading figures
of the German Enlightenment.
The affair aroused such passions at home and abroad in part, Freedman
suggests, because it evoked a “mythic narrative,” bringing to mind hoary tales

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of host desecration, well poisoning, and ritual murder. Jews might well have
served as obvious scapegoats on whom to blame the poisoning, but Jews had
not resided in Zurich since they had fallen victim to mob violence in the
wake of a well-poisoning accusation in the fourteenth century.The next best
choice was “gravedigger Wirz,” a member of a low-status trade considered “dishonorable” in some parts of the empire, though not in Zurich. Wirz had
motive and opportunity. The Antistes, Zurich’s leading clergyman and one of
the first to drink of the tainted wine, had previously scolded the gravedigger
for his job performance, and for this Wirz harbored deep resentment. Wirz
could easily have entered the cathedral by night to poison the wine, accessing the nave from the watchtower where he also served as bell-ringer. But
Wirz did not confess, and since there was not enough circumstantial evidence
against him to justify the use of judicial torture, there was no case against
him. Wirz was released, and the mystery of the poisoned communion wine
remained unsolved.
Meanwhile the case sparked a veritable pamphlet war in the German press.
The two main protagonists in this debate were Johann Caspar Lavater, a conservative Zurich pastor and vigorous foe of the Enlightenment best known for
his works on physiognomy, and Friedrich Nicolai, publicist of the
Enlightenment, editor, bookseller, and author. Lavater’s best-selling sermons
explained the poisoning as a sign of the general moral decay brought about by
the pernicious influence of the Enlightenment, which had watered down the
truths of revealed Christianity in favor of pale,“reasonable” Christianity devoid
of miracles. Nicolai responded by questioning the “fact” of the poisoning itself.
The chemical analyses could not be relied upon because of their divergent
results, but more importantly because the investigators had been predisposed
to find poison, and so they were not truly impartial observers. And what
motive might the alleged poisoner have had to engage in mass murder at the
Lord’s Supper? The most plausible explanation, Nicolai suggested, was that the
wine seller had supplemented his wine with some botanical additives to
enhance an inferior product, an effort which had gone sadly awry. Lavater’s
response ignored the question of scientific objectivity, to expound instead on
theodicy, the problem of evil.The desecration of “the blood of Christ” had been
a truly diabolical crime. When “enlightened” Christianity denied the reality of
Satan as an actual, physical force for evil in the world, they left believers
defenseless in the face of diabolical temptation. Satan and his agent, the poisoner, engaged in evil for its own sake. A search for a rational motive was
beside the point.
But what really happened to the communion wine in the cathedral that
night? Taking on the role of historian-detective, Freedman concludes by proposing his own solution to the mystery: it was gravedigger Wirz, after all! Wirz
added not arsenic, not mercury, but rather some harmless but foul-tasting
herbs to the wine to disrupt to communion ceremony and get even with the
Antistes. It is an explanation as plausible as any.

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This microhistory provides an accessible introduction to some of the philosophical and theological controversies of the German Aufklärung. One point
of criticism is that Freedman presents the controversy sparked by the alleged
poisoning as a purely intra-Protestant debate. Admittedly, the bulk of eighteenth-century German newspapers and journals were produced in Protestant
Germany, but there were some Catholic publications. Was there really no
Catholic reaction at all to this alleged desecration of the blood of Christ? What
about more popular sources such as “shocking ballads” and broadsheets, media
that predated the advent of the enlightened press? But these caveats aside,
Freedman does an excellent job in moving back and forth between the local
context in Zurich and the broader German “public sphere.”And he presents us
with a highly enjoyable historical detective story.
University of California, Davis

KATHY STUART

Heresy, Literature, and Politics in Early Modern English Culture. Edited by
David Loewenstein and John Marshall. (New York: Cambridge University
Press. 2006. Pp. x, 318. $90.00.)
This coherent and useful set of essays could be read with profit alongside
Alexandra Walsham’s recent Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in
England, 1500–1700. Even in the unified Western Latin Church before the
Reformation, it was difficult enough to define heresy, when there was no one
agreed description of the miracle of the Mass, or when expounding the doctrine
of apostolic poverty might provide evidence of sanctity or a reason for death at
the stake. Once the Western Church fractured, matters became much more complicated—though for Catholics loyal to the Pope, they were simplified.
Charles V burned the first Protestants for heresy in 1523 before
Protestantism had even been named. The first case-study here (from David
Loewenstein) deals with one of the most remarkable English Protestant martyrs, Anne Askew, who walked out on her Catholic husband and whose heroically phlegmatic account of her tortures by leading courtiers of Henry VIII
belies its contemporary male editor’s characterization of her womanly frailty.
Problems emerged for Protestant admirers of Askew’s steadfastness, who
immediately found that there were people that they would like to burn too.
This uncomfortable realization necessitated much discussion of when such an
extreme sanction against doctrinal variation might operate, and what should
be done otherwise. Surprisingly rarely did Protestants accuse Catholics of
heresy (as opposed to error, corruption, and a penchant for repression and cruelty), so Catholics figure little in these essays. English Reformers’ anger and agonizing largely concerned those who took the Reformation too far. Carrie Euler
deals with the first wave, mostly Dutch or German immigrants who brought
with them a “Melchiorite” Christology so high that they insisted that the incarnate Christ had celestial and not earthly flesh; three Melchiorites are known to

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have been burned in Edward VI’s time (Euler has missed one of the three).
Both Elizabeth I and James I burned others, though they are not much dealt
with here. Instead we have two engrossing considerations of the Family of
Love from Christopher Marsh and Peter Lake.The Familists, elitist mystics, sheltered comfortably within established churches wherever they lived, and
Puritans were infuriated at being treated like traitors to the Church of England
while the outrageously heretical Familists seemed to enjoy powerful protection right up as far as the Queen herself (historians are now arguing as to
whether Elizabeth I had Familist sympathies).
When the episcopal Church collapsed in the 1640s, problems of defining
heresy multiplied: Presbyterians who had recently been persecuted wanted to
deal harshly with innovating Christian groups, and were indeed responsible for
brutally maltreating the exhibitionist Quaker James Nayler. John Coffey’s essay
is a brilliant exposition of this period, describing a split between “conservative” and “progressive” views of Reformation. Anne Hughes summarizes her
recent book on Thomas Edwards’s Presbyterian vademecum of heresy,
Gangraena (1646). In the earlier parts of his sprawlingly sneering catalogue,
Edwards made the mistake of describing each error without refuting it, rashly
assuming his readers would automatically be shocked and alarmed.
Nigel Smith describes a new wave of anti-Trinitarian thought allied to Polish
Socinianism, captained by the sometime don and schoolmaster John Biddle,
who died for the cause in prison under Charles II—he especially outraged
Puritans by coming from the heart of Puritanism rather than the more
common link of Socinians with the already abominated Arminians. Smith and
John Rogers both trace John Milton’s creative extensions of Socinian themes
in his writings.
Thomas N. Corns shows how Gerrard Winstanley’s early religious writings
developed heterodox themes which moved from theology to politics and to
his Digger activism at St. George’s Hill. Justin Champion deals with Thomas
Hobbes’s skeptical and secularizing analysis of religious truth, and notes that
the Calvinist Thomas Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, managed to combine highminded rejection of executions for heresy—that was what cruel papists did—
with a bleak determination to have Hobbes executed for blasphemy instead.
John Marshall shows how John Locke positioned his advocacy of toleration in
relation to his wide knowledge of centuries-long advocacies of intolerance. N.
H. Keeble finds that the ecumenically-minded Richard Baxter’s famed tolerance of error faltered when it came to antinomianism, which had seemed to
him horrifically embodied in Cromwell’s New Model Army. Baxter lived to participate in disputes over accusations of antinomianism, which in the 1690s
swiftly broke up the “Happy Union” formed by Congregationalists and
Presbyterians in response to their disappointing exclusion from a comprehensive national church after the Glorious Revolution.At least these two parties did not accuse each other of sodomy, sedition, or disrespect for private

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property, aspersions which for ten centuries and more had furnished standard
excuses for being beastly to religious deviants.
DIARMAID MACCULLOCH

St. Cross College, Oxford
Late Modern European

Le Pontificat de Léon XIII: Renaissances du Saint-Siège? Edited by Philippe
Levillain and Jean-Marc Ticchi. [Collection de l’École française de Rome,
Volume 368.] (Rome: École Française de Rome. 2006. Pp.x, 523. paperback.
ISBN: 2-7283-0754-7.)
These essays are the Acts of the Colloquy at Paris on October 16-17, 2003.
The collected papers from most colloquies so vary in quality that portions
can usually be 1eft to one side.That is not so with this volume, for all the contributors, despite the question mark of the title, are unanimous in believing
Leo to be a great Pope, and contribute to our knowledge of that remarkable
period in papal history. They were fortunate that in 1979 John Paul II opened
up the archives. Levillain gives an up-to-date (2002) list of writings about Leo
from the moment of his accession and other essayists comment on past treatments, important in considering the work of that master of the ancient world,
Henri Marrou.
The mood of the Catholic world was intransigeance, and naturally a pope
who started to reign at the age of sixty-eight shared those convictions. No
compromise, no concession, hold fast to tradition in discipline as well as doctrine.The cardinals at the Conclave of 1878 refused to elect Bilio, who as the
part-author of the Syllabus represented that mood, in favor of Pecci, who had
some (not much) political experience and whom they expected to live a short
time. By his use of the French archives Bernard Barbiche throws light on a relatively well-known conclave; the rejection of the respected Bilio was partly
due to awareness that the French were likely to use their veto against him, and
vetos were to be avoided. It did not mean that a majority of cardinals did not
share the intransigeance.
Yet Leo had a quality that did not marry the general mood. He cared about
history, and despite public belief in its irrelevance, it can force revolutions in
ideas. Philippe Boutry, nevertheless, shows how it fitted his conservative ideas;
he imagined that history would clear away legends which pseudo-history
recorded about the Catholic Church; he knew that history is a war upon lies;
if historians are given access to the documents of the past they will demolish
legend—and he was hardly aware they were certain also to discover matter
which would be awkward for those who wished for no change in ideas.The
outlook contained an attractive axiom, that history has a moral content,
Clamat enim quodammodo omnis historia, Deum esse, in a way all history
cries aloud that God is.

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Two valuable essays treat the situation in Rome when there were no longer
States of the Church, not even a Vatican City. One (Catherine Brice) supplements the usual view of the militant power of the new government, with its
seizure of the Quirinal Palace and then the ecclesiastical buildings for government offices, by showing how the traditions, institutions, families, and money
of Catholic Rome, with pilgrims from abroad, kept much of the older atmosphere.Another (François Jankowiak} records how a Curia, designed for different purposes, had to be changed and resisted change.
Perhaps the most interesting essay, because in ground little known before,
are those which concern Orthodoxy in Russia and the Slavs of the Balkans,
Armenians and Catholics inside the Ottoman Empire. Leo longed to end the
schism with the East. He desired to achieve this by helping Uniate congregations and failed to realize that this would further alienate the Orthodox (original matter here on the famous Strossmayer).What should be done about the
traditional French protectorate in the Near East in a time when French religion
seemed to be falling apart?
Naturally,the encyclicals Aeterni Patris and Rerum Novarum are not omitted,
but it is treatment of less visible subjects that specially holds the reader, such as
the pope’s desire to unify the Benedictine Order and give it a government in Sant’
Anselmo on the Aventine, and how the plan failed (for the most part) because
Benedictines loved their communities with their special traditions.
Cambridge University

OWEN CHADWICK

Vatican II and the Ecumenical Way. By George H. Tavard. [Marquette Studies
in Theology, No. 52.] (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. 2006. Pp.
$20.00 paperback.)
During the last third of the twentieth century, the Second Vatican Council
(1962–65) was a compass point not only for Catholics but also for ecumenically minded Christians. With the passage of four-plus decades, however, the
discussions and especially the debates and the drama behind the conciliar documents are increasingly in danger of being misinterpreted, if not forgotten altogether; it is then important to preserve the memories of the dwindling number
of participants for the benefit of posterity both as a matter of historical record
as well as a resource for ecclesiological interpretation.
The present volume, which is variously autobiographical, analytical, and
anecdotal, presents its author’s personal reminiscences and theological reflections about the ecumenical dimensions—antecedent, concomitant, and subsequent—of the Council. In this respect, George H. Tavard has been uniquely
privileged: a theologian with ecumenical interests and involvement prior to
the Council, when “ecumenism” was an unfamiliar, even suspect, word among
Catholics; a conciliar peritus and staff member of the Secretariat for the

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Promotion of the Unity of Christians that was responsible for drafting ecumenical statements for the Council’s consideration; a participant in numerous
official national and international postconciliar ecumenical dialogues; as well
as the author of dozens of volumes on a wide range of topics: ecumenism, theology, history, and spirituality.
Perhaps the major value of this short book comes from its author’s extraordinary ecumenical experience; for example, one can read elsewhere about the
institutional ecclesiology that prevailed in Catholicism prior to Vatican II, but
gaining a feel for an ecumenical ecclesiology of “divine presence” comes only
through the experience of dialogue; in other words, ecumenical theology is
not abstract, but experiential. Similarly, while one might carefully chronicle the
long history of interdenominational polemics, their resolution requires a healing of memories that includes the “act of forgetting”:“the Church needs to be
disencumbered from things remembered that ought to be forgotten” (p.112).
One might also note the author’s candid appraisal of the postconciliar Church
as torn “between gauchist deviation and reactionary conservatism” which can
be attributed to (1) “a glaring lacuna at Vatican II itself,” (2) “hesitancies on the
part of Paul VI,” and (3) “the heavy weight of institutional inertia” (p. 122).
Ecclesiologists, as well as ecumenists, might then take to heart the “problems
of reception” that have plagued even the best intentioned ecumenical documents; finally, theologians would do well then to give explicit attention to the
author’s concluding question:“Can Theology be Non-Verbal” (pp. 141–48)?
Unfortunately, one finds some slips in this book; for example, the encyclical, Humanae Vitae, published on July 25, 1968, could hardly have “caused an
unexpected turmoil in the Summer of 1967” (p. 126). Also, the enumeration of
footnotes is sometimes out of sync. In addition, some opinions are at least
debatable; for example, while “the condemnation of Anglican Orders, in 1896,
by Leo XIII” may have been ecumenically problematic and historically questionable, it seems a stretch to claim, “The canonical category of validity no
longer provides, if it ever did, an acceptable standard to describe and evaluate
the sacramental experience of other Churches than one’s own” (pp. 92–93).
Such shortcomings aside, readers who once eagerly and sometimes anxiously followed the proceedings of Vatican II will be treated to a retrospective
that awakens memories, if not nostalgia. Readers for whom Vatican II is a
matter of historical investigation and theological reappraisal will also benefit
from the insights of an influential insider.
The Catholic University of America

JOHN T. FORD

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Catholicism, Popular Culture, and the Arts in Germany, 1880–1933. By
Margaret Stieg Dalton. (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press.
2005. Pp. xi, 378. $35.00 paperback.)
“In the absence of anything better, kitsch with a Catholic gloss passed for
culture. . . . Catholic culture was too Catholic even for most Catholics” (p. 233).
Such is Margaret Stieg Dalton’s devastating commentary on fifty years of struggle by German Catholic elites to create an alternative to materialist, individualist, and secular modernity. Dalton’s diligently researched study thus raises
major questions about the relationship between religion and the arts in general, and the possibilities and limits of creative cultural production within the
ideological and institutional framework of an embattled late nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century Catholicism. Moreover, Dalton’s examination of the
ultimately futile efforts to develop a confessional alternative to both high and
popular culture in literature, music, theater, and film represents a potentially
important addition to scholarship on the Catholic social-cultural milieu.
However, Dalton’s decision to extract her cultural subject matter from its political, social, and economic context, based on the questionable assertion that
cultural values and debates “had an only indirect connection to [the political]
arena” (p. 5) blunts the book’s overall impact. Lacking grounding in the many
political and social currents and crises that radically challenged Catholic identity and beliefs, Dalton’s analysis of cultural theorizing and production among
intellectual elites often seems abstract, self-referential, and divorced from
larger historical realities.
Recent scholarship has shown how perceptions of Catholic cultural inferiority played a central role in the formation of modern German society. Michael
Gross’s reassessment of nineteenth-century liberalism’s cultural “war against
Catholicism” and David Blackbourn’s study of the Marian apparitions at
Marpingen are two powerful examples of how conflicts in religion, culture,
and politics have become inextricable and constitutive elements of modern
German history. Dalton’s research on the Catholic cultural movement, a loosely
connected set of initiatives to achieve aesthetic excellence infused with
Catholic spirituality, and to disseminate the resulting cultural products to an
idealized Volk, thus addresses issues of immediate interest to scholars. She
presents in a comprehensive and accessible manner the wide array of projects
dedicated to the common goal of overcoming the culture gap while inspiring
a higher commitment to Catholic identity. Literary journals, lending libraries,
musical associations, playwriting, even film and radio productions—Dalton
covers these with appropriate treatment of key personalities, theoretical
debates, institutional histories, and relevant scholarship.
Helpful too is Dalton’s analysis of the inherent self-contradictions that crippled the best-intentioned efforts at Catholic cultural renewal.She correctly notes
the cultural movement’s underlying flaws: its profound negativity, born of a generalized angst toward modernity; the subordination of aesthetics and culture to
assertions of spiritual purity; and the never-resolved conflict between cultural

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elites’ romanticized desire to connect with a pure and pious Volk coupled to
their profound doubt, bordering on distaste, regarding the masses’ capacity to
improve their impoverished tastes. Nor was it clear what end cultural enlightenment would serve.Was it to equip Catholics to leave the confessional ghetto
and transform the larger society? Or was it to strengthen an enclosed, self-sustaining subculture and inoculate it from outside pollution? Under these conditions, the Catholic cultural movement could neither develop truly outstanding
art nor appeal effectively outside a narrow circle of elites. It was, in short, the
poster child of activity for its own sake: “The movement did make a contribution, but it was a contribution that did more to make its participants feel good
about themselves than to improve the cultural environment” (p. 231).
The most frustrating aspect of Dalton’s otherwise useful text is her treatment of Catholic cultural developments in isolation from their larger political
and social context. The acute challenges created by direct competition from
prewar Social Democracy for the political and cultural allegiance of workingclass Catholics; the trauma of the World War I, the Revolution of 1918, and the
political and economic crises of the early Weimar Republic; the linkage
between fears of cultural degeneration and fears of American-style materialism
or Communist revolution in the 1920s and early 1930s; the impact of the
Depression and the politicization, polarization, and militarization of culture
that marked the end of democracy—none of these themes are consistently
integrated into Dalton’s account of Catholic (self-)perceptions, organizationbuilding, and the generally weak outcomes of their cultural endeavors. Perhaps
Dalton’s sources were really unaware of the connection between these larger
events and their particular interests—although material from the Catholic
labor movement suggests that many clergy were extremely conscious of the
linkages among faith, culture, and the larger sociopolitical environment.
Certainly this is a methodological problem, the result of Dalton’s top-down,
intellectual approach to cultural history.
Nonetheless, Margaret Dalton is to be thanked. Her book breaks ground in
assessing the role of culture in the German Catholic milieu, exposes the internal problems behind the long-term failure of the confessional cultural movement, and lays a strong foundation for future research that would link this
important topic to broader themes of modern German history.
Washington State University

RAYMOND C. SUN

Hitler’s Bavarian Antagonist: Georg Moenius and the Allgemeine Rundschau
of Munich, 1929–1933. By Gregory Munro. (Lewiston, New York: The
Edwin Mellen Press. 2006. Pp. xxvi, 510. $139.95.)
Gregory Munro’s well-researched intellectual study of the Allgemeine
Rundschau steered under the 1929–33 editorship of Father Georg Moenius, a
priest of the Bamberg archdiocese, makes a significant contribution to the lit-

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erature on Catholic resistance to National Socialism, prior to 1933. Founded in
Munich in 1904 by Armin Kausen, the Allgemeine Rundschau was a Catholic
weekly that covered German politics, culture, and religion.After acquiring coownership of the journal in 1929, Moenius immediately acted in an editorial
direction that placed him in conflict with diocesan authorities, the Catholic
Bavarian People’s Party, and the National Socialist Party. In part influenced by
his colleague Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster, Moenius not only argued for the
acceptance of the Versailles Treaty, especially article 231, which placed primary
blame for the war on Germany, but also “welcomed the revolution of 1918–19
as a form of providential justice . . . to atone for the sins committed by Imperial
Germany”(p. 22).This latter view contradicted the stance of his bishop and led
for a time to Moenius’s suspension from ministry and eventual reassignment
to a remote parish. Moenius’s Allgemeine Rundschau cautioned the Bavarian
People’s Party from working with the Nazi Party in some kind of coalition by
pointing out that Nazism was “exclusively obsessed with the acquisition of
Lebensraum according to a racial creed of Germanic supremacy which permitted no room for the Christian world view” (p. 213).
According to Munro, a unique critique of Reichsideologie provided the
intellectual impetus for Moenius and the staff of the Allgemeine Rundschau
to resist National Socialism. Such thinking that “a traditional Roman Catholic
concept of a German historical calling to a universal, peacefully oriented
German Reich governed under a genuine federal constitution” (p. 60) challenged the dominant Protestant-Borussian historical view. At the core of this
thinking was the notion of Romanitas that echoed the “the culture of the High
Middle Ages when church, state, society, and philosophy were understood as
an integral whole.” Moenius regarded Charles Maurras’s Action Française and
Mussolini’s Fascist Italy as the “two most significant protagonists” (p. 11) of
such a position. By contrast, National Socialism with its Nordic neo-paganism
and anti-Semitism set itself apart from the two former movements. Likewise,
Moeinus asserted, National Socialism was an “instrument of a vengeful
Prussianism” in “Germany’s struggle against Rome and the Occident.” The
Allgemeine Rundschau also continually warned its readers that Hitler was a
“fanatical ideologue who embodied many of the sentiments of hatred and
revenge harbored by völkisch ideologues as well as the quasi-religious
impulses behind Prussia’s German mission in Europe” (pp. 209–10). In turn,
Moenius’ journal correctly concluded that Hitler harbored great hostility
against Christianity, which he believed “constituted a major blemish on
German völkisch culture” (p. 213).
The Allgemeine Rundschau also regularly criticized National Socialism’s
paganism and anti-Semitism. In this vein, it directly challenged the popular and
often anti-Semitic Austrian Catholic journal, Die Schönere Zukunft, whose
editor Joseph Eberle increasingly led its leadership to support National
Socialism. Still, on the negative, the Allgemeine Rundschau’s contributors continued to believe in the legitimacy of a “Jewish problem” in Germany, which

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they primarily attributed to secular Jews who, through their “unwholesome
obsession with the accumulation of wealth” (p. 222), damaged German culture. In addition, after Hitler’s appointment of Chancellor in January 1933,
Alexander Emmerich and Josef Minn, two regular contributors to Allgemeine
Rundschau, became deeply involved in Kreuz und Adler, an organization
established to promote mutual harmony between Catholicism and Nazism.
Though the basis of Moenius’s intellectual pining might be questionable,
his bold and courageous stand against National Socialism is not. By early March
1933, the Nazis had heard enough from the Allgemeine Rundschau and sent
SA-men to ransack its editorial office and take Moenius into protective custody.
Luckily tipped off about his immanent arrest, Moenius fled Munich for
Switzerland. From there he continued to publish the journal until its final ban
in June 1933. Moenius eventually ended up in the United States, where he had
a series of unfulfilling pastoral positions until he finally returned to Germany
in April 1948. Generally unappreciated and labeled a troublemaker throughout
his ministerial career, the relatively forgotten Moenius died of liver cancer in
July 1953.
Munro’s study ensures that Father Moenius’s heroic intellectual stand
against National Socialism will no longer be forgotten. Though Munro has
offered an informative work with an exhaustive bibliography, including entries
from numerous archives, his work is still in a dissertation-like-state and could
use considerable editing. This is especially true of chapters two and three,
which examine the intellectual background of the Allgemeine Rundschau’s
world view. Still, Munro’s work brings forth a wealth of information about various German Catholic thinkers and organizations that have never been hitherto discussed in the English historiography of the Catholic Church under
National Socialism. It is certainly worthy of a reader’s interest.
Stonehill College

KEVIN P. SPICER, C.S.C.

Katholische Kirche und Nationalsozialismus, 1930–1945: Ein Bericht in
Quellen. By Hubert Gruber. (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag. 2006.
Pp. liv, 534. €48,00.)
This extensive volume adeptly puts together more than 250 documents on
the Catholic church and the challenge posed by National Socialism. Many of
these documents previously appeared in the comprehensive six-volume
series, Akten Deutscher Bischöfe, from the Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, the
Catholic historical association in Bonn. Other sources appear here for the first
time. Unlike other editions put together with the assistance of the Kommission
für Zeitgeschichte, this volume was intended for use in the German classroom.
Its editor, Hubert Gruber, served as the director of an academic high school
(Gymnasium). On the whole, the collection serves this purpose admirably, but
will probably bring few surprises to longstanding scholars.

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For those coming to the field for the first time, this volume competently
tells the traditional story of the Catholic Church’s relationship to National
Socialism. Prior to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, the Church steered a
course of opposition to Nazism, having rejected its racial ideology as heretical and irreconcilable with Christian doctrine.The signing of the Concordat,
which provided a new legal basis for the relationship between the Church
and the Nazi regime, however, evoked widespread sentiments of euphoria
amongst Catholic leaders. These hopes of cooperating with and even christianizing the Nazi state were, of course, evanescent. The Nazi state almost
immediately began to violate the terms of the Concordat, dissolving Catholic
ancillary organizations, arresting priests, and removing religious influences
from the schools. Catholic institutions were pushed out of their place in the
public sphere and relegated to a narrow space inside church walls. Pius XI’s
famous protest in 1937, Mit brennender Sorge, merely accelerated the crackdown. Even the onset of war in 1939 did not curb the Nazi hardliners, who
continued their crackdown on the church. The bishops, moreover, were not
of one opinion as to how to proceed against such a determined opponent,
even though it had become clear that the church’s mostly private protests
had accomplished little. By 1943, the bishops overrode the objections of the
head of the Fulda Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Bertram, and issued a more
forceful statement,“The Ten Commandments as the Law of Life of all Peoples,”
which condemned the Nazi killings of Jews, mentally handicapped, and prisoners of war.
Those seeking documents more critical of the Church will likely be disappointed.The volume contains little on right-wing Catholics (except in the year
1933), or of events such as Bertram’s directives to hold a requiem Mass in
memory of the deceased Führer in 1945, directives that were, however, not carried out.The volume also contains few materials from the wartime years. For
students new to the field, however, this volume brings together useful materials—the text of the Concordat, excerpts from the papal encyclical Mit brennender Sorge and from von Galen’s sermons. It is also quite user-friendly.The
index is complete, and the font more readable than in other such publications:
each document, moreover, contains a succinct introduction. Clearly, a volume
published in English with similar aspirations would greatly be of great benefit
to courses in American college classrooms.
Saint Louis University

MARK EDWARD RUFF

Catholicism, Culture, Conversion: The History of the Jesuits in Albania
(1841–1946). By Ines A. Murzaku. [Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 277.]
(Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale. 2006. Pp. 282, 13 pages of photographs.
Paperback.)
The book by Ines A. Murzaku, an associate professor of religious studies at the
Graduate School of Theology, Seton Hall University, as well as a lecturer at the

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Centro per l’Europa Centro-Orientale e Balcanica of the University of Bologna, is
an original and valuable contribution to the knowledge of the Balkans, in particular of the former Roman province of Illyricum. The work fills a significant
gap in our understanding of the lands we can daily hear about in the media.The
book, which is her doctoral dissertation prepared at Pontificio Istituto Orientale
in Rome, is focused on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contents,
however, especially in the introduction, provide a wider view and set a more
complex and broader historical and geographical frame for further discussion.
According to her mentor, Professor Constantin Simon, S.J., her findings are “in a
certain sense the first fruits of learned scholarship issuing forth from a new and
free, post-Communist Albania,” as well as a great success for the Pontifical
Oriental Institute. Her work “represents a water-shed in the history of the institute, founded expressly to aid the suffering Christians of Eastern Europe”(p. 23).
It is quite natural then that her treatise was included in the distinguished
“Orientalia Christiana Analecta” series published by the Institute.
The work is a fruit of many years’ study, above all of primary sources,
unpublished and recorded in different writings and languages.They were scattered in different archives around Albania (Archive of the History Institute,
Albanian Academy of Sciences) and in Italy, foremost in the archives of the
Jesuit communities (the central archives of the Jesuit Order in Rome and in the
Archive of the Venetian Province, Gallarate, Varese). An integral part of the
thesis are the twenty-nine photographs taken from the Archivum
Photographicum Societatis Jesu, which supplement the findings of the treatise.
In the introduction, the author presents the Albanian Catholic Church
through the centuries in a professionally faultless, fluent, and pleasant language. She begins with the last period of the Byzantine Empire and the imminent destruction of the Church brought about by intensive Islamization of the
Ottoman Empire.The following nine chapters examine the presence and contribution of the Jesuit community to the development of the ecclesiastical, cultural, as well as general social development of the Albanians (the first Albanian
football team was founded at the Jesuit college!).We trace the beginning of the
Jesuit Albanian mission, their work during their first year in Albania, from May
1841 to July 1842, and the first suppression of the Jesuit mission in the country. Next comes the description of the Jesuits’ return to Albania, the second
attempt to build the Central Albanian Seminary, a review of the activities of the
Pontifical Albanian Seminary (the first institute of higher learning in Albania),
and the endeavors for the firm establishment of Saint Francis Xavier High
School which was the central educational institution for young people. The
final three chapters present some particularly original forms of pastoral presence of the Jesuit community among the Albanians: Jesuit traveling missions,
their apostolic and charitable activities, and the Jesuits’ endeavors for the promotion of Albanian culture.
A marked feature of the mission was the continuous interference of the
(Austro-Hungarian and Italian) government authorities in their work, a dis-

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guised or open Islamization, frequent lack of understanding of the ecclesiastical authorities, inner church tensions, and finally the ruthless communist persecution, which suppressed all the institutions and recalled the time of the
martyrs.
Despite smaller defects, mainly linguistic (divergent forms of personal and
place names, the use of technical terms, the transcription of German terms)
and technical (textual repetition in some places), which, however, do not
diminish the integral value of the work, the thesis affirms the basic fact that
ecclesiastical history is an important part of Albanian history. Furthermore, the
work of the Jesuits needs to be appreciated as an essential part of the ecclesiastical history of the country. By writing the book in the English language, the
author has reached her goal: a greater recognition of her native country and its
people and a personal contribution to the small number of books on Albania
in the English language.
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

BOGDAN KOLAR

The Orthodox Church and Civil Society in Russia. By Wallace L. Daniel.
[Eugenia and Hugh M. Stewart ‘26 Series on Eastern Europe.] (College
Station:Texas A&M University Press. 2006. Pp. xvi, 251. $29.95.)
Most works that assess the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in contemporary post-Soviet society gravitate to one of two approaches: hostile (the
Church is a tool of the government, an obstacle to reform, progress, and
democratization) or hagiographical (the Church is the fount of Russian culture
and values and the most trusted institution in Russian society). Baylor
University’s Wallace L. Daniel steers between both extremes; The Orthodox
Church and Civil Society in Russia presents a complete picture from someone who, while sympathetic to the Church, does not whitewash some of the
serious problems it faces.
Daniel is a long-time observer of the Russian religious scene, and he constructs his examination of the role played by the Orthodox Church in Russian
society via four case studies—the reform-minded priest who tried to create a
new type of parish community based on the vision of the early twentieth-century Russian theologians; the Soviet scientist-turned-abbess who recreated a
living, thriving women’s monastic community at the museum complex of the
Novodevichy Monstery; the traditionalist pastor charged with re-establishing
the parish at Moscow University; and the journalist who inaugurated the first
regular coverage of religion at one of Russia’s leading newspapers. In particular, his reliance on first-person interviews gives a much richer picture of
church life than would be obtained from documentary sources—although it
must be noted that his examples are all Moscow-based.
Daniel captures the feeling of many within the official Church that the role
of civil society is not to act as an oppositional check on the state, but rather to

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work in close partnership to pursue shared goals. To paraphrase Fareed
Zakaria, the Church is a proponent of what we might term an “illiberal civil
society”—and Daniel’s work explores further what the ramifications of this
might be.
One problem with this book is that it covers only the Yeltsin period and the
first term of the Putin administration (to 2003). Since then, the strong levels of
support for Putin’s regime have decreased the importance of the Church as a
source of legitimacy. Unlike Yeltsin, Putin can claim the mantle of being a faithful Russian Orthodox Christian without having to cede much political initiative to the Church hierarchy.
More attention could also have been paid to questions of “the next generation”—not least of which will be who will succeed Aleksy II as patriarch of the
Russian Orthodox Church—a transition some feel will be just as important for
the future of Russia as the political succession after Putin leaves office in 2008.
What will be the future of the “case studies” Daniel discusses? Judith
Kornblatt’s essay in the spring 2005 issue of the Toronto Slavic Quarterly on
what has happened to the “spiritual children” of Father Alexander Men, a leading “dissident” priest of the late Soviet era fifteen years after his death questions “whether his legacy has had a lasting effect on the Church”and notes that
his followers have moved in different directions, with some even leaving the
official Church. And this raises the point as to what extent the Russian
Christian spiritual tradition, which up to this point has been almost exclusively
identified with the Russian Orthodox Church, will be claimed by groups outside the official Church structure—including a growing number of Russian
Protestants.Will the Orthodox Church always have a “special role” in Russian
society—or could it be marginalized as, say, the state Lutheran Churches of
Scandinavia?
Daniel concludes on an optimistic note, that the “green shoots” of spiritual
revival can help stabilize Russian civil society—but acknowledges that we are
only at “the beginning” of such an evolution. Events over the next decade will
show whether this is going to be the case.
The National Interest (Editor)

NIKOLAS GVOSDEV

The Church of England and the Holocaust: Christianity, Memory and
Nazism. By Tom Lawson. [Studies in Modern British Religious History, 12.]
(Rochester, New York:The Boydell Press. 2006. Pp. x, 207. $80.00.)
This book is a valuable addition to the historiography of the Christian
churches as bystanders.Tom Lawson explores the failure of most Anglican leaders to understand the realities of Nazism, especially Nazi crimes against the
Jews, and places this failure in its context.

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In interpreting Nazism, Anglican churchmen relied on their pre-existing,
narrow, and Christian-centred worldview. It was this, Lawson argues, that led
them to construct a skewed understanding of the Nazi menace—as directed
primarily against Christian culture. They saw Nazism as the inversion of
Christian values, the Christian churches in Germany as Nazism’s primary
victim, and Christianity as its primary opponent.
These preoccupations were inconsistent with recognizing the Jews as the
Nazis’ primary victims. Anglicans were reluctant to dwell on the specifics of
Nazi crimes against the Jews or to understand them as the consequence of
anti-Semitic policies. Instead, these crimes were reconceived as attacks on
Christian or universal values.
Led by Bishop Bell of Chichester, Anglicans turned the embattled German
Protestant pastor, Martin Niemöller, into their pre-eminent symbol of all resistance to the evils of Nazism, despite the ambiguity of Niemöller’s protests and
his acknowledged anti-Semitism.Anglicans repeatedly equated the totalitarianism and godlessness of Nazism with that of the Soviet Union, blurring the distinctions between each regime’s characteristics.
These attitudes continued essentially unchanged from the first years of the
Nazi regime until well into the postwar era. Yet church leaders could bend
with the changing winds of British foreign policy. From celebrating Munich to
going to war, from denouncing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to accepting
alliance with the Soviet Union, Anglicans displayed what Lawson calls the
“propensity for the tendentious translation of political reality into moral certainty.” But how much of this process of adaptation was distinctively Anglican,
as opposed to broadly British?
As regards the Holocaust, Lawson relies heavily on the work of other
authors to summarize Anglican involvement in British debates on rescue
policy, highlighting the activism of the Archbishop of Canterbury, William
Temple.Well-briefed by rescue campaigners with details of the fate of the Jews
and advice about its presentation,Temple made eloquent appeals that demonstrated his humanitarian concern, but were ultimately impotent.The point of
the chapter on the murder of the Jews is to demonstrate that it did not change
Anglicans’ views of Nazism. Nor did it trigger a re-examination of their views
of themselves or their own faith.
Anglicans persisted in regarding Germans, including even the German
army, as the Nazis’ victims. Looking to the postwar era, they aspired to reach
out to these needy fellow Christians and to strive for the re-Christianization of
Europe. Fear of compromising the reconciliation process contributed to
Anglicans leaders’ hostility to de-nazification and to their participation in the
calls for cessation of the program of war crimes trials.
These indulgent views of the perpetrators were accompanied by Anglicans’
failure to reappraise their attitudes toward the Nazis’ Jewish victims. The

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Reverend James Parkes, whose insight into Christian-Jewish relations was
decades ahead of his contemporaries, was met with derision by his fellow
churchmen when he circulated suggestions that Christian attitudes toward the
Jews were the cause of Nazi anti-Semitism and that Christian missions to the
Jews should cease.
Lawson’s study is well researched and his argument forceful, if repetitious.
He has deepened our understanding of Anglican thinking about the perpetrators. He makes a good case for his contention that the dominance of an outdated worldview should be preferred to more commonly accepted explanations for the blinkered attitudes of the Church of England—attitudes whose
influence in shaping perceptions of Nazism has, he shows, been far-reaching
and long-lasting.
LOUISE LONDON

Leo Baeck Institute, London

American
The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past. Edited by
Catherine A. Brekus. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2007.
Pp. x, 340. $59.95 clothbound; $19.95 paperback.)
Forty years ago there was little writing on the history of women in religion.
But in recent decades there has been an enormous outpouring of research that
has demonstrated how central women are in the actual practice of religions,
especially in Christian congregations. In spite of the ample availability of excellent studies on women and religion, Catherine Brekus, professor of the history
of Christianity at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, finds that
women still continue to be ignored in mainstream histories of America. History
is seen as primarily about elite men in public life. Women, non-elites, and
people other than white Protestants are still marginalized. Religion also is marginalized.Women historians share this bias, often ignoring religion and women
of color.
Catherine Brekus has edited this collection of twelve essays on women in
American religion in an effort to demonstrate the importance of greater
inclusiveness. She argues that one cannot understand American history without seeing the importance of religion, or American religion without seeing
the importance of women.These twelve essays by leading women historians
cover four centuries from the seventeenth to the late twentieth century.
They include four that focus on white Protestants, one on Black Protestants,
four on Catholics, which include blacks, whites, and Mexican Americans, one
on Mormons, and one on Jewish women.A twelfth essay challenges the presumed split between religion and the development of feminism in the late
1960s, showing how religiously committed women predominated in its
development.

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The four essays on American Catholic women are striking for their diversity. One, by Emily Clark of Tulane University, focuses on the centrality of white
and black religious women in the evangelization of blacks in the city.Another
essay, by Kathleen Cummings of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American
Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, details the struggles of the Sisters
of Notre Dame de Namur to found Trinity College in 1897–1900.This was the
first Catholic women’s college to be founded as a college rather than evolving
from an academy.The Sisters’ proposal to found such a college raised fears of
Catholic conservatives in the United States and in the Vatican that this was a
capitulation to Americanism, feminism, and co-education, all anathema in some
circles. Cummings shows how Sister Julia McGroarty steered a difficult course
between conflicting forces to found the college.
A third essay, by Amy Koehlinger of Florida State University, lifts up the
racial apostolate of American nuns in the 1960s that not only pioneered new
work with African Americans in the rural South and the inner cities, but was
able to use the gender and racial ambiguity of habited nuns to cross racial and
gender boundaries. A concluding essay, by Kristy Nabhan-Warren of
Augustana College, focuses on a Mexican American lay woman of South
Phoenix who successfully translated her personal experiences of apparitions
of the Virgin Mary into an international movement of Mary’s Ministries that
founded a K–12 charter school and created a powerful practice of empowerment of women that combines feminist and conservative values, Catholic and
evangelical styles of piety.
These twelve essays make fascinating reading. Together they make clear
how much we miss of American religious history if we ignore the role of
women of many ethnic and religious backgrounds.
Claremont Graduate University

ROSEMARY RADFORD RUETHER

Citizens or Papists? The Politics of Anti-Catholicism in New York, 1685–1821.
By Jason K. Duncan. [Hudson Valley Heritage Series, 3.] (New York: Fordham
University Press. 2005. Pp. xviii, 253. $70.00.)
Jason Duncan analyzes the political fortunes of New York Catholics from
the anti-Catholic populist regime that came to power in the colony in 1689
after the downfall of James II to the state constitutional convention of 1821,
which finally accorded Catholics full civil rights. From the beginning of the
eighteenth century to the year after the British evacuation of New York City in
November 1783 Catholic priests were legally barred from entering the colony
under penalty of life imprisonment.
During the Revolution anti-Catholic sentiment among the Patriots gradually
subsided in New York as elsewhere in the colonies. Loyalists, more numerous
in New York than anywhere else, taunted Patriots for their connivance with

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popery. As early as 1777 the first state constitution guaranteed religious freedom to all, including Catholics. However, supplementary legislation limited the
practical consequences of this declaration by requiring office holders to
renounce their allegiance to all foreign jurisdiction “ecclesiastical as well as
civil” and prescribing the same religious test for immigrants seeking citizenship. In Duncan’s words,“[I]t was convenient . . . to grant religious liberty to
Catholics in the abstract and then to erect legal barriers to discourage them
from entering the state and deny full citizenship to those already there”(p. 42).
The restrictive state naturalization law lapsed with the adoption of the federal constitution.After a protest signed by 1,300 New York Catholics, the religious test for office holders was repealed in 1806, allowing a Catholic, Francis
Cooper, to take his seat in the state Assembly.That same year the state legislature voted to give St. Peter’s Church in New York City the same subsidy for its
parochial school as was granted to Protestant schools. During the War of 1812
the state legislature repealed the law that gave election inspectors the right to
require voters to renounce foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction.The offensive law
was not included in the new state constitution adopted in 1821.
Duncan demolishes the myth that colonial New York was a model of religious toleration by documenting that Catholics were excluded from its benefits after 1689. He also delineates the sometimes tortured relationship between
Catholics and New York political parties after the Revolution by tracing the
constantly shifting attitude to Catholics on the part of both Federalists and a
bewildering variety of Republicans. In the 1790s Federalists and Catholics
shared a common antipathy to Jacobin anticlericalism, but it did not lead to a
permanent alliance because patrician Federalists could not bring themselves
to embrace poor Irish immigrants as desirable political allies. On the other
hand, New York Catholics frequently found unexpected allies in religiously radical American Republicans, since they shared a common dislike of Tories in
Great Britain and Federalists in the United States, especially after the revolt of
the United Irishmen in 1798.
Building on the pioneer work of Patrick Carey, Duncan adds a new dimension to the standard accounts of the trusteeism controversies at St. Peter’s
Church by linking them to the rival political allegiances of the trustees, which
were not always dictated by class differences. Cornelius Heeney, one of the
wealthiest trustees, was a staunch Republican because of their support of Irish
nationalism.An unexpected combination of circumstances led to a bizarre situation in a civil suit involving St. Peter’s Church in 1819. An Irish Protestant
lawyer with impeccably radical credentials championed the rights of the hierarchy on behalf of working-class Irish immigrants against the claims of wealthy
conservative businessmen who sought greater lay control of the parish.
Duncan demonstrates that decades before the massive Irish immigration of
the 1840s Irish Catholics were already an important factor in New York politics. By 1821 half-hearted Federalist coquetting of the Catholic vote had ended

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in failure as the majority of Irish Catholics gave their allegiance to the
“Bucktail” Republicans and later to the Jeffersonian Democrats.
Jason Duncan has made an original and important contribution to the
emergence of the Catholic community as a significant factor in New York politics in the early years of the Republic.
Fordham University

THOMAS J. SHELLEY

The Rainbow Never Fades: Niagara University, 1856–2006. By John B.
Stranges. (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. 2007. Pp. xiv, 256. $42.95
paperback.)
Niagara is the oldest, but least well known, of the nation’s three Vincentian
universities. It is also the smallest, with a student body roughly a quarter the
size of St. John’s in New York (est. 1870) or DePaul in Chicago (est. 1898).
Niagara’s relatively out-of-the-way location is partly responsible for the difference, but its seminary orientation was also a major factor. It began in 1856 as
the seminary of Our Lady of Angels and, though chartered as a university in
1883, the seminary was the tone-setting element in the whole operation
through much of the twentieth century. It was not finally separated from the
university until 1961. The author is mistaken in saying that it was “untypical,
though precocious,” to combine collegiate and seminary instruction. On the
contrary, that arrangement was quite common before the Civil War; thereafter
it rapidly became outdated. Its long persistence at Niagara reinforced the institution’s commitment to residentiality (day students were not admitted until
1911) and to curricular conservatism.
Pressure to gain accreditation from the Middle States Association led to the
elimination of prep students in the early 1920s. Graduate courses were added
in that decade; later modernizing moves included setting up schools of business, education, nursing, and an Institute of Transportation,Travel, and Tourism.
Yet Niagara’s academic mediocrity prompted a critical 1957 Middle States
review that Stranges characterizes as “a salutary shock.” Since then the university has striven to upgrade itself academically, but financial stringency and
other strains led to the creation of a faculty union in 1975. In connection with
financial stringency, it is interesting that Niagara refused Bundy aid in the
1960s, but accepted it twenty years later.
Stranges—a Niagara alumnus, long-time faculty member in history, and vicepresident for academic affairs since 1977—covers these and many other matters competently, but his book could have been improved by footnotes, a fuller
bibliography, and a more adequate index.
University of Notre Dame (Emeritus)

PHILIP GLEASON

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Ambition and Arrogance: Cardinal William O’Connell of Boston and the
American Catholic Church. By Douglas J. Slawson. (San Diego: Cobalt
Productions. 2007. Pp. xiv, 232. $17.95 paperback.)
This “is the story,” Douglas J. Slawson writes,“of a man who forced his way
to the top and then attempted to become spokesman of the American
Catholic church” (p. x). The story of William O’Connell’s exploitation of
Roman connections, ideology, and questionably gained wealth to secure episcopal appointments to Portland and Boston as well as a red hat is a wellknown one, notably from James M. O’Toole’s excellent biography, Militant
and Triumphant (1992). So too are the scandals that threatened O’Connell’s
position as Cardinal Archbishop of Boston and eventually destroyed his influence in both Rome and America. What is new here is Slawson’s mining of
archival sources, particularly Vatican ones, to delineate a depressingly full picture of O’Connell’s use of money and playing of the Roman card to win
Vatican support, to show the extent and persistence of the effort to remove
O’Connell from Boston, and to underscore the connection between the cardinal’s struggle for survival and the shaky beginnings of the National Catholic
Welfare Conference.
William O’Connell came of age in a period when ultramontanism was in
the ascendancy, marked by the establishment of national seminaries in
Rome, the global outreach of Vatican control with the appointment of papal
nuncios and apostolic delegates, the curtailing of national episcopal councils, the promotion of Roman-trained or Roman-minded candidates for bishoprics, and the affirmation of papal infallibility as the source of all spiritual
authority. O’Connell early on cast his fortunes to that star. He was proud to
be known, he once told a Vatican official, as one who “stood for Rome, for
Roman views and for Roman sympathies.” He was the chief loyalist of the
Vatican in America and the protector of its interests and position. Utilizing
his friends in high places in the Vatican, O’Connell was able to get himself
appointed coadjutor archbishop of Boston in 1906, despite being the choice
of neither Archbishop Williams nor the New England suffragans, by painting
those nominated for the position as proponents of “Americanism,” the condemned ecclesiastical ideology, and himself as one who had been passed
over because of his Roman loyalty.
Once O’Connell succeeded Williams as the Boston ordinary, he began to
pursue plans to Romanize his diocese and province, first with the ouster of
the Americanist-tainted Sulpicians from the archdiocesan seminary, then with
a series of unsuccessful efforts to install Roman-oriented bishops in New
England sees. The Romanization campaign resulted in his alienating most of
his suffragans, along with many others in the church in the region. In 1914
several of O’Connell’s bishops in the New England province sought his
ouster, on the grounds of his misusing diocesan funds (by 1907 it was estimated that he had an income, as archbishop, of between $150,000 and
$200,000 a year), and for buying off a woman who had accused O’Connell’s

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personal chaplain of a breach of promise to marry. Events, in the form of Pius
X’s death and the advent of World War II, bought the prelate four years.When
even more serious charges arose in 1919 involving O’Connell’s sufferance of
the secret marriages of two priests living in the cardinal’s household—his
chaplain and his chancellor, who happened to be his nephew—a new pope,
Benedict XV, ordered O’Connell to remove his nephew as chancellor.
O’Connell fought the order, but the nephew eventually resigned and left the
priesthood, supposedly, according to some, with three quarters of a million
dollars of the archdiocese’s funds.
Two years later Louis Walsh, who had succeeded O’Connell as bishop of
Portland, renewed the effort to remove the cardinal himself. Pope Benedict
promised Walsh that if the bishop was able, in effect, to get at least fifteen other
American prelates to support his effort, he would personally call O’Connell
permanently to Rome. Walsh quickly secured the number the pontiff had set
as a minimum, including the archbishops of Chicago, New York, and
Philadelphia, and thought victory was at hand. The sign of opposition to
O’Connell that the pontiff requested was the refusal of at least fifteen prelates
to recognize O’Connell’s right, as senior prelate, to preside at the next meeting of the National Catholic Welfare Council.Then on the eve of the meeting,
the Vatican wired the apostolic delegate that the pontiff was now “not . . .
opposed to getting in touch with O’Connell” should at least a quarter of the
hierarchy vote against him “spontaneously.”The delegate persuaded Walsh not
to press for an election and O’Connell simply assumed the chair as senior
prelate. Slawson suggests that “spontaneously” was simply a poor translation of
the Italian “spontaneamente” (voluntarily) and that Walsh should have proceeded with the effort to put someone else in the chair, but the tone of the
pope’s directive suggests more strongly that he had become much less committed to acting against the cardinal.
When Benedict XV died shortly afterwards, O’Connell used the occasion of
the conclave to repair his standing in the Vatican and to bring to an end the
NCWC, which he saw as a competitor to his own claims of leadership of the
Church in the United States and an ecclesiastical democracy that perpetuated
the ideals of “Americanism.” Rome in 1922 called for the suppression of the
NCWC, but O’Connell’s triumph was short-lived, as the new pontiff, Pius XI,
had it restored within the year. That same year a final effort was begun, by
Walsh and the former apostolic delegate among others, to remove O’Connell
from Boston. O’Connell took effective proactive moves, including a doubling
of Boston’s Peter’s Pence contribution, gifts to Vatican officials, and a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to defeat the attempt. Once again O’Connell’s money and
influence prevailed as a new pope, despite the formidable mountain of evidence pointing to the cardinal’s sins, essentially took no action against him.
Although O’Connell had by then exhausted his political capital in both
Rome and America, he survived for another two decades as the cardinal archbishop of Boston. Slawson sees in the sordid affair a cautionary tale about the

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need in the Church to observe formal canonical processes when serious allegations against churchmen are raised, as well as to put an absolute ban on
Vatican officials receiving gifts. In light of the recent experience of the church
in Boston that saw one of O’Connell’s successors punitively transplanted to
Rome, such advice seems more than timely.
Georgetown University (Emeritus)

ROBERT EMMETT CURRAN

An Archbishop for the People: The Life of Edward J. Hanna. By Richard
Gribble, C.S.C. (New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press. 2006. Pp. x, 416.
$24.95 paperback.)
Richard Gribble’s biography of Archbishop Edward Hanna is both satisfying
and tantalizing—satisfying because a biography of Hanna is long overdue.
Gribble’s theme is the title of his book: An Archbishop for the People. He tells
the story of a clergyman devoted to the people of his church, his city, and his
country whether within or without the Catholic fold. In turn, he was loved and
respected by the citizens of Rochester, New York, the scene of his priestly ministry, and by those of San Francisco, California, the site of his work as archbishop. Hanna was an advocate for the poor, the imprisoned, and immigrants,
though this latter advocacy uncharacteristically did not apply to Mexicans—
the exception that proved the rule.
Long before ecumenism was fashionable in Catholic circles, Hanna participated in outreach to those of other faiths. In Rochester, he was invited to join
the Fortnightly Club, a group of prominent citizens who gathered to discuss
social and literary issues. Though not aimed at church unity, the club gave
Hanna and Reverend Algernon Crapsey, an Episcopalian Modernist, the opportunity to find common ground about the rights of labor and Christianity’s preferential option for the poor. As archbishop of San Francisco, Hanna belonged
to a group of religious leaders called Better Understanding that sought to surface themes common to various religions and denominations. He also supported Jewish agencies and causes, winning him the American Hebrew Medal
in 1931.
Gribble is at his best in recounting Hanna’s efforts on behalf of labor. Hanna
supported the living wage, the right to collective bargaining, and to a certain
extent the right of labor to participate in the management of production for
the public good. He was sought after time and again as an arbitrator in capitallabor disputes in both Rochester and San Francisco. Gribble attributes his success in these endeavors “to his wide appeal to all constituencies of the local
community, his strong sense of justice, and his affable and kind disposition.”
The book is less successful as biography when discussing Hanna’s role as
chairman of the administrative committee of the National Catholic Welfare
Conference (NCWC), through no fault of the author. Gribble does a creditable

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job of recounting the more salient issues both domestic and international managed by the NCWC under Hanna: the organization’s formation, suppression, and
reinstatement; immigration; the attempt to federalize education; and the churchstate conflict in Mexico.This portion of the book reads more like institutional
history than biography, principally because Hanna’s role in these affairs was at
the level of strategy,while the details of working through the issues and the dayto-day decision-making were carried out by subordinates. Hanna himself felt
this. After more than a decade in office, he confided to John Burke, his lieutenant at NCWC headquarters, that he thought he should relinquish the chairmanship because he was so far removed from affairs (San Francisco from
Washington) and unable to give them the attention they required.
The book is tantalizing in its first and last chapters, where the sources are
scarce and sometimes contradictory. Gribble handles Hanna’s brush with
Modernism with a deft hand, giving careful attention to his theology and the
internal politics that kept him from the coadjutorship of San Francisco in
1907–08. Intriguing is Gribble’s comment in an endnote that “Modernism in the
United States has its roots in the Americanist movement.” Gribble never associates Hanna with that movement, though he points out that Hanna studied at the
American College under Denis O’Connell, an ardent Americanist promoter, and
was a classmate, colleague, and friend of Edward Pace, also an Americanist supporter. Hanna’s commitment to labor and the poor were Americanist causes,
especially among the New York Academia. Bishop Bernard McQuaid passed
over Hanna for the coadjutorship of Rochester because the latter refused to
obey his edict to refuse sacraments to parents who sent their children to nonCatholic colleges, something that also suggests Americanist leanings.Was Hanna
a crypto-Americanist in the diocese of one of that movement’s opponents?
Given available sources, historians may never know for certain.
Especially tantalizing is the reason for Hanna’s sudden retirement
(removal?), the announcement of which took family members and the archdiocese by surprise. Gribble points out that only a year earlier, the Apostolic
Delegate,Archbishop Amleto Cicognani, had been prepared to remove Hanna
from his see, but relented.A year later, he thanked Bishop John Cantwell of Los
Angeles for taking care of a “distasteful task” regarding Hanna (securing his resignation?). Shortly after retiring, Hanna departed to live in Rome, residing first
at the Villa San Francisco operated by Franciscan Tertiary brothers, where he
was kept rather incommunicado. Some evidence suggests that Hanna may
have been suffering from “an undiagnosed case of what today is called
Alzheimer’s Disease.” This has been the standard interpretation of the retirement. Gribble’s detective work suggests that Hanna’s mind may have been
better than historians have thought, and that the real reason for his removal
was an indiscretion with a woman.The truth will remain unknown until relevant documents in the appropriate archives are opened.
The book contains some minor errors. Joseph Bruneau is incorrectly identified as John Bruneau (p. 31). Gribble cites Francis Weber in ascribing author-

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ship of a letter received by Bishop Cantwell to a Cardinal Donato Ceretti (p.
71). There was no such cardinal. Authorship belongs to either Cardinal
Bonaventura Cerretti or Cardinal Donato Sbarretti. Precise attribution will
depend on seeing the document itself. Cardinal Pietro Gasparri is described as
“prefect of the Apostolic Chamber” (p. 174), while at the time he occupied the
better-known post of Vatican Secretary of State.
National University, San Diego

DOUGLAS J. SLAWSON

The Sacred Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions. Selected Writings of
Arthur Carl Piepkorn. Volume Two. Edited and Introduced by Philip J.
Secker (Mansfield, Connecticut: CEC Press. 2007. Pp. xlviii, 313).
Arthur Carl Piepkorn (1907–73) was a pastor in the Lutheran ChurchMissouri Synod, for many years a professor at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis,
and undoubtedly a major theologian in the Lutheran tradition. A selection of
his writings was edited by M. Plekon and W. Wiecher and published by ALPB
Books in 1993 and reprinted in 2006. Entitled, The Church, it constitutes the
first in a projected series of four volumes of selected writings from Arthur Carl,
as he was affectionately known to his friends.Volumes 2–4 are being published
by the Arthur Carl Piepkorn Center for Evangelical Catholicity (founded and
directed by Philip Secker). The book can be computer searched on Search
Google Books (http://books.google.com).
Volume 2 of the series contains articles and notes on the Sacred Scriptures
(Part I) and on the Lutheran Confessions (Part II). Part I reflects Piepkorn’s
interest in Scripture (he had studied oriental languages, and his doctoral dissertation was in that area). Part II, much longer, illustrates his conviction that
the Book of Concord (published in 1580, and progressively adopted by most
Lutherans) provides a true and normative interpretation of the Scriptures.The
papers belong to different genres: formal presentations, short notes and
reports, occasional letters.They follow a topical order in Part I and a chronological order in Part II. Several papers have extensive footnotes from
Piepkorn. Many short explanations, references, and translations from Latin,
German, Greek and Hebrew are due to the editor. An index would have
helped many readers.
In Part I, which has seven documents, the topics go from the notion of
“canonical” Scriptures (the word occurs once in the Augsburg Confession, but
Piepkorn does not recommend its use) to the deuterocanonical books, usually
called apocryphal by Protestants, but used by Luther and Lutherans as illustrating the faith, to the inspiration of Scripture, to its inerrancy (the longest
paper), to the Old Testament in the Lutheran Symbols (a very short piece), and
finally to the authority of Scripture.
Part II includes nineteen pieces, on the Council of Chalcedon, on the
Reformation (and many outrageous misrepresentations of it), on the Lutheran

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Symbols (these documents, along with another on the Augsburg Confession,
form the theological center of the book), on Melanchthon, who authored the
greater part of the Symbolical Books, on the relations of the Symbols to Holy
Scripture. There is a short reflection on Erasmus. Two brief notes discuss
whether a new creed should be composed. Several letters answer questions
asked by correspondents.The last document is a very elaborate statement of
belief.The book ends with a survey of Piepkorn’s life, by the editor.
The volume should be of special interest to Catholic readers. Piepkorn was
well acquainted with Catholic history and theology, and a very effective and
friendly participant in the official Lutheran-Catholic Conversations in America,
from their initiation (he attended the planning meeting, in 1965) to his death.
His knowledge of Patristic thought and of medieval church history was deep
and extensive. His concern for exact, and often minute, historical details could
be astonishing. Theologically, he found continuity between Lutheranism and
medieval Catholicism, to which, he thought, the Augsburg Confession (1530)
was more faithful than the later Council of Trent (1545–63). He therefore considered the Lutheran Churches as included in the continuing Catholic Church;
and he regarded the Roman Catholic Church as also a post-Tridentine continuation of the medieval Church.At the same time, however, he was grateful for
the work of many “Roman” theologians. Most of the texts in the volume date
from before Vatican Council II. In October 1965, however, in a piece entitled,
“Why still be Lutheran?” Arthur Carl acknowledged that something new was
happening: “Today’s Roman Catholic Church is not the same institution that
resisted Luther’s reforming work. Rome itself is in the midst of a major, fullscale reformation, which Roman Catholics prefer to call renewal”(pp. 193–94).
The self-understanding of the Missouri Synod comes through in his writings, as it did in his person, as a persistent, gentle call to Christian fidelity, and
to devotion to the truth in spite of the prevalent indifference and permissiveness of modern society.
GEORGE H.TAVARD

Assumption Center
Brighton, Massachusetts
Latin American

Needs of the Heart: A Social and Cultural History of Brazil’s Clergy and
Seminaries. By Kenneth P. Serbin. [Helen Kellogg Institute for International
Studies.] (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 2006. Pp.
xx, 476. $60.00.)
In this groundbreaking work, Kenneth Serbin has provided a masterful
account of the history of Brazil’s clergy and their training from the sixteenth
century to the present day. Supplemented by a unique and comprehensive collection of tables, figures, and maps, Serbin provides original and detailed

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insight into an aspect of church history in Brazil not commonly explored —
certainly not on this scale.This work is a “must” read not only for those interested in Brazilian history, but for anyone looking to understand the state and
role of the Church in contemporary Brazilian society. One of Serbin’s key
observations relates to the way in which the clergy were both shaped by, and
actively shaped their centuries-long experience in Brazil.“In some instances,”
he relates, “the intended transformers of Latin America’s religious culture
became the transformed because of their profound experiences in the region.”
At the same time, notes Serbin, “no matter how foreign the models, priests
employed great creativity in adapting them to the local context” (p. 18).
To facilitate his task, Serbin divides Brazilian clerical history into four critical stages. During the first (1549–1759), religious orders dispatched from
Europe dominated the religious landscape, in effect aiding and abetting the
conquest of Brazil by the Portuguese. With the growing maturity of Brazilian
society (1759–1840), however, an indigenous secular clergy began to emerge
from a growing number of domestic seminaries. Given their domestic roots,
these priests in turn aligned themselves with local elites looking to establish
Brazil as a modern nation-state. The subsequent period (1840–1962) focuses
on the Church’s attempts to bring an increasingly “untamed” Brazilian Church
back into line with established doctrine and practice. Focusing on the case of
the Vincentian fathers, Serbin demonstrates how the Church restructured seminary training to reinforce the Vatican ideal. Yet, while the growing cohort of
effectively Romanized clergy “transformed Catholicism into a religious, intellectual, and social force” (p. 108) by the mid-twentieth century, it bred as well
a sense of self-centeredness among the clergy and a growing sense of alienation between the institution and ordinary Brazilians. With the advent of
Vatican Council II, the stage was thus set for a growing conflict between “new”
and “old” church ideals. For proponents of a Catholicism more attuned to the
social realities of Brazil in the 1960s and early 1970s, few choices were in evidence; for those who did not leave outright, the primary option was “liberation
theology” and a growth in seminary training attuned preferentially to the dire
condition of Brazil’s “poor and oppressed.” From this point, the story is reasonably well known, as the Brazilian Church—led by a highly visible cohort of
“radical priests”—led a running battle with Brazil’s ruling generals until
democracy returned in the mid-1980s. As Serbin outlines in his epilogue, the
ultimate fate of this grand experiment is equally well known, with the
Church’s relatively rapid retreat to orthodoxy in the 1990s, ostensibly in
response to both Vatican pressure and the growing domestic threat posed by
galloping Protestantism.
The long and winding history of the Brazilian Catholic Church is thus
revealed in Serbin’s analysis as the partial work-product of its primary footsoldiers—its clergy.As such, the book provides a critical complement to previous
work which has focused with relative exclusivity on the policies and practices
of church leadership, whether in Brazil or the Vatican. Quite correctly, then,

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Serbin’s thesis reminds us of the need to maintain a sharp focus on the full
range of actors in the historical dramas which have shaped nations.
University of Western Ontario

WARREN E. HEWITT

Clerical Ideology in a Revolutionary Age: The Guadalajara Church and the
Idea of the Mexican Nation (1788–1853). By Brian F. Connaughton,
Translated by Mark Alan Healey. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado and
University of Calgary Press. 2003. Pp ix, 426. $65.00 hardcover, $27.95
paperback.)
For those Anglophone historians who do not understand Spanish or whose
Spanish is not quite proficient, Mark Alan Healey’s translation of Brian
Connaughton’s 1992 study of the political role of the Guadalajara Church in
Mexico from the late colonial period to the advent of General Santa Anna’s last
dictatorship is indeed a welcome one.To this day, whilst the Mexican Church
has been studied in depth for the colonial period in the works of such eminent
historians as David Brading and William B.Taylor, its role in the early national
period remains remarkably understudied. Apart from those studies that
Michael Costeloe, Jan Bazant, and Anne Staples dedicated to specific aspects of
the history of the Church in Independent Mexico, there have been no works
of substance, with the exception of Connaughton’s early nineties Ideología y
sociedad en Guadalajara (1788–1853).
In this particularly insightful work Connaughton dismantled a whole array
of misconceptions and myths that had plagued the historiography’s interpretation of the ideological stance of the Church toward independence, sovereignty, and modernity, in the build-up to, during, and in the wake of the
1810–21 civil war. By concentrating on the clergy’s discourse in the specific
regional context of Guadalajara, using church pamphlets, sermons, edicts, pastoral letters, and newspapers as the mouthpieces of clerical ideology,
Connaughton demonstrated that the Church was not monolithic, that its views
were not necessarily reactionary, and that its political beliefs were highly fluid
and sophisticated, being capable of advocating change and continuity at the
same time. He also succeeded in tracing a particularly complex yet evident
evolution of political thought on the part of the more eloquent members of
the clergy, as they grappled with and responded to the changing times and
contexts they were faced with.Thus the clergy was, at different stages, capable
of advocating enlightened principles, a need for greater provincial autonomy,
independence, a republican system, and representative politics and of embracing a number of key tenets of early nineteenth-century liberal thought. In a
country whose constitutions declared, in no uncertain terms, that the Catholic
faith was the official religion of the Mexican state, and that no others would
be tolerated, it is not surprising to find that the Church played a fundamental
part in the forging of independent Mexico. It would be with time, and faced
with the bellicosity of the anticlerical liberals of the 1830s, as well as the

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manner in which the governing elite approached the patronage question and
defended the abolition of church tithes, that clerical ideology became increasingly traditionalist in its outlook.The subsequent syncretism that characterized
ecclesiastical politics in 1840s-’50s Mexico, with its propensity to advocate a
conservative liberal agenda whilst stressing the providential role of the Church
in Mexico’s emergent national identity, was first discussed in any significant
depth in Connaughton’s study.The fact that he did this employing a predominantly regional focus was also noteworthy at a time when the historiography
was still extremely Mexico City-based. Since the publication of Connaughton’s
volume, a whole range of studies have been published concentrating on particular regional contexts, allowing us to understand the early national period
from a variety of concrete yet pluralistic and meaningful perspectives.The fact
that this key historiographical text has been translated will no doubt enable an
Anglophone readership to engage, at last, with one of the very few existing
interpretations, to date, of clerical ideology in independent Mexico.
University of St Andrews

WILL FOWLER

El Concilio Plenario de América Latina: Roma 1899. Edited by Antón Pazos
and Diego Piccardo. [Acta Coloniensia: Estudios Ibéricos y Latinoamericanos.] (Madrid: Iberoamericana, and Frankfurt am Main:Vervuert Verlag.
2002. Pp. 204 paperback.)
The present publication offers two outstanding contributions to a symposium that was held in the Vatican on June 21–25, 1999. Pazos is the author of
the chapters 1–2 dealing with the Church in Latin America at the end of the
nineteenth century and with the preparation of the Plenary Council of Latin
America (PCLA). Chapters 3–4 are written by Piccardo, who presents the celebration of the PCLA and an analysis of its documents. Both authors make
extensive use of the archival material that for a few years has been available
from the Archivio della S. Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici
Straordinari of the Vatican.
In 1888 Archbishop Mariano Jaime Casanova of Santiago de Chile took the
initiative to write to Pope Leo XIII and propose the celebration of a PCLA.The
Latin text of the letter is published in the appendix of the book (pp.163–66).
The pope warmly welcomed the project and provided for an intensive preparation. In a circular letter to all the Latin American bishops the Secretary of
State, Cardinal Rampolla, proposed the possibility of such a gathering, and he
also asked an expert in canon law, Concha of Chile, to elaborate a scheme for
the meeting. In 1894 Leo XIII appointed a commission of cardinals and experts
to prepare and to study the project, involving all the Latin American bishops in
the work of preparation; they were also asked to propose a possible place for
the meeting as well as procedures.The answers of the bishops contained rich
and useful material for the coming discussions. But also the commission of cardinals was quite familiar with the situation in Latin America; they discovered

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weak points in Church-and-state relations. After almost a century after independence some clergymen and bishops had to continue with the patronato
system; also pastoral needs were neglected.
Outstanding experts of canon law such as F. X.Wernz and G. Bucceroni, and
especially J. de Llevaneras, the future cardinal Vives y Tutó, offered a careful
examination of Concha’s scheme; the experts were entitled to propose additions and changes.After this Wernz and Llevaneras were asked to prepare the
final scheme of the agenda for the meeting of the PCLA. In order to avoid
national rivalries Rome was chosen as the place of the CPLA, where the bishops met from May 5 to June 9, 1899.The project was discussed in twenty-nine
general sessions and voted on by fifty-nine Council Fathers in nine solemn sessions.The Pope proposed a cardinal as honorary president, and the archbishops were effective presidents of the meetings, taking turns; they presided
according to the dates of their nominations. In the first General Session the
members of the PCLA elected secretaries, judges, promoters, relators, notaries,
and advisors; in the second session rules for procedures were established and
freedom of speech was affirmed. In the discussions the considerable influence
of Freemasons in some places and governments emerged.The PCLA clarified
the question and facilitated the application of church norms in this regard.The
fathers also showed an awareness of the problems of the aborigines. They
recalled to parish priests the duty of learning native languages, avoiding racial
neglect, and taking care of dying persons also in distant places. The need of
seminaries, the solid formation of the clergy, and incardination were thoroughly discussed. However, the shortage of priests was not sufficiently presented. In some countries the application of the Church’s social doctrine
caused difficulties.
The Bishop of San Luis de Potesí, Ignacio Montes de Oca y Obregón, known
for his literary talents, was asked to translate the Latin text of the acts into
Spanish, which facilitated a greater diffusion. The revision of the acts was performed by the same commission of cardinals, who had prepared the PCLA.To
them was added Cardinal Vives y Tutó. On January 1, 1900 Leo XIII approved
the PCLA with the Apostolic Letter Iesu Christi Ecclesiam. In 1900 the proceedings were printed in the Vatican Polyglot Printing Office.
Pazos illustrates well the importance of the PCLA for the history and for a
unified legislation of the Church in Latin America. It also served as a source for
the Code of Canon Law 1917. Piccardo offers a good survey of the application
of the PCLA in Latin America (pp. 139–42). The book constitutes a valuable,
precise, critical, and indispensable guide to the acts of the PCLA, which will be
needed for the study of further special questions.
Oblatenkloster, Munich

WILLI HENKEL, O.M.I.

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187

Asian
Francisco Varo’s Glossary of the Mandarin Language. Volume I: An English
and Chinese Annotation of the Vocabulario de la Lengua Mandarina.
Volume II: Pinyin and English Index of the Vocabulario de la Lengua
Mandarina. By W. South Coblin. [Monumenta Serica Monograph Series,
LIII/1 and LIII/2.] (Sankt Augustin, Germany: Monumenta Serica Institute.
2006. Pp. 1,033. €115,00.)
The role of missionaries as compilers of grammars and dictionaries is well
known in the history of North and South America during the seventeenth
century and later, but much less known are similar efforts in Asia and Africa.
Even today languages spoken in some of these areas of the world have not yet
been transcribed in written form. Michele Ruggieri (1543–1607) and Matteo
Ricci (1552–1610), the Jesuits who opened the first permanent presence of
Christianity in China during the modern period, realized the need of a dictionary for effective discussions and preaching. Their Portuguese-Chinese
work, probably compiled in 1583–1588, remained in manuscript form until its
recent publication.1 Later in his writings Ricci significantly improved this initial step in acquiring Chinese by adding tone marks which are commonly
used today.
When the Dominicans first arrived in the province of Fujian in 1632, they
faced the need not only to know Mandarin but also the local Fujianese dialect
that native Mandarin speakers from Nanjing or Beijing found quite difficult to
understand. Francisco Varo, O.P. (1627–87), a native of Seville, Spain, entered
the Dominican Order in 1643, was sent to the Philippines three years later, and
was ordained in Mexico in 1648. He returned to Manila, where he focused on
studying Chinese, and then went to Fujian in 1649, the site of his missionary
apostolate until his death there.
Although Varo’s first known lexicographic work of Mandarin was a
Portuguese-Chinese glossary in 1670, he produced the Spanish-Chinese
Vocabulario a few years later as a means for his Spanish-speaking confreres to
propagate the Gospel. Two extant manuscripts in Berlin and London form the
core of this publication with the Berlin text as the base and the London text
as an ancillary one. Recognition is given to another copy in the archives of the
Missions Étrangères de Paris. Since this entire Paris codex was discovered as
this book was going to press, only its introduction was translated, while the
rest could not be included in its preparation.With meticulous care, the editor,
W. South Coblin, has provided ample coverage of all the insertions necessary
for transcribing from the manuscript to its printed form. One example can
illustrate the contents. Varo’s original entry reads: “Abaxar Dios a encar1
John Witek, ed., Dicionário Português-Chinês. Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary, by
Michele Ruggieri, S.J. and Matteo Ricci, S.J. (Lisbon: Biblioteca Nacional, 2001). Most of
the Portuguese entries and the romanization are in Ruggieri’s hand.

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nar–kiáng se–ng.” This entry is drawn from the manuscript with the English
translation in brackets “:[for God to come down (to the world) to assume a
physical body],” then the Chinese characters are added. With approximately
sixty entries per page in the manuscript of 228 pages that are printed with the
added data for each entry in this published version of more than 1,000 pages,
there is no doubt that students of Chinese language and historians of the China
mission in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have a significant reference work due to the prodigious efforts of a prominent scholar of Chinese linguistics.2 It is hoped that other manuscript dictionaries by missionaries in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century China might also be published.These can fill
in vernacular expressions that are usually absent in Chinese literary sources.
Such data are vital for the comparative and historical analysis of spoken and
written Chinese in that period. Toward that goal the editor has provided scholars with an invaluable exemplar.
Georgetown University

JOHN W. WITEK, S. J.

Noble Patronage and Jesuit Missions: Maria Theresia von Fugger-Wellenburg
(1690–1762) and Jesuit Missionaries in China and Vietnam. Edited by
Ronnie Po-chia Hsia. [Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, Series Nova,
Volume 2.] (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu. 2006. Pp. 365.)
The history of the overseas missions conducted by the Catholic religious
orders in the early modern period has been fertile terrain for scholars during
the past two decades. New analyses of evangelization efforts in the Americas,
Africa, and Asia have enriched a field which had long been the province of
chroniclers from the orders involved, or other participants in missionary
efforts. As the study of the mission churches has expanded, however, the history of the European networks which supported the enterprises has largely
been eclipsed. Noble Patronage and Jesuit Missions, a volume that combines
an introductory essay with transcriptions of correspondence between Europe
and China in German, French, and Latin, is a highly useful contribution toward
helping to balance out this burgeoning field of study. In addition to examining
the global flow of information in the 1700s, this book gives valuable insights
into the little-studied (albeit crucially important) subject of mission finance.
Moreover, R. Po-Chia Hsia has skillfully edited and annotated the correspondence between one patroness and a set of Jesuits in Asia for the benefit of
other scholars to examine.
The documents found in this volume come from the Fugger-Archiv in
Dillingen and were primarily written by Maria Theresia von FuggerWellenburg, Florian Bahr, and Johann Siebert. Hsia’s introductory essay places
2
W. South Coblin and Joseph A. Levi, Francisco Varo’s Grammar of the Mandarin
Language (1703). An English Translation of the “Arte de la Lengua Mandarina”
(Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 2000).

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189

these three individuals in the context of Catholic Germany in the mid-eighteenth century, showing how the Countess von Fugger-Wellenburg encountered the two Jesuits during the early stage of their voyage to Asia (Bahr eventually arrived in China and Siebert worked in Cochinchina). He examines the
patterns of female devotional life of Southern German Catholics and explains
why Maria Theresia sustained her correspondence with these distant friends
over the course of more than two decades. Hsia also explains the mechanics
of global finance in the eighteenth century, showing how it was possible—
though never easy—for a patron to offer material support to clients on the
other side of the globe. After tracing the history of the relationship between
Maria Theresia and her correspondents, especially Bahr, he presents transcriptions of her letters and their responses (with intervals of months or years), as
well as related documents such as Annual Letters and other reports from the
Asian missions.
The figure that emerges most clearly from this volume is Maria Theresia,
whose letters reveal a great deal about her character and personal piety. We
learn that she was especially moved by reports from China about the plight of
abandoned infants at the imperial capital, perhaps as a result of her personal
misfortune of losing a child.With the help of Bahr in Beijing and other Jesuit
agents in Paris, Maria Theresia sent funds to China to help support of a corps
of lay assistants organized by the missionaries who visited the city’s gates in
search of children to deliver to orphanages (or at least to baptize). Yet the
countess also showed concern for the well-being of the missionaries and the
dignity of the divine cult and Jesuit enterprise in far-off China. She inquires
after boxes of European objects that she sent to Asia and seeks to defend the
good name of the Society of Jesus among her peers at the courts of Munich
and Paris. Maria Theresia also reveals herself as an avid reader of devotional
books, as well as reports of the global missionary efforts printed in works such
as the Welt-Bott and the Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses. In sum, Hsia paints a
portrait of her that is far more complex and textured than one would have
imagined. How many other such scenes of patronage lie hidden in the
archives, waiting to be discovered?
Princeton University

LIAM MATTHEW BROCKEY

BRIEF NOTICES
_______
Evans, G. R. Breaking the Bounds: An Inaugural Lecture Given in the
University of Cambridge, 16 February 2004. (New York: Cambridge
University Press. 2004. Pp. 43. $11.00 paperback.)
In 2003 Charles Clarke, the then Secretary of Education in the United
Kingdom, publicly declared that in his opinion the government-funded universities of Britain should concentrate upon useful subjects: “I don’t mind
there being some medievalists around for ornamental purposes, but there is no
reason for the state to pay for them.” G. R. Evans, a Cambridge medievalist,
retorted, “With a philistine thug like that in charge . . . we need to protect the
jobs of all the historians of thought and all the wordsmiths we can” (The
Guardian, May 9, 2003).
Professor Evans is an astonishingly prolific scholar of medieval theology
and intellectual and church history, her books ranging from the patristic era to
the central Middle Ages and from Augustine and Gregory the Great to Anselm
and Peter Lombard. But she has also written cogently about the challenges
facing universities in the English-speaking world (especially in her Calling
Academia to Account: Rights and Responsibilities [1999]). Breaking the
Bounds draws in equal parts from Evans the medieval scholar and Evans the
commentator upon the academic condition.
An Oxbridge inaugural lecture is an occasion when erudition and positionstaking publicly intertwine, often in a wittily mischievous way, and Professor
Evans’s is no exception. Her twin themes are the nature of intellectual
endeavor as medieval minds engaged it, and the parallels between that
endeavor and the essence of disciplines and interdisciplinarity in the early
twenty-first century.Writers in the Middle Ages struggled between pre-existing
knowledge and texts, and the principles inherent in certain subjects (mathematics, rhetoric), and the challenge of creating something new. “There are
important modern educational lessons in all this, of the need to be well aware
of existing work in one’s aspirations to innovation and discovery” (p. 12).
Likewise today, despite the modishness of interdisciplinary claims, academia is
not always well suited institutionally to foster the insights that often emerge
only at the interstices of subjects.This may be especially true in the wake of
the significant changes in governance and funding that U.K. universities have
undergone in the past fifteen years (readers unfamiliar with these may not
always follow the frequently acronym-laden allusions here). L. R. POOS (The
Catholic University of America).
190

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191

Magocsi, Paul Robert. The People from Nowhere: An Illustrated History of
Carpatho-Rusyns. Commentary to illustrations by Valerii Padiak. (Uzhorod,
Ukraine: V. Padiak Publishers. Distributed by Carpatho-Rusyn Research
Center, 5304 Perry Highway, Erie, Pennsylvania, 16509-3559. 2006. Pp. 119.
$24.50.)
This brief historical sketch presents a popular version of the history and
ethnic identity of the Carpatho-Rusyns predominantly located in the
Carpathian Mountains. Perhaps the very title and the first page of text entitled,
“A People from Nowhere,” encapsulates the entire book as it details the struggle of a group of people for an identity. Mogocsi argues his point in a sweeping historical pictorial overview divided into nine chapters: 1.The Geographic
Setting of Carpatian Rus’; 2. States and Peoples; 3.The Early History of Rusyns
from the Fifth to the Fifteenth Centuries; 4. Politics, Religion, and Identity in
the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries; 5. The Rusyn National Awakening
(Nineteenth and Beginning of the Twentieth Centuries); 6. Carpatho-Rusyns in
the Interwar Years (1920s and 1930s); 7. Carpatho-Rusyns during World War II
(1939-1945); 8. Carpatho-Rusyns under Communist Rule 1945-1989; 9. The
Third Rusyn National Revival (since 1989). His use of only twenty-three footnotes for the entire work and the lack of a bibliography represent major lacunae. Certainly, the copious, well taken photos, even including those on the
book covers, are helpful, but they do not readily assist the inquirer in knowing
what scholarly material would be available to complement this work. His argumentation lacks a solid scientific historical critical manner of developing and
supporting his thesis.The whole rationale for the book can be summarized in
his closing sentence: “Carpatho-Rusyns existed in the past. They exist in the
present. And they will exist in the future”(p. 111). This book provides ample
popular, cultural, and ethnic impetus to encourage an interest in a people from
nowhere. MARK MOROZOWICH (The Catholic University of America)

Quash, Ben, and Michael Ward (Eds.). Heresies and How to Avoid Them:Why
It Matters What Christians Believe. (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson
Publishers. 2007. Pp. xii, 148. $16.95 paperback.)
Within this book, edited by Ben Quash and Michael Ward, and featuring a
foreword by Stanley Hauerwas, one will find twelve short essays divided into
two categories: heresies concerning the person of Christ and heresies concerning the Church and Christian living.The heresies herein presented are, in
general, the ones familiar to scholars of the early Church, featuring Arianism,
Docetism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism,Theopaschitism, Marcionism, Donatism,
Pelagianism, and Gnosticism. However, the articles expand to cover some heresies in Medieval Christianity, including the Adoptionism of Elipandus and the
heresy of the Free Spirit associated with Marguerite Porete.Those who study
these heresies will not find any new information within the pages of this book,
as this is not the point of the essays. Rather, the book was developed out of a

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sermon series preached at Peterhouse Chapel, Cambridge. The intent of the
sermons was to provide “informed and accessible accounts of how these
ancient debates still have much to say to Christians today as they try to make
sense of their faith in thought, word, and deed” (p. 8).To accomplish this goal,
each essay begins with a short definition or description of the heresy under
consideration, as well as some relevant supporting or opposing biblical texts.
The body of the essay is devoted to presenting the major themes of each
heresy, explaining why they were deemed to be in error, and finally detailing
how certain of their elements can be present in the modern Church and how
they can be avoided.While each essay is written from a perspective of orthodox faith, the authors are quick to point out the positive aspects of heresy and
to appreciate the impetus that led to their development. However, each essay
raises significant theological concerns, from a modern perspective, associated
with particular heresies and demonstrates the importance of avoiding them.
Each essay is well written and provides evidence of solid research, and should
prove useful within an ecclesiastical or catechetical setting. MARK FRISIUS
(Marymount University)

NOTES AND COMMENTS
_______
Vatican Library, Vatican Philatelic Museum,
and Research Tools
Among the various changes at the Vatican Library is the retirement of
Father William Sheehan, C.S.B., as director of the Printed Books Department.
He will remain at the library in order to finish another volume on the incunabula in the Vatican collection. Dr.Adalbert Roth has succeeded him as director.
On November 24, 2007, the former prefect of the library and current archivist
and librarian of the Holy Roman Church, Archbishop Raffaele Farina, S.D.B.,
was appointed a cardinal. The new prefect is Msgr. Cesare Pasini, the former
vice-prefect of the Ambrosiana Library and noted scholar of Greek patristics.
The vice-prefect of the Vatican Library is Mr.Ambrogio Piazzoni.
Located within the Vatican Museums is a new Philatelic and Numismatic
Museum of Vatican City State. It brings together all the stamps and coins issued
in the Vatican City State from 1929 to the present day.Among the materials on
exhibit are sketches by various artists, printing plates, plaster models, and
bronze casts used in the production of coins, postage stamps, and aerograms.
There is also an exhibit tracing the history of the postal service of the Papal
States (1852–70).
The American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives of
the Catholic University of America has made available to scholars the finding
aid and links to the digitized documents in its Papal Autograph Collection on
its website http://libraries.cua.edu/achrcua/papalautograph.html. These letters and official documents, from the period 1578–1865, signed by several
popes from Gregory XIII to Pius IX, deal mostly with the administration of the
Papal States.A finding aid to the voluminous records of the National Catholic
War Council dating from World War I that are organized into ten series can be
viewed on the web at http://libraries.cua.edu/achrcua/NCWarCouncil.html.
A new website dedicated to Peter of Auvergne (ca. 1245–1304), a Paris
master and disciple of Thomas Aquinas and later bishop of Clermont, can be
found at http://www.paleography.unifr.ch/petrus_de_alvernia.

Archaeological Reconstruction
At historic St. Mary’s City in southern Maryland, the site of the colony’s first
capital, the foundations in the form of a Latin cross of a Catholic church that
193

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were first found in 1938 and dated to ca. 1667 have provided the basis for a
reconstructed chapel. The original chapel, made of brick and replacing the
wooden one destroyed by anti-Catholics and anti-royalist forces in 1645, was
apparently dismantled in the early eighteenth century when Catholic worship
was again banned in the colony. Much of the materials was transported to St.
Inigoes Manor, five miles away, to be used to build a chapel there.The reconstructed chapel in St. Mary’s, recently completed, has faithfully reproduced the
appearance of the original, as far as it can be surmised by studying contemporary Jesuit churches in South American and Asian colonies. Because federal
funds were used in the reconstruction, the altar will not be consecrated and
no worship services will be held in the building.

Causes of Saints
On October 20, 2007, Albertina Berkenbrock (1919–31), a native Brazilian
laywoman, was beatified in Tubarao, Brazil.
On October 21, 2007, Manuel Gómez González (1877–1924), a Spanish
diocesan priest, and Adilio Daronch (1908–1924), a Brazilian layman, both martyred in Feijao Miudo, were beatified.
On October 27, 2007, Celina Chludzinska (1833–1913), a widowed native
of Poland and foundress of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Resurrection
of Our Lord Jesus Christ, was beatified in St. John Lateran Basilica in Rome.
On November 11, 2007, Ceferino Namuncurá (1886–1905), a layman and
student of the San Francisco de Sales Society, was beatified in Argentina.
In December of 2007, Lindalva Justo de Oliveira, a sister of the Daughters
of Charity of St.Vincent de Paul who died at 39 years of age defending her virginity, was beatified in Brazil.

Conferences, Meetings, Lectures
On October 2, 2007, the Gesellschaft zur Herausgabe des Corpus
Catholicorum e. V. held its annual meeting in the Bonifatiussaal of the
Priesterseminar in Fulda and heard a lecture by Dr. Berthold Jäger on the
theme “Zwichen Reformation und Gegenreformation: Das Stift Fulda in der
Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts.”
On October 5, 2007, in the Koninklijke Bibliothek van België in Brussels an
international colloquium was held on the theme “De Rosweyde aux Acta
Sanctorum: La recherche hagiographique des Bollandistes à travers quatre siècles.” Among the papers presented were: “Des recueils de Vies de saints aux
Acta Sanctorum: Persistances et transformations de l’écriture hagiographique
de l’Humanisme à la Contre-Réforme” by Sofia Boesch Gajano; “L’œuvre
hagiographique de Héribert Rosweyde” by Robert Godding;“De Bollandisten-

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195

bibliotheek tijdens het ancien régime” by Bart Op de Beeck;“Les saints orientaux dans les Fasti Sanctorum de Rosweyde” by Xavier Lequeux; “Insular
Saints in the Fasti Sanctorum of Heribert Rosweyde” by Michael Lapidge;
“Memorare juvat effigies: Les gravures incluses dans les Acta Sanctorum: Un
trésor iconographique à exploiter” by François de Vriendt;“Les sources manuscrites des Acta Sanctorum et leur collecte”by François Dolbeau; and “Regards
sur quartre siècles de recherches bollandiennes: Perspectives de recherches
historiographiques” by Bernard Joassart.
The conference was followed by an exhibition entitled “Bollandisten,
Heiligen en Legenden:Vier eeuwen onderzoek” in the library from October 5
to November 30, 2007.
On November 23–24, 2007, a conference was held at the Accademia di San
Carlo in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan on the theme “L’architettura
milanese e Federico Borromeo: Dall’ investitura arcivescovile all’apertura della
Biblioteca Ambrosiana.”Among the papers given were “La chiesa e il monastero
di San Paolo Converso a Milano all’inizio del Seicento: Cantiere e committenza”
by Tommaso Tagliabue; “Progetti per la chiesa e la casa degli Oblati di San
Sepulcro” by Luigi Schiavi; “La cappella di San Teodoro in Santo Stefano a
Milano” by Cristiana Fumarco; “Collegi e seminari: L’avanzamento delle fabbriche fondate da Carlo Borromeo” by John Alexander;“Il coro a Navicella di S.
Pietro” by Richard Schofield;“Il Santuario di Rho” by Davide Tolomelli; and “La
fabbrica milanese di Sant’Antonio Abate: Novità e proposte” by Andrea Spiriti.
On February 26, 2008, the Scottish Church History Society will present a
lecture entitled “The Faith Land of the Monks—a Walk Through Iona’s Island
Territories” by Janet MacDonald at the University of Glasgow; on March 25,
2008, “‘I Disclaim Both Ecclesiasticke and Political Popery’: Lay Catholic
Identity in Early Modern Scotland” by Scott Spurlock at New College,
Edinburgh.
On March 13–14, 2008, the Pontificia Università della Santa Croce in Rome
will sponsor the XII convegno internazionale: “La storia della chiesa nella
storia: bilancio e prospettive.” Among the papers to be given are “Due
tradizioni storiografiche a confronto: le Historiae ecclesiasticae e i De viris
illustribus” by Paolo Siniscalco; “Elementi di storiografia ecclesiastica
medievale” by Martin Aurell; “La storia della Chiesa nella prospettiva degli
umanisti (secoli XV–XVI)” by Marco Pellegrini;“Cesare Baronio e la polemica
storiografica intorno ai Concili Ecumenici” by Johannes Grohe;“La storia della
Chiesa e i Papi contemporanei” by Cosimo Semeraro;“La storiografia religiosa
francese del Novecento” by Jean-Dominique Durand; and “Correnti di storiografia ecclesiastica dopo il Concilio Vaticano II” by José Andrés-Gallego.
On April 5, 2008, the Academy of American Franciscan History and the
California Mission Studies Association will host a conference on the role of
music in the California missions. Among the speakers is William Summers,

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author of a recent book on the Franciscan musican J. B. Sancho. For more information on the conference, see www.aafh.org.
On April 11–12, 2008, the Thirty-Fifth Annual Sewanee Medieval Colloquium
will be held at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee. Its theme is
“Francis, Dominic, Their Orders and Their Tradition.” Among the scheduled
speakers are Bernard McGinn, David Lyle Jeffrey, and Michèle Mulchahey.
On April 17–19, 2008, the Cushwa Center for the Study of American
Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame will convene a conference entitled
“Catholicism in the American Century.” This conference explores how the writing of twentieth-century U.S. history might be revised through consideration of
the significance of Catholic ideas, institutions, and actors. Conference speakers
and presentations are Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University, “Re-viewing the
United States in the Twentieth Century”; Marie Gliffith, Princeton Univer-sity,
“Catholics after Kinsey: Gender, Sexuality, and Catholic Historiography”; David
Gutienez, University of California at San Diego, “Christianity and Community:
Religion and Religiosity in Mexican American History”; Wilfred McClay,
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, “The Catholic Moment in American
Social Thought”; Robert Orsi, Northwestern University,“U.S. Catholics Between
Memory and Modernity”; Thomas Sugrue, University of Pennsylvania, “The
Catholic Encounter with the 1960s”; R. Scott Appleby, University of Notre
Dame, “Catholicism in the American Century.” For further information, please
visit the Cushwa Center’s web site at www.nd.edu/-cushwa.
On May 8–11, 2008, the American Cusanus Society will sponsor three sessions at the 2008 International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo,
Michigan. The topics are “The World of Nicholas Cusa”; “Coincident Theology”; and “The Future of Cusanus Research:A Roundtable Discussion.”
On June 2–3, 2008, the Canadian Catholic Historical Association will hold
its 74th Annual Meeting at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in
conjunction with the Annual Congress of the Canadian Federation of the
Humanities and Social Sciences. For more information, see www.umanitoba
.ca/colleges/st pauls/ccha/studies.html. The program chair is Heidi MacDonald
(heidi.macdonald@uleth.ca); the local arrangements’ co-ordinator is Jacqueline
Gresko (jgresko@telus.net).
On July 21 to 24, 2008, a conference on John Duns Scotus, 1308–2008 will
be held at Oriel College at Oxford University with the theme “The Opera theologica of Scotus;” on November 5 to 9, 2009, at the Albertus-Magnus-Institut/
Duns-Skotus-Akademie (Bonn and Cologne) on “The Metaphysics and Ethics of
Scotus”; and on March 18 to 22, 2009, at the Universities of Mainz and
Strasbourg on “Scotism Through the Centuries.”
On October 10–12, 2008, the American Cusanus Society will hold its
eleventh Biennial Conference at Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg,

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197

Pennsylvania dedicated to Gerhardt Ladner’s The Idea of Reform. For more
information, please contact Christopher Bellitto at cbellitto@kean.edu.
On November 14 to 15, 2008, the VII Congreso Internacional dedicated to
Estudios de Frontera will address the themes “Islam y Cristiandad y los Banu
Said de Alcalá la Real entre los siglos XI y XVI.” For more information, please
contact cultura.tecnico@alcalalareal.es.
On March 26 to 29, 2009, the Organization of American Historians will hold
its annual meeting in Seattle, Washington. It invites proposals for sessions or
single papers. Please see http://www.oah.org/2009 or contact Amy Stark at
astark@oah.org.

Publications
When the first volume of the Sermons de St. Antoine, edited by Valentin
Strappazzon, was presented at the headquarters of the Éditions du Cerf in Paris
in collaboration with the Éditions Franciscaines on October 3,2005,four papers
were read that have now been published in Fascicle 1-2 of Volume XLVII (2007)
of Il Santo, as follows:Valentin Strappazzon,“Antoine, saint populaire et docteur
évangélique pour aujourd’hui” (pp. 251–60); Luciano Bertazzo,“De Fernand de
Lisboa à Antoine de Padoue: Histoire d’un passage” (pp. 261–72); Nicole Bériou,
“Antoine de Padoue, le témoin d’une parole nouvelle au XIIIe siècle” (pp.
273–82); and Bernard Forthomme, “La complexité du sens et l’usage des sciences naturelles chez Saint Antoine de Padoue” (pp. 283–94).
The single issue of Regnum Dei, Collectanea Theatina, for 2003 (Volume
LIX, published in 2007) contains the proceedings of the international conference of interdisciplinary studies on the theme “I Teatini nella Storia della
Sicilia,” which was held in Palermo on October 10–12, 2003, on the occasion
of the fourth centenary of the presence of the Theatines in the island. It is dedicated to the memory of Father Francesco Andreu (1908–2002), archivist and
historian of the Order who was editor of the journal for fifty-seven years.The
following are the more important historical articles: Marcella Campanelli,“La
presenza Teatina in Sicilia nel XVII secolo”(pp. 29–60); Orazio Cancila,“I Teatini
e l’Università di Palermo” (pp. 67–100); Guglielmo de’ Giovanni-Centelles,
“Sicilia e Mediterraneo dopo Lepanto. I Teatini” (pp. 153–80); Patrizia Licini,
“Dalla Sicilia all’Oriente cristiano: progetti Teatini nella Georgia del secolo
XVII” (pp. 181–200); Giovanni Scarabelli, “I Teatini a Leopoli” (pp. 211–23);
Dalma Frascarelli,“Arte barocca e spazio liturgico nei luoghi di culto Teatini”
(pp. 235–49); several articles on particular churches, and the final article, Eric
Pedroni,“La Muta Praedicatio des Clercs Réguliers: Sources historiques et spirituelles de l’iconographie du Premier Ordre religieux du Renouveau
Catholique (16ème–18ème Siècles)” (pp. 289–333).
In 2006 the Augustinians celebrated the 750th anniversary of the Great
Union of their Order effected by the bull Licet Ecclesiae of Pope Alexander IV

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on April 9, 1256. This event is commemorated in the number of Revista
Agustiniana for January-April, 2007 (Volume XLVIII, Number 145), with the
following articles: Carlos Alonso Vañez, OSA, “La gran unión de la Orden en
1256” (pp. 11–27); Luis Marín de San Martín, OSA,“Influencia de la gran unión
en la espiritualidad agustiniana” (pp. 29–56); Ángel Martínez Cuesta,
“Recolección agustiniana: origen, historia y espiritualidad” (pp. 57–76); Pablo
Panedas, OAR, “Influencia de la gran unión en la vida religiosa de la orden
(modelos de santidad)” (pp. 77–92); Teófilo Viñas Román, OSA, “Monjas
Agustinas Contemplativas” (pp. 93–108);Arminda de la Red Vega,A.M.,“Rostro
y camino de Agustinas Misioneras” (pp. 109–26); Carmen Torres and Amanda
Díaz, AA.AA., “Agustinas Hermanas del Amparo” (pp. 127–34); Myriam del
Carmen Neira Guerrón, “Misioneras Agustinas Recoletas. Origen, charisma y
espiritualidad” (pp. 135–48); Ángel Cárdaba Martín, OSA, “Federación
Agustiniana Española: Historia y Actividades” (pp. 149–68); and Miguel Ángel
Orcasitas, OSA, et al.,“Pasado y presente de la Orden de San Agustín. La cita con
la Historia” (pp. 169–88).
“Les Jésuites dans l’Europe savante” was the theme of the “Journée d’études
de la Société d’étude du XVIIe siècle,” which was held in Lyons on May 19,
2006.The papers presented on that occasion, plus two others contributed by
Paul Nelles and Mordechai Feingold, have been published in the issue of XVII e
siècle for October-December, 2007 (Volume 59, Fascicle 4, Number 237), as follows: Jean-Louis Quantin, “Présentation” (pp. 611–14); Jacob Schmutz,
“L’invention jésuite du «sentiment d’existence», ou comment la philosophie
sort des collèges” (pp. 615–31); Anne-Élisabeth Spica,“Les jésuites et l’emblématique” (pp. 633–51); Sophie Conte,“Louis de Cressolles: le savoir au service
de l’action oratoire” (pp. 653–67); Paul Nelles,“Du savant au missionnaire: La
doctrine, les mœurs et l’écriture de l’histoire chez les jésuites” (pp. 669–89);
Jean-Louis Quantin,“Les jésuites et l’érudition anglicane” (pp. 691–711); Sylvio
Hermann De Franceschi,“Le modèle jésuite du prince Chrétien. À propos du
De officio principis Christiani de Bellarmin”(pp. 713–28); Jean-Marie Valentin,
“Diffusion et adaptation des écrits politiques des jésuites italiens et espagnols
dans le Saint Empire entre 1591 et 1638” (pp. 729–38); Paola Vismara, “Les
jésuites et la morale économique” (pp. 739–54); Mordechai Feingold, “Fama:
les savants jésuites et la quête de la renommée” (pp. 755–74); and Emmanuel
Bury,“Conclusions” (pp. 775–77).
A symposium on “Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805–1880): Leben—
Werk—Wirkungen, organized by the Verein für württembergische Kirchengeschichte and the Evangelische Akademie Bad Boll, was held in that city on
October 7–9, 2005. The dozen papers presented on that occasion have now
been published in the Blätter für württembergische Kirchengeschichte,
Volume 106 (2006).
“Editors and Their Newspapers” is the theme of the issue of U.S. Catholic
Historian for summer, 2007 (Volume 25), which contains the following six
articles: Joseph H. Lackner, S.M.,“The American Catholic Tribune: No Other

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199

Like It” (pp. 1–24); Robert L. Anello, M.S.A., “Humphrey J. Desmond, the
Catholic Citizen and Americanism” (pp. 25–73); Mark S. Raphael,“Americanism
as Seen through the Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph: Two Editors, Two
Perspectives” (pp. 51–73); Steven A. Avella, “The Catholic Press as an Urban
Booster: The Case of Thomas A. Connelly of Sacramento” (pp. 75–86); Patrick
McNamara, “’Catholic Journalism with its Sleeves Rolled Up’: Patrick Scanlan
and the Brooklyn Tablet, 1917–1968” (pp. 87–107); and Jeffrey M. Burns,“John
O’Connor and the ‘New Age’ of Catholic Journalism, 1960–1967” (pp. 109–26).
Potomac Catholic Heritage, the large-format publication of the Catholic
Historical Society of Washington, in its issue for fall, 2007 (Volume XIV), bears
on its front cover a full-color reproduction of Constantino Brumidi’s mural
“Capitol Site Selection, 1791,” in the United States Capitol. The five brief articles it contains are devoid of footnotes but are tastefully illustrated:“Cardinal
Gibbons and the Church in Washington,” by Morris MacGregor, co-editor of the
magazine (pp. 1–9);“Jane E. Marilley, Entrepreneur,” by Harold D. Langley (pp.
10–14); “Churches That Never Were,” by Paul Liston (pp. 15–22); “Catholic
Washington’s War on Demon Rum,” by Morris MacGregor (pp. 24–29); and “St.
Mary’s of Upper Marlboro,The Early Years,” by Gloria Garner (pp. 30–37).
Several of the papers presented at the annual meeting of the English
Section of the Canadian Catholic Historical Association that was held at York
University on May 29-31, 2006, as well as papers submitted by scholars independently, have been published in Volume 73 (2007) of Historical Studies, as
follows: Hillary Kaell, “‘Marie-Rose, Stigmatisée de Woonsocket’: The
Construction of a Franco-American Saint Cult, 1930–1955” (pp. 7–26); Richard
A. Lebrun,“Canadian Catholic History:The CCHA Journal over Seventy Years”
(pp. 27–43); William F. Ryan, S.J., “Personal Recollections and Reflections on
the Implementation of the Second Vatican Council by the Canadian
Conference of Catholic Bishops (1964–1990)” (pp. 45–62); Robin S. Gendron,
“Canada’s University: Father Lévesque, Canadian Aid, and the National
University of Rwanda” (pp. 63–86); and Michael Power,“From Frontier Priest
to Urban Prelate: Father Edmund Burke Kilroy” (pp. 87–102).The volume also
contains “A current Bibliography of Canadian Religious History, 2006–2007”
(pp. B1–B32), and Études d’histoire religieuse, 2007, in which four articles
are presented: Janice Harvey,“La religion, fer de lance de l’aide aux démunis
dans la communauté protestante montréalaise au XIXe siècle et au début du
XXe siècle” (pp. 7–30); Dominique Marquis,“Être journaliste catholique au XXe
siècle, un apostolat: les exemples de Jules Dorion et Eugène L’Heureux” (pp.
31–47); Caroline Manseau, “Être digne de l’Esto Vir. Une exploration de la
socialisation religieuse chez les acéjistes (1904–1931)” (pp. 49–60); and
Olivier Ménard,“L’implication du clergé et du laïcat dans les ciné-clubs étudiants au Québec, 1949–1970” (pp. 61–75).

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Personals
Dr. Thomas A. Brady, Jr., the Peder Sather Professor of History at the
University of California, Berkeley is the First Heiko A. Oberman Visiting
Professor of Late Medieval and Reformation History at the University of
Arizona. In October his former students honored him with a Festschrift,
Politics and Reformations (Brill).
Dr. Patrick Foley, editor emeritus of the Catholic Southwest: A Journal of
History and Culture, was honored on November 25, 2007, in the historical San
Fernando Cathedral of San Antonio,Texas, by the Consul General of Spain who
conferred on him a knighthood in the Order of Civil Merit in the rank of
Encomienda on orders of King Juan Carlos I of Spain in recognition of his services in promoting the Catholic culture of Spain, especially by his publications.
On that same occasion receiving the Order of Isabel the Catholic award were
Drs. Félix D.Almaráz, Jr., and Ricardo Romo.

Obituary
George H.Tavard, a priest of the Augustinians of the Assumption (A.A.) and
a life-member of the American Catholic Historical Association, died suddenly
on August 13, 2007, in a Paris airport; he had been visiting family and friends
in France and was preparing to return to Boston, where he resided at the
Assumptionist Center in Brighton. After funeral services on August 21, at the
Church of St. Dominic in Paris, Father Tavard was buried in the Assumptionist
plot in the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.
Born on February 26, 1922, in Nancy, France,Tavard studied at the Grand
Séminaire de Nancy and the Catholic Faculties of Lyon, where he received
a doctorate in theology in 1949. Ordained on March 2, 1947, he taught theology at Capenor House in Surrey, England, before coming to the United
States, where he taught at Assumption College (Worcester, Massachusetts),
Mount Mercy College (now Carlow University, Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania
State University, and the Methodist Theological School in Ohio—until he
retired in 1990 as professor emeritus. He also was a visiting professor at several institutions, including The Catholic University of America, Princeton
Theological Seminary, and Marquette University, where his archives are
located.
Father Tavard was named a peritus (expert) for the Second Vatican Council
(1962–65) by Pope John XXIII and also served as a consultant to the Pontifical
Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. After the Council, he devoted a
major portion of his time to ecumenism as a member of many ecumenical dialogues, including the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Conversations,
the Consultation on Church Union, and the Lutheran-Catholic and EpiscopalCatholic Dialogues in the United States. In 2006, he published his reflections

NOTES AND COMMENTS

201

on his decades-long ecumenical experiences in Vatican II and the
Ecumenical Way (Marquette University Press).
Tavard was the author of numerous professional and popular articles as
well as dozens of books in French, English, and Spanish, including The Catholic
Approach to Protestantism (1955), Holy Writ or Holy Church (1959, for
which he received Honorable Mention for the John Gilmary Shea Prize of the
ACHA in 1960), Paul Tillich and the Christian Message (1962), The Church
Tomorrow (1965), Woman in Christian Tradition (1973), Theology for
Ministry (1983), Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Theology of Beauty (1991),
From Bonaventure to the Reformers (2005). As this list of sample titles suggests,Tavard’s intellectual and theological interests were wide-ranging—which
made him both an interesting lecturer, a knowledgeable ecumenist, and a fascinating conversationalist.
A recipient of the John Courtney Murray Award of the Catholic Theological
Society of America in 1974,Tavard also received the Medal of St. Augustine of
Canterbury from the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1981. The Washington
Theological Consortium presented its Ecumenism Award to Tavard, along with
his fellow ecumenists, the Reverend Joseph Fitzmyer, S.J., and Dr. John H.
Reumann, for their outstanding theological contribution to Lutheran-Roman
Catholic Dialogue, which led to the milestone Lutheran-Catholic “Joint
Declaration on Justification” in 1999.
At the time of his death, Tavard was memorialized by people around the
world as a theologian and teacher, as an ecumenist and reformer, as a pastoral
minister and a friend. One of his former undergraduate students remembered
him as “the first teacher who made me think.” A former graduate student
deeply admired him for his “commitment to patient and loving reform of the
Church.”An ecumenical leader praised him for his “dynamic mingling of intelligence and heart in the service of the unity of Christ’s Church.”A theologian
described him as “one of the most influential ecumenists of the twentieth century.”Yet, perhaps the memory that would have pleased Tavard the most came
from a Franciscan sister who extolled him for having “a heart open to human
encounters of all sorts.”1
The Catholic University of America

JOHN T. FORD, C.S.C.

1
Further information is available at Tavard’s website: http://www.assumption.us/
Tavard/ (accessed: 8 January 2008).

PERIODICAL LITERATURE
General and Miscellaneous
El Vaticano y la evolución. La recepción del darwinismo en el Archivo del
Índice. Rafael A. Martínez. Scripta Theologica, XXXIX (May–Aug., 2007),
529–49.
100 Jahre nach der Modernismusenzyklika. Das Problem der Dogmengeschichte. Peter Neuner. Stimmen der Zeit, 225 (Sept., 2007), 579–92.
Los Romanos Pontífices del siglo XX y el Derecho canónico (II parte). Luis de
Jesús Hernández Mercado. Revista Mexicana de Derecho Canonico, 13 (1,
2007), 47–77.
Erzbistum und Kürfurstentum Köln. Wilhelm Janssen. Römische Quartalschrift, 102 (1–2, 2007), 25–46.
Le cause matrimoniali discusse presso il tribunale vescovile veronese tra XV e
XVIII secolo.Valeria Chilese. Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in
Trento, XXXII (2006), 11–45.
El modelo cristiano de superstición en la España moderna (siglos XV a XVIII).
Fabián Alejandro Campagne. Anthologica Annua, 48–49 (2001–2002),
217–74.
San Paolo Maggiore in Napoli da Casa Teatina a sede dell’Archivio Notarile.
Renato Lambiase. Regnum Dei, LVIII (Jan.–Dec., 2002), 65–151.
Aurelio Giuseppe Amatucci studioso di letteratura cristiana antica. Luigi F.
Pizzolato. Aevum, LXXXI (Jan.–Apr., 2007), 227–53.
Ancient
La organización de las Iglesias de Oriente en la época postapostólica. Robert
Kantor. Revista Mexicana de Derecho Canónico, 13 (1, 2007), 29–46.
A Jew in Celus’ True Doctrine? An examination of Jewish Anti-Christian
polemic in the second century C.E. Lincoln Blumell. Studies in Religion, 36
(2, 2007), 297–315.
Le theme du miracle dans la Gnose ancienne. Maddalena Scopello. Rivista di
Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, XLII (3, 2006), 621–37.
“Above the Bath of Myrtinus”: Justin Martyr’s “School” in the City of Rome.
Harlow Gregory Snyder. Harvard Theological Review, 100 (July, 2007),
335–62.
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PERIODICAL LITERATURE

203

Photinian Opponents in Hilary of Poitier’s Commentarium in Matthaeum.
Carl L. Beckwich. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 58 (Oct., 2007), 611–27.
Hilary and the Homoiousians: Using New Categories to Map the Trinitarian
Controversy. Mark Weedman. Church History, 76 (Sept., 2007), 491–510.
Augustine, ‘Pelagianism’, Julian of Aeclanum and Modern Scholarship. Josef
Lössl. Journal of Ancient Christianity, 11 (1, 2007), 129–50.
Uomini e spazi. Per una ricostruzione della Cappadocia tardoantica. Margherita
Cassia. Orpheus, XXVII (1–2, 2006), 5–22.
The Hypapante Feast in Fourth to Eighth Century Jerusalem. Nicholas
Denysenko. Studia Liturgica, 37 (1, 2007), 73–97.
The Validity of Marriage in Cases of Captivity: The Letter of Innocent I to
Probus. Geoffrey D. Dunn. Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, 83 (Apr.,
2007), 107–21.
The Marriage Revolution in Late Antiquity: The Theodosian Code and Later
Marriage Law. Matthew Kuefler. Journal of Family History, 32 (Oct., 2007),
343–70.
Barmherzigkeit und Buße—Zum christlichen Gehalt des spätantiken
Kirchenasyls. Christian Traulsen. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für
Rechtsgeschichte, 124, Kanonistische Abteilung 93 (2007), 128–53.
La relation de dépendance entre saint Benoît et ses serfs: contrainte ou protection? Cécile Dejardin-Bazaille. Le Moyen Age, CXIII (2, 2007), 383–92.
Medieval
La «charte de Nizezius»: encore un faux de l’abbaye clunisienne de Moissac?
Jean-Luc Boudartchouk. Annales du Midi, 119 (July–Sept., 2007), 269–308.
“Do Prophets Come with a Sword?” Conquest, Empire, and Historical Narrative
in the Early Islamic World.Thomas Sizgorich. American Historical Review,
112 (Oct., 2007), 993–1015.
Wechselbeziehungen zwischen dem lateinischen, byzantinische slavischen
Kirchengesang im frühen und hohen Mittelalter: Das Cherubikon für
Gründonnerstag ⌻⌷⌼ ⌳⌶⌱⌱⌱⌵⌷⌼ ⌺⌷⌼. Neil K. Moran. Ostkirchliche
Studien, 56 (1, 2007), 155–69.
Dynamische Schriftlichkeit: Zur Normbildung in den vorgratianischen
Kanonessammlungen. Andreas Thier. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für
Rechtsgeschichte, 124, Kanonistische Abteilung 93 (2007), 1–33.
Defining paganism in the Carolingian world. James Palmer. Early Medieval
Europe, 15 (4, 2007), 402–25.
Ein Würzburger Necrolog aus dem 9. Jahrhundert. Rainer Leng. Deutsches
Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 63 (1, 2007), 1–40.

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La (ri)costruzione di un manoscritto: nello scriptorium di Bobbio al tempo
dell’abate Agilufo (887–896). Martina Pantarotto. Scriptorium, 61 (1, 2007),
48–73.
Mille anni di pellegrinaggio a Santiago: sopravvivenza e trasformazione di un
luogo sacralizzato. Xosé Luís Barreiro Rivas. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura
Religiosa, XLII (3, 2006), 573–90.
Die ältere Burchardvita, die jüngere Kilianspassio und Stephan von Novara.
Hartmut Hoffmann. Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 62
(2, 2006), 485–503.
Der Hauptschreiber des «Codex Egberti». Ein Kalligraph des x. Jahrhunderts.
Walter Berschin. Scriptorium, 61 (1, 2007), 3–47.
An abbot between two cultures: Maiolus of Cluny considers the Muslims of La
Garde-Freinet. Scott G. Bruce. Early Medieval Europe, 15 (4, 2007), 426–40.
1054 Revisited. Charles Frazee. Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 42 (Spring,
2007), 263–79.
Alessio I Comneno e la polemica antiarmena nei secoli XI-XII. Gioacchino
Strano. Orpheus, XXVII (1-2, 2006), 154–68.
The earliest work of Ivo of Chartres: the case of Ivo’s Eucharist florilegium and
the canon law collections attributed to him. Christof Rolker. Zeitschrift der
Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 124, Kanonistische Abteilung 93
(2007), 109–27.
Freising and Worms in the Early Eleventh Century: Revisiting the Relationship
between the Collectio duodecim partium and Burchard’s Decretum. Greta
Austin. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 124,
Kanonistische Abteilung 93 (2007), 45–108.
Prayer as Liturgical Performance in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Psalters.
Susan Boynton. Speculum, 82 (Oct., 2007), 896–931.
Zwischen Grundherrschaft und Territorium. Zum Besitz fränkischer und altbayerischer Bistümer im habsburgischen Herrschaftsbereich. Helmut
Flachenecker. Römische Quartalschrift, 102 (1–2, 2007), 1–24.
Heavenly Hosts [hospitality in English Benedictine abbeys, 1066–1250]. Julie
Kerr. History Today, 57 (Nov., 2007), 54–59.
On the so-called second version of the Hispana Gallica Augustodunensis.
Nicolás Álvarez de las Asturias. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für
Rechtsgeschichte, 124, Kanonistische Abteilung 93 (2007), 34–44.
Exkommunikation: Ein unterschätztes Mittel geistlicher Politik und
Herrschaft? Zur Wirksamkeit der Sanktionspraxis der Bischöfe von Meißen
im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert. Marek Wejwoda. Zeitschrift der SavignyStiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 124, Kanonistische Abteilung 93 (2007),
182–219.

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205

War in Paradise [Damascus in the Second Crusade]. Jonathan Phillips. History
Today, 57 (Sept., 2007), 36–41.
Das Briefbuch Wibalds von Stablo. Hartmut Hoffmann. Deutsches Archiv für
Erforschung des Mittelalters, 63 (1, 2007), 41–69.
Espacios de espiritualidad: el monasterio de Moreruela. María Luisa Bueno
Domínguez. Hispania Sacra, LIX (Jan.–June, 2007), 35–50.
The earls of Dunbar and the church in Lothian and the Merse. Elsa Catherine
Hamilton. Innes Review, 58 (Spring, 2007), 1–34.
El monasterio leonés de Santa María de Trianos y su articulación con otras
instancias eclesiásticas (s. XII–XV). Susana Royer de Cardinal. Hispania
Sacra, LIX (Jan.–June, 2007), 7–38.
Mendicant orders in the Principality of Achaia and the Latin communal identity, 1204–1453. Lori Frey Ranner. Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies,
31 (2, 2007), 157–69.
Magister Silvester, die Collectio Estensis und die Compilatio secunda. Eine
Studie zu den Dekretensammlungen am Anfang des 13. Jahrhunderts. Peter
Landau. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 124,
Kanonistische Abteilung 93 (2007), 154–81.
La Regula non bullata dei frati Minori (1221), dallo “stemma codicum” al testo
critico. Carlo Paolazzi, OFM. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 100
(Jan.–June, 2007), 5–148.
I “nodi” di frate Elia. Silvestro Nessi. Il Santo, XLVII (1–2, 2007), 105–86.
La Vita Prima del B. Egidio. Una storia meditativa. Emil Kumka, O.F.M. Conv.
Miscellanea Francescana, 106–07 (I, II, 2006–2007), 169–86.
Forma vitae. Eine Interpretation der Ordensregel der heiligen Klara von Assisi.
Theresia Maier. Wissenschaft und Weisheit, 70 (1, 2007), 3–61.
Testi liturgici antichi per la festa di santa Chiara (sec. XIII–XV). Giovanni
Boccali, OFM. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 100 (Jan.–June, 2007),
149–220.
King Henry III and Saint Edward the Confessor:The Origins of the Cult. D. A.
Carpenter. English Historical Review, CXXII (Sept., 2007), 865–91.
Über die mittelalterliche Rota Romana. Ein Streifzug aus der Sicht der
Geschichte der kurialen Gerichtsbarkeit, des römisch-kanonischen
Prozessrechts und der kanonistischen Wissenschaft. Knut Wolfgang Nörr.
Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 124, Kanonistische
Abteilung 93 (2007), 220–45.
Luca lettore da Padova omin († ca. 1287) e i sermoni del Codice Antoniano
466. Emanuele Fontana. Il Santo, XLVII (1–2, 2007), 7–103.
Were the Magdalen nuns really turned into Dominicans in 1287? Simon
Tugwell, O.P. Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, LXXVI (2006), 39–77.

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PERIODICAL LITERATURE

The Byzantine wall paintings from the Protaton Church on Mount Athos,
Greece: tradition and science. Sr. Daniilia, Andreas, Tsakalof, Kyriaki
Bairachtari, Yannis Chryssoulakis. Journal of Archaeological Science, 34
(Dec., 2007), 1971–84.
Bernard Saisset and the Franco-papal rift of December 1301. Jeffrey H. Denton.
Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 102 (Apr.–June, 2007), 399–426.
La condamnation de Pierre Flote par le pape Boniface VIII. Tilmann Schmidt.
Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome, Moyen Âge, 118 (1, 2006), 109–21.
Un nouveau manuscript des Flores Chronicorum de Bernard Gui et la bibliothèque des dominicains de Limoges. Jean-Loup LeMaitre. Archivum
Fratrum Praedicatorum, LXXVI (2006), 79–101.
“Regressie” in de laatmiddeleeuwse monastieke geschiedschrijving? De casus
van de Gentse benedictijnenabdijen Sint-Baafs en Sint-Pieters. Nicolas
Mazeure. Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 82 (2, 2006), 217–42.
»Detestatio choreae«. Eine anonyme Predigt des 14. Jahrhunderts im Kontext
der mittelalterlichen Tanzpolemik.Valeska Koal. Francia, 34 (1, 2007), 19–38.
Sobre la promoción regia de la orden franciscana en la Corona de Castilla
durante el primer reinado Trastámara. Pablo Martin Prieto. Hispania Sacra,
LIX (Jan.–June, 2007), 51–83.
Le tecniche artistiche di Altichiero nei cantieri padovani alla luce dei recenti
restauri. Elisabetta Cortella. Il Santo, XLVII (1–2, 2007), 189–217.
Conventuals and Observants in late medieval Aragon: a documentary view. Jill
R. Webster. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 100 (Jan.–June, 2007),
221–50.
Inventing the Lollard Past:The Afterlife of a Medieval Sermon in Early Modern
England. Alexandra Walsham. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 58 (Oct.,
2007), 628–55.
Histoires pragoises: les chroniqueurs français devant la révolution hussite.
Olivier Marin. Francia, 34 (1, 2007), 39–63.
Politics, Patronage, and Piety in the Work of Osbern Bokenham. Simon
Horobin. Speculum, 82 (Oct., 2007), 932–49.
Rom und Mainz. Italienische und deutsche Universitäten im 15. und beginnenden 16. Jahrhundert. Michael Matheus. Römische Quartalschrift, 102
(1–2, 2007), 47–75.
“S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli” en las guías de Roma y otras fuentes para la
Historia del Arte. Rosa Vázquez Santos. Anthologica Annua, 48–49 (2001–
2002), 703–26.
La Historia Hispanica de Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo: Propaganda enriqueña
y actitudes antihumanísticas. Luis Fernández Gallardo. Anthologica Annua,
48–49 (2001–2002), 275–337.

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207

La diversité thématique dans les prédications de Pelbart de Temesvár. Ildikó
Bárczi. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 100 (Jan.–June, 2007), 251–310.
Libertà di culto e architettura nella Scuola Grande di S. Giovanni Evangelista:
scontro fra poteri a Venezia alla fine del Quattrocento. Alberto Spinazzi.
Studi Veneziani, LI (2006), 145–54.
Sixteenth Century
Las constituciones de la congregación de San Benito de Valladolid (1500–
1835). Ernesto Zaragoza Pascual. Studium Ovetense, XXXIII–XXXIV (2005–
2006), 339–58.
Nouveaux regards sur des monuments des Hospitaliers à Rhodes. Bartholino
da Castiglione, architecte de Pierre d’Aubusson, monuments dépendant de
la langue de France, loge, chapelle Saint-Michel (première partie). Jean-Marc
Roger. Journal des Savants (Jan.–June, 2007), 113–70.
Catholic Identity and Antisemitism in a Eulogy for Isabel “The Catholic.” John
M.McManamon.Journal of Ecumenical Studies,42 (Spring,2007),196–216.
Luther’s Freedom of a Christian and the Pope. Berndt Hamm. Lutheran
Quarterly, XXI (Autumn, 2007), 249–67.
Continuités et ruptures dans la vie des pèlerinages de la Réforme à la
Révolution française. Dominique Julia. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura
Religiosa, XLII (3, 2006), 535–71.
El factor religioso en el conflicto de las Comunidades de Castilla (1520–1521).
El papel del clero. Máximo Diago Hernando. Hispania Sacra, LIX (Jan.–
June, 2007), 85–140.
Il coinvolgimento pastorale degli Agostiniani nella direzione spirituale delle
donne e nella cura monialium.Continuità e fratture tra Medioevo et Età moderna. Pierantonio Piatti. Archivio Storico Italiano, CLXV (2, 2007), 325–64.
Liebe, Leid und Vernunft—Konstituierung und Praxis des frühen evangelischen
Eherechts im Reformationsjahrhundert. Ralf Frassek. Zeitschrift der
Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 124, Kanonistische Abteilung 93
(2007), 372–92.
Eine Berufung ohne Gerichtsverfahren. Die Appellation der evangelischen
Fürsten und Städte an Kaiser und Konzil (1529) und das römisch-kanonische
Prozessrecht. Diethelm Böttcher. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für
Rechtsgeschichte, 124, Kanonistische Abteilung 93 (2007), 279–311.
Time of history and time out of history: the Sistine Chapel as ‘theoretical
object’. Giovanni Careri. Art History, 30 (June, 2007), 326–48.
“Que de ambos oficios era Dios servido”. El origen de la dualidad litúrgica
toledana en la historiografía renacentista. Juan Pablo Rubio Sadia. Hispania
Sacra, LIX (Jan.–June, 2007), 141–62.

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PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Contaminated with David Joris’s blasphemies. David Joris’s contribution to
Castellio’s De Haereticis an sint persequendi. Mirjam Van Veen. Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, LXIX (2, 2007), 313–26.
Mission Delayed:The Russian Orthodox Church after the Conquest of Kazan.
Matthew P. Romaniello. Church History, 76 (Sept., 2007), 511–40.
Una moral para confesores y penitentes. Los confesionales españoles de siglo
XVI (II). Albelardo del Vigo Gutiérrez. Scriptorium Victoriense, LIII (Jan.–
June, 2006), 43–91.
Marking Time: Astrology, Almanacs, and English Protestantism. Alison A.
Chapman. Renaissance Quarterly, LX (Winter, 2007), 1257–90.
“Servir a Dios con quietud”, la elaboración de un modelo regular femenino
para las dominicas castellanas a mediados del siglo XVI. Guillermo Nieva
Ocampo. Hispania Sacra, LIX (Jan.–June, 2007), 163–96.
(Re)building the sacred landscape: Orléans, 1560–1610.Andrew Spicer. French
History, 21 (Sept., 2007), 247–68.
La Iglesia y Hospital de Montserrat de Roma en los siglos modernos. Maximiliano Barrio Gozalo. Anthologica Annua, 48–49 (2001–2002), 11–48.
Warum fehlt ein erzbischöfliches Konsistorium im Erzstift Magdeburg bis zur
Integration in Brandenburg-Preußen 1680? Ein Beitrag zur Rechts- und
Verfassungsentwicklung von Erzsift und Stadt Magdeburg am Beispiel der
iurisdictio in Ehesachen. Hans Seehase. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für
Rechtsgeschichte, 124, Kanonistische Abteilung 93 (2007), 406–25.
Domingo de Baltanás, monje solicitante en la encrucijada religiosa andaluza:
confesión, Inquisición y Compañía de Jesús en la Sevilla del Siglo de Oro.
Gianclaudio Civale. Hispania Sacra, LIX (Jan.–June, 2007), 197–241.
Die Einführung der Kirchenzuchtordnung von 1570 in der Pfalz—ein Beispiel
für Kompetenzstreitigkeiten um die geistliche Stafgerichtsbarkeit. Isabelle
Deflers. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 124,
Kanonistische Abteilung 93 (2007), 393–405.
Sixteenth-century Pluscarden priory and its world. Augustine Holmes, O.S.B.
Innes Review, 58 (Spring, 2007), 35–71.
La mesa de Felipe II. Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras. La Ciudad de Dios, CCXX
(May-Aug., 2007), 417–28.
Miracoli estremi. Prodigi accrescitivi e recompositivi nell’Europa di età moderna. Paolo Cozzo. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, XLII (3, 2006),
507–32.
Una «devotione stupenda et inaudita». Fatti prodigiosi e pellegrinaggi alla
Madonna di Mondovì a Vico (1595–1596). Giancarlo Comino. Rivista di
Storia e Letteratura religiosa, XLII (3, 2006), 591–602.

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209

Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
El Monasterio de la Encarnación de Monjas Agustinas Concepcionistas de
Sevilla.Angeles González Soler, O.S.A. La Ciudad de Dios, CCXX (May–Aug.,
2007), 429–57.
Infallibilità nel canonizzare e certezza della santità nel XVII secolo. Pierluigi
Giovannucci. Studia Patavina, LIII (Sept.–Dec., 2006), 631–74.
Entre el “trampantojo” y el retablo a lo divino. Imágenes de devoción mariana
en la literatura española del siglo XVII. Rosa Margarita Cacheda Barreiro.
Anthologica Annua, 48–49 (2001–2002), 727–43.
Botsende belangen. De zielzorg in enkele norbertijnenparochies in het
Hageland gedurende de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw. Maarten F. Van
Dijck. Analecta Praemonstratensia, LXXXII (2006), 321–46.
En torno al título de una cofradía del seiscientos español: San Cayetano y las
benditas almas del Purgatorio. Cayetano Rossell i Clivillers, C.R. Regnum
Dei, LVIII (Jan.–Dec., 2002), 35–63.
“Che si riduca al modo di procedere di Castiglia”. El debate sobre el precedimiento inquisitorial portugués en tiempos de los Austrias. Ana Isabel LópezSalazar Codes. Hispania Sacra, LIX (Jan.–June, 2007), 243–68.
Una precisazione e una proposta per Antonio Pizzocaro: il perduto oratorio
della Concezione a Castelgomberto. Luca Trevisan. Il Santo, XLVII (1–2,
2007), 219–46.
Una relazione seicentesca sugli insediamenti domenicani di Spoleto. Carlo
Longo, O.P. Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, LXXVI (2006), 171–216.
La Casa Teatina di Genova e la fondazione di Sainte Anne-Le-Royale a Parigi.
Gian Ludovico Masetti Zannini. Regnum Dei, LVIII (Jan.–Dec., 2002), 17–33.
The fall of Candia and the ‘Padre Ottomano’. Facts and fiction.Thomas Freller.
Studi Veneziani, LI (2006), 319–49.
El arquitecto agustino-recoleto fray Lorenzo de San Nicolás (1593–1679). Juan
Ramón Sierra Morales. La Ciudad de Dios, CCXX (May–Aug., 2007), 459–90.
Thomas Gataker and the Use of Print in the English Godly Community. Diane
Willen. Huntington Library Quarterly, 70 (3, 2007), 343–64.
Soul’s Trial and Spirit’s Voice: Sir Henry Vane against the “Orthodox.” David
Parnham. Huntington Library Quarterly, 70 (3, 2007), 365–400.
Bodies and Interests: Toleration and the Political Imagination in the Later
Seventeenth Century. Derek Hirst. Huntington Library Quarterly, 70 (3,
2007), 401–26.
Sínodo diocesano celebrado en Segovia el año 1661 por el Obispo D. Francisco
de Zárate y Terán. Ángel García y García-Estévez. Salmanticensis, LIV (Jan.–
Apr., 2007), 123–80.

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PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Apunte sobre almerienses nativos o de adopción que fueron obispos. Juan
López Martín. Anthologica Annua, 48–49 (2001–2002), 607–76.
Los informes de visita “ad limina” del cardenal Portocarrero, arzobispo de
Toledo.Angel Fernández Collado. Anthologica Annua, 48–49 (2001–2002),
49–101.
“Legea stramos,ească”: Glaubensordnung und Garantie des sozialen Zusammenhalts. Ernst Christoph Suttner. Ostkirchliche Studien, 56 (1, 2007), 138–54.
Correspondencia entre el Cardenal Aguirre y el Rey Carlos III sobre la definición dogmática de la Inmaculada Concepción y la causa de Sor María de
Ágreda (1697–1699). Ernest Zaragoza i Pascual. Salmanticensis, LIV (Jan.–
Apr., 2007), 89–121.
Crónica desde Mallorca: Temas Ligorinos y Cayetanistas. Francisco Riera
Montserrat. Regnum Dei, LVIII (Jan.–Dec., 2002), 153–83.
Between Two Thieves:The Protestant Nobility and the War of the Camisards.W.
Gregory Monahan. French Historical Studies, 30 (Fall, 2007), 537–58.
John Ernest Grabe, Biblical Learning and Religious Controversy in Early
Eighteenth-Century England. Nicholas Keene. Journal of Ecclesiastical
History, 58 (Oct., 2007), 656–74.
“De winst van de waanzin”: de financiën in de Cellebroederskloosters van
Diest en Mechelen in de achttiende eeuw. Jeroen Der Kinderen. Revue
Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 84 (2, 2006), 365–400.
Bishop Francis Hutchinson (1660–1739): a case study in the eighteenth-century culture of improvement. Andrew Sneddon. Irish Historical Studies,
XXXV (May, 2007), 289–310.
La aplicación del Concordato de 1753 en la diócesis de Oviedo. Juan José
Tuñón Escalada. Studium Ovetense, XXXIII–XXXIV (2005–2006), 299–311.
Leopoldo Ernesto Firmian (1708–1783) e l’arcidiocesi di Salisburgo.Alessandro
Cont. Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, XXXII (2006),
71–126.
Negación de asilo a jesuitas franceses refugiados en España en el dictamen del
fiscal Campomanes en 1764. Manuel Revuelta González. Miscelánea
Comillas, 65 (Jan.–June, 2007), 101–24.
Textes concernant les prémontrés de France, 1766–1788. Xavier Lavagne
d’Ortigue. Analecta Praemonstratensia, LXXXII (2006), 5–282.
El destierro de los jesuitas de la “Provincia de Aragón” bajo el reinado de Carlos
III. Crónica inédita del P. Blas Larraz, S.I. José M. Benitez i Riera, S.I.
Anthologica Annua, 48–49 (2001–2002), 341–606.
La suppression des confréries en Hainaut par Joseph II: autopsie d’un échec
(1786–1791). Philippe Desmette. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 102
(Apr.–June, 2007), 446–79.

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211

La unión o confederación de párrocos de la diócesis de Segovia. Mariano Sanz
González. Anthologica Annua, 48–49 (2001–2002), 103–90.
Notas biográficas de un emigrado francés: Louis-Apollinaire de la Tour du Pin
Montauban, arzobispo de Auch. José Ramón Hernández Figueiredo.
Anthologica Annua, 48–49 (2001–2002), 677–702.
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Juan García y Benito, Obispo de Tuy (1798–1825), y la organización y reunión
de los libros parroquiales. Franco Díaz de Cerio, S.I. Anthologica Annua,
48–49 (2001–2002), 191–215.
Program for a New Catholic Wissenschaft: Devotional Activism and Catholic
Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Richard Schaefer. Modern Intellectual History, 4 (Nov., 2007), 433–62.
Une loi de l’Eglise et de l’Etat: Napoleon and the central administration of religious life, 1800–1815. Noah Shusterman. French History, 21 (Sept., 2007),
313–30.
The Early Ampleforth College. Peter Galliver. Recusant History, 28 (Oct., 2007),
511–28.
Heimatlose im katholischen Europa des 19. Jahrhunderts.Alvaro und Heinrich
von Liaño und ihre Beziehungen zur Bischöflichen Klerisei in den Niederlanden und zur altkatolischen Bewegung in Deutschland. Dick Schoon.
Internationale Kirchliche Zeitschrift, 97 (Apr.–June, 2007), 73–105.
El P. Joan Gallifa i Arqués, C.R. (1775–1809), joven sacerdote teatino catalán, víctima de la ocupación napoleónica y símbolo popular de la liberación de
Barcelona. Jordi Cassà i Vallès, C.R. Regnum Dei, LVIII (Jan.–Dec., 2002),
225–75.
Documentos sobre los Agustinos Recoletos en el archivo parroquial de
Maqueda (Toledo). Jesús Gómez Jara. Mayéutica, XXXII (74, 2006), 403–18.
“Lo sconquasso dei tempi trascorsi”. La Chiesa di Terra di Lavoro e le riforme
statali nell’Ottocento. Marcella Campanelli. Rivista Storica Italiana, CXIX
(Apr., 2007), 142–74.
Re-evaluating John Lingard’s History of England. Peter Phillips. Recusant
History, 28 (Oct., 2007), 529–46.
From Bavaria to Bokhara to Isle Brewers:The Extra-Ordinary Life and Times of
Dr The Revd Joseph Wolff, DD. Hugh Leach. Asian Affairs, XXXVIII (Nov.,
2007), 318–36.
Guéranger and Study, Pitra and Migne. Cuthbert Johnson, O.S.B. Ephemerides
Liturgicae, CXXI (Jan.–Mar., 2007), 7–24.
Victorian Anglican Evangelicalism:The Radical Legacy of Edward Irving. Ralph
Brown. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 58 (Oct., 2007), 675–704.

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Strijden tegen de islam? De conceptualisering van een niet-christelijke religie
en cultuur in leerboeken kerkgeschiedenis voor het katholiek godsdienstonderricht. Een vergelijkende analyse van de Belgische en Franstalige
Canadese situatie (1869–1948). Jan Van Wiele. Revue Belge de Philologie et
d’Histoire, 84 (2, 2006), 401–47.
Father Victor Braun and the Catholic Church in England and Wales, 1870–1882.
Sr. Brigid Gallagher. Recusant History, 28 (Oct., 2007), 547–74.
Forging the compact of church and state in the development of Catholic education in late nineteenth-century Scotland. Francis J. O’Hagan and Robert A.
Davis. Innes Review, 58 (Spring, 2007), 72–94.
Zwischen Geschichte und Dogmatik: Momente und Tendenzen des Studiums
und des Unterrichts im kanonischen Recht in Italien (19. bis 20. Jahrhundert). Orazio Condorelli. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 124, Kanonistische Abteilung 93 (2007), 312–33.
The Imperial Abbey at Farnborough, 1883–1920. Nicholas Paxton. Recusant
History, 28 (Oct., 2007), 575–92.
Martyrs of charity, heroes of solidarity: Catholic and republican responses to
the fire at the Bazar de la Charité, Paris, 1897. Geoffrey Cubitt. French
History, 21 (Sept., 2007), 331–52.
The Historian and the Mystic: The Revisionist Vision of Henri Bremond.
Charles J.T.Talar. Downside Review, 125 (July, 2007), 177–96.
L’Opera salesiana di San Severo (FG), 1905–1969. L’apporto decisivo della gentildonna Assunta Fraccacreta e della beneficenza dei cittadini. Francesco
Casella. Salesianum, LXIX (Apr.–June, 2007), 299–322.
Lagrange dénoncé à Pie X en 1911. Bernard Montagnes, O.P. Archivum
Fratrum Praedicatorum, LXXVI (2006), 217–39.
Dan Crawford, Thinking Black, and the Challenge of a Missionary Canon. Mark
S. Sweetnam. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 58 (Oct., 2007), 705–25.
Patriarch Tichon und die Sowjetmacht. Igor Pochoshajew. Zeitschrift der
Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 124, Kanonistische Abteilung 93
(2007), 334–71.
Die Beziehungen zwischen Staat und katholischer Kirche in Württemberg von
1919 bis 1932 nach Lage der Akten in den Vatikanischen Archiven. Ein
Beitrag zur Konkordatspolitik Eugenio Pacellis in Deutschland. Antonius
Hamers. Römische Quartalschrift, 102 (1–2, 2007), 76–140.
Die weltanschaulich bedingte Politik der Deutschen Zentrumspartei in ihrer
Weimarer Epoche. Karsten Ruppert. Historische Zeitschrift, 285 (Aug.,
2007), 49–97.
Eine Studentenzeitschrift nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg und ihre Rezeption von
Liturgischer Bewegung. Emil Ostaschinskis (1897–1971) ,,Gedanken über
das liturgische Kirchenjahr“ aus dem Jahr 1923. Hans J. Limburg, M.S.C.
Archiv für Liturgische-wissenschaft, 48 (1/2, 2006), 22–40.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

213

Le pape Pie XI et Thérèse de l’Enfant Jésus. Marie-Thérèse Desouche. Bulletin
de Littérature Ecclésiastique, CVIII (July–Sept., 2007), 359–80.
Pio XI, Mussolini e il regolamento dei balilla. Giovanni Sale, S.I. La Civiltà
Cattolica, 158, I (Jan. 20, 2007), 112–25.
The World the Students Made:Agriculture and Education at American Missions
in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1930–1960. Todd H. Leedy. History of Education
Quarterly, 47 (Nov., 2007), 447–69.
1868 en la memoria carlista de 1931: dos revoluciones anticlericales y un paralelo. Antonio Manuel Moral Roncal. Hispania Sacra, LIX (Jan.–June, 2007),
337–61.
Fondazione delle Suore della carità di Miyazaki: ruolo di don Antonio Cavoli, di
don Vicenzo Cimatti e delle prime suore (II). Mario Midali. Salesianum,
LXIX (Apr.–June, 2007), 255–98.
La repercusión del régimen constitucional en la Iglesia de Lleida durante el
trienio liberal. Antoni Sánchez i Carlelén. Hispania Sacra, LIX (Jan.–June,
2007), 323–36.
Karl Heussi, der Nationalsozialismus und das Jahr 1933. Peter Gemeinhardt.
Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 104 (Sept., 2007), 287–319.
Mons.Vigilio Federico Dalla Zuanna (1880–1956). Predicatore della Casa pontificia—Ministro Generale dei Cappuccini—Vescovo di Carpi. I. Il Ministro
Generale padre Vigilio da Valstagna e Pio XI; II. Il vescovo di Carpi durante la
Resistenza. Remo Rinaldi. Studia Patavina, LIII (Sept.–Dec., 2006), 697–726.
L’opera di p. Bonaventura Mansi, O.F.M. Conv. per s. Francesco patrono
d’Italia e per Assisi (1939–1944). Felice Autieri, O.F.M.Conv. Miscellanea
Francescana, 106–07 (I–II, 2006–2007), 187–215.
Des théologiens “officiels et mandatés” dans la France de Vichy? Étienne
Fouilloux. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 102 (Apr.–June, 2007), 481–502.
The Mutual Contributions of Church History and Systematic Theology: The
Holocaust and Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a Case Study. Keith Clements. Pacific
Historical Review, 20 (June, 2007), 162–84.
Rethinking Blasphemy: Religious Ideas in the Writings of W. K. Hancock,
Manning Clark and Russel Ward. Anne O’Brien. Australian Historical
Studies, 130 (Oct., 2007), 228–43.
Una vita dedicata alla Chiesa perseguitata: Maria Teresa Carloni. Giuliano Raffo.
La Civiltà Cattolica, 158, I (Feb. 17, 2007), 352–59.
The Middle Belt Movement and the Formation of Christian Consciousness in
Colonial Northern Nigeria. Andrew E. Barnes. Church History, 76 (Sept.,
2007), 591–610.
A Pioneer of Biblical Studies: Dom Bernard Orchard, 1910–2006. Dom Henry
Wansbrough. Downside Review, 125 (July, 2007), 157–76.

214

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Between Moscow and London: Romanian Orthodoxy and National
Communism, 1960–1965. Lucian N. Leustean. Slavonic and East European
Review, 85 (July, 2007), 491–521.
Bischof Jins Kampf für die Kirche in China. Adam Minter. Stimmen der Zeit,
225 (Oct., 2007), 651–65.
Contested Victims: Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Russian Orthodox Church,
1990–2004. Emily B. Baran. Religion, State & Society, 35 (Sept., 2007), 261–78.
American and Canadian
Le rôle et les activités des missionnaires catholiques en Acadie de 1610 à 1710.
Matteo Binasco. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 102 (Apr.–June, 2007),
428–44.
Roger Williams, American Democracy and the Baptists. Curtis W. Freeman.
Perspectives in Religious Studies, 34 (Fall, 2007), 267–86.
“A Faithful Ambassador”: The Diary of Rev. William Hutson, Pastor of the
Independent Meeting in Charleston, 1757–1761. Daniel J.Tortora, ed. South
Carolina Historical Magazine, 108 (Jan., 2007), 32–100.
From Swiss Cloister to American Frontier: The Early History of the Benedictine
Sisters of Idaho: Part I. Evangela Bossert, O.S.B. American Benedictine
Review, 58 (Sept., 2007), 249–66.
Evectio Canoniae de West de Pere ad dignitatem Abbatialem et nominatio primi
Abbatis, Bernardi Pennings, die 10a mensis Februarii A.D. MCMXXV. Bernard
Ardura. Analecta Praemonstratensia, LXXXII (2006), 347–52.
“To Praise and to Teach”: Paul Bussard and Early Liturgical Renewal. Anne M.
Klejment. American Catholic Studies, 118 (Fall, 2007), 27–53.
“The Apostle of Industrial Peace”: Brother Elzear Alfred, F.S.C., the La Salle
College Civic and Social Congress, and Catholic Labor Education in Philadelphia, 1938–1952. Francis Ryan. American Catholic Studies, 118 (Fall,
2007), 55–81.
Visions in Conflict: The Department of Religion at the University of North
Carolina, 1947–1960. David L. Weaver Zercher. North Carolina Historical
Review, LXXXIV (Oct., 2007), 390–413.
The Catholic Church in Arkansas and Desegregation, 1946–1988. Mark
Newman. Arkansas Historical Quarterly, LXVI (Autumn, 2007), 293–319.
The Catholic Church in Tennessee and Desegregation, 1954–1973. Mark
Newman. Tennessee Historical Quarterly, LXIV (Summer, 2007), 144–65.
Il Dio di Jack Kerouac. I diari di uno “strano solitario pazzo mistico cattolico.”
Antonio Spadaro, S.I. La Civiltà Cattolica, 158, I (Jan. 20, 2007), 126–39.
Catholics in America: Where We Have Been and Where We Are. Joseph A.
Varacalli. Delta Epsilon Sigma Journal, LII (Fall, 2007), 92–102.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

215

Where We Came From, Where We Are, and Where We Are Going: Asian and
Pacific Catholics in the United States. Peter C. Phan. American Catholic
Studies, 118 (Fall, 2007), 1–26.
Latin American
La evangelización franciscana del nuevo mundo y la educación. De la
“Tlacahuapahualiztli” náhualt a una pedagogía del encuentro. Fernando Gil.
Nuevo Mundo, 7 (2006), 3–26.
La legislación franciscana sobre los espacios conventuales en la Nueva España.
Guillermo Rodríguez Rico, O.F.M. Revista Mexicana de Derecho Canonico,
13 (1, 2007), 9–28.
Usos políticos del Santo Oficio portugés en el Atlántico (Brasil y África
Occidental). El período Filipino. Bruno Guilherme Feitler. Hispania Sacra,
LIX (Jan.–June, 2007), 269–91.
Demographic Patterns in the Jesuit Missions of the Río de la Plata Region:
The Case of Corpus Christi Mission, 1622–1802. Robert H. Jackson. Colonial
Latin American Historical Review, 13 (Fall, 2004), 337–66.
Missing Idolatry: Mid-Colonial Interactions between Parish Priests and Indians
in the Diocese of Arequipa. María N. Marsilli. Colonial Latin American
Historical Review, 13 (Fall, 2004), 399–421.
Ritual Time in British Plantation Colonies, 1650–1780. Nicholas M. Beasley.
Church History, 76 (Sept., 2007), 541–68.
La Búsqueda de la Mayor Gloria de Dios, en la Dinámica Argumentativa
Misionera Jesuítica. El Informe de las Misiones del Marañón del Padre
Francisco de Figueroa de 1661. Fernando Torres-Londoño. Theologica
Xaveriana, 57 (Apr.–June, 2007), 239–57.
Igreja e escravidão nas Constituções do Arcebispado da Bahia de 1707.
Fernando Torres-Londoño. Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira, 67 (July, 2006),
609–24.
Crónicas de un cura doctrinero de principios del siglo XIX. Sociedad,
población y economía en el Valle de Famatina, la Rioja, del Virreinato del Río
de la Plata.Valentina Ayrolo. Hispania Sacra, LIX (Jan.–June, 2007), 303–21.

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

Akenson, Donald Harman. Some Family: The Mormons and How Humanity
Keeps Track of Itself. (Montreal and Kingston, London, and Ithaca: McGillQueen’s University Press. 2007. Pp. xvi, 349. $29.95.)
Bergin, Liam (Ed.). According to Your Word: Proceedings of a conference held
on Saturday 4 March 2006 at the Pontifical Irish College Rome to
honour Desmond Cardinal Connell on his eightieth birthday. (Dublin:
Four Courts Press. Distributed in the United States by ISBS, Portland, Ore.
2007. Pp. 167. $55.00.)
Brophy, Don. One Hundred Great Catholic Books: From the Early Centuries
to the Present. (New York: BlueBridge, An imprint of United Tribes Media
Inc. 2007. Pp. xviii, 222. $16.00 paperback.)
Campi, Emidio, and Joseph C. McLelland (Eds.). Commentary on Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics: Peter Martyr Vermigli. [The Peter Martyr Library,
Volume Nine; Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, Volume LXXIII.]
(Kirksville, Mo.:Truman State University Press. 2006. Pp. xxxii, 438.)
Cassidy, Richard J. Four Times Peter: Portrayals of Peter in the Four Gospels
and at Philippi. [Interfaces.] (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press. 2007. Pp.
xiv, 154. $15.95 paperback.)
Chesterton, G. K. The Everlasting Man. (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
Publishers. 2007. Pp. 262. $14.95 paperback.)
Dawes, Gregory W. Introduction to the Bible. [The New Collegeville Bible
Commentary, Volume 1: Old Testament.] (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical
Press. 2007. Pp. 80. $6.95 paperback.)
Dilcher, Gerhard, and Diego Quaglioni (Eds.). Gli inizi del diritto pubblico:
L’età di Federico Barbarossa: legislazione e scienza del diritto. [Annali
dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, Jahrbuch des italienischdeutschen historischen Instituts in Trient, Contributi, 19.] (Bologna: Società
editrice il Mulino. 2006. Pp. 353. €26,00 paperback.)
Elbert, Edmund Joseph. “Is There an American Married Catholic Priesthood
on the Horizon?” (New York: Vantage Press, Inc. 2007. Pp. x, 45. $8.95
paperback.)
Empereur, James, and Eduardo Fernández. La Vida Sacra: Contemporary
Hispanic Sacramental Theology. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, Inc. 2006. Pp. viii, 336. Paperback.)
216

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

217

Fiore, Benjamin, S.J. The Pastoral Epistles: First Timothy, Second Timothy, Titus.
[Sacra Pagina Series,Vol. 12.] (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press. 2007. Pp.
xxi, 253. $39.95.)
Flynn, Eileen P. How Just is the War on Terror? A Question of Morality. (New
York and Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press. 2007. Pp. x, 121. $14.95 paperback.)
Gill, Robin. Health Care and Christian Ethics. [New Studies in Christian
Ethics.] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. xiv, 229.)
Harrington, Daniel J., S.J. The Gospel of Matthew. [Sacra Pagina Series, Vol. 1.]
(Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press. 2007. Pp. xiv, 433. $29.95 paperback.)
Harvey, John. Photography and Spirit. (Chicago and London: Reaktion Books.
Distributed by The University of Chicago Press. 2007. Pp. x, 306. $29.95
paperback.)
Heyndrikx, Marcel. Towards Another Future: On the Christian Faith and Its
Shape between Yesterday and Tomorrow. [Louvain Theological & Pastoral
Monographs, 34.] (Louvain, Belgium, and Dudley, Mass: Peeters Press, W. B.
Eerdmans. 2006. Pp. x, 358. $40.00 paperback.)
Johnston, Sarah Iles (Ed.). Ancient Religions. (Cambridge, Mass., and London:
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2007. Pp. xviii, 266. $19.95
paperback.)
Kelly, Joseph F. An Introduction to the New Testament for Catholics.
(Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press. 2006. Pp. xiv, 278. $29.95 paperback.)
Leroux, Georges. Éthique, culture religieuse, dialogue: Arguments pour un
programme. (Quebec: Éditions Fides. 2007. Pp. 119. $9.95, €9 paperback.)
Mathis, Deborah. What God Can Do: How Faith Changes Lives for the Better.
(New York:Atria/Simon and Schuster. 2007. Pp. x, 228. $14.00 paperback.)
McMahon, Christopher. Jesus Our Salvation: An Introduction to Christology.
(Winona, Minn.: Saint Mary’s Press. 2007. Pp. xx, 268. Paperback.)
Mueller, J.J., S.J., et al. Theological Foundations: Concepts and Methods for
Understanding Christian Faith. (Winona, Minn.: Saint Mary’s Press. 2007.
Pp. xii, 418. Paperback.)
O’Reilly, Kevin E. Aesthetic Perception. A Thomistic Perspective. (Dublin: Four
Courts Press. Distributed in the United States by ISBS, Portland, Ore. 2007.
Pp. 636. $55.00.)
Quinones, Sam. Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream: True Tales of Mexican
Migration. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2007. Pp. 318.)
Ray, Stephen. Apostolic Fathers: Handing on the Faith. [The Footprints of God,
Documentary DVD Series.] (San Francisco: Ignatius Press. A Division of
Guadalupe Associates, Inc. and St. Joseph Productions. 2007. $24.95 VHS
and $29.95 DVD.)

218

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

Ray, Stephen. Lost Gospels or False Gospels? The Truth About the ‘Other
Gospels’ and Early Christianity. [The Footprints of God, Documentary
DVD Series.] (San Francisco: Ignatius Press. A Division of Guadalupe
Associates, Inc. and St. Joseph Productions. 2007. $24.95 VHS and $29.95
DVD.)
Roberts, William P. Marriage: It’s a God Thing. (Cincinnati: St. Anthony
Messenger Press. 2007. Pp. xii, 163. $13.95 paperback.)
Russell, Jeffrey Burton. Paradise Mislaid: How We Lost Heaven—and How We
Can Regain It. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2007. Pp. xii, 210.
$14.95 paperback.)
Salzmann,Andrew, and Sabitha Narendran. Catholic and Loving It: Traditions
for a New Generation. (Cincinnati: Servant Books, an imprint of St.Anthony
Messenger Press. 2007. Pp. x, 178. $12.99 paperback.)
Stanlis, Peter J. Robert Frost: The Poet as Philosopher. (Wilmington, Del.: ISI
Books. 2007. Pp. xxvi, 452. $28.00.)
Twomey, D. Vincent, S.V.D., and Lewis Ayres (Eds.). The Mystery of the Holy
Trinity in the Fathers of the Church: The Proceedings of the Fourth
International Patristic Conference, Maynooth, 1999. [Irish Theological
Quarterly Monograph Series,Vol. 3.] (Dublin: Four Courts Press. Distributed
in the United States by ISBS, Portland, Ore. 2007. Pp. 199. $65.00.)
Whitacre, Rodney A. A Patristic Greek Reader. (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
Publishers. 2007. Pp. xxiv, 279. $29.95 paperback.)