Steven M.Avella
President
The American Catholic Historical Association
2010
Photograph by Caitlin Paige

The Catholic Historical
Review
VOL. XCVII

APRIL, 2011

No. 2

CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY
AMERICAN WEST:
THE NEXT FRONTIER
BY

STEVEN M.AVELLA*

The author presents a case for additional scholarship on the twentieth-century American West. He draws heavily on the methodology
of the New Western historians, especially their emphasis on
common regional identity even amidst the extensive geographical
and cultural diversity of the West. The author suggests three overarching themes (extensive federal investment, tourism, and urbanization) derived from contemporary scholarship on this period
that Catholic historians might profitably use to study the interplay
between the region and the Roman Catholic Church.
Keywords: frontier; New Western historians; regionalism; religion in
the American West
I consider the American West my home. True, I was born in
Chicago and have lived most of my adult life in the Midwest. Still, as
a youngster in the 1950s and 1960s, I called California “home,” and
that attachment to the West remains with me to this day. My family
moved west when my father found employment in the burgeoning
electronics industry on the Pacific Coast. My early recollections of
Catholic life in northern California are of foreign-born Irish priests
who “read” Mass very quickly—what I later discovered they jokingly
*Father Avella is professor of history at Marquette University, steven.avella@
marquette.edu. The author would like to acknowledge the help of William Issel, Anne
M. Butler, and Susan Silva in preparing this essay.

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CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WEST

called “the Dublin rite”—and of poorly constructed “temporary”
church structures and a surplus military chapel. My first Communion
was not in a lavishly decorated church with baroque angels and
carved statuary, but in a dingy classroom with a rude altar and rough
two-by-fours hammered together for a Communion rail. Over the
years, my poor parents contributed to the building of three separate
parish complexes in the Sacramento suburb where they lived.There
were no ethnic enclaves around the military base where my father
worked nor in the more upscale suburb to which we moved after he
obtained a civil service promotion. Rather, I grew up in a religiously
mixed neighborhood and school environment. In fact, in both locations my family was one of the few who went to church every
Sunday. Apart from those I glimpsed from an occasional trip to the
then markedly Catholic San Francisco, the stately church structures
and densely packed Catholic neighborhoods so typical of cities like
Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia were unknown to me. Ethnic
churches existed, but apart from Sacramento’s thriving Latino Our
Lady of Guadalupe, they were only a shadow of what they had once
been and nothing like the still reigning enclaves of Milwaukee,
Racine, and Kenosha I encountered in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Catholic schools were scarce in the California of my boyhood, and
we met nuns in habits only rarely. Our Church was not “militant and
triumphant” nor “confident,” but rather low-key and almost invisible
in the suburban neighborhoods where I grew up.
When I moved to the heartland of the nation, I entered into
another religious zone. Here was a rather dense and vibrant Catholic
culture, replete with majestic churches, large schools, and still-active
ethnic communities. My years of travel between these two regions
and my study of the Catholic history of both have convinced me that
Catholicism in the American West is distinct—and in some cases even
unique. The time is ripe for additional scholarship on the history of
Catholicism in the American West, especially during the twentieth
century.1
1
Historians such as Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Eldon Ernst, and Ferenc Szasz have long
insisted that American religious history should be revised along a west-to-east trajectory rather than the Turnerian east to west. See Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, “Eastward Ho!
American Religion from the Perspective of the Pacific Rim,” in Retelling U.S. Religious
History, ed. Thomas A. Tweed (Berkeley, 1997), pp. 127–48; Eldon Ernst, “American
Religious History from a Pacific Coast Perspective,” in Religion and Society in the
American West: Historical Essays, ed. Carl Guarneri and David Alvarez (Lanham, MD,
1987), pp. 3–39.

BY STEVEN M. AVELLA

221

The old NCWC canard (“Nothing Counts West of Chicago”) is not
true when speaking of existing Catholic scholarship of the West.2
Particularly exceptional and substantive are works dealing with
Catholic interaction with native peoples and the development of
2
Catholic historiography has not ignored the American West. Students of Catholic
University of America professors Peter Guilday and Richard J. Purcell have turned out
an impressive array of doctoral dissertations on Catholic life along the frontier.
Thomas W. Spalding cites these in “Frontier Catholicism,” The Catholic Historical
Review, 77 (1991), 470–84, here 473n15. Anne M. Butler has undertaken some of the
most creative and well-received work on American women religious in her “Pioneer
Sisters in a Catholic Melting Pot: Juggling Identity in the Pacific Northwest,”
American Catholic Studies, 114, no. 1 (2003), 21–39, and “There Are Exceptions to
Every Rule: Adjusting the Boundaries—Catholic Sisters and the American West,”
American Catholic Studies, 116, no. 3 (2005), 1–22. An interesting perspective on
the Sisters of Mercy is Anne Elizabeth Hartfield’s “‘Sisters of Mercy, Mothers to the
Afflicted’: Female-Created Space in San Francisco 1854 through the Turn of the
Century” (PhD diss., Claremont Graduate University, 2003). For communities of men,
see John B. McGloin, Jesuits by the Golden Gate (San Francisco, 1972), and Gerald
McKevitt, Brokers of Culture: Italian Jesuits in the American West, 1848–1919 (Palo
Alto, CA, 2007). Ronald E. Isetti, F.S.C., has written a solid account of the Brothers of
Christian Schools, Called to the Pacific (Moraga, CA, 1979). Episcopal biographies and
diocesan histories, although often neglecting to incorporate the Church into a wider
sociocultural context, provide a substantial amount of information about nineteenthcentury developments. Good episcopal biographies of California prelates include
John B. McGloin’s life of Joseph Sadoc Alemany, California’s First Archbishop (New
York, 1966), and John T. Dwyer’s life of Eugene O’Connell, Condemned to the Mines
(New York, 1976). The most famous account of a western prelate is Paul Horgan’s
Lamy of Santa Fe (New York, 1975). For California diocesan histories, see Francis J.
Weber, Century of Fulfillment: The Roman Catholic Church in Southern
California, 1840–1947 (Mission Hills, CA, 1990); Jeffrey Burns, ed., Catholic San
Francisco: Sesquicentennial Essays (Menlo Park, CA, 2006); Henry L.Walsh, Hallowed
Were the Gold Dust Trails (Santa Clara, CA, 1949). For South Dakota, see Robert F.
Karolevitz, With Faith, Hope and Tenacity: The First One Hundred Years of the
Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls, 1889–1989 (Mission Hill, SD, 1989); for North
Dakota, Terence Kardong, O.S.B., Beyond the Red River: The Diocese of Fargo,
1889–1989 (Fargo, ND, 1988). For Nebraska and the Great Plains, see Henry W.
Casper, S.J., History of the Catholic Church in Nebraska, 3 vols. (Milwaukee,
1960–66). In 1966 the Diocese of Tucson, Arizona, produced Salpointe (Tucson,
1966), a reprinting of John Baptist Salpointe’s account of Catholic beginnings in
Arizona, and Shepherds in the Desert (Tucson, 1966), a collection of essays about the
spread and organizational development of Catholic life in the Vicariate Apostolic of
Arizona. For the Pacific Northwest, see Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., A History of the
Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest (Washington, DC, 1987), and Kevin A.
Codd, “A Favored Portion of the Vineyard: A Study of the American College
Missionaries on the North Pacific Coast” (PhD diss., Catholic University of Louvain,
2007). For Oregon, consult Patricia Brandt and Lilian A. Pereya, Adapting in Eden:
Oregon’s Catholic Minority, 1838–1936 (Pullman, WA, 2002). For Montana, see
Cornelia M. Flaherty, Go with Haste into the Mountains (Helena, MT, 1984).

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CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WEST

Latino Catholicism.3 But much study remains to be done on two critical areas. The first is the period of Catholicism’s greatest expansion
in the West, the twentieth century. The second is the need for more
systematic study of the interplay between Catholicism and the region.
The Twentieth Century
For historians of the American West, the twentieth century is the
period when the region was truly transformed. Federal investment in
the American West was without a doubt the single most important
factor contributing to the West’s development. Even before the turn
of the century, a cascade of federal bounty had begun to transform the
region, which could then only be considered a colony of the more
3
For Catholic efforts among western Indians, see Christopher Vecsey, The Path of
Kateri’s Kin (Notre Dame, 1997). See also Vecsey’s introduction in The Crossing of Two
Roads: Being Catholic and Native in the United States, ed. Marie Therese Archambault,
Mark G.Thiel, and Christopher Vecsey (Maryknoll, NY, 2003), pp. xix–xxviii.The Spanish
missions and presence of evangelizers with military expeditions are the rightful
claimants to the earliest phase of Catholic history in the American West. Scholars of the
borderlands are deeply indebted to the pioneering work of Herbert Eugene Bolton, his
students, and more recently David J.Weber, who have all acknowledged and contextualized the role of Catholicism in the wider narrative of Spanish colonies.This era has an
abundance of excellent Catholic histories, which run the familiar gamut of filiopietism
to revisionist critiques of missionaries and the Church. See Herbert Eugene Bolton, The
Spanish Borderlands: A Chronicle of Old Florida and the Southwest (Charleston, SC,
2010); David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest
under Mexico (Albuquerque, 1982); Weber, “Failure of a Frontier Institution: The
Secular Church in the Borderlands under Independent Mexico, 1821–1846,” Western
Historical Quarterly, 12 (1981), 125–43. Zephyrin Englehardt, a German Franciscan
living in California, wrote many works on the missions, including the four-volume classic The Missions and Missionaries of California (1908–29). Maynard J. Geiger,
Englehardt’s successor, also wrote a number of mission histories. One of the most
famous was The Life and Times of Fray Junipero Serra, O.F.M. (Washington, DC, 1959).
Geiger played an important role in Serra’s beatification.The rescripting of mission history—especially in the wake of the work of Sherburn Cook and others—has provoked
quite heated argument at times. For a concise summary of the state of mission historiography, see James J. Rawls, “The California Mission as Symbol and Myth,” California
History, 71, no. 3 (1992), 342–61. Recent historical research has given us a richer and
more balanced view of these evangelical outposts, best represented by James A.
Sandos’s Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions (New
Haven, 2004)—a promising indicator of what can happen when the best of U.S.
Catholic history and the most creative studies of American Indians merge. See also
Steven W. Hackel, Children of Coyote, Missionaries of San Francisco: Indian-Spanish
Relations in Colonial California, 1769–1850 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2005), and Kent G.
Lightfoot, Indians, Missionaries and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial Encounters
on the California Frontiers (Berkeley, 2005).

BY STEVEN M. AVELLA

223

developed areas of the East and Middle West.This investment accelerated during the New Deal era, which began an even more robust
phase of regional transformation.
World War II became another major catalyst for significant western
growth. Millions of defense dollars went into the West’s military bases
and wartime industries. A significant portion of this money went to
California, but evidence of this spending is found in the military installations of Nevada, Arizona, Texas, North Dakota, Kansas, Utah,
Wyoming, and elsewhere.4 The onset of the cold war poured even
more money into the region. Military installations—many of them Air
Force bases—and centers for atomic technology opened all across the
West.5 Defense industries like Motorola, Boeing, Lockheed, and
Morton Thiokol brought jobs to Phoenix, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Salt
Lake City. Federal subsidies for the construction of the interstate road
system transformed the West in the twentieth century as had the
transcontinental railroad in the nineteenth century, substantially
assisting its touristic appeal.Air conditioning, at first found only in theaters, soon made its way into office buildings and then homes—
making the torrid cities of Phoenix,Tucson, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas
livable in the summer.
Significant demographic change resulted not only from an influx of
people from other parts of the United States but also the millions
from Central and South America, especially Mexico, as well as from
the Philippines, Korea, and Vietnam. The immigration epic may have
psychologically ended in the East and Midwest during the 1920s, but
in the American West—particularly the Southwest and the Pacific
Coast—it had only just begun. With these massive population shifts
came a corresponding growth for the Catholic Church in the West
(and the South), while slowing or reversing in the East and Midwest.
Indeed, until the recent economic downturn some areas of the
American West had recorded some of the fastest population growth in
America. Clark County in Nevada (home of Las Vegas) and Maricopa
4
See Gerald D. Nash, The Federal Landscape:An Economic History of the Twentieth
Century West (Tucson, 1999); Nash, The American West in the Twentieth Century: A
Short History of an Urban Oasis (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1973); Nash, The American
West Transformed: The Impact of the Second World War (Bloomington, IN, 1985);
Roger Lotchin, Fortress California, 1910–1961: From Warfare to Welfare (New York,
1992). See also Richard Lowitt, The New Deal and the West (Bloomington, IN, 1984).
5
The Cold War American West, 1945–1989, ed. Kevin J. Fernlund (Albuquerque,
1998); Bruce Hevly and John M. Findlay, The Atomic West (Seattle, 1998).

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CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WEST

County in Arizona (home of Phoenix) were among the most rapidly
expanding communities in the United States.With such growth often
came the need for more parishes, schools, and increased development
of Catholic social ministries. Catholic schools everywhere faced
enrollment shortages, but not in states like Arizona and California,
where student populations burgeoned.
There is already a substantial bibliography of Catholic history that
encompasses a number of twentieth-century individuals, issues, and
themes.6 But a new line of inquiry may be able to embed the Catholic
Church more firmly into the history of the twentieth-century West.
What did coming to the West do to the Catholic Church? Where is the
6
Episcopal biography of twentieth-century prelates has been a rich source of information. See James Gaffey’s Citizen of No Mean City: Archbishop Patrick Riordan of
San Francisco, 1841–1919 (West Greenwich, RI, 1976); Richard Gribble, C.S.C., An
Archbishop for the People: The Life of Edward J. Hanna (New York, 2006); Francis J.
Weber, His Eminence of Los Angeles, 2 vols. (Mission Hills, CA, 1997); Saul E. Bronder,
Social Justice and Church Authority: The Public Life of Archbishop Robert E. Lucey
(Philadelphia, 1982). Two priests who served in the West and later became bishops—
Edwin V. O’Hara (founder of Catholic Rural Life and a leader in advancing the
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) and Francis Clement Kelley (founder of the
Catholic Church Extension Society)—significantly influenced the twentieth century.
See Timothy M. Dolan, “Some Seed Fell on Good Ground”: The Life of Edwin V. O’Hara
(Washington, DC, 1992), and James Gaffey, Francis Clement Kelley and the American
Catholic Dream, 2 vols. (Bensenville, IL, 1980). Father Peter Yorke—the fiery San
Francisco priest active as an Irish nationalist, journalist, and friend of organized labor—
is the subject of Joseph Brusher, S.J., Consecrated Thunderbolt: Father Yorke of San
Francisco (Hawthorne, NJ, 1973). William Issel explores lay Catholic activism in San
Francisco in For Both Cross and Flag: Catholic Action, Anti-Catholicism and National
Security Politics in World War II San Francisco (Philadelphia, 2010); see also Issel and
Mary Anne Wold,“Catholics and the Campaign for Racial Justice in San Francisco from
Pearl Harbor to Proposition 14,” American Catholic Studies, 119, no. 3 (2008), 21–44.
Historians, particularly of Latino/Latina life, have produced a number of books and articles exploring the realities of the largest Catholic demographic in the modern American
West. See Roberto R. Treviño, The Church in the Barrio: Mexican-American EthnoCatholicism in Houston (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006); Treviño, “Facing Jim Crow: Catholic
Sisters and the ‘Mexican Problem’ in Texas,” Western Historical Quarterly, 34 (2003),
139–64; Mario T. Garcia, Catolicos: Resistance and Affirmation in Chicano Catholic
History (Austin, 2008); Timothy M. Matovina, Guadalupe and Her Faithful: Latino
Catholics in San Antonio from Colonial Origins to the Present (Baltimore, 2005);
Matovina,“Sacred Place and Collective Memory: San Fernando Cathedral, San Antonio,
Texas,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 15, no. 1 (1997), 33–50; Gina Marie Pitti,“‘To Hear about
God in Spanish’: Ethnicity, Church and Community Activism in the San Francisco
Archdiocese’s Mexican American Colonias, 1942–1965” (PhD diss., Stanford University,
2003). African American Catholicism in Arizona is given a first-rate treatment by Vernon
Meyer, “This Far by Faith: The History of Black Catholics in Phoenix, Arizona,
1868–2003” (PhD diss., University of Dayton, 2004).

BY STEVEN M. AVELLA

225

West, and what are its distinctive regional realities? How did
Catholicism adapt to the various “subregions” of the American West—
for example, the Great Plains, the Pacific Northwest, and the Great
Basin?
Where and What Is the American West?
There appears to be confusion even among those who study and
teach the subject about where exactly the West begins.7 Admittedly,
firm regional boundaries are often difficult to ascertain. I have chosen
to adapt the following definition:
The American West is that contiguous section of the continent west of the
Missouri River acquired by the United States, beginning with the Louisiana
Purchase of 1803; continuing through the acquisition of Texas, the Oregon
Territory, and the Mexican Cession in the 1840s; and ending with the 1854
Gadsden Purchase of lands between the Gila River and the present Mexican
boundary.8

To this, I add the noncontiguous states of Alaska and Hawaii, joined to
the Union in 1959, but long attached to the United States by extractive industries as well as social and commercial ties.
Just as important as defining, even loosely, the boundaries of the
American West is understanding what the West means to Americans.
For many, it is the ever-shifting frontier encompassed in Frederick
Jackson Turner’s famous 1893 thesis,“The existence of an area of free
land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward” and, at the same time, a dynamic that shaped and
defined American life; it was the crucible of American civilization—a
locus for the flourishing of democratic values, a cornucopia of abundance, a safety valve for building national tensions, an artificer of
American values of independence and creativity, and a source of
national exceptionalism.9
7
Walter Nugent,“Where Is the American West? Report on a Survey,” Montana: The
Magazine of Western History, 42 (1992), 2–23. Nugent has documented the waves of
people who have come and inhabited various areas of the West, significantly changing
its character and identity from one generation to the next. See also Nugent, Into the
West: The Story of Its People (New York, 1999).
8
Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the
American West (Norman, OK, 1991), p. 4.
9
Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,”
The Frontier in American History (1893, repr. Charleston, SC, 2008), 13–42, here p. 13.

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CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WEST

Since the 1980s, the writings of the now not-so-new Western historians have redefined the study of the American West, insisting the
West is a discrete region whose boundaries, like the South and New
England, can be defined.10 They, like Turner and his followers, are
keen to study the processes that influenced the people who moved
into these lands—but they also assert that it has been a program of
conquest and adjustment to conquest rather than a process of democratization unfolding in empty land. Characteristic of historians trained
in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, they pay attention to those whom
Turner and his disciples seem to ignore: women, African Americans,
Asians, and Latinos.Today most sophisticated western historians argue
that the twin approaches of place and process are not totally adequate. Rather, today they “tend to speak more of ‘Wests,’‘frontiers,’ and
‘borderlands’ in the plural and to give national [or state] boundaries
less of a role in defining them.”11
Scholarly interest represents only part of America’s love affair with
the West. Perhaps just as important is the allure of the mythic West.
This region, more than any other, has been enshrined in the American
psyche as the very soul of the nation. Popular culture has been the
source of this “West of the imagination.” Dime novels, Buffalo Bill’s
western shows, and the writings of western novelists from Zane Grey
to Louis L’Amour have done more to project the image of the
American West than scholars have. From its origins in print and stage
shows, the “western” found even wider reception with the advent of
radio, movies, and television.These popular outlets usually portrayed
a positive (and at times caricatured) image of the American West,
using dramatic western scenery as the setting for morality tales that
pitted good against evil, the virtuous against the sinful.The conflation
of this region with America itself became a staple of international per10
There are a number of “canonical” texts for New Western historians.The following
is a sampling of the most important: Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest:
The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York, 1987); Limerick, Something in
the Soil: Legacies and Reckoning in the New West (New York, 2001); Limerick,“What
on Earth Is the New Western History,” in Trails: Toward a New Western History, ed.
Patricia Nelson Limerick, Clyde A. Milner II, and Charles E. Rankin (Lawrence, KS, 1991),
pp. 81–88; Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”; Under an
Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Western Past, ed. William Cronon, George Miles, and
Jay Gitlin (New York, 1992).
11
“Report to the Western History Association Council,” Next Fifty Years Committee,
Elliott West et al., September 17, 2010, p. 2, http://www.westernhistoryassociation
.org/wp-content/uploads/50-Year-Report1.pdf. See also Many Wests: Race, Culture, &
Regional Identity, ed. David M.Wrobel and Michael C. Steiner (Lawrence, KS, 1997).

BY STEVEN M. AVELLA

227

ceptions of America as audiences worldwide began to consume
American westerns; European writers and movie producers created
their own westerns (for example, Karl May’s popular cowboy and
Indian novels in Germany, Sergio Leone’s “spaghetti” westerns in
Italy); and journalists and cartoonists depicted aggressive American
politicians as cowboys. In the past twenty years, western history has
become one of the more vibrant subfields in American historical
study, encouraged by the Western History Association that was
founded in 1960. But what has often been absent from both the scholarly and popular renditions of the West (or marginalized at best) were
the activities of religious people and institutions.12
Religion and the American West
Turner did not say much about religion on the frontier, but some
religious historians did.13 From the days of Peter Guilday to a relatively
recent book of documents on Catholicism and the frontier, historians
have explored the advance of the Catholic Church along the ever-shifting lines of settlement.14 Although careful to avoid the exceptionalist
ethos of Turneriansm, Notre Dame’s Thomas T. McAvoy noted how the
distinctive environment of developing areas left an imprint on Catholic
life and identity.15 In a 1990 public address as the Catholic Daughters of
the Americas chair at The Catholic University of America, Thomas W.
Spalding, C.F.X., of Spalding University used the frontier as his vantage
point for an enhanced understanding of Catholicism in America.16
Spalding examined the history of the idea, its critics, and its incarnation
in various Catholic histories written to date. He delineated a set of fron12
See Anne M. Butler, “Selling the Popular Myth,” in The Oxford History of the
American West, ed. Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A. O’Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss (New
York, 1994), pp. 771–801.
13
John B. Boles,“Turner, the Frontier, and the Study of Religion in America,” Journal
of the Early Republic, 13 (1993), 205–16. See also Peter G. Mode, The Frontier Spirit in
American Christianity (New York, 1923); William Warren Sweet, Religion on the
American Frontier, 1783–1840, 4 vols. (New York, 1931–46); Gilbert J. Garraghan,
Chapters in Frontier History (Milwaukee, 1934).
14
Anne M. Butler, Michael E. Engh, S.J., and Thomas W. Spalding, C.F.X, eds., The
Frontiers and Catholic Identities (New York, 1999). See also Anne M. Butler, “The
Invisible Flock: Catholicism and the American West,” in Catholicism in the American
West: A Rosary of Hidden Voices, ed. Roberto R. Treviño and Richard V. Francaviglia
(College Station,TX, 2007), pp. 14–41.
15
McAvoy noted the distinct character of frontier Catholicism in Indiana in The
Catholic Church in Indiana, 1789–1831 (New York, 1940), pp. 19–20.
16
Spalding,“Frontier Catholicism,” pp. 470–84.

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CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WEST

tier characteristics derived from Turner: democracy, individualism,
activism, confidence, optimism, simplicity, patriotism, and plasticity
(adaptability). These he believed could be examined within their
Catholic context to help American Catholics better understand how the
Church adapted to its distinct American environment.17 He also perceived a clear historical continuity between the Catholic core on the
East Coast and the unfolding periphery on the frontier—a continuity
assured by the chain migration of settlers from the East to the West.
The New Western historians’ emphasis on regionalism, conquest,
and the broad breadth of historical actors in the West reflects the
broad mainstream of scholarship today.18 Approached with a critical
eye, these themes offer a helpful point of departure for historians of
Catholicism. In turn, they can also fill in gaps in the New Western historiography, which has also been criticized for its neglect of religious
forces.
The late Ferenc Morton Szasz of the University of New Mexico had
been one of the most vocal critics of his sometimes too-secular western history colleagues. He even suggested they might be afraid to
pursue this particular aspect of the western experience because a
religious template realigns all the traditional categories used to understand
the western past: ethnic, political, economic, social, the traditional westward expansion, and the new triad of race-class-gender. The religious history of the modern American West introduces a new cast of characters and
often forges its own boundaries.19
17
Another historian who has used the frontier dynamic to explain Catholic development on the trans-Appalachian frontier is John R. Dichtl, Frontiers of Faith: Bringing
Catholicism to the West in the Early Republic (Lexington, KY, 2008). Dichtl insists the
frontier experience had a palpable effect on the condition of Catholic life in much the
same manner as Spalding had asserted earlier:“The open wilderness of Kentucky and
other peripheral areas to which Catholics migrated in the first years of nationhood fostered enthusiasm and optimism, as well as a more assertive and outward orientation”
(p. 4). However, he qualifies his argument by maintaining the frontier was a place of
contested space where “kinetic interactions” between Catholics and non-Catholics, and
between laity and clergy, were defining features of Catholic life.
18
In his introduction to the documents in The Frontiers and Catholic Identities,
Michael E. Engh gently alludes to the differences among the book’s three editors,
“which reflect in microcosm the present diversity among historians of the American
West” (p. xxi). Butler surely represents the most recent approach to western history;
Spalding, the Turnerian viewpoint; and Engh, the middle ground.
19
Ferenc Morton Szasz, Religion in the Modern American West (Tucson, 2002), p.
xii. Szasz also makes this same point in the earlier seminal article “The Clergy and the
Myth of the American West,” Church History, 59 (1990), 497–506.

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229

Western historians need to take religion seriously as “a central component of the human experience, the historical locus of both personal and social vision.”20
By the same token, religious historians’ work is often too narrowly
sectarian and not related to the wider western context. Their work
would benefit from greater attention to regional variables beginning
with the diversity of the western landscape. Szasz and coauthor
Margaret Connell Szasz wrote:
The key to understanding religion in the West . . . was the land.The vastness
of this immense territory, with its many ecological subregions, provided a
multitude of homes for native belief systems, as well as for diverse faiths
brought by European, African, and Asian immigrants. [In these zones] a
variety of religious subcultures flourished.21

The call to situate religion within its regional context and its various
“ecological subregions”is just as daunting as Spalding’s putative project
for the frontier. But, given Spalding’s gifts as a scholar, there is no doubt
he could have adequately integrated the strengths of the regional focus
with the processes of frontier development he so lucidly discussed in
his 1990 address. It would have become his new frontier.
The Regional Approach to Catholic History
Regionalism has sometimes been dismissed by some as a casualty
of mass production, mass consumption, and mass culture—not to
mention globalization. Nonetheless, it appears to have enjoyed a
revival in recent years. Historians rediscovered local history in the
1970s, and it has flourished with local festivals, state history councils,
tourism marketing, and the advent of popular presses like Arcadia
Publishing.Virtually every state and region has its own historical association and journal. Although regionalism has some powerful critics
20
Szasz, Religion in the Modern American West. See also D. Michael Quinn, who
argues that a “full history of religion in the West” be written in his thoughtful essay,
“Religion in the American West,” in Under an Open Sky, ed. Cronon, Miles, and Gitlin,
pp. 145–66, here p. 146. Historians who have responded to this point include Michael
E. Engh, Frontier Faiths: Church, Temple and Synagogue in Los Angeles, 1846–1885
(Albuquerque, 1992);Todd M. Kerstetter, God’s Country, Uncle Sam’s Land: Faith and
Conflict in the American West (Urbana, IL, 2008); and Steven M. Avella, Sacramento
and the Catholic Church: Shaping a Capital City (Reno, 2008).
21
Ferenc M. Szasz and Margaret Connell Szasz,“Religion and Spirituality,” in Oxford
History, ed. Milner, O’Connor, and Sandweiss, pp. 359–60.

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CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WEST

and skeptics, it seems that with proper caveats and qualifications, it
still appeals to scholars.22
Yet it is not always easy—even for a professional scholar—to identify where a region begins and ends. Those who wrestle with this
question readily admit that regional constructs often exist only in
people’s minds and do not correspond to precise legal (that is, fixed
boundary) definitions or geographical markers like mountain chains,
rivers, or climate conditions. Likewise, regional realities evolve and
change over time.
Despite the complexity, regional historians have demonstrated the
existence of identifiable areas marked by geographic place and are
making progress in defining their characteristics in a meaningful way.
Historians Edward L. Ayers and Peter Onuf provide one of the most
sophisticated descriptions of regionalism, simultaneously acknowledging
the difficulties of assigning boundaries and generic characteristics while
at the same time validating their existence. Regions, they argue, are not
areas filled with a certain cultural ether [but are] places where discrete,
though related structures intersect and interact in particular patterns.The
region is climate and land; it is a particular set of relationships between
various ethnic groups; it is a relation to the federal government and economy; it is a set of shared cultural values.23

Some religious historians have embraced regionalism as a “valuable
organizing principle” even as they caution about its limitations and
the ambivalence that sometimes attends efforts to nail the jelly of
regional identity to the wall of religious practice, architecture, or identity.24 Religious demographers, sociologists, and geographers have
also attempted to create religious zones for the United States. Their
lines are drawn not on the basis of ecology or land use, but rather of
22
In July 2010 the American Historical Association issued a call for Regions and
Regionalisms in the Modern World, a new series of publications, and observed,“Regions
and the concomitant phenomenon of regionalisms are increasingly receiving attention
as the object of historical study.” The directors of this project note the global dimensions of regionalism and “promise to mediate between the local and national on the one
hand, and global dimensions on the other.” See “Call for Proposals,” AHA Today, July 19,
2010, http://blog.historians.org/publications/1090/Call-for-Proposals-Regions-andRegionalisms (accessed August 16, 2010).
23
Edward L. Ayers and Peter S. Onuf, introduction to All over the Map: Rethinking
American Regions, ed. Edward L. Ayers et al. (Baltimore, 1996), pp. 1–10, here p. 5,
emphasis in original.
24
Bret E. Carroll, “Reflections on Regionalism and U.S. Religious History,” Church
History, 71 (2002), 120–31.

BY STEVEN M. AVELLA

231

population density and culture.25 Wilbur Zelinsky, in a memorable
1961 article in the Annals of the Association of American
Geographers, devised a religious map of the United States consisting
of seven distinct “religious regions” and five “subregions,” based on statistics derived from the National Council of Churches in 1952.26
Edwin Scott Gaustad published his Historical Atlas of Religion in
America (New York, 1962), the first of many such mapping projects.27
Zelinsky’s and Gaustad’s works were among a number of contributions to the cultural regions of the United States.28
One of the most recent projects exploring the topic, the multivolume Religion by Region produced by the Leonard Greenburg Center
of Trinity College and edited by Mark Silk and a cadre of writers, examines how “religion shapes and, is being shaped by regional culture in
America.”29 These seven volumes contain an array of demographic
and historical information that is reflected in his mapping and interpretation of religious America. Silk’s map is “largely conventional,”
dividing the nation’s regions into familiar configurations of New
England, the Middle Atlantic, the South, the Midwest, the Mountain
West, the Pacific, and the Pacific Northwest, augmented by a new
zone called Southern Crossroads.30
25

Mark Silk and Andrew Walsh note this in One Nation Divisible: How Regional
Religious Differences Shape American Politics (Lanham, MD, 2008), p. 2.
26
Wilbur Zelinsky, “An Approach to the Religious Geography of the United States:
Patterns of Church Membership in 1952,” Annals of the Association of American
Geographers, 51 (1961), 139–93.
27
Edwin Scott Gaustad, Historical Atlas of Religion in America (New York, 1962).
Revisions of this atlas have been made in 1976 and 2000. See also Gaustad and Philip
A. Barlow, A New Historical Atlas of Religion in America (New York, 2000);William M.
Newman and Peter L. Halvorson, Atlas of American Religion: The Denominational
Era, 1776–1990 (Walnut Creek, CA, 2000); Bret E. Carroll, The Routledge Historical
Atlas of Religion in America, Routledge Atlases of American History (New York, 2001).
Two back-to-back review essays offering interesting observations and cautions about
religious mapping are Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp’s “If It’s South Dakota You Must Be
Episcopalian: Lies,Truth-Telling, and the Mapping of U.S. Religion,” Church History, 71
(2002), 132–42, and David F. Ley’s “Mapping the Metaphysical, Plotting the Pious:
Assessing Four New Atlases of Religion,” Church History, 71 (2002), 143–51.
28
Editor Christopher Kaufmann devoted two issues of the U.S. Catholic Historian to
the theme “Religious Geography:The Significance of Regions and the Power of Places”:
vol. 18, nos. 3 and 4 (2000).
29
Mark Silk, preface to Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest: The None
Zone (Walnut Creek, CA, 2004), pp. 5–8, here p. 5.
30
The Southern Crossroads is “what American historians know as the Old
Southwest, comprising Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri.” Silk and
Walsh, One Nation Divisible, p. 1.

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CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WEST

Catholic Interaction with Regional Realities
Three interlocking, but not exhaustive, subject areas provide “valuable organizing principles” for better understanding Catholicism’s
interaction with larger developments in the twentieth-century
American West.31
The Federal West. Throughout the twentieth century but especially
through the period stretching from the New Deal through the cold
war, the American West was significantly transformed by heavy federal spending. Infrastructure, especially water projects and roads,
benefited from this, but a large amount was devoted to national
defense. How did the huge investments made by the federal government in virtually every area of the American West affect western
Catholicism? What impact did it have on Catholic growth and development and even parish life?
The Touristic West. Tourism was and continues to be a distinctive
feature of the American West. It has likewise spawned an enormous
industry that is also a major economic engine for some areas of the
West. How have Catholics interacted with the culture of tourism? In
what ways have they accommodated or resisted it?
The Urbanizing West. Cities are the primary matrix of Catholic life
and development in the United States. In this regard, western
Catholicism is truly distinct, although not unique. However, western
cities often have a different historical and social trajectory than the
traditional urban centers where Catholicism flourished. How have
these regional difference influenced the development of Catholicism
in western cities?
The Federal West
The most obvious result of the heavy federal investment in the
American West was population growth. Many Catholics, especially
after World War II, took jobs in the expanding defense or service
industries of the region—all of which led to the proliferation of dioceses, parishes, and other Catholic institutions. The number of
31
The author wishes to thank David M. Wrobel (University of Nevada–Las Vegas),
Patricia Nelson Limerick (University of Colorado–Boulder), and Anne M. Butler (former
editor of the Western History Quarterly and emerita of the University of Utah) for
their help in formulating these three themes.

BY STEVEN M. AVELLA

233

Catholic dioceses and archdioceses surged from thirty-nine in 1950
(including one apostolic vicariate in Alaska) to sixty-six by the year
2000.Table 1, compiled by aggregating the populations of the dioceses in the western states between 1950 and 2000, shows the percentage of Catholic growth in this period.32
In all, the general population in these states grew by nearly 170
percent between 1950 and 2000.The Catholic population grew even
faster, increasing by 276 percent of the population of the West.
The single largest expansion of dioceses has taken place in Texas
and California. In 1950 Texas had seven dioceses with nearly 1 million
Catholics. Today, there are fifteen with 4.7 million Catholics. In
California there were five dioceses with slightly more than 2 million
Catholics.Today, there are twelve with more than 10 million Catholics.
The Archdiocese of Los Angeles of 2011 has 5 million Catholics—the
largest single diocesan concentration of Catholics in the United
States. During this time, the conferral of the cardinal’s hat on James
Francis Aloysius McIntyre, the archbishop of Los Angeles, in 1953 symbolized the heightened prestige and prominence of the West. In 2007,
the honor was given to Daniel Nicholas DiNardo, the archbishop of
Galveston-Houston.
Two western cities—Phoenix and Colorado Springs—which grew
substantially in the postwar period and became major centers of
Catholic life provide helpful case studies of the relationship between
heavy federal investment and Catholic growth.Before World War II,both
were relatively small communities—Phoenix was a regional trading
center and distribution point for the small towns, ranches, farms, and
mines in the area; Colorado Springs was a tourist center with a mining
past dominated by the imposing Pikes Peak. World War II brought airfields and other military installations to both communities, dramatically
changing their economic culture.These continued and even expanded
during the cold war. In 1954 President Dwight Eisenhower selected
Colorado Springs as the site of the new Air Force Academy and other
military centers developed as well, including the headquarters for the
North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Phoenix,
meanwhile, attracted a host of defense industries—all with lucrative
32
These are admittedly rough statistics.The statistical reporting is not always precise
nor accurate (e.g., some dioceses report the same number for two years in a row).
Likewise, these statistics are for the preceding year, and the actual numbers may have
increased slightly in the year listed.

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CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WEST

TABLE 1. Catholic Growth in Western States, 1950–2000

Western
States

Catholic
Catholic
Percent
Percent of
Percent of Change,
Catholic
Total
Catholic
Total
Catholic
Population, Population, Population, Population, Population,
1950
1950
2000
2000
1950–2000

Alaska
Arizona
California
Colorado
Hawaii
Idaho
Kansas
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Mexico
North Dakota
Oklahoma
Oregon
South Dakota
Texas
Utah
Washington
Wyoming

10,833
115,000
2,032,617
189,696
190,000
27,701
194,697
65,000
221,741
23,100
245,606
130,639
74,037
107,017
117,654
998,468
23,392
227,101
48,263

8.42
15.34
19.20
14.32
38.02
4.71
10.22
11.00
16.73
14.43
36.06
21.08
3.32
7.03
18.02
12.95
3.40
9.55
16.61

54,188
740,649
9,335,283
553,840
236,688
126,650
395,771
124,296
364,733
458,441
330,483
176,893
149,181
334,074
158,732
4,637,689
103,825
657,378
49,000

8.64
14.44
27.56
12.88
19.54
9.79
14.72
13.78
21.31
22.94
18.17
27.54
4.32
9.76
21.03
22.24
4.65
11.15
9.92

400.21
544.04
359.27
191.96
24.57
357.20
103.28
91.22
64.49
1884.59
34.56
35.41
101.50
212.17
34.91
364.48
343.85
189.47
1.53

TOTAL Western
Dioceses
5,042,562

14.56

18,987,794

20.35

276.55

Sources: Official Catholic Directory (New York, 1950; New Providence, NJ, 2000). U.S.
Population by State, 1790 to 2009 (http://www.infoplease.com).

government contracts—including manufacturing giants like Chicagobased Motorola, General Electric, and Sperry Rand.33
Catholic growth went in tandem with these huge infusions of federal dollars and personnel. Maricopa County, the metropolitan area of
Phoenix, added thirty-one new parishes between 1940 and 1969. A
33
Bradford Luckingham, Phoenix: The History of a Southwestern Metropolis
(Tucson, 1989), pp. 136–76; The Urban Southwest: A Profile History of Albuquerque,
El Paso, Phoenix, Tucson (El Paso,TX, 1982), pp. 79–84. Maria E. Montoya describes the
rapid growth of Colorado Springs during the cold war era in “Landscapes of the Cold
War West,” in The Cold War, ed. Fernlund, pp. 17–18. See also Carl Abbott, Stephen J.
Leonard, and Thomas J. Noel, Colorado: A History of the Centennial State, 4th ed.
(Boulder, 2005), for tourism, pp. 224–25, 230–32; for military, pp. 316–17.

BY STEVEN M. AVELLA

235

handful of Catholic parishes existed in Colorado Springs—including a
high school and Catholic hospital—but like Maricopa County,
Colorado’s El Paso County soon experienced a boomlet of parochial
growth.As both areas grew, each developed its own separate identity
from the parent See. Colorado Springs Catholics considered Denver a
foreign capital, interested only in their money. Likewise, Phoenix was
anxious to shake-off the hand of distant Tucson. Phoenix became a
diocese in December 1969, and Pope Paul VI appointed Edward A.
McCarthy, an auxiliary bishop of Cincinnati, as its first bishop.34
Consisting of four Arizona counties that occupied the northwestern
portion of the state, the new diocese encompassed older Catholic
areas such as Flagstaff (previously under the jurisdiction of the
Diocese of Gallup) and tourist areas like Lake Havasu on the Colorado
River; but the largest concentration of Catholics and parishes lay in
Phoenix’s metropolitan area.What had begun as a sleepy state capital
with one or two parishes expanded rapidly after World War II, thanks
in large measure to heavy federal investment in military, defense, and
infrastructure as well as the state’s Sunbelt allure.
In the early 1970s Denver Archbishop James V. Casey studied
Colorado’s existing diocesan boundaries with an eye to creating several smaller dioceses in the Fort Collins-Greeley area north of Denver,
the Western Slope-Grand Junction area, and a third headquartered at
Colorado Springs. All three sites were tied to what seemed to be thriving local economies that promised people and revenue sufficient to
support new dioceses. However, plans for Grand Junction fell through
when the oil shale business along the western slope collapsed, and
Fort Collins also hit economic difficulties. This left only Colorado
Springs, which, thanks to federal expenditures there, proved the most
viable. After a brief period of tutelage as a vicariate, the Diocese of
Colorado Springs was created by Pope John Paul II in November
1983.The new See consisted of ten counties from Denver and Pueblo
that encompassed twenty-six parishes, schools, a hospital, and other
forms of social provision. Richard Hanifen, the Denver auxiliary
bishop, became its first bishop.35
34
Steven M. Avella, Encountering the Living Christ: A History of the Diocese of
Phoenix (Strasbourg, 2008).
35
Steven M.Avella, I Lift My Eyes to the Mountains: A Brief History of the Diocese
of Colorado Springs (Strasbourg, 2008); Thomas J. Noel, Colorado Catholicism
(Boulder, 1990); Author interview with Bishop Richard Hanifen, Colorado Springs, CO,
August 2007. Hanifen was most helpful in explaining the ideas of Archbishop Casey and
his own efforts in Colorado Springs prior to the establishment of the diocese.

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CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WEST

The dynamics of parish growth in areas of heavy federal investment (either military or infrastructure) also created an interesting
set of dynamics for parish life. Research in the Sacramento area—
which in many ways was a microcosm of developments throughout
the federal West—illustrates this point.36 Sacramento was a virtual
prototype of the federal West—with extensive water control projects; three major military posts; and a large defense-industry
employer, the aerospace giant Aerojet General. The land near these
pivot points of federal investment exploded with an influx of new
inhabitants, and Catholic parishes in Sacramento followed the population growth. Catholics who migrated to these areas from “back
east” found themselves in the unaccustomed role of parish
founders—coping with an array of temporary buildings and continuous fund-raisers sometimes for many years. This was a distinct
change from their eastern or midwestern experience, where they
lived in well-established and often well-appointed churches with
large schools, rectories, and convents attached. Parish histories written on the twenty-fifth or fiftieth anniversaries of these western
parishes often waxed nostalgic about their beginnings in dance
halls (with the stale smell of alcohol that had to be cleaned up
before Sunday Mass), movie theaters, or warehouses. “Pioneers”
remembered door-to-door visits to take the parish census and beg
for pledges to build parish structures.
The regular retelling of the various mixers, dances, and other
social events in the early years of the parish suggested the importance of these community-building exercises to California suburbanites who were often far from extended families and networks of
friendship “back east.” These bonds may also have been a source of
stability in the midst of the frequent fluctuations in parish membership that took place in these federal zones. The regular transfers of
military personnel and the booms and busts of federal spending on
defense projects often moved people with great regularity. Likewise,
since the finances of parish life were tied to the vagaries of the
defense budget, government contracts, and the whims of local developers, plans to build permanent facilities were often delayed for
many years. Further studies of these “federal suburbs” may reveal
more about the lived experience of Catholics in the twentieth-century
American West.

36

See Avella, Sacramento and the Catholic Church, pp. 187–214.

BY STEVEN M. AVELLA

237

The Touristic West
Tourism—even today a major “industry” of the American West—has
become the object of a lively historiography since the publication of
Earl Pomeroy’s In Search of the Golden West (New York, 1957).37 The
late Hal K. Rothman contributed substantially to this growing literature and underscored the importance of tourism to the West’s economic and cultural life even as he criticized its cumulative impact.38
Regardless of the aesthetical and ethical implications, all agree
tourism has contributed to the region’s economic stability and distinctiveness. Catholics have had to contend with, contest, and even
actively participate in western touristic culture. The most obvious
intersection is through heritage tourism, or “the marketing of historic
and scenic sites,” which dominated the western tourist industry
during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.39 Here the
legacy of the Spanish missions that ran from Texas through New
Mexico, Arizona, and most famously California are the most notable
heritage sites that blend religious faith and touristic interest.
Reviving the missions in Texas had been a priority of Catholics
since the nineteenth century when they retrieved the missions from
the Republic of Texas and under various priests began to rebuild
them. As American bishops began to exercise authority over Catholic
life in Texas, mission properties were reacquired in 1841, and efforts
made to restore the missions of San Antonio as functioning parishes
(see figure 1). In 1855 French-born Father Francis Bochu began his
work of rebuilding the missions of San Juan and Espada near San
Antonio. Until his death Bochu worked tirelessly, reconstructing the
missions and helping to cultivate a historical—and touristic—appreciation of these “ancient” structures.40
37
Earl Pomeroy, In Search of the Golden West: The Tourist in Western America, 2nd
ed. (Lincoln, NE, 2010).
38
Hal K. Rothman, Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth Century West
(Lawrence, KS, 1998). Some historians take issue with Rothman’s negative assessment of tourism. See Seeing and Being Seen: Tourism in the American West, ed.
David M. Wrobel and Patrick Long (Lawrence, KS, 2001), for the varieties of scholarship on this topic.
39
Hal K. Rothman, “Selling the Meaning of Place: Entrepreneurship, Tourism, and
Community Transformation in the Twentieth Century American West,”Pacific Historical
Review, 65 (1996), 525–57.
40
The classic work on the history of Catholic Texas is Carlos E. Castaneda, Our
Catholic Heritage in Texas, 7 vols. (Austin, 1936–58).

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CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WEST

FIGURE 1. Notable Churches of the West

Mission Concepción, San Antonio.
Photograph courtesy of the
National Park Service.

St. James Cathedral, Seattle.
Copyright © St. James Cathedral,
Seattle. Reproduced by
permission.

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels,
Los Angeles, December 2007.
Photograph by Adam Sofen.
Reproduced by permission of the
photographer.

Cathedral of the Madeleine, Salt
Lake City. Used by permission, Utah
State Historical Society, all rights
reserved.

BY STEVEN M. AVELLA

239

A larger effort toward mission-restoration occurred in the twentieth
century, when the Diocese of San Antonio made common cause with
local preservationists, state historical interests, and the National Park
Service to “transform the San Antonio missions into tourist attractions.”41 Local historical groups like the Daughters of the Republic of
Texas took the lead in raising funds for mission restorations and in
generating public support for their preservation as a means of highlighting the appeal of San Antonio to tourists. Church leaders supported these endeavors—even to the point of recruiting brown-robed
Franciscans to minister in the missions—a finishing touch in creating
an imagined authenticity. San Antonio’s appreciation of the touristic
appeal of the missions worked hand in hand with Catholic interests,
especially during the episcopate of Archbishop Robert Emmet Lucey
(1941–70) when Lucey,“for the glory of God . . . but also for the pleasure of tourists . . . embarked on nearly three decades of sustained
preservation and restoration efforts at the San Antonio missions.”42 The
archbishop bought up land adjacent to mission sites and poured archdiocesan money into shoring up old buildings, tending to their authenticity, landscaping, and enlisting the support of Ethel Wilson Harris, a
state park manager at Mission San José and mission purist, who insisted
the missions be reconstructed and operated with as much fidelity to
their historic origins as possible. Lucey’s interest in the renovation of
the Texas missions stemmed in part from the fact that he was a
Californian. Living in California, the home of the most popular of the
mission chains, Lucey had seen firsthand the spiritual significance and
local economic benefits derived from mission restoration.
The chain of missions in California—stretching from San Diego to
Sonoma—is as integral a part of the California landscape as the
Golden Gate Bridge. The images associated with the missions have
been used to advertise the state, adorn fruit boxes, and even launch
an important building style that still graces many California cities.43
Mission images ubiquitously have promoted California: “The mission
ruins, a crumbling arch, particularly combined with a modern back41
Thomas S. Bremer, Blessed with Tourists: The Borderlands of Religion and
Tourism in San Antonio (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004), p. 69. Bremer, like Rothman, regards
the touristic impact on the missions as largely a negative development.
42
Bremer, Blessed with Tourists, p. 86.
43
Mission and old California images are contained in K. D. Kurtz and Gary F. Kurtz’s
beautiful book of California poster art, California Calls You: The Art of Promoting the
Golden State 1870–1940 (Sausalito, CA, 2000), pp. 28, 37, 29, 54, 135, 142, 144, 149,
160, 161.

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CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WEST

drop, suggested California’s rich past and promising future.”44
Romanticized views of the missions had sprung to life in the wake of
the popular success of Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona in 1884. This
tragic tale set in old California—and memorialized in an oft-performed play—evokes powerful images of a land long lost, of sun and
citrus and romance, and of friendly padres chiming mission bells.
Jackson’s novel set in motion a wave of nostalgia for California’s
“ancient” past and provided a ready template for a state looking for an
image and identity to market itself—with eager railroad companies
anxious to propagate it.45
Missions had deteriorated in California by the late-nineteenth century, but under the impact of Ramona and other forces a renewed
interest in reclaiming and literally rebuilding these remnants of
California’s past began. The Franciscans had revived Mission Santa
Barbara and Mission San Luis Rey while secular priests had recovered
San Gabriel and San Luis Rey.Tessia Kelso, the head of the Los Angeles
Public Library, launched an early fund-raising effort in 1896 to restore
these treasures of California’s past. Later, journalist and editor Charles
Fletcher Lummis—a Yankee-born, Harvard-educated outdoorsman
who developed a lifelong infatuation with the Southwest and far
West—took her place. A gifted and colorful writer, he accepted the
editorship of a local booster publication, Land of Sunshine, and in
1895 formed the Landmarks Association, building on Kelso’s first
efforts.With the publicity Lummis’s romantic prose provided and the
funds raised by the Landmarks Association, Lummis and his followers
set about to restore the missions of San Diego, San Juan Capistrano,
San Fernando, and the assistencia of Pala attached to San Luis Rey.
“Lummis issued a clarion call to preserve the missions not only as
examples of superb architecture and buildings of true historical
worth, but as magnets capable of drawing tourists to the southland.”46
Lummis also pressed plans for the restoration of El Camino Real, arguing for its extension from San Diego north, “Every hotel man, every
livery stable, every railroad, every street car line, every enterprise and
every individual that plans to harvest a tourist dollar has a stake in the
44

K. D. Kurtz and Gary F. Kurtz, California Calls You, p. 159.
For an interesting summary of the revival of the missions and its role in the shaping of California’s identity, see Glen Gendzel, “Pioneers and Padres: Competing
Mythologies in Northern and Southern California, 1850–1930,” Western Historical
Quarterly, 32 (2001), 55–79.
46
Edwin R. Bingham, Charles F. Lummis, Editor of the Southwest (Westport, CT,
1955), p. 104.
45

BY STEVEN M. AVELLA

241

movement.”47 Missions became and continue to be prime tourist
attractions, including San Juan Capistrano, which is located near
Disneyland and welcomes more than 500,000 visitors annually.
A perhaps more creative adaptation of Catholics to the realities of
regional tourism occurred in Nevada.With the collapse of the mining
industry and limited land available for agriculture, Nevada turned to
tourism and special services to provide a stream of revenue. One economic engine was the state’s sanctioning of “quickie” divorces and
marriages—with the city of Reno gaining a reputation for the most
lenient and expeditious divorce proceedings anywhere. Literally thousands of people—from movie stars to laborers—arrived and rapidly
shed unwanted spouses. Marriage chapels flourished, and individuals
could be formally divorced in the morning and wed anew by the afternoon.48 However, if the seeming moral squalor of the divorce industry
truly offended Catholics, the resulting boom in hotels, legal fees, and
hospitality-related businesses muted any serious efforts to change the
laws or even to penalize Catholics who actively participated in it,
including some of the lawyers and judges and perhaps even wedding
chapel proprietors. Eventually other states loosened their divorce and
marriage laws, thereby decreasing the need to “go to Reno” except to
gamble.
Although games of chance were not considered as sinful as divorce,
the casinos of Nevada with their exotic dancers,racy comedy shows,and
generally free-wheeling atmosphere presented a peril to the morals and
chastity of Catholics. Gambling had come and gone in Nevada, but when
the Great Depression hit Nevada, the state legislature permanently legalized it on March 19, 1931, the very day the Holy See formally erected the
new Diocese of Reno.49 The greatest beneficiary of legalized gambling
came to be the heretofore sleepy town of Las Vegas,which boomed after
the war. In 1941, on the outskirts of Las Vegas,Thomas Hull opened the
El Rancho, a new type of resort, casino, and entertainment center that
would make Las Vegas an adult entertainment playground. Other fabulous hotels, resorts, and clubs opened after the war, especially during the
1950s, creating the famous Las Vegas strip.50
47

Charles F. Lummis,“The Camino Real,” Out West, 20, no. 1 (1904), 82–83.
James W. Hulse, The Silver State: Nevada’s Heritage Reinterpreted, 2nd ed. (Reno,
1998), pp. 199–200.
49
Hulse, Silver State, pp. 261–64, provides the early history of gambling in Nevada.
50Eugene P. Moehring, Resort City in the Sunbelt: Las Vegas, 1930–2000 (Reno,
2000), pp. 73–106.
48

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CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WEST

Catholic growth in Las Vegas was slow with only a single parish
serving the city from 1908 until 1940. After the war, the number of
parishes needed to meet the expanding Catholic population grew
rapidly. Bishop Thomas Gorman made note of the rising appeal of Las
Vegas in a 1951 letter to the Chicago-based Catholic Church
Extension Society, pleading for a new church:
Since the church will be beside the main highway from Los Angeles to Salt
Lake, thousands of tourists will yearly pass its doors. So many thousands,
even millions of tourists and soldiers have passed through this region during
the past twenty years. . . .Who has not tried his luck on the wheels and tables
of this resort? Who has not read of the atomic bomb blasts in this area?51

Gambling’s deleterious effects—addiction, poverty, and the avoidance
of “honest” labor—were no doubt a daily experience for Las Vegas
parishes who frequently helped impoverished gamblers with gas
money or food. Still, as Gorman noted, the local Church and the larger
economy were built on this so-called vice. In another telling 1951
letter to Catholic Senator Patrick McCarran (D–NV), approving the
solon’s efforts to stop a potentially devastating tax on “our gambling
activities in Nevada,” Gorman acknowledged and acceded to the economic realities of the tourist culture: “I think we all realize to what
extent we are presently dependent upon the activities attendant upon
the gambling industry of our state.”52
Reno’s second bishop, the scholarly Robert Dwyer, took a dim view
of the culture of vice in Nevada, but could not ignore the growing
needs of the Church in Las Vegas, which expanded by leaps and
bounds due to the entertainment industry. The rapid growth of Las
Vegas required additional parishes, and the need to capture some of
the revenue from devout gamblers and tourists led to a remarkable
pact between the Church and the Las Vegas strip. At the behest of Joe
Bock, the food and beverage manager of the Stardust and Desert Inn,
Viatorian Father Richard Crowley began offering a 4:30 am Sunday
Mass in the lounge of the Royal Hotel for entertainers and staff. Later
these masses moved over to the showroom of the Stardust. With the
encouragement of local casino owners like Moe Dalitz of the Desert
Inn and others, Crowley mobilized support for a church on the strip;
51
Thomas Gorman to Richard R. St. John, November 1951, “Correspondence-Reno1951,” Records of the Catholic Church Extension Society, Loyola University Archives,
Chicago.
52
Thomas Gorman to Patrick McCarran, October 2, 1951, Diocese of Reno Archives,
Chancery Office, Reno, NV.

BY STEVEN M. AVELLA

243

when Dalitz donated land, Bishop Dwyer gave permission for the erection of the Chapel of the Holy Guardian Angels. Crowley’s grand plans
for the site included a church with a large prayer tower and a religious
articles shop—in short, a tourist trap for visiting Catholics who may
have wanted to donate a portion of their casino winnings to the
church. Crowley’s plans never materialized, and another Viatorian
priest, who built a more modest church designed by Los Angeles architect Paul Anderson in 1963, replaced him.This church, decorated with
mosaic angels created by émigré artist Edith Piczek, eventually became
the cathedral of the newly created Diocese of Las Vegas in 1995.53
The Urbanizing West
Dynamic forces unique to the region created western cities: the
instant cities of the mineral rushes, the communities springing up in
the wake of railroad lines, and the federally-seeded districts near
defense plants and military installations. The effects of World War II,
rapid regional growth, and the changing global economy produced a
network of western cities “created by petroleum, global war, air-conditioning, and the Social Security Act of 1935.”54 Similar to other
American cities, Catholic participation in western urban life followed
the traditional patterns of monumental buildings, health care provision, education, and charity. Catholics were often a minority in
Western cities—even in the growth years of the twentieth century. As
a result, Catholics contributed to urban life in much quieter and more
subtle ways than their eastern co-religionists and often sought to
assure their place in the city by an explicit association with wider
urban development goals.55
53
Steven M. Avella, “That All May Be One”: A Celebration of the History of the
Church in Northern Nevada (Strasbourg, 2001), pp. 24–25. Douglas Firth Anderson
also mentions the building of the strip church in “Toward an Established Mysticism:
Judeo-Christian Tradition in Post-War California and Nevada,” in Religion and Public
Life in the Pacific Region, Fluid Identities, ed. Wade Clark Roof and Mark Silk (Walnut
Creek, CA, 2005), pp. 57–88, here pp. 80–81.
54
Carl Abbott, How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in
Western North America (Albuquerque, 2008), p. 165.
55
Urban studies that highlight the interplay of religion and urban life can still take
inspiration from Kathleen Neils Conzen’s brief 1996 essay, “The Place of Religion in
Urban and Community Studies.” In this piece, she argues for a re-examination of the
agency of religious bodies in urban history. Religious institutions, she insists, were “particular agent[s]” who sought “to influence the urban order directly through its investments, services, political power, and control of space.” See Kathleen Neils Conzen,“The
Place of Religion in Urban and Community Studies,” Religion and American Culture, 6
(1996), 108–14.

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CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WEST

The Catholic presence in many western cities was often small.
Communities like Sacramento, Phoenix, Reno, and Cheyenne were for
many years served by one Catholic parish (with mission stations).
Catholic institutions, like hospitals and schools, relied on the benefactions of Protestants or nonbelievers to be built and sustained.
These enterprises were from the outset seen as urban rather than sectarian institutions. For example, “despite intense anti-Catholic sentiment in Oregon and Washington, Protestants helped to support the
Sisters of Providence and the Holy Names schools as well as the
Providence Sisters’ hospitals, orphanage and home for the mentally
weak.”56 The network of Catholic health care institutions that spread
across the West often represented the first or the most advanced hospitals and clinics, ministering to those arriving from harsher climates
to recover their health. In Phoenix, the refuge of those with the white
plague, the Sisters of Mercy opened St. Joseph Hospital in 1895, still
one of that city’s major health care providers. In the same year the
Sisters of Mercy opened Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Sacramento,
known colloquially as “Sisters’ Hospital” and frequented by
Sacramento residents of all faiths. The placement of Catholic health
care centers and orphanages followed the employment patterns of
the region: near lumber and mining camps, where accidents maimed
and killed many workers. Catholic hospitals took care of injured railway workers in grain-belt cities and even in the Mormon capital. In
Las Vegas, a Catholic hospital opened in 1947 that soon developed a
well-regarded oncology ward to care for cancer patients—many of
whom lived near the nuclear testing grounds in the Nevada desert.57
Catholic institutions cared for the orphans and half-orphans left by
natural disasters and work-related deaths occurring in the many
extractive industrial areas of the West.
Cathedral-building in western cities also seemed to be deliberately
calculated to fit wider urban needs and architectural styles. Western
cities, often founded in the wake of mineral rushes or other fast-growing (and collapsing) western industries, frequently worked hard to
overcome their reputations as centers of disorder, violence, and lowbrow culture. Many made strenuous efforts to enhance a city’s appeal
with the construction of opera houses, art museums, theaters, and
56
Patricia Killen to author, “Thoughts on Catholicism in the Pacific Northwest,”
November 28, 2010.
57
For a substantial account of the role of Catholic sisters in health care in selected
cities of the West, see Barbra Mann Wall, Unlikely Entrepreneurs: Catholic Sisters and
the Hospital Marketpace, 1865–1925 (Columbus, OH, 2005).

BY STEVEN M. AVELLA

245

other accouterments of “civilization.” In like manner, Catholics in
diocesan centers often built their cathedral churches with one eye on
their spiritual needs and another on creating “worthy ornaments” for
the emerging city skyline that could serve as counterparts to handsome civic or state buildings.
In Salt Lake City, the placement and erection of the cathedral took
into account the dominance of the Mormon Church and the centrality of the Mormon Temple within the city’s grid. Bishop Lawrence
Scanlan, who conscientiously sought accommodation with the LatterDay Saints, wanted a location sufficiently distant from the Mormon
headquarters, yet close enough to be a rallying point for Utah’s growing Catholic population. St. Mary Magdalene Cathedral, built on a
small hill in the Mormon capital, advanced slowly from 1899 to 1907
as funds became available. Historian Bernice Maher Mooney acknowledges the civic purpose of the elaborate structure:“Positioned in the
midst of the Mormon metropolis, the Cathedral would reconcile
Catholicism to the community and to the West.”58 Later renamed the
more elegant “Cathedral of the Madeleine,” it was lavishly adorned by
Utah’s second bishop, Vincentian Joseph Sarsfield Glass, who tapped
into the southern California Doheny oil fortune to make the church
one of the architectural gems of the Great Basin (see figure 1).
In the Pacific Northwest, Bishop Edward O’Dea became bishop of
Nesqually,Washington, in 1896—by that time a backwater to the more
prosperous port city and rail hub of Seattle. He pressed Rome to
approve the transfer of diocesan headquarters to Seattle because of
that city’s “predominant influence in the political, social and economic affairs of the state” (and also to battle anti-Catholicism).59 To
prepare for the move, O’Dea purchased a city block on Seattle’s First
Hill and approved a design for a Renaissance-style cathedral with twin
towers spiking 175 feet into the sky (see figure 1).When it was dedicated on December 22, 1907, O’Dea had the added pleasure of
announcing the formal transfer of the diocese to Seattle from
Nesqually. O’Dea had been very much aware of the desire of local
boosters and developers of Seattle to make the city into the pre-eminent metropolis of the Pacific Northwest. In his brief notes about the
58
Bernice Maher Mooney, The Story of the Cathedral of the Madeleine (Salt Lake
City, 1981), p. 16.
59
David Buerge, “Amidst a Cloud of Witnesses,” in House of God and Gate of
Heaven: Seattle’s St. James Cathedral, ed. Jackie O’Ryan (Strasbourg, 2000), pp.
87–104, here p. 90.

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CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WEST

history of the cathedral, Rector Michael Ryan linked the building of St.
James and its location with this larger civic purpose, observing that St.
James
also quietly validated the claim of Seattle’s first pioneers had made for
their fledgling settlement that day in 1851 when they had beached their
boats on a promontory west of Seattle and christened it, in the local language of the natives, “New York Alki” (New York by and by).60

Other cathedrals marked off sacred space near architecturally elegant government buildings. Bishop Patrick Manogue of Sacramento
moved his diocesan See from the mining town of Grass Valley to the
state capital in 1886 and even before Rome approved the transfer
secretly bought up land one block north of California’s imposing capitol. On this turf, he erected the French Renaissance Cathedral of the
Blessed Sacrament—a counterpoint to the Greco-Roman style of the
capitol. In a similar vein, the Cathedral of St. Mary in Cheyenne,
Wyoming, raises its modest spires a few blocks from the capital building and amidst other state offices built to accentuate the permanence
and majesty of the people’s government. The sheer architectural
beauty and social utility of these structures is evident to all who visit
them.They are all part of the urban landscape and—in a bow to one
of the West’s great industries—are often touted as tourist attractions
for their size, interior artwork, and architectural elegance.
A “galloping Manhattanization of urban cores along with radical
decentralization” has characterized modern urban life in the West.61
Large buildings—often of architectural merit—dominate these contemporary western cityscapes. Almost like islands unto themselves,
they create self-contained space (with large, ample parking decks)
and secure and attractive gathering places.
The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, which
opened in 2000, reflects this architectural ethos (see figure 1). Here,
the earlier tradition of locating elaborate and even architecturally
distinctive cathedrals in places of prominence continued. After the
Northridge earthquake of 1994 seriously damaged St. Vibiana
Cathedral, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles laid plans to build
the new cathedral, selecting a 5.6-acre site that was once a parking
60
Michael G. Ryan,“Domus Dei Porta Coeli,” in House of God, ed. O’Ryan, pp. 9–11,
here p. 9.
61
Abbott, How Cities Won the West, p. 166.

BY STEVEN M. AVELLA

247

garage on the “old Bunker Hill” in Los Angeles and was near some of
the city’s largest new buildings. Uppermost in Mahony’s vision was,
of course, a fitting temple for the worship of God and the gathering
of the Catholic community. But he also insisted that the new structure was not “being built [just] for the Catholic community—this is
being built for the whole community.The cathedral is a cathedral of
the people. . . . The cathedral creates a common ground, a common
place.” Michael Collins, an official of the Los Angeles Convention and
Visitors Bureau, echoed Mahony’s assertion,“It is intended as a community edifice, in the larger sense, to celebrate something of universal value.”62 To this end, Mahony took note of the distinctive features
of southern California’s natural and built environment—especially
the sunlight, the mission-church motif, and the automobile culture of
the southland—to literally shape the giant Cathedral of Our Lady of
the Angels. Designed by Spanish architect José Rafael Moneo, the
huge structure sits on five urban acres and features large alabaster
windows to let in and filter the California sunlight. Cathedrals were
often built near rivers, the main transportation networks of days
gone by. Mahony planted his near the roaring Hollywood Freeway—
a major transportation artery of today’s Golden State. Underneath the
site, there is ample parking. A 2.4-acre, sun-drenched plaza—an adaptation of the old mission plaza—welcomes churchgoers and provides
space for them to linger after Mass. In its lower levels are burial
niches—occupied first by Mahony’s parents and later actor Gregory
Peck—a nod to the tourist appeal of the cemeteries of the stars in
the Los Angeles area.The $200 million-plus building earned its share
of detractors and controversy, but its significance to the revival of
downtown Los Angeles and its conscious attempt to blend the realities of its southern California location reflect the extent to which
unique western urban realities have dictated the shape and scope of
the Catholic presence.63
San Francisco—a larger, more cosmopolitan, and more Catholic
city, especially in matters of public policy—also illustrates the intersection of Catholic aspirations and western urban culture. Catholic
62
Dana Bartholomew, “Cardinal Says New Cathedral to Link Secular, Sacred L.A.,”
Daily News of Los Angeles,August 11, 2002, N1.
63
For additional information on the building of the Los Angeles cathedral, consult
Francis J. Weber, Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (Mission Hills, CA, 2004). See
also Jack Miles,“Our Lady of the Freeways,” Commonweal, February 28, 2003, 13–17;
and Willard F. Jabusch, “California’s New Cathedrals,” Commonweal, May 21, 2010,
11–12.

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CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WEST

leaders and organizers maintained rather high-profile roles in the
shaping of San Francisco’s political culture from 1900 to 1940 and
beyond. Catholic leaders like Father Peter Yorke and Archbishop
Edward J. Hanna, working off the vision of Catholic social teaching,
created a business-labor partnership that ended a long period of bitterness between management and labor in the city.64 Few American
cities demonstrated such an overt alliance between Catholic thought
and urban political culture.65
Catholic Action, a hearty staple of Catholic life in the Midwest and
East, played a distinct role in San Francisco in the 1930s through the
work of Sylvester Andriano, an Italian attorney. Working with Hanna’s
successor, Archbishop John Joseph Mitty, Andriano laid out an effective and highly mobilized plan of Catholic Action that brought Catholic
influence to bear on the city’s politics and on some of its policies.
Indeed, the successes of Catholic Action enterprises ultimately evoked
a counter campaign by San Francisco’s communists and anarchists
who accused Catholic Actionists of having fascist sympathies.66 The
false charges of having fascist sympathies may have stymied Andriano,
but his activities with Mitty mobilized Catholic voters and inspired the
public policy efforts of men like mayors Angelo Rossi and Joseph
Alioto, as well as labor leaders like John Shelley and Jack Henning, who
played important roles both locally and nationally. Whether through
the informal cooperation with local commercial movers and shakers
or through organized political activity, a visible and often admired
Catholic presence emerged in western cities.
Conclusion
The New Western historians, despite their secularist bias, point the
way to a new regional history that takes into account the diversity of
64

For a life of Edward A. Hanna, see Gribble, Archbishop.
William Issel,“Business Power and Political Culture in San Francisco, 1900–1940,”
Journal of Urban History, 16 (1989), 52–77. See also Issel’s “New Deal and Wartime
Origins of San Francisco’s Postwar Political Culture: The Case of Growth Politics and
Policy,” in The Way We Really Were:The Golden State in the Second Great War, ed. Roger
Lotchin (Urbana, IL, 2000), pp. 68–92; and Issel’s “‘The Catholic Internationale’: Mayor
Joseph L. Alioto’s Urban Liberalism and San Francisco Catholicism,” U.S. Catholic
Historian, 22, no. 2 (2004), 99–120.
66
William Issel, “Faith-Based Activism in American Cities: The Case of the San
Francisco Catholic Action Cadre,” Journal of Church and State, 50 (2008), 519–40. See
also Issel’s For Both Cross and Flag: Catholic Action, Anti-Catholicism, and National
Security Politics in World War II San Francisco (Philadelphia, 2010).
65

BY STEVEN M. AVELLA

249

the area, the distinct conditions of local development and geography,
and the larger overarching themes that transcend localities and shed
light on a wider regional culture. These insights can be helpful to
Catholics historians who can begin to write the Catholic Church into
the narrative of the American West. Echoing in my ears is “The Search
for Unity,” the 1978 American Catholic Historical Association presidential address of my graduate mentor, Philip Gleason. It was a typical
masterwork of Gleason’s keen mind and a view of the intellectual
power of the neo-Scholastic philosophy, which undergirded Catholic
life and thought in the twentieth century. Although it is unlikely that
St. Thomas and his interpreters said anything about the American
West, that call for synthesis and integration was uppermost in my
mind as I struggled to establish overarching themes for a region as
variegated as the American West.
Amidst all of its glorious diversity, there is a regional West that is a
real place, not only frontier, and an important backdrop for the wider
American Catholic narrative. Although related in part by earlier generations of historians, this region is ready to surrender new perspectives to those willing to incorporate the best new scholarship on the
American West. Even in Boston, John Winthrop’s city on a hill, the
errand into the wilderness was to advance the frontier where there
was land, prosperity, and abundance. Indeed, Katharine Lee Bates’s
“America the Beautiful,” written in the shadow of Pikes Peak, spoke of
the Pilgrims’ feet “whose stern impassioned stress” took them inexorably westward. Catholics, too, crossed the Great Plains, surmounted
the rugged mountains, and plodded across the arid deserts. They
established their churches, schools, and hospitals everywhere and—
inspired by the words of Jesus, “Go ye therefore and teach all
nations”—created new chapters for the old Catholic story.

CONVENTS AND CHANGE: AUTONOMY,
MARGINALIZATION, AND RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION
IN LATE-MEDIEVAL BOLOGNA
BY

SHERRI FRANKS JOHNSON*

The histories of two Bolognese monastic houses, Santa Maria del
Monte della Guardia and Santa Caterina, reveal the complex relationships between some religious women’s communities and
monastic orders. They began as communities in small, regional
congregations; became Augustinian in the mid-thirteenth century
due to papal intervention; and were Dominican by the fifteenth
century. Amid these changes, both communities attempted to retain
elements of their early status and practices rather than accepting
integration into larger orders. Whereas much scholarly attention
rightly has been paid to convents that strove for incorporation into
the religious orders, examinations of communities with more fluid
affiliations can complement these studies and provide a fuller picture of medieval religious women’s lives.
Keywords: Bologna; cura monialium; Dominican nuns; monastic
orders; religious women
A historical problem in the study of religious women in the high
and late Middle Ages is the nature of their relationship to religious
orders. As large, centralized monastic orders began to develop in the
twelfth century, the place of women in these orders and the role of
monks and friars in providing the care of nuns (cura monialium)
became a subject of debate. Modern scholars have scrutinized the
records of general chapters, personal letters, bulls and decrees, petitions to legates and popes, and other sources for clues that can indicate the degree of integration of religious women into religious orders.
*Dr. Johnson is an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of
California, Riverside, sherrij@ucr.edu. The Center for Ideas and Society (CIS) of UC
Riverside supported her research. The author wishes to thank the members of her residential fellowship group at CIS, the members of the California Medieval History
Seminar, and especially Marie Kelleher and Maureen Miller for their comments.

250

BY SHERRI FRANKS JOHNSON

251

Historians of religious movements and institutions such as Herbert
Grundmann and Micheline de Fontette have posed this relationship as
a problematic one, contrasting an increase in the number of women
who desired to engage in the religious life with religious men’s reluctance to commit to providing care for nuns, resulting in nuns remaining on the margins of religious orders.1 These and other scholars
focus on the gradual expulsion of women from the Premonstratensian
Order in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries;2 the tenuousness of
nuns’ place in the emerging Cistercian Order;3 and the periodic rejection of the duty to care for nuns on the part of several orders, including the mendicant orders established by Ss. Dominic and Francis of
Assisi, in the thirteenth century.4 Summarizing trends in literature on
the status of nuns, one scholar has noted recently that “the leitmotif
for religious women within orders in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is as succinct as it is familiar: decline.”5
Whereas studies of the negotiations between religious women and
male authorities in religious orders elucidate an important dynamic
affecting many convents, a focus on the problems of religious women
in securing the cura monialium from monks and friars emphasizes
religious men’s ability to determine the identity and status of nuns
rather than the nuns’ own ideas about their place in religious life. It is
difficult to know the percentage of women’s monastic houses that
identified so strongly with a religious order that they pressed for
incorporation.There were houses that followed the practices of large
1
Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN,
1995). See especially pp. 75–137; Micheline de Fontette, Les religieuses à l’âge classique du droit canon (Paris, 1967).
2
Penny Schine Gold, The Lady and the Virgin (Chicago, 1985), pp. 86–115.
3
The status of nuns in the Cistercian order has been a subject of great debate, with
some considering most houses of Cistercian women “imitators” of Cistercian customs.
See Louis Julius Lekai, The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality (Kent, OH, 1977), pp. 347–63;
and Sally Thompson, “The Problem of Cistercian Nuns in the Twelfth and Early
Thirteenth Centuries,” in Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford, 1978), pp. 227–52.
For a less restricted view of women’s participation in the Cistercian order, see Brigitte
Degler-Spengler, “The Incorporation of Cistercian Nuns into the Order in the Twelfth
and Thirteenth Century,” in Medieval Religious Women, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian
Thomas Shank, [Hidden Springs: Cistercian Monastic Women, 3], (Kalamazoo, MI, 1995),
pp. 85–134; and Constance Berman, “Were There Twelfth-Century Cistercian Nuns?”
Church History, 68 (1999), 824–64.
4
Fontette, Les religieuses, pp. 88–89.
5
Fiona Griffiths, “‘Men’s duty to provide for women’s needs’: Abelard, Heloise, and
Their Negotiation of the cura monialium,” in Medieval Religion: New Approaches, ed.
Constance H. Berman (New York, 2005), pp. 268–99, here p. 292.

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CONVENTS AND CHANGE

orders such as the Cistercians or Dominicans, although they were not
recognized by the leaders of those orders, but rather remained under
the care of their bishop. Such convents probably relied on local
priests to administer the sacraments.6 This may have happened
because of the unwillingness of monastic men to accept the responsibility of caring for their sisters. Alternatively, it may indicate that
these communities did not seek incorporation, but rather defined
themselves in other ways—for example, by rule and habit; patron
saint; a pious founder or abbess; or papal privileges.
By examining religious houses with looser ties to monastic orders,
we can gain a better understanding of the fluidity and complexity of
monastic women’s lives in the later Middle Ages. Two cases from
Bologna, Santa Maria del Monte della Guardia and Santa Caterina di
Quarto, illustrate the competing forces that sometimes drove communities of religious women to solidify their relationship with their
male counterparts in religious orders and at other times led them to
emphasize their autonomy and unique status rather than seeking
incorporation into a large, centralized religious order.
The first of these two examples, Santa Maria del Monte della
Guardia, began in 1193 as an abode for a hermitess named Angelica,
who was attended by a group of male clerics.This church was transformed into a nunnery after Angelica’s death in the 1240s.7 The
second, Santa Caterina di Quarto, was established as a double
monastery, where early records indicate that women outnumbered
men, although the prior was the main authority in the community.
Santa Caterina observed its own rule and became the head of its own
small congregation, sometimes called the Order of Santa Caterina.
Both of these groups were given the Augustinian Rule in the late
1240s under Pope Innocent IV, reflecting papal attempts to clarify
monastic categories after the Fourth Lateran Council’s decree forbid6
Grundmann explores this phenomenon in a discussion of religious women’s communities in Germany that followed rules similar the Dominican convent of Santo Sisto
in Rome, but embeds it in a discussion of the difficulty that religious women had in
securing the cura monialium from the Order of Preachers. Religious Movements, pp.
103–08.
7
Although there is no Latin or Italian equivalent of the word nunnery, it is used
here because the term connotes in English a community of religious women that has
taken permanent vows to live according to a rule. This term is used to mark the
change in status of these communities that begin as either an oratory for a hermitess
or a double monastery but later became single-sex communities of women professing
an accepted rule.

BY SHERRI FRANKS JOHNSON

253

ding the establishment of new orders.8 Over time, both communities
moved into the Dominican sphere of influence. Although by the fifteenth century both houses clearly identified with the Order of
Preachers, their relationship to the order differed slightly. One house,
Santa Maria del Monte, developed ties to the Dominicans in the latethirteenth century, although it is likely that the strength of its affiliation varied. It was only officially incorporated into the order in 1496.9
The second, Santa Caterina, cannot clearly be identified as Dominican
until the fifteenth century. It was never incorporated, but rather
remained under the jurisdiction of the bishop. Nevertheless, some
members of this house engaged in the reform of other Dominican
convents in the early-sixteenth century.10
These two Bolognese communities were in a city that had great
importance to the Dominican movement—St. Dominic’s remains are
in an impressive ark in the friars’ main church, and several early general chapters were held in the city. Santa Caterina’s founder was a man
who seems to have been close to the saint, which is emphasized in
early-modern chronicles of the community’s history. Nevertheless,
well into the fourteenth century, Santa Caterina argued for its status
as head of its own religious order. In the late-thirteenth century Santa
Maria del Monte had close ties to the order, especially to the
Dominican bishop Teodorico Borgognoni, and may have adopted a
version of the order’s rules as early as 1278.Yet despite these ties and
influences, each of these communities continued to distinguish themselves in some way. Santa Maria del Monte and its sister monastery, San
Mattia, assiduously guarded a privilege that Angelica had gained from
a series of popes placing the church directly under papal protection;
this allowed the nuns to ascertain that Dominican officials or other
clerics performed visitations as representatives of the pope and not as
direct authorities over them. These convents demonstrate that com8
“Ne nimia religionum diversitas gravem in ecclesia Dei confusionem inducat, firmiter prohibemus, ne quis de caetero novam religionem inveniat, sed quicumque
voluerit ad religionem converti, unam de approbatis assumat.” Decrees of the Fourth
Lateran Council, canon 13, in Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, ed. Giuseppe
Alberigo et al. (Basel, 1962), p. 218.
9
Archivio di Stato di Bologna, Fondo Demaniale (henceforth referred to as ASB
Dem.), San Mattia, 14/5775, not numb., November 4, 1496.
10
ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 19/4503, no. 32, March 1, 1510. In this bull,
Cardinal Francesco Alidosi orders the union of San Giovanni Battista with the
Benedictine convents of San Guglielmo and Santi Gervasio e Protasio, presenting this
union as occurring due to the request of the prioress of San Giovanni Battista for permission to reform these two nunneries.

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CONVENTS AND CHANGE

munities of religious women could have ambiguous relationships
with orders not only because of their difficulty in gaining acceptance
but also their alternative ways of understanding their place in the
Church.
The Foundation of Santa Maria del Monte della Guardia:
Angelica’s Oratory
In 1193,Angelica established Santa Maria del Monte della Guardia,
an oratory in the hills southwest of Bologna.11 Although little is
known about Angelica’s background, it is clear that her family
entrusted an endowment of 1000 Bolognese lire to the Canons of
Santa Maria di Reno, an Augustinian congregation in Bologna and its
surrounding area, in return for their care and oversight of Angelica’s
hermitage. In the first decade of the thirteenth century Angelica broke
with these canons due to a dispute over finances and obligations, but
attracted another group of clerics that established a church near her
oratory.12 She also gained an important privilege in 1197 from Pope
Celestine III, which was confirmed by Innocent III, exempting her
from episcopal authority and placing her church under the direct protection of the papal see.13 For the duration of her life, the community
consisted of a group of Augustinian canons that considered Angelica
their foundress. Although the day-to-day leadership rested in the
hands of a prior, Angelica continued to represent the community; for
example, she traveled to Rome in 1228 to argue for reconfirmation of
the community’s papal privilege from the newly elected Pope
Gregory IX.14

11
Historical details about Angelica’s life beyond those known from the documents
mentioned in this article are scarce, although a foundation legend emerged in the fifteenth century. See Mario Fanti, “La leggenda della Madonna di San Luca di Bologna.
Origine, fortuna, sviluppo e valore storico,” in La Madonna di San Luca in Bologna:
Otto secoli di storia, di arte e di fede, ed. Mario Fanti and Giancarlo Roversi (Bologna,
1993), pp. 69–100.
12
ASB Dem., San Mattia, 52/5813, nos. 3–4, March 18, 1205, and December 1, 1210.
The dispute with Santa Maria di Reno concerned the agreement between the canons
and Angelica that there would be two priests at her church, which the canons later
claimed was unnecessarily burdensome. In the course of the dispute, each side sued the
other for financial compensation. In 1210, the canons gave Angelica five pieces of land,
perhaps in recompense for the endowment that had been entrusted to them to support
Angelica’s oratory.
13
ASB Dem., San Mattia, 2/5763, no. 11, December 21, 1197.
14
ASB Dem., San Mattia, 3/5764, no. 16, June 2, 1228.

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255

From Oratory to Nunnery
At the time of Angelica’s death in the early 1240s, only the prior,
Alfredo, and one other cleric remained in the church attached to her
oratory. In 1249 Cardinal Legate Ottaviano Ubaldini allowed three religious women named Balena, Dotta, and Marina to transfer from
Santissima Trinità di Ronzano, another community in the Bolognese
countryside, to Santa Maria del Monte. This arrangement was meant
to revive the struggling church.15 Balena became the group’s first prioress and served in that capacity until 1271. Alfredo appears to have
stayed on the Monte della Guardia and is described in 1250 as the
group’s priest and converso.16
The move from Santissima Trinità to the oratory on the Monte della
Guardia seems to have involved a quick transition to the observance
of the Augustinian Rule. When Cardinal Ottavio Ubaldini transferred
Balena, Dotta, and Marina to the Monte della Guardia, he lamented
that the Rule of St. Augustine had fallen into neglect there and
expressed faith that the constitutions observed at Santissima Trinità
would provide for more rigor in religious observance. He nevertheless
absolved the inhabitants of Santa Maria del Monte della Guardia from
obedience to Ronzano. By 1258, Pope Alexander IV described the
foundation as belonging to the Order of St. Augustine in his renewal
of the papal privilege that his predecessors had given to the church.17
The transfer of these three women to Santa Maria del Monte della
Guardia represents the combination of two unusual communities into
one that would soon become much more recognizable as a nunnery.
Santissima Trinità had probably included both men and women and,
as part of the congregation led by the Canons Regular of San Marco
of Mantua, followed an obscure rule written by Blessed Brother Albert
of Mantua.18 From 1239 to 1265, three small groups of women would
leave Ronzano to repopulate existing religious communities or to
15
Giovanni Gozzadini, Cronaca di Ronzano e Memorie di Loderingo d’Andolò,
Frate Gaudente, (Bologna, 1851), pp. 150–51, document no. 3.
16
“Frater Alfredus sacerdos et conversus dicte ecclesia. . . .” ASB Dem., San Mattia,
5/5766, no. 6, 1240. This is an unusual combination of titles, as a converso is usually a
lay member of a monastic house who does not participate in the divine offices, but
rather performs manual labor.
17
ASB Dem., San Mattia, 5/5766, not numb., January 28, 1258. This document is
edited in Gozzadini, Cronaca di Ronzano, pp. 132–33.
18
“Canonici Regolari di San Marco,” Dizionario degli istituti di perfezione, ed.
Guerrino Pelliccia and Giancarlo Rocca, 10 vols. (Rome, 1975) 2:cols. 122–23.

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CONVENTS AND CHANGE

found new ones. The gradual transfer of women from Santissima
Trinità to other houses may have been due to the increasing discomfort of church officials with mixed communities. In addition to these
three communities, a fourth, Santa Maria delle Pugliole, was founded
under the Rule of San Marco before 1237 and seems to have been
independent of Santissima Trinità.19
Santa Maria del Monte is the best documented of these four
groups, but it can serve as an exemplar of the path that they all traveled. These communities had emerged from the Canons Regular of
San Marco di Mantova and had at some point followed Albert of
Mantua’s rule, but over time changed to the Rule of St. Augustine. Each
of the four also came into the sphere of influence of the Dominicans,
although the strength of the ties is difficult to determine because of
the infrequent and varying descriptions of their religious affiliations.20
The Foundation of Santa Caterina di Quarto
Like Santa Maria del Monte, Santa Caterina did not begin as a traditional nunnery. Santa Caterina di Quarto was established in 1205 as a
community of religious men and women. In that year, a group gathered
in the episcopal palace in Bologna to bless the first stone to be used in
the building of a church “in honor of God, the Virgin Mary and Santa
Caterina and all the saints.”21 The group included priests and laymen,
men and women. Adelasia,the first magistra of the women living in the
church, served as a witness, as did Alberto, the community’s first prior.
Although much is unknown about Alberto’s life, he was recognized
as holy among his contemporaries, meriting inclusion in an early Vita
19
Gabriella Zarri,“I monasteri femminili a Bologna tra il XIII e il XVIII secolo,” in Atti
e memorie della Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Provincie di Romagna, 24
(1973), 198–99.
20
In addition to Santa Maria del Monte, the three other women’s religious foundations that emerged in Bologna from the Congregation of the Canons Regular of San
Marco di Mantova were Santa Maria delle Pugliole (1237), San Giovanni Battista (1239),
and Santa Maria Maddalena di Valdipietra (1265). See Zarri,“I monasteri femminili,” pp.
198–99; San Giovanni Battista was founded in 1239 by a former prioress of Santissima
Trinita’ di Ronzano. In 1247 they were given the Augustinian rule and Dominican
statutes, although they remained under the bishop’s jurisdiction and were not incorporated into the Dominican order. See especially ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista,
3/4487, nos. 11 and 30, May 30, 1239, and August 7, 1247.
21
ASB Dem. 1/4485, no. 5.“ad honorem dei, sancte marie virginis et sancte catelline
et omnium sanctorum. . . .”

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257

of Dominic. In the Vita he attends the saint’s funeral and receives a
vision assuring him that he would join his friend Dominic in heaven the
following year.22 The association of Alberto with Dominic in an account
of Dominic’s life that dates to the thirteenth century raises questions
about the nature of the religious movement that gave rise to both of
these groups. The two founders were in all likelihood aware of one
another’s activities, but there is no evidence that Alberto and his successors sought inclusion into Dominic’s order. The founding of Santa
Caterina predated Dominic’s activities in Bologna and is likely an example of several small congregations founded roughly contemporaneously
with their more famous counterparts, the Dominicans and Franciscans.
Although the heyday of double monasteries had passed and such
communities were coming under increasing scrutiny,23 Santa Caterina
grew and also apparently enjoyed the favor of Innocent III, who in
1213 asked the bishops of Parma, Reggio, and Modena to donate whatever money they took in from the feast of San Vitale to help the nascent church.24 An indulgence from 1240 shows the diocesan clergy’s
positive evaluation of the rapidly growing community. Ottaviano
Ubaldini, the archdeacon and future bishop of Bologna, addressed his
indulgence to the clergy and faithful of Bologna and encouraged them
to visit the foundation and give alms:
We believe that this is known to all of you, either by reputation or by
sight.We notify you . . . that in the church of Santa Caterina in the Diocese
of Bologna a great multitude of men and women are gathered to serve
God. They serve God in true religion and in the greatest poverty. . . .
Persevering in prayers day and night, they strive to implore the mercy of
the Lord for themselves and for all sinners. Indeed, the light of the good
works they do shines before humanity in such as way that many men and
women, seeing their good works, glorify the Father who is in heaven.25
22
Theodoricus of Apolda, “S. Dominius conf. Bononiae, Acta Ampliora,” Acta
Sanctorum, 67 vols. (Antwerp, 1641–1940),Aug. 1, Dies 4, col. 603C.
23
Sharon K. Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England (Chapel Hill, NC,
1988), pp. 117–24; Gold, The Lady and the Virgin, pp. 109–15.
24
ASB Dem. 1/4485, no. 8., April 22, 1213.
25
“Omnibus vobis fere pro fama ut pro visum credimus esse notum. Nos vobis . . .
notificamus quod magna multitudo virorum et mulierum congregata est ad serviendum
deo in ecclesia sancte catherine bononiensis episcopatus qui creatori nostro in vera
religione ac maxima paupertate serviunt. . . . [P]erseverantes in orationibus diebus et
noctibus student pro se ac pro cunctis peccatoribus domini misericordiam implorare.
Denique lux bonorum operum que faciunt lucet coram hominibus ita quod multi tam
viri quam mulieres videntes eorum opera glorificant patrem qui in celis est.”ASB Dem.,
San Giovanni Battista, 3/4487, no. 14, 1240.

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CONVENTS AND CHANGE

Although by 1240, the existence of a double monastery was unusual,
Santa Caterina’s organization did not prevent regional officials from
holding up the community as a model of poverty and good works.
The “Order of Santa Caterina”
Not only did Santa Caterina observe its own rule and maintain a
community that included both men and women, but it also attracted
daughter houses and thus became the head of its own small order,
despite the fact that its rule does not seem to have had papal
approval. As the reputation of the community grew, other groups
sought to place themselves under Santa Caterina’s authority, and a
small congregation of houses began to emerge.The houses that affiliated with Santa Caterina were varied, including groups that were
composed solely of men or women, as well as communities with
inhabitants of both sexes.
The first community to become a daughter house of Santa Caterina
was San Giacomo della Mella in Brescia, which did so in 1225. The
nine canons of San Giacomo gave Ugo, the prior of Santa Caterina, and
his successors the right of visitation, correction, and instruction,
although Alberto da Reggio, the bishop of Brescia, also retained the
right to oversee the church.26 Although eventually there would be
women among the inhabitants of San Giacomo, there is no mention
of their presence at this point.
By 1250 there were both men and women in the community,
although there is no indication of the proportional population of either
group. In that year, the prior renounced his position in the presence of
the confratres and sorores of the church of San Giacomo della Mella. In
the election of his successor, the names of three priests and seven laybrothers are listed, although the women of the church are not named.27
By the next election in 1262, it is clear that women substantially outnumbered the men—twenty-six sisters are named along with three
26

ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 2/4486, no. 11, October 29, 1225.
ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 4/4488, no. 7, October 19, 1250. In this year, Prior
Gemignano of San Giacomo renounced his position in the presence of the prior of
Santa Caterina, “in domo capituli confratrum et sororum ecclesie Sancti Jacobi de
Lamella.” Two years later, the prior of Santa Caterina approved the election of a new
prior for San Giacomo who was “electum in priorem per predictos fratres et etiam per
sorores dicte ecclesie sancti iacobi de lamella.”ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 4/4488,
no. 14,August 12, 1252.
27

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259

priests and six laybrothers. The leader of the women at San Giacomo
holds the title of magistra, as was the case at Santa Caterina.28
In the 1230s two other communities placed themselves under the
authority of Santa Caterina.The first was the Ospedale of Santa Maria
di Misericordia in Ferrara. In this case, a group of women appeared
before the bishop of Ferrara in 1233,“saying that they wanted to live
chastely and to observe the rule of the same Santa Caterina.”29 The
bishop invested the prior of Santa Caterina with authority over the
church and the hospital with the condition that the church should
offer a yearly census of a pound of incense to the bishop, recognizing
his authority over them. Unfortunately, Santa Caterina’s records do not
indicate whether the relationship between the two churches
endured. Similarly, in 1236 the ten friars of the church of San Nicolò
in Bologna placed themselves under the governance of Santa
Caterina.30 The only other record besides the submission of San
Nicolò to Santa Caterina is a document from 1289 regarding the leadership of the church. In this case, San Nicolò’s leader had been elected
to lead another church, and the brothers of Santa Caterina were asked
to choose a new rector, whom they confirmed with the agreement of
the two brothers left at San Nicolò.31 A final member of the congregation, the Cremonese community of Santa Maria di Valverde, placed
itself under the authority of Santa Caterina’s prior in 1255. Although
it is not clear how many men lived in Santa Maria di Valverde, at least
thirteen women lived there at the time. Thus, by the 1250s the prior
of Santa Caterina governed four daughter houses in nearby cities,
which sought to live by the Rule of Santa Caterina and emulate the
way of life of the mother house. The men and women of Santa
Caterina di Quarto conceived of themselves as the head of their own
small order following their own rule and would continue to make
claims to that effect well into the fourteenth century, despite a series
of papal and diocesan reforms.
Order of Santa Caterina or Order of St. Augustine?
In the late 1240s under Pope Innocent IV, both Santa Caterina di
Quarto and the newly revived Santa Maria del Monte della Guardia
28

ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 5/4489, no. 21, March 6, 1262.
“. . . dicentes que volebant caste vivere et regulam sanctae caterinae ibidem observare. . . .” ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 3/4487, no. 1, October 31, 1233.
30
ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 3/4487, no. 7, September 10, 1236.
31
ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 7/4491, no. 5, August 31, 1289.
29

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CONVENTS AND CHANGE

were assigned the Rule of St. Augustine. The Augustinian Rule had
gained increased use in the twelfth century, especially among communities of canons. The advantage of this rule is that it allowed for much
more flexibility than did the Rule of St. Benedict and thus was better
suited to houses whose mission required fewer daily offices and more
ability to shape monastic duties to the needs of the community. For
this reason, it was suitable for priests who lived a common life but
maintained pastoral duties, or for friars in the new mendicant orders,
whose mission involved an active life of preaching and service.
In 1247 Innocent IV gave Santa Caterina the Augustinian Rule to
follow, and ecclesiastical correspondence that mentions the community’s order affiliation describes Santa Caterina as part of the Order of
St. Augustine. At the same time as the rule change, Innocent agreed to
take Santa Caterina under papal protection.32 The decree also stated
that San Giacomo della Mella in Brescia would enjoy papal protection
as part of Santa Caterina’s privilege, although there is no mention of
Santa Maria di Misericordia in Ferrara or San Nicolò in Bologna. At the
same time Innocent was organizing groups of Tuscan mendicants into
congregations using Augustine’s Rule that his successor, Alexander IV,
would form into the Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine, but Santa
Caterina was not part of any of these groups.33 Rather than placing
Santa Caterina into a larger, organized monastic group, Innocent’s
action was probably intended to ascertain that the community followed a widely recognized and approved rule.
Despite its new rule, the men and women of Santa Caterina clearly
continued to observe some of their previous practices. In 1259
Alexander IV wrote to Blessed Henry of Segusio, canon lawyer and
papal legate, commissioning him to look into two issues. First was
whether the community’s resources were sufficient to allow it to
accept additional members. Second was the continuing use of the
monastery’s own statutes beyond those contained in the Rule of St.
Augustine. Henry entrusted this task to the prior of San Michele in
Bosco, a local house of Augustinian canons.34 Regarding the first issue,
32
“. . . ordo canonicus qui secundum deum et beati augustini regulam in eadem
ecclesia institutus esse dinoscitur perpetuis ibidem temporibus inviolabiliter observetur.”ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 3/4487, no. 29, April 30, 1247.
33
C. H. Lawrence, The Friars: The Impact of the Early Mendicant Movement on
Western Society (New York, 1994), pp. 98–99.
34
Paola Foschi,“Gli ordini religiosi medievali a Bologna e nel suo territorio,” in Storia
della Chiesa di Bologna, ed. Paolo Prodi and Lorenzo Paolini, 2 vols. (Bologna, 1997),
2:463–99, here p. 481.

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261

the report led Henry to decide that the house could exceed the established limits for men (eight clerics and twenty-five laymen),“lest the
worship of the Divine name seem to grow cold,” but that the number
of sisters should not exceed the current population of sixty.35
Although women were more numerous, Henry clearly considered
men necessary to the community, and there was no attempt to separate the two sexes at this time. On the observance of the rule, Henry
mandated changes to the attire, eating arrangements, and travel practices of the inhabitants of Santa Caterina, in most cases leading to a
moderation of the previously more ascetic rule. For example, one
change stipulated that when anyone from Santa Caterina, either male
or female, had good reason to leave the monastery, they could sleep
on beds that their hosts prepared for them, although their previous
practice had been to refuse this comfort.36 This correspondence
between Alexander IV and Henry suggests that their concern was not
a lack of rigor in ascetic practice or the proximity of men and women,
but was aimed at ascertaining that the inhabitants of Santa Caterina
were complying with the mandated rule change.
By the early-fourteenth century Santa Caterina transitioned from a
double house to a nunnery, although it would retain a prior until
1468. Due to the deterioration of its original convent and the draw of
the city (including the protection of city walls and proximity to family
and donors), Santa Caterina built a new house in 1291 inside Bologna
in the parish of Santa Maria Maddalena. By this time, there were only
a few men left. The prior of the monastery became the parish priest
for Santa Maria Maddalena, and the monastic community and parish
were united under his authority. Although for a short time correspondence to the monastery continued to be addressed to the brothers and sisters of Santa Caterina and Santa Maria Maddalena, the house
soon came to be seen as a nunnery.
A reexamination of the church’s constitution and statutes followed
this transfer of location, resulting in increased specificity regarding
the behavior prescribed for the sisters. Two modifications of the constitution occurred in the wake of papal or diocesan reforms regulating nuns. Other religious women’s foundations in the area, however,
35
“ne . . . videatur in dicto monasterio cultus divinum nominis refrigere.” ASB Dem.,
San Giovanni Battista, 5/4489, no. 15,August 26, 1259.
36
ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 5/4489, no. 15, August 26, 1259.
37
Elizabeth Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and Its
Commentators, 1298–1545 (Washington, DC, 1997), pp. 131–32.

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CONVENTS AND CHANGE

did not receive the same degree of attention as Santa Caterina, raising
the prospect that the unusual elements of Santa Caterina’s situation
made it a target for reform in the wake of these councils and decrees.
The first of the changes of Santa Caterina’s statutes in the years after
its move into the city occurred in 1298, the same year that Pope
Boniface VIII issued the bull Periculoso, ordering stricter regulation of
enclosure for women’s communities.37 The contents of Santa
Caterina’s 1298 statute modification demonstrate the growing discrepancy between the regulation and mobility of nuns compared to
the few remaining brothers in the group. Even after its move, regulations for Santa Caterina still included rules for both women and men.
Whereas the constitution forty years earlier had allowed both brothers
and sisters to travel, in the 1298 statutes only brothers are mentioned
in any provisions pertaining to behavior outside the monastery or outlining acceptable reasons for leaving.38 The constitution assumed that
the sisters, by contrast, would remain in the cloister and that their contact with others would take place in the context of receiving guests
into a hostel inside the church compound but outside the cloister. The
prior was allowed to enter the sisters’ cloister once or twice a month
for hearing confession or providing other sacraments.39
In 1310 a diocesan synod took up the issue of enclosure among
nuns. The decrees of the meeting contain complaints that many nuns
were not following Boniface VIII’s mandate. The tenor of the remarks
in the record suggests that the main goals were keeping guests out of
the cloister and regulating conversation at the gate or windows.40 In
1318 the bishop’s vicar visited Santa Caterina and compiled a list of
specific punishments for transgressions, although it is not clear
whether the list was meant to correct behavior he observed at the
monastery or whether the list was meant only to anticipate punishment for actions that might occur. These regulations do not mention
the existence of friars—even the prior does not figure into the new
38
A provision regarding behavior outside the monastery in the 1259 constitution
reads “Ceterum cum vos tam fratres quam sorores extra monasterium vestrum obtenta
debita licentia ex aliqua iusta causa egredi. . . .” ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 5/4489,
no. 15, August 26, 1259; in 1298 a similar provision reads,“Si vero extra monasterium
contingeret priorem ut fratres ire propter aliquam causam licitam et honestam. . . .” ASB
Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 7/4491, no. 32, December 15, 1298.
39
ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 7/4491, no. 31–32 (April 14 and December 15,
1298).
40
Constitutiones Episcopatus Bononie, Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, no.
2251, fol. 25r, October 22, 1310.

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263

statutes. Although the vicar made some regulations regarding internal
matters such as attentiveness in the choir and silence in the refectory,
the majority of the precepts involve the enclosure of nuns.41
Despite these changes, Santa Caterina and at least one of its daughter houses would continue to invoke the Order of Santa Caterina in
the fourteenth century in petitions to ecclesiastical officials, although
it is clear that the officials in question did not recognize the existence
of such an order. Four years after the revisions to Santa Caterina’s rule,
the nuns requested that they be allowed to send a small group of nuns
to the community’s original location outside of Bologna, arguing that
they needed to preserve their property against depredations and
ensure continuous habitation of the house that was the original foundation of the Order of Santa Caterina.42 Their request was approved,
but the papal legate who replied approved it only on the basis of their
need to preserve their property, making no mention of the Order of
Santa Caterina and addressing them as members of the Order of St.
Augustine.43 In 1349 the remaining friars of Santa Maria di Valverde
protested a visitation by Augustinians, claiming that they followed the
Rule of Santa Caterina and were subject only to the prior of that
house. They were forced to accept the authority of the Augustinian
visitors under threat of excommunication.44
Although papal and diocesan reforms led to substantial change in
Santa Caterina’s way of life in the thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries, the community held on to some sense of itself as an
autonomous community at the head of its own small order. Because
of this identity and the continued presence of a priest and prior who
could provide for the spiritual needs of the community, the nuns of
Santa Caterina may not, at this point, have felt a need for a closer affiliation with male monastics.
41
ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 9/4493, no. 2, May 24, 1318. One new regulation
specifically prohibited speaking at the window or the gate to nonmembers of the
monastery unless the nun had received permission from the prior or magistra and was
accompanied by two or three sisters, echoing the concerns of the diocesan synod. The
punishment for transgression was three days on bread and water. A nun admitting
anyone to the cloister without the permission of the bishop or his vicar would be
denied a voice in chapter and could not seek office without a dispensation from the
bishop. The visitor reproved sisters for their habit of making bread outside the interior
cloister, saying that the sisters could not leave the cloister for any reason without the
permission of the bishop or his vicar.
42
ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 9/4493, no. 7, June 30, 1322.
43
ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 9/4493, no. 8, June 30, 1322.
44
ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 11/4495, no. 15, 1349.

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CONVENTS AND CHANGE

Santa Maria del Monte della Guardia:
Augustinian or Dominican?
While Santa Caterina attempted to maintain its role as the head of its
own order despite continued revisions to its rule and statutes, the nuns
of Santa Maria del Monte della Guardia fought to guard their autonomy
by ensuring that they retained the papal privilege that Angelica had
obtained for her community, exempting the nuns from the authority of
the bishop and placing Santa Maria del Monte under the direct protection of the papacy. Unlike Santa Caterina, Santa Maria del Monte did
develop an association with the Dominican Order in the thirteenth century, although the community did not seek incorporation.
Soon after the move to Santa Maria del Monte in 1249, Balena,
Dotta, and Maria were given the Rule of St. Augustine to follow, as
were the two remaining clerics in that church.45 As previously mentioned, Balena became the group’s first prioress and served in that
capacity until 1271. Shortly after moving to the Monte della Guardia,
the group built another house, San Mattia. Whereas Santa Maria del
Monte was located in the hills southwest of Bologna over a mile outside the walls, San Mattia was just outside the city’s southwestern
gate, the Porta Saragozza. San Mattia began with a 1254 bequest from
a woman named Emma, who left to Santa Maria del Monte a house
along with twenty tornatures of land and 20 Bolognese lire to help
with the building of a church.46 Although the sisters had acquired a
new building, they maintained the old one and would continue to do
so well into the seventeenth century.
Two outcomes of building this new house would pull the community in conflicting directions for decades. On the one hand, the sisters
of Santa Maria fought to extend Angelica’s papal privilege to their new
suburban monastery. On the other hand, the growing community
gained the attention and support of the Dominican Bishop
Borgognoni of Cervia, which would lead to Santa Maria and San Mattia
coming into the Dominican sphere of influence. This association
seems to be something that the nuns initially sought, but later became
a source of conflict.
In January 1258,Alexander IV issued a bull granting the new inhabitants of Santa Maria del Monte a confirmation of the papal privilege
45
46

Gozzadini, Cronaca di Ronzano, pp. 150–51, document no. 3.
ASB Dem., San Mattia, 5/5766, no. 8, July 13, 1254.

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265

that his predecessors had given to Angelica’s oratory. At this point,
there is no mention of San Mattia—the bull is simply addressed to the
“prioress and sisters of the church of Santa Maria del Monte della
Guardia, Order of Saint Augustine.”47 The second prioress, Dotta,
pressed to extend Maria del Monte’s privilege to San Mattia. To this
end, the sisters wrote two letters explaining the relationship between
the original foundation and the new one. A letter addressed only to
“your reverend Father” from the “prioress and sisters of Santa Maria
del Monte della Guardia, order of Saint Augustine” recounts their history.48 The sisters argued that because of the large number of newly
professed nuns, it was no longer possible for them to live at their current location, thus justifying the move to a new house closer to the
city. Since they were immediately subject to Rome and not under the
jurisdiction of the bishop, they asked the pope to appoint a suitable
representative to confirm the election of the prioress. This detail
dates the letter to 1271 or earlier, because in September of that year,
Pope Gregory X instructed the prior of the Dominican friars in
Bologna to confirm Dotta’s election.49
A second letter continues to make the case that San Mattia should
enjoy the privileges of its sister house. Like the first one, this letter is
undated. The only information that helps to date the letter is that
Dotta is the prioress, which means that the letter was written
between 1271 and 1296. This second letter asks that San Mattia be
exempt from episcopal jurisdiction as the sisters of Santa Maria del
Monte had built it “to serve the Lord under the discipline of the rule
more securely, more honestly, and more fittingly.”50 They then asked
that the prior of the Dominican province of Lombardy or some other
suitable Dominican be named as their visitor. This request indicates
that the nuns of Santa Maria del Monte and San Mattia were gaining
an association with the Dominican movement, although at this point,
they were careful to specify that the visitor would be acting as a representative of the pope and would not exercise authority on behalf of
the order.

47

ASB Dem., San Mattia, 5/5766, not numb., January 28, 1258.
ASB Dem., San Mattia, 4/5765, not numb., n.d., beginning “Significant Reverende
Paternitate vestre. Priorissa et sorores sancte marie montis guardie ordinis sancti
augustini. . . .”
49
ASB Dem., San Mattia, 52/5813, no. 12, September 19, 1271.
50
ASB Dem., San Mattia, 6/5767, not numb., n.d., beginning “Significat sanctitate
vestre”:“securius, honestius et commodius sub regulari disciplina domino famulari. . . .”
48

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CONVENTS AND CHANGE

An important link between the combined community of San Mattia
and Santa Maria del Monte and the Dominicans friars came through
the testament of Borgognoni, who had become a supporter of San
Mattia. The first evidence of any relationship between Borgognoni
and San Mattia was an indulgence that Borgognoni issued in 1268.51
He appears again in the record at the groundbreaking of a new
church for San Mattia in 1294.52 In 1298 San Mattia received 1196 lire
from Borgognoni’s estate, which was to be used to buy land. The
bequest included specific instructions for disposing of the profits
from the cultivation of this property. San Mattia could keep one-tenth
of the proceeds; the remaining nine-tenths were to be given to a
house of the Friar Preachers in Lucca, Borgognoni’s hometown.53 It is
likely that the payment was meant to tie the community more closely
to the Dominican Order, if not by any official incorporation into the
order, at least by a link to a group of Dominican friars. Putting the
bequest in the hands of the sisters also ensured that they would continue to receive income from the inheritance, as he seems to have recognized this might not occur if the friars administered the bequest
and its income. Borgognoni’s interest in San Mattia and Santa Maria
del Monte provides an example of a prominent Dominican cleric at
odds with the Dominican General Chapter’s resistance to fostering
associations with nuns.
Early-modern histories of the convent identify this era as the point
at which San Mattia and Santa Maria del Monte became Dominican. In
a sixteenth-century chronicle, the Dominican friar Leandro Alberti
stated that the sisters of San Mattia had received the Dominican habit
from Borgognoni around 1280.54 There are no documents in the nunnery’s records, however, to verify this claim. Although it is possible
that the nuns did wear the Dominican habit from that time, the
remaining evidence in the archive suggests that their relationship to
the Dominicans varied in the fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries,
51
ASB Dem. San Mattia, 52/5813, no. 10, February 1, 1268. Borgognoni’s indulgence
was addressed to the cities and Dioceses of Cervia and Bologna.
52
ASB Dem., San Mattia, 52/5813, no. 14,August 28, 1294.
53
ASB Dem., San Mattia 1/5762, no. 14, n.d. This document is a later vernacular
account of Borgognoni’s 1298 bequest to San Mattia, with the stipulation that they turn
over nine-tenths of the profit to San Romano in Lucca. A document from November 22,
1308,ASB Dem., San Mattia, 1/5762, no. 1, is the earliest of a series of documents from
the friars of Lucca acknowledging receipt of their share of the annual income from
Borgognoni’s legacy.
54
Leandro Alberti, Chronichetta della Madonna di San Luca (Venice, 1579), p. 16.

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267

only becoming more solid in the late-fifteenth century. On the occasions when ecclesiastical officials mention the observance and ecclesiastical status of Santa Maria del Monte and San Mattia, they are
described as immediately subject to the Roman Church, in the Order
of St. Augustine.
It is probable that in the early-fourteenth century, this community
remained in the Dominican sphere of influence. For example, in 1310,
a cardinal legate gave them the right to hear preaching and receive
the sacraments from Dominican friars, notwithstanding the statutes of
the Order of Preachers that frowned on the administration of these
services to nuns.55 In this document, however, the convent is
described as being in the Order of St. Augustine. This does not preclude the possibility that the sisters considered themselves
Dominicans at this point—some religious women’s houses that identified strongly with the Order of Preachers were described primarily
in terms of the basic rule that they followed, which, as was the case
with the friars, was the Rule of St. Augustine. Although sometimes
they were referred to as “nuns of the Order of St. Augustine under the
care of the Friars Preachers,”56 this additional information was not
included in many cases. Thus, the 1310 bull can be read to indicate
that San Mattia and Santa Maria del Monte desired and may have
received continued care from Dominican friars.
Whatever their spiritual affiliation might have been, their institutional status was emphasized persistently as directly subject to Rome.
In 1330 the sisters protested against a delegation of visitors that they
felt were acting in some other capacity than as representatives of the
pope. This delegation included two Dominican friars along with the
abbot of a Benedictine house in the Diocese of Bologna. In 1359 they
elected a new abbess and needed a male cleric to oversee the election.
The record of this election includes a negotiation with an Augustinian
canon from Santa Maria di Reno and San Salvatore (the communities
55
“nos volentes annuere votis vestris quod possitis per fratres ordinis predicatorum
in monasterio vestro proponi, facere verbum dei et ab eiusdem fratribus recipere ecclesiastica sacramenta qui quotiens expedierit, confessiones vestras audiant et super hijs
vestre formam ecclesie beneficium absolutionis impendant . . . constitutionibus vestri
ordinis seu aliquibus statutis per magistrum generalem dicti ordinis predicatorum in
contrarium creditis . . . non obstantibus.” ASB Dem., San Mattia, 8/5769, not numb.,
December 21, 1310.
56
See Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner, “Dominican Order,” Women and Gender in
Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, ed. Margaret Schaus (London, 2006), pp. 223–24,
here p. 223.

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CONVENTS AND CHANGE

that had been in conflict with Angelica over property and duties),
allowing him to oversee the election on the proviso that he recognized
the status of the nuns as immediately subject to the pope. Two
Dominican friars attended the election, but only as witnesses.57
The participation of Augustinian canons in the 1359 election, combined with the role that an Augustinian canon played in an earlier
event, give weight to the possibility that the Santa Maria del Monte
della Guardia and San Mattia may have been considered Augustinian for
some portion of the fourteenth century. In 1324 the prioress and two
sisters were sentenced to do penance—the two sisters for leaving the
monastery and the prioress for negligence in performing her office.
The cleric delegated to oversee the penance was a Brother Peter from
San Michele in Bosco, at that time an Augustinian house, and was also
the penitentiarer of the Bolognese bishop.58 Peter is described as a
member of the same order (eiusdem ordinis) as the sisters.
In the fifteenth century Dominican friars appear more frequently
in the convent records, but these interactions were not always signs
of concord. On the one hand, Dominican friars from the nearby
church of San Domenico presided over and witnessed the election of
a new prioress in 1426, and there is no sign of any negotiation over
the authority of the friars to perform these roles.59 However, from the
1420s through the 1440s, the nuns of San Mattia and Santa Maria del
Monte clashed with the friars of San Romano in Lucca over the inheritance from Borgognoni. The Luccan friars on several occasions sent
representatives to collect money from the nuns and in 1444 threatened the sisters with a penalty of 100 lire for continued failure to
pay.60 The resolution of the status of Santa Mattia and Santa Maria del
Monte came in 1496, when Pope Alexander VI ordered the nuns to
submit to the Order of Preachers.61
Santa Caterina and the Dominican Order
The process by which Santa Caterina came to be Dominican is
substantially murkier than that of Santa Maria del Monte. In the late57

ASB Dem., San Mattia, 9/5770, not numb., October 5, 1360.
Foschi,“Gli ordini religiosi,” p. 485. San Michele would later become an Olivetan
monastery.
59
ASB Dem., San Mattia, 11/5772, not numb., November 13, 1426.
60
ASB Dem., San Mattia, 1/5762, no. 13, March 10, 1444.
61
ASB Dem. , San Mattia, 14/5775, not numb., November 6, 1496.
58

BY SHERRI FRANKS JOHNSON

269

fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries extant records do not
describe the affiliation of the house, nor is there mention of a continuing association with the daughter houses after 1375, when the community sent a new prior to Santa Maria di Valverde in Cremona.62
The first strong indication of Dominican observance is in 1451, when
six women made their professions in Santa Caterina. They promised to
live “according to the Rule of the Blessed Augustine and the institutes of
our monastery, confirmed and approved by Pope Honorius of happy
memory.”63 The most likely meaning of this is that the nuns observed the
Dominican statutes, which had been approved by Pope Honorius III in
1216, since there is no alternative constitution from Santa Caterina that
could have been confirmed by any pope named Honorius.
By 1468, it is clear that the convent was recognized as Dominican.
In that year, Giovanni Battista Savelli, a papal legate and governor of
Bologna, described the monastery as belonging to the Order of St.
Dominic and approved the union of Santa Caterina with another
Dominican house, San Giovanni Battista. This union seems to have
occurred due to a petition of the nuns of Santa Caterina, who argued
that their monastery was in poor physical condition and, moreover,
too small to accommodate its population. The sisters asked to be
united with another community that had a larger, better building and
chose San Giovanni Battista, citing that its nuns were of “the same
order and habit”; noting the small population of its house, which was
only three nuns; and alleging laxity in its observance.64
Although the three nuns from San Giovanni Battista protested the
union and claimed that charges made against them were false, the
nuns of Santa Caterina transferred to San Giovanni Battista, and their
community became known by the name of their new home. The
three nuns who had been in San Giovanni Battista transferred to San
Pietro Martire, another Dominican house in Bologna. Later chronicles
of San Giovanni Battista and Santa Caterina would emphasize the early
62
“Ego Frater Lucchinus praedictus facio professionem et pronunto [sic] obedienciam deo et Beate Marie Virgini gloriose ac sancte caterine et sancte marie Magdalene
et tibi fratri . . . priori quod ero obediens secundum regulam sancti augustini tibi tuisque
successoribus. . . .” ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 12/4496, no. 23, fol. 1r, July 16, 1375.
63
“iuxta regulam beati Augustini et Institutiones nostrum monasterium confermatas
et approbatas per felicis recordationis Onorium papam.” ASB Dem., San Giovanni
Battista, 17/4501, no. 5, November 30, 1451.
64
“eiusdem ordinis et habiti . . . similiter dicto domino episcopo Bononiesis
subiecte. . . .” ASB Dem., San Giovanni Battista, 17/4501, no. 21, December 6, 1468.

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CONVENTS AND CHANGE

association of Santa Caterina’s founder with St. Dominic, claiming that
the affiliation of Santa Caterina with the Order of Preachers in the fifteenth century was a return to its roots. These chronicles do not mention conflict in the union between Santa Caterina and San Giovanni
Battista. In the early-sixteenth century, the Bolognese bishop would
send three nuns from San Giovanni Battista to reform Santa Maria
Nuova, a house of Dominican penitent women that was transitioning
into a convent of enclosed nuns. The Dominican affiliation of San
Giovanni Battista remained stable until its suppression during the
Napoleonic invasion of Italy.
The gradual consolidation of both Santa Maria del Monte and Santa
Caterina into the Dominican Order is probably the result of a confluence of factors. The strength of the Friar Preachers in Bologna may
have fostered a sense of Dominican identity. In addition, Dominicans
seem to have grown less wary of accepting women in the late-fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. For example, in 1343 the General
Chapter meeting in Paris made positive prescriptions regarding the
kind of friar that should be deputed to houses of nuns (one who is
pious and mature) rather than warning of the scandal that could
result from friars visiting nunneries or beguinages, as the General
Council had done in 1315.65 In 1386, the General Council aligned
with the papacy in Avignon made prescriptions for specific psalms
and prayers to be recited in Dominican women’s communities.66
These decrees indicate a recognition of the place of women in the
order and are accompanied by more frequent mention of particular
nunneries and individual nuns for whom the General Chapter
enjoined prayers. The formalization of the previously loose and informal relationship between Dominicans and penitent women is demonstrated by the development of a rule for penitents in the early-fifteenth
century.67 The extent to which the trend toward Dominican affiliation
was a product of changing attitudes in the order as a whole or, alternatively, was brought about by local influence can only be ascertained
by comparative studies of other cities and regions where other orders
had greater influence.
65
Acta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Fratrum Predicatorum, Monumenta
ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum historica (hereafter cited as MOPH) (Rome, 1896–),
4:85, 286.
66
Acta Capitulorum, MOPH 8:26.
67
Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner, “Writing Religious Rules as an Interactive Process:
Dominican Penitent Women and the Making of Their “‘Regula,’” Speculum, 79 (2004),
660–87.

BY SHERRI FRANKS JOHNSON

271

Conclusion
Studies of religious women’s communities such as Santa Maria del
Monte and Santa Caterina can contribute to recent reevaluations of
the narrative of decline in women’s monasticism. For more than a
decade, scholars have questioned the earlier idea that the Gregorian
reform led to the marginalization of religious women. In contrast to
the idea of decline, Bruce Venarde has found an increase for France
and England in the rate of new foundations in the mid-twelfth century. This is followed by a healthy, although slower, rate of new establishments through the mid-thirteenth century.68 Santa Maria del
Monte and Santa Caterina were founded in the decade before and
after 1200, just preceding a period that saw an efflorescence of
women’s monasticism in Bologna.The number of convents in Bologna
quadrupled over the course of the thirteenth century, with more than
thirty convents in the city by 1300. Some of this growth was driven
by the emergence of the new mendicant orders, although some new
houses were independent communities following the Augustinian
and other rules, such as those of San Marco of Mantua and Santa
Caterina. Inclusion of Italy in assessments of the state of women’s
monasticism as represented by the rate and affiliation of new foundations would strengthen the conclusion that the twelfth century did
not mark the beginning of a clear decline for religious women.
Scholars have also seen the presence of double monasteries as an
indicator of the status of religious women. The Premonstratensian,
Fontevrist, and Gilbertine Orders all originated in the early-twelfth
century as congregations of double monasteries, although with varying organizational structures.69 Blessed Robert of Arbrissel, founder of
Fontevraud, has been the subject of considerable scholarly attention,
particularly as an example of a religious man who saw care of religious women as central to his mission.70 Although these studies make
68

Bruce Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society: Nunneries in
France and England, 890–1215 (Ithaca, NY, 1997).
69
Gold, The Lady and the Virgin, pp. 86–115; Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and
Medieval Society, pp. 7–16; Sharon Elkins, “The Emergence of a Gilbertine Identity,” in
Distant Echoes: Medieval Religious Life for Women, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian
Shank (Kalamazoo, MI, 1984), pp. 169–82.
70
See Jacques Dalarun, Robert of Arbrissel: Sex, Sin and Salvation in the Middle
Ages, trans. Bruce Venarde (Washington, DC, 2006); Constant Mews, “Negotiating the
Boundaries of Gender in Religious Life: Robert of Arbrissel and Hersende, Abelard
and Heloise,” Viator, 37 (2006), 113–48; Fiona Griffiths, “The Cross and the Cura

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CONVENTS AND CHANGE

clear that some religious leaders considered the care of religious
women an important part of their duty, criticism of this way of life and
the gradual expulsion of women from the Premonstratensian Order
over the course of the twelfth century have seemed to provide evidence that this form of monasticism was a hallmark of the earlytwelfth century, but was strongly discouraged from the mid-twelfth
century onward. Although Santa Caterina’s congregation was small, its
existence demonstrates that new groups following this way of life
could be established in the thirteenth century and that these double
monasteries could be regarded by clerical officials as attractive
models for nearby communities to follow.
Through study of religious women’s houses that did not fit into
well-known monastic orders or that changed their rule or status over
time, a more complete view emerges of women’s monastic life in the
high and late Middle Ages. Studies of the formation of women’s
monastic identity has centered on the nuns’ struggle to gain acceptance into religious orders. This scholarship has necessarily focused
on nunneries that identified strongly with large, male-centered
monastic orders. Although these studies elucidate an important element of religious women’s lives, they may lead to a picture that overestimates the extent to which communities of religious women in
general desired incorporation or similar close ties to the authority
structure of large monastic orders. Some convents had more fluid
affiliations. A considerable variety of forms of religious life outside of
larger orders continued well into the fifteenth century, and some
communities of religious women such as Santa Caterina and the combined houses of Santa Maria del Monte della Guardia and San Mattia
emphasized their autonomy rather than fighting for inclusion in
larger groups.
This diversity of religious life continued despite the efforts of
popes and other ecclesiastical officials to standardize and centralize
monastic institutions. Although the best-known instance of this
reforming impulse is the prohibition of new rules and orders at the
Fourth Lateran Council, popes after Innocent III continued in this
vein. In some cases, popes who wanted to ensure that monastics oversaw monastics sided with nuns seeking incorporation over the objection of their monastic brethren. Ecclesiastical leaders also struggled
monialium: Robert of Arbrissel, John the Evangelist, and the Pastoral Care of Women
in the Age of Reform,” Speculum, 83 (2008), 303–30.

BY SHERRI FRANKS JOHNSON

273

with the emergence of new religious groups despite the prohibition
on new orders, leading to the suppression at the Council of Lyons in
1274 of some mendicant groups founded after the Fourth Lateran
Council that did not have clear papal approval.71
Perhaps as part of a larger program of organizing and regulating
monastic life, Pope Innocent IV imposed the Augustinian Rule on both
of these establishments in the 1240s, as he did with at least one other
convent in Bologna, San Giovanni Battista. This action gave Santa
Caterina and Santa Maria del Monte della Guardia an approved rule to
follow, although it did not tie them to an organized monastic order, as
a variety of groups of Augustinian canons existed. Innocent’s choice
of the Augustinian Rule for these communities may have prepared the
way for the later affiliation of these houses with the Dominicans, who
use the same rule.
Although both of these communities moved into the sphere of
influence of the Order of Preachers, they did so under different circumstances and in a manner that was not necessarily linear. Santa
Maria del Monte della Guardia gained ties to the order through a supporter and patron, Teodorico Borgognoni. Nevertheless, the nuns of
this community took care to maintain their status as directly subject
to the pope. Although the association with the Dominicans was relatively strong in the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries, they
were more closely associated with Augustinian canons by the middle
of the fourteenth century, returning to the Dominicans in the fifteenth century. After the imposition of the Augustinian Rule, Santa
Caterina and one of its subordinate houses continued to assert their
participation in the Order of Santa Caterina into the fourteenth century. The first signs of association with the Dominicans came in the
fifteenth century, and although the house was never incorporated
into the order (either before or after its union with San Giovanni
Battista), the nuns were entrusted with the reform of a community of
penitents as well as other Dominican convents in the early-sixteenth
century.
Recent scholarship on religious women in the Dominican sphere
of influence indicates that the path traveled by these communities is
not unique. In her study of German Sister-books, Gertrud Jaron Lewis
71
Frances Andrews, The Other Friars: Carmelite, Augustinian, Sack and Pied
Friars in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, UK, 2006).

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CONVENTS AND CHANGE

examines nine communities that came to identify with the
Dominican order, although in each case these houses emerged from
small houses of penitent women or beguines. Most of these groups
adopted the Rule of St. Augustine early in their histories and were
incorporated into the Dominican Order in the 1240s under Pope
Innocent IV.72 Although these German communities solidified their
associations with Dominicans much earlier than either Santa Maria
del Monte della Guardia or Santa Caterina, the Sister-books show the
fluctuation of the relationship between religious women’s communities and the Dominican Order. Nuns relied on older sisters for spiritual counsel and at times ignored or rejected the orders of the friars
who served as their superiors.73 In Italy, Guido Cariboni demonstrates the diverse origins and histories of women’s houses later associated with the Dominican Order. For example, the Milanese community dedicated to St. Agnes is described in some early documents
as a house of Humiliati, although it is also classified as a convent of
the canonical order of St. Augustine. Bernard Gui lists it among
women’s monasteries that are Dominican but not incorporated—
that is, under the jurisdiction of the local bishop. In sum, as Maiju
Lehmijoki-Gardner finds:
. . . throughout the Middle Ages, both nuns and religious laywomen typically lived under ad hoc arrangements, if not an institutional limbo.
Women’s religious communities, even ones that at some point were incorporated into a religious order, had to seek repeatedly for reaffirmation of
their status from ecclesiastical and secular leaders, superiors of religious
orders, and the popes.74

Rather than petitioning for incorporation, Santa Maria del Monte della
Guardia and Santa Caterina are examples of women’s monastic communities that cultivated this “institutional limbo.”
Tracing the changes in the status of these communities points to
the difficulty of ascertaining the religious affiliation of some women’s
houses—transitions can be difficult to detect, and associations with
72
Gerturd Jaron Lewis, By Women, for Women, about Women: The Sister-Books of
Fourteenth-Century Germany (Toronto, 1996), pp. 10–31.
73
Lewis, By Women, pp. 189–99.
74
Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner, “The Women behind their Saints: Dominican Women’s
Institutional Uses of the Cults of Their Religious Companions,” in Images of Medieval
Sanctity: Essays in Honour of Gary Dickson, ed. Debra Strickland (Leiden, 2007), pp.
5–24, here p. 5.

BY SHERRI FRANKS JOHNSON

275

particular orders may not persist. Although ecclesiastical officials
sometimes mentioned the rule and order of nunneries in letters and
bulls in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and began to do so more
frequently by the late-fourteenth century, this practice remained sporadic and incomplete. This transition over time demonstrates the
growing importance in monastic life of participation in a large monastic order. It also suggests that the reforms of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries were implemented only over a long period of time and that
the organization of monastic life remained in flux two centuries after
the Fourth Lateran Council.

EMPERORS, KINGDOMS,TERRITORIES:
MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF THE PIETAS AUSTRIACA?
BY

MARIE-ELIZABETH DUCREUX*

The author proposes to enlarge the model of the Pietas Austriaca formulated by Anna Coreth by including material from non-Austrian
core lands of the Habsburg monarchy. Using sources mainly from
Austria and the empire, Coreth revealed the principal components
of the dynastic devotion, linking the mission given by God to the
founding emperor, Rudolph of Habsburg. Yet, in Hungary and
Bohemia, seventeenth-century narratives on the origin and models
of dynastic piety were not always in line with the Viennese model.
Some parallel symbolic competition in representations of Habsburg
piety culminated in an invention of traditions distinct from the
Austrian model. The author then distinguishes between holy
patrons and patron saints in the Habsburg monarchy, mostly in the
seventeenth century.
Keywords: Bohemia; holy rulers; piety; political symbolism; sacral
kingship
Decentralizing Pietas Austriaca?
In 1959, the Austrian historian and later director of the Viennese
Haus- Hof-und Staatsarchiv (House, State and Court Archives) Anna
Coreth (1915–2008) published her most famous opus, the landmark
Pietas Austriaca.1 This short but brilliant book described how seven*Dr. Ducreux is director of research at the Centre de Recherches Historiques
(CNRS), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, ducreux@ehess.fr.
1
Anna Coreth, Pietas Austriaca. Ursprung und Entwicklung barocker Frömmigkeit
in Österreich. (Vienna, 1959). Coreth, Pietas Austriaca. österreichische Frömmigkeit
im Barock, 2nd ed. (Vienna, 1982). Coreth published a first draft of her argument in
“Pietas Austriaca. Wesen und Bedeutung habsburgischer Frömmigkeit in der
Barockzeit,” Mitteilungen des österreichischen Staatsarchivs, 7 (1954), 90–119. The
fact that the first English edition was recently published in the United States testifies to
the long-lasting success and great influence of Coreth’s work. Anna Coreth, Pietas
Austriaca, trans.William D. Bowman and Anna Maria Leitgeb (West Lafayette, IN, 2004).

276

BY MARIE-ELIZABETH DUCREUX

277

teenth-century Austrian Habsburg sovereigns succeeded in changing
what was initially presented as dynastic and personal devotion into
public religious ritual, giving their peoples and lands a new common
ideological horizon and inextricably binding reasons of state with theological doctrine. Coreth wrote: “These conceptions were based on
an all-inclusive worldview, itself dependant on a certain cultural
framework, that connected secular and spiritual realms.”2
Coreth approached her topic through four aspects: worship of the
Eucharist, devotion to the Blessed Virgin, confidence in Christ’s Holy
Cross, and veneration of selected saints. These have been viewed as
special manifestations of Habsburg piety and the fundamentals of
their sovereign rule, from Ferdinand II (1619–37) to the mid-eighteenth century and particularly during the Counter Reformation.3 All
of these aspects disclosed the central component of the Habsburgs’
scheme of theological politics: the process of salvation stressing
Christ’s human presence on earth through incarnation and its outcome; the Eucharist; and the Sacrifice of the Cross, in which the
prince embodies the mediation between this world and the heavenly
one and thus represents God on earth. Yet from the introduction of
her book, Coreth made clear that the whole system of the Pietas
Austriaca rested on the sovereign’s virtues. These virtues were inherited from ancestors, especially from Rudolph I (1218–91), as Coreth
noted.“The same piety became a holy, binding heritage, which had to
be faithfully followed and constantly renewed as the destiny of the
house depended upon it,” she wrote.4
Recent research on the political devotional comportment of the
Habsburg’s Spanish branch, on “the Power of the Kings” and also on theological politics in general make it increasingly evident that the themes
favored by the Habsburgs were not unique to them in all their features.5
2

Coreth, Pietas (English trans., 2004), p. xxi.
Coreth, Pietas (English trans. 2004, p. 5), records that even Maria Theresa (1740–80)
considered in her political testament that her ancestors “of undying fame were especially dedicated to this piety and because of it received divine grace and support in
times of extreme danger.”
4
Coreth, Pietas (English trans. 2004), p. xxii.
5
On the Habsburg Spanish branch see Marie Tanner, The Last Descendant of
Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor (New Haven, 1993), and
Sylvène Edouard, L’Empire imaginaire de Philippe II. Pouvoir des images et discours
du pouvoir sous les Habsbourg d’Espagne au XVI e siècle (Paris, 2005). On the “Power
of Kings” and theological politics, there is an enormous bibliography in most European
languages. See Paul Kléber Monod, The Power of Kings. Monarchy and Religion in
3

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EMPERORS, KINGDOMS, TERRITORIES

Coreth addressed this aspect briefly.6 Like the Habsburgs, other
Catholic European rulers were convinced of a divine presence on
earth and thus believed in the righteousness of acts inspired by God.
Obviously, ties between religion and politics have been inherent to
the power of rulers from antiquity through the Enlightenment and
the French Revolution, and in some cases even beyond.7 However, the
Pietas Austriaca constituted a particular form of Habsburg piety built
on the four main types of devotion stressed by Coreth.What was also
specific about Austrian Habsburg piety was the identification of its
components with a special mission to rule the empire, which God
had given the House of Austria in medieval times.8 Because of its
intrinsic contradictions, Habsburg piety—together with virtue, a collection of devotions, and an ambition to rule—was an essential element in forming an ideological identity, providing a political impetus
for reinforcing Catholicism, and even for issuing laws.9
The success of Coreth’s book resounds still. Her path-breaking
proposition shaped a paradigm for historians as well as for art historians. So many scholars have followed in Coreth’s footsteps that it
would be impossible to list them all, but Franz Matsche and, more
recently, Maria Goloubeva and Jutta Schumann have contributed valuable and highly inspired studies in art history and the history of communication and propaganda.10 The four main features of Habsburg
piety, as delineated by Coreth and others, turned out to be increasingly present during the seventeenth century and the first half of the

Europe, 1589–1715 (New Haven, 1999); Louis Marin, La parole mangée et autres essais
théologico-politiques (Paris, 1986); Louis Marin, Portrait of the King (Minneapolis, 1988).
6
Coreth, Pietas (1959), p. 7; and in the preface to the 2nd ed., 1982 (English trans.,
2004, p. xxii).
7
Alain Boureau and Claudio Sergio Ingerflom, eds., La royauté sacrée dans le
monde chrétien. Colloque de Royaumont, mars 1989 (Paris, 1992).
8
Coreth, Pietas (English trans., 2004), p. xxii.
9
Ferdinand II published on December 5, 1633, a mandate making clear the rules for
a virtuous life and fixing the punishment of public vices. Formally intended for Inner
Austria (Styria, Carinthia, Carniola) and Gorizia, it was also dispatched to other
Habsburg lands and may be found in the Czech National Archives in Prague (Royal
Patents: PT-5.12.1633). Leopold I reissued it in 1683, at least for Bohemia (Prague
National Archives, Stará manipulace/SM sg.P 130/2061903).
10
Franz Matsche, Die Kunst im Dienst der Staatsidee Kaiser Karls VI.
Ikonographie, Ikonologie und Programmatik des “Kaiserstils,” 2 vols. (New York,
1981). Maria Goloubeva, The Glorification of the Emperor Leopold I in Image,
Spectacle and Text (Mainz, 2000). Jutta Schumann, Die andere Sonne. Kaiserbild und
Medienstrategien im Zeitalter Leopolds I (Berlin, 2003).

BY MARIE-ELIZABETH DUCREUX

279

eighteenth century, as evidenced in prints, paintings, and architecture
related to the Habsburg emperors and their immediate families.
Carried out through social rituals of all kinds (ceremonials, processions, and so forth) and soaking up the spirit of congregations such as
Marian sodalities, these features have played a role, above all, for
nobles and the urban elite.11 Their integration and efficacy for the
peasantry and rural parishes certainly deserves investigation; we have
little evidence that Pietas Austriaca directly informed the enormous
growth of Catholic rituals during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. More than a set of shared beliefs, Pietas Austriaca was a system
for sacralizing and sanctifying the legitimacy of the dynasty through
representations, as well as paving an early-modern path to Austrian
State mystic and raison d’État.
Despite the importance of Coreth’s findings, she and most other
researchers of the Pietas Austriaca have worked primarily with materials from Austria, the Spanish Low Countries, and the Holy Roman
Empire, or, in the case of authors such as Friedrich Polleross, have
included the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs.12 They did not explicitly confuse the dynastic and territorial elements of the topic, but
seem to have promulgated the idea that a single ideological construction spread from Vienna to the Austrian hereditary lands, as well
as to other realms and provinces of the Habsburg monarchy (except
Hungary, which usually is omitted from such analyses), transmitted
from the center to the margins, rather than in the other direction.
Schumann’s book, conceived as a study of media strategies, focused
on what she called a “multiple culture of [Emperor Leopold I’s]
image” (multiplizierende Imagepflege), spread through the higher
strata of society both in the empire and Austria.13 Goloubeva, for her
11

Many prints that were intended for Marian sodalities develop narratives emphasizing the Habsburgs’ piety. It is obviously the case in the widespread books of János
Nádasi, a Hungarian Jesuit. See Gábor Tűskés, A XVII.századi elbeszélő egyházi irodalom európai kapcsolatai (Nádasi János) (Budapest, 1997);“Johannes Nádasi. Leben
und Werk eines aszetischen Jesuitenschrifsteller in der zweiten Hälfte des 17.
Jahrhunderts,” in Gábor Tűskés and Éva Knapp, Volksfrömmigkeit in Ungarn
(Dettelbach, 1996), pp. 355–98; Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux, “Dévotion, littérature et
poésie au XVIIe siècle: Bridel et Nádasi,” in Aurora Musas nutrit. Die Jesuiten und die
Kultur Mitteleuropas im 16.–18. Jarhundert (Bratislava, 2008), pp. 89–112.
12
Friedrich Polleross,“‘Majesté’ contre ‘Sainteté’ dans les portraits des Habsbourg au
début du XVIIe siècle,” in L’image du roi de François Ier à Louis XIV. Fictions du pouvoir et stratégies visuelles 1550–1650, ed. Thomas W. Gaeghtens and Nicole Hochner
(Paris, 2006), pp. 33–55.
13
Schumann, Die andere Sonne, pp. 305–69, 371–89.

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EMPERORS, KINGDOMS, TERRITORIES

part, identified many starting points in the monarchy (and elsewhere,
mostly in South Germany) for laudatory writings on Leopold I’s glory
and righteousness. She also briefly pointed out “the decentralized
nature of the glorification of the emperor.”14 Nevertheless, she still,
perhaps unconsciously, considered things in a hierarchical perspective, with Viennese textual production in a preeminent position,
excepting material coming from the German Empire, which
Goloubeva carefully and generously employed.15 By implication, in
these visions, the Pietas Austriaca is disseminated from Vienna,
Catholic Germany, and the Habsburg dynasty. The territorial dimension of the Pietas Austriaca thus has remained a kind of blind spot
until now.
In the case of the Pietas Austriaca, we are in fact confronted with
a far-reaching symbolical system, which, especially following
Ferdinand II’s victory at the White Mountain in 1620 and the consequent recatholicization of Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, the County of
Glatz, and Silesia, proposed and gradually developed a deeply renewed
worldview, creating links between the Habsburg dynasty’s mythology
and a novel approach to autochthonous historical narrative in each
land and province of the Austrian monarchy.16 This point has been
insufficiently emphasized. Analyses of academic theses, panegyrics,
and funeral orations, along with some vernacular literature, often show
a distinctive image of the Pietas Austriaca, differentiating the dynastic
path—which can be also called “Pietas Habsburgica”—from a “Pietas
Bohemica” or “Hungarica” and thus reveal that there was no centralized vision of the Habsburg monarchy. Habsburg rulers held a place in
the normal succession of Bohemian and Hungarian kings; they were
consecrated and crowned in accordance with old and (in Czech lands)
new constitutions and customs, and were integrated into the genealogies of genuine local dynasties.17 The core of the Pietas Austriaca, as
14

Goloubeva, The Glorification, p. 2.
Goloubeva, The Glorification, pp. 54–55.
16
The victory at White Mountain near Prague, on November 8, 1620, allowed
Emperor Ferdinand II to reconquer the royal throne of Bohemia and to reimpose the
Catholic religion in Czech and Austrian hereditary lands.
17
Some examples are to be found in László Listius, Reges Hungariae Ab Anno
Christi CDI. Ad Annum MDCLII. Ungaricis Rhytmis descripti, in Magyar Márs avagy
Mohách mezején történt veszedelemnek emlékezete (The Hungarian Mars or the
Memory of the Battle that Took Place on the Field of Mohács) (Vienna, 1653), 1–81
(spec. pag. after p. 154); Giulio Solimani, S.J., Elogia ducum, regum, interregum, qui
Bohemis praeferrunt (Prague, 1629), pp. i–iii, 1–60, i–ii; Michael Franz Ferdinand
Althann, Imago principum Bohemiae LXI. . . (Prague, 1673).
15

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281

described by Coreth, did not exclude local forms, but little attention
has been paid to their potential heterogeneity. All these specific forms,
even when praising the current ruler and the Habsburg dynasty, also
proclaimed patriotic virtues and native sovereigns. In this respect, it is
worthwhile to compare the Bohemian and Austrian paths. The
Hungarian case, due to the Ottoman presence and the religious and
political division of the country, is more complicated; however, some
parallelism exists and may enrich Goloubeva’s findings on “multiple
culture of [Emperor Leopold I’s] image.”18 For example, Géza Galavics
has demonstrated that theses by Catholic Hungarian students at the
universities of Trnava (Nagyszombat), Košice (Kassa), and Vienna, who
were usually members of a noble household, sometimes linked
Leopold I’s and Joseph I’s glory and apotheosis with the ancient kings
and patron saints of Hungary, a better-known pattern for Austrian and
Bohemian students.19
Indeed, the central headings of Coreth’s model—Marian piety,
devotion to the crucified Jesus Christ and the Eucharist, and the worship of the saints as well as the recital of ancestral virtues—were not
viewed uniquely as the focus of the Habsburg dynastic ideology. They
were equally stated in various forms in Bohemia and Hungary, where
they originated in local historical and dynastic traditions. As is shown
below, these local achievements were not necessarily carried out
under the sole auspices of the “Pietas Habsburgica” but also
extended beyond the oft-used paradigm of “Landespatriotismus.” Of
particular interest from that point of view are the cults of the Blessed
Mary and of the Bohemian and Hungarian holy patrons.20 Interlacing
Habsburg genealogies with those of the ancient local dynasties,
numerous texts centered on the virtues of the holy kings Stephen and
Ladislas of Hungary and duke Wenceslas of Bohemia. In so doing,
these writings showed a kind of Bohemian or Hungarian pious anteriority, parallel to the contemporary Pietas Austriaca. Such discourses
set out a narrative entirely specific to these countries, highlighting the
18
Goloubeva, The Glorification, pp. 54–55. For a thorough discussion about the particularity of the Hungarian case, see Robert John Weston Evans, The Making of the
Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700. An Interpretation (Oxford, 1979), pp. 234–74.
19
Géza Galavics,“Thesenblätter ungarischer Studenten in Wien im 17. Jahrhundert.
Künstlerische und pädagogische Strategien,” in Die Jesuiten in Wien. Zur Kunst-und
Kulturgeschichte der österreichischen Ordensprovinz der “Gesellschaft Jesu” im 17.
und 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Hubert Kartner and Werner Telesko (Vienna, 2003), pp.
113–30.
20
Evans, Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, pp. 224–28, 255–56.

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EMPERORS, KINGDOMS, TERRITORIES

continuity and spiritual identity of each realm, and finally suggesting
a distinctive “Pietas Bohemica” and “Pietas Hungarica” under the
rule of contemporaneous Habsburg emperors as well as kings of
Bohemia and Hungary. Later, especially in the second half of the seventeenth century, authors from Bohemia and Hungary introduced
topics that underscored and maintained a local identity and dignity
when discussing the sacred kingship of righteous rulers. This point
deserves stronger emphasis.
Thus, comparing the many ways in which local levels and the
dynastic representation models intersected provides us with some
perspective for a broader reading of the Pietas Austriaca. The details
of competing narratives of the Pietas Habsburgica will be explained
below, as well as interpretative discrepancies and nuances that have
molded the Pietas Austriaca as presented in Coreth’s model.
Local Nuances: The Habsburgs as God’s Chosen Rulers
and the Mediatory Role of the Virgin Mary
Ferdinand II is at the center of Coreth’s Pietas Austriaca, because
he was the first ruler to break almost completely with sixteenth-century
forms of religious coexistence in Austrian and Czech core lands of the
Habsburg monarchy and to enforce the Catholic religion there.
Moreover, according to his confessor Wilhelm Lamormaini, he would
have preferred to lose all of his lands, power, wealth, and resources
rather than suffer a single heretic living in his duchies and kingdoms.21 Given this evidence at least one historian has viewed
Ferdinand II as the real founder of the Habsburg monarchy.22
In the seventeenth century, the Habsburgs’ political theology was
embodied in ideals such as the anonymous Princeps in Compendio (a
handbook for governing greatly valued by the Austrian Habsburgs
since Ferdinand II) and texts such as Lamormaini’s “Ferdinand II’s
21
See Wilhelm Lamormaini, Ferdinandi II. Romanorum imperatoris Virtutes
(Vienna, 1638), here in Franz Christoph Khevenhüller’s German translation
(Ferdinandi II. Christliche/Heroische Tugenden. Das erste Capitel. Glaub und Eyser in
der Catholischen Religion, in Annales Ferdinandi, oder warhaffte Beschreibung
Kaysers Ferdinandi dess Andern . . . Thatten. . . , 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1726), 12:cols.
2380–81.
22
Robert J. Bireley, “Ferdinand II: Founder of the Habsburg Monarchy,” in Crown,
Church and Estates: Central European Politics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries, ed. R. J.W. Evans and T. V. Thomas (London, 1991), pp. 226–44, here p. 226.

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Virtues,” a far-reaching eulogy written by the emperor’s Jesuit confessor after Ferdinand II’s death.23 Princeps in Compendio quotes the
scriptures on whether a prince holds office through God: “By me,
kings reign and rulers make laws which are just.”24 Coreth interprets
this quotation from Proverbs 8: “This was understood to mean not
only that God calls the ruler—in the sense of the divine right of
kings—to his reign, but also that God assists the ruler continuously
with his governmental tasks, as long as the ruler allows himself to be
led by God.”25 Habsburg legends and myths, as re-elaborated in the
seventeenth century, contain no ambiguity: They saw their dynasty
elected by God to a world empire because of their forefather Rudolph
I’s reverence for a priest carrying the Eucharist. Previously, in the sixteenth century, the point of God’s choice of a sovereign was still a delicate matter, lacking unanimity among Catholic theologians. For
example, Jesuit Francesco Suárez underlines in his Tractatus de legibus, ac Deo legislatore that “the power of political dominion or rule
over men has not been granted, directly by God, to any particular
human individual.”26 Still, in about 1610, Jesuits Robert Bellarmine
and Martin Becan argued against an unlimited conception of the
divine right of the kings, no doubt answering King James I of
England’s Trew Law of Free Monarchies and Basilikon Doron.27
However, from about 1619–20, Ferdinand II appears in apologetic
works, as well as in anti-Machiavellian political literature, as truly
23
Wilhelm Lamormaini, Ferdinandi II. Romanorum imperatoris Virtutes (Vienna,
1638). On the significance and success of Lamormaini’s encomium, see Marie-Elizabeth
Ducreux, “La Cour Sainte et le prince chrétien. Usages et circulations de quelques
imprimés entre la France, la Hongrie, l’Autriche et la Bohême au XVIIe siècle” in Cahiers
d’Etudes Hongroises, vol. 14 (Paris, 2008), II:273–96; and Robert J. Bireley,“The Image
of Emperor Ferdinand (1619–1637) in William Lamormaini, S.J, ‘Ferdinandi II
Imperatoris Romanorum Virtutes’ (1538),” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 52
(2009), 121–40; Bireley,“Ferdinand II: Founder,” pp. 220–44. For Princeps in Compendio
see Coreth, Pietas (English trans., 2004), p. 2; Franz Bosbach,“Princeps in Compendio,”
in Das Herrscherbild im 17. Jahrhundert, ed. Konrad Repgen (Münster, 1991), pp.
79–114. Charles VI’s biographer Eucharius Gottlieb Rinck published a German translation in the 3rd edition of his life of Leopold I (Leopolds des Grossen Römischen
Kaysers wunderwürdiges Leben und Thaten . . .) (Cologne, 1713), I:44–76.
24
Rinck, Leopolds des Grossen, I:45.
25
Coreth, Pietas (English trans., 2004), p. 2.
26
Quotation in English translation from Monod, Power of Kings, p. 52.
27
On this topic: Robert J. Bireley, Maximilian von Bayern, Adam Contzen S.J. und
die Gegenreformation in Deutschland (Göttingen, 1975); Monod, Power of Kings, pp.
68–69; Bernard Bourdin, La genèse théologico-politique de l’État moderne (Paris,
2004); Robert J. Bireley, The Jesuits and the Thirty Years’ War. Kings, Courts and
Confessors (Cambridge, UK, 2003), pp. 4, 14.

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EMPERORS, KINGDOMS, TERRITORIES

selected by God, the “Celestial Inhabitant,” to quote the Jesuit Adam
Contzen’s dedication to the emperor in his Ten Books on Politics.28
In 1638, Lamormaini’s Ferdinand’s Virtues presupposed as fundamental the sovereign’s election by God, and his threnody played a
seminal part in propagating this idea as well as some fundamental
themes of the Pietas Austriaca in Marian congregations and universities.29 Thus in Ferdinand II there is an actualization of Rudolph I’s
figure. The victory at White Mountain in November 1620, which contemporaries perceived as God’s miracle manifested by the Blessed
Virgin, consolidated a vision of Ferdinand II as God’s chosen one.
The Virgin’s mediation was a typical feature of the Austrian
Habsburgs’ ideology in the seventeenth century. Dynastic historiographers and apologists used it in countless variations. Slovenian canon
Joannes Schönleben commented in 1680: “Thus the Austrians are
reigning, ruling, are victorious and ensure peace by Mary.”30
Furthermore, by the middle of the seventeenth century, Bavarian
Jesuit Wilhelm Gumppenberg, in his Atlas Marianus (1657), a major
work conceptualizing the reign of the Holy Virgin in the world, no
longer explains the Habsburgs’ divine election by Rudolph I’s respect
toward the Eucharist, but ties it to their Marian piety, more specifically
to the Virgin of Loreto: “Rudolf I being in 1291 in Tersato gave the
Virgin his horse for her Son, and the Virgin and Jesus Christ gave in
return for the horse an endless empire, and assured him that Austria
would be the nest of the imperial Eagle.”31 Thus, according to
Gumppenberg, because the Virgin’s house, which angels miraculously
brought by air from Nazareth, was supposed to have stayed three
years in Dalmatia before a definitive settlement in Loreto, Mary promised the House of Austria three centuries of future dominion over the
empire, now culminating in Ferdinand II and his successors.
28
“At habitator coeli, susceptor tuus exaltauit caput tuum, proceresque Bohemiae
permouit. . . ,” in Adam Contzen, Politicorum Libri Decem . . . (Mainz, 1621), dedicatory
epistle to Ferdinand II, sigs. **2 v–**3r.
29
Ducreux,“La Cour Sainte,” pp. 280–82, 293–95.
30
“Sic per Mariam Austriaci regnant, imperant, vincunt, pacem stabiliunt,” in
Joannes Ludovicus Schönleben, Dissertatio polemica de prima origine augustissimae
domus habspurgo-austriacae (Ljubljana, 1680), p. 172.
31
“Dederat Rudolphus nuper Virginis Filio equum, pro quo Virgo Domum,
Virginis Filius (ut speramus) Imperium sine fine dedit, jussitque Austriam posthac
esse pro nido Aquilae; & jam tribus saeculis cum dimidio fuit, cuiusvis anni moram
saeculo Imperii remuneratus,” in P. Wilhelm Gumppenberg, Atlas Marianus. quo
sanctae Dei genitris Mariae imaginum miraculosarum origines historiarum centuriis explicantur (Munich, 1672), 1:3.

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285

Many baroque narratives confirm or repeat in other contexts the
theme of Ferdinand II’s election as mediated by the Virgin. The
learned Czech Jesuit Bohuslav Balbín supplied one example in his
Latin story of the pilgrimage to Svatá Hora in Bohemia.32 Its Czech
vernacular translation by another Jesuit, Matěj Václav Šteyer, relates
Ferdinand’s II imperial designation thusly: “Johann Schweikard, archbishop of Mainz . . . and elector of the Holy Roman Empire, was not
willing to give his voice to Ferdinand II” in 1619, but “the Blessed
Virgin Mary spoke to him and rebuked him, ordering him to vote in
Ferdinand, because it has been already ruled and chosen in Heaven.”33
Incidentally, in Lamormaini’s Ferdinand II’ s Virtues, Schweikard is
given a particular part in the disclosure of God’s will concerning
Ferdinand II’s accession to the empire. Lamormaini’s account of this
important episode has Mary simply ordering Schweikard to elect
Ferdinand as emperor, while the Czech narration stresses the preexisting divine choice of Ferdinand II.34
Both Lamormaini and Balbín’s narrations considered Ferdinand II’s
election to the empire as the culmination of the Virgin’s promise to
the ancestral founder of the Habsburg dynasty. Even if the Czech
account differed on subtleties, it still stands directly in line with
Coreth’s interpretation in the Pietas Austriaca. That is not the case
for all of the following examples.

32
Bohuslav Balbín, Diva Montis Sanctis, seu origines et miracula magnae Dei
hominumque matris Mariae (Prague, 1665). For an introduction to Balbín, see
Bohuslav Balbín und die Kultur seiner Zeit in Böhmen, ed. Zuzana Pokorná and
Martin Svatos (Cologne, 1993), and Howard Louthan, Converting Bohemia. Force and
Persuasion in the Catholic Reformation (Cambridge, UK, 2009), pp. 130–45.
33
“Nově jš í příklad máme na Ferdinandovi, toho jména druhém českém králi; neb
když Jan Švikard rodem kroneburgský, arcibiskup mohutský, Svaté římské říš e volenec,
pochyboval, má-li mu dáti svůj hlas, aby byl římským císařem, blahoslavená Panna Maria
zřetedlnými slovy k ně mu promluvila, napomínajíc ho, aby Ferdinanda (ač se ten zdá
nehrubě mocný a má nepřátel mnoho) za císař e vyvolil, že tak o něm jest v nebi
vyrčeno a ustanoveno,” in Bohuslav Balbín, Př epodivná Matka Svatohorská Maria.
(The Miraculous Mother by Svatá Hora, the Holy Mary . . .)—Př ídavek. O lásce Blahoslavené Panny Marie k zemím české, moravské a slezské, a o pobožnosti Českého
národu k též Blahoslavené Panně (Supplement. About the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Love
of the Czech, Moravian and Silesian Lands and about the Devotion of the Czech Nation
to This Blessed Virgin) (Litomyšl, 1666), pp. 461–62.
34
Lamormaini, Ferdinandi II. … Virtutes, chap. 28 (Quaedam in Ferdinando mira),
quoted here from a later edition (Tyrnau [Trnava, Nagyszombat], 1739), pp. 161–62.
Here, Mary was simply telling the archbishop-elector to be unafraid of electing
Ferdinand.

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Competing Ancestors
As in their other lands and territories, Ferdinand II, Ferdinand III
(1637–57), and Leopold I (1658–1705) were often alleged to rule in
their Bohemian and Hungarian kingdoms through explicit divine election, through mimicry of Christ (Christomimesis), and through
virtues that are consubstantial to them and to the dynasty and connect them to their forefathers. This looks like a well-known pattern.
Yet the oft-published founding narrative of Habsburg myth, with
Rudolph I’s promise of ruling the empire, competes with other native
accounts. Here, seventeenth-century Habsburg rulers are linked with
other “ancestors”: the patron saints of Czech lands and Hungary, principally St. Wenceslas for Bohemia, and Ss. Stephen and Ladislas for
Hungary, with their virtues anticipating and sometimes inspiring
those of the Habsburgs. The different phases of increasing veneration
of these “national” or state patrons and custodians in the seventeenth
century deserve new, detailed studies, aimed at clarifying the strategies of their promoters as well as the complex part played by some
protagonists.
The relationship between power and piety, as well as holiness and
sanctity, in seventeenth-century rulers is a point of special importance
and has not been sufficiently developed. Medieval holy rulers of
Hungary and Bohemia were described in legends and vitae as combining the perfect models of king and saint. Rudolph I of Habsburg,
whose founding tale gathers the characteristics of the Pietas
Austriaca, ruled as emperor only on earth: While pious and holy, he
was not sanctified and canonized. Furthermore, compared to other
European and Central European dynasties, the Habsburgs could not
claim to be descended from holy blood and lineage (a Beata Stirps),
as did the Arpadians and the Přemyslidians in Hungary and
Bohemia.35 This explains why dissenting versions on the origin of the
Habsburg’s imperial charisma exist, even in Austria. In any case, this is
attributed to their virtue of piety. A philosophy thesis written at
Vienna University in 1699 summarizes this widespread pattern:“If you
are asking who first has bestowed the empire on the world, the
answer is: so did Piety.”36
35
On Arpad and Přemyslid saintly rulers see Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and
Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge, UK, 2002).
36
“Si primum Europaei orbis Imperii collatorem? is fuit Pietas,” qtd. in Conrad
Adolf Albrecht, Ferdinand Joseph Albrecht, and Jordan Johann Albrecht von

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287

St. Leopold Challenges Rudolph I as the Source of Habsburg Glory
and Right to the Imperial Dignity
First, the situation in Austria will be examined. When dealing with
supposedly “holy ancestors,” an initial parallel should be drawn with
what is known about the cult of St. Leopold of Babenberg.37 This
medieval margrave of Austria (1073–1136), founder of Vienna and an
Augustinian monastery at Klosterneuburg, whose local cult started
soon after he died in 1136, was canonized by Pope Innocent VIII in
1485 at the behest of Emperor Frederick III (1440–93). In some
baroque publications, Leopold of Babenberg is presented as a challenge to Rudolph I, although he was not of Habsburg lineage.38
Emperor Maximilian (1493–1519), who paid great attention to all possible glorious ancestors, let a court historiographer include Leopold
of Babenberg in a long series of his holy forebears.39 Nonetheless, his
cult remained confined to the Augustinian canonry of Klosterneuburg
and to Lower Austria. But, as shown by Elisabeth Kovács, Maximilian’s
death brought about an interruption in St. Leopold’s dynastic cult
until the end of the sixteenth century.40 Emperor Leopold I, born on
St. Leopold’s Day (November 15, 1640), declared him the patron saint
of Austria in 1663.41 St. Leopold’s worship then began to intensify,
after five centuries of local veneration in Klosterneuburg and the
countryside around its monastery.

Albrechtburg, Phosphori Austriaci sive compendiosae Historiae de Augustissimae
Domus Austriacae Origine, Magnitudine, & Potentia (Austrian Morning Star, or an
Abridged History of the Most August House of Austria’s Origin, Greatness, and Power)
(Vienna, 1699), fol. 2r.
37
Coreth, Pietas (English trans., 2004), pp. 83–84; Georg Wacha, Leopold III., der
Heilige. Ein Symbol in Österreichs Geschichte (St. Polten–Vienna, 1975); and Elisabeth
Kovács, “Der Heilige Leopold und die Staatsmystik der Habsburger,” in Der Heilige
Leopold. Landesfürst und Staatssymbol, ed. Floridus Röhrig and Gottfried Stangler
(Vienna, 1985), pp. 68–83.
38
Stefan Samerski,“Hausheilige statt Staatspatrone. Der misslungene Absolutismus in
Österreichs Heiligenhimmel,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1620 bis 1740. Leistungen
und Grenzen des Absolutismusparadigmas, ed. Petr Mat⬘a and Thomas Winkelbauer
(Stuttgart, 2006), pp. 254–61.
39
See Tanja Reinhardt,“Die habsburgischen Heiligen des Jakob Mennel” (PhD diss.,
Freiburg University, 2002), pp. 186–87, available online at http://www.freidok.
uni-freiburg.de/volltexte/2438.
40
Elisabeth Kovács, “Der heilige Leopold–Rex perpetuus Austriae?”, Jahrbuch des
Stiftes Klosterneuburg, Neue Folge, 13 (1985), 159–211, here 180.
41
See Floridus Rohrig, Leopold III. der Heilige, Markgraf von Österreich (Vienna,
1985).

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EMPERORS, KINGDOMS, TERRITORIES

Interestingly, many authors who have written about this holy margrave of Lower Austria have overlooked the localization of the devotion paid to St. Leopold in the seventeenth century. Most studies mention Austria in a very general way, without differentiating among
Lower, Upper, or Interior Austria, and they seem to extend St.
Leopold’s patronage to all Habsburg lands. (A recent paper by Stefan
Samerski is a noteworthy exception.) Some studies, for example, have
argued that since 1663, when Leopold I declared St. Leopold of
Babenberg as patron saint of Austria, his cult began to flourish more
widely in Habsburg lands.42 Yet his veneration remained strongest on
a local level, and when cultivated elsewhere, it was on the level of religious orders such as Augustinians and Premonstratensians. In the
Diocese of Vienna, a pilgrimage to Klosterneuburg, the seat of the holy
margrave, was initiated on November 15, 1661, and continued annually until 1775. On this occasion, a panegyric dedicated to the saint
was habitually recited and then was duplicated in the Viennese university, where St. Leopold later also became patron saint of the
Austrian academic nation.43 These encomiums bestowed St. Leopold’s
virtues and piety on Emperor Leopold I, bringing both Leopolds into
the “Heart of Austria” and praising together “Leopold holy and pious in
the heaven and on earth Leopold forever august and pious.”44
Nevertheless, there is no evidence of a significant expansion of St.
Leopold’s cult outside Austrian hereditary lands surpassing that of local
patron saint.After the Battle at the White Mountain (1620), Ferdinand
II received papal permission for maintaining St. Leopold’s Day in the
Viennese proper and Cardinal Ernst Adalbert von Harrach, archbishop
of Prague had it extended to his diocese in 1638.45 In spite of this liturgical detail, it seems that it neither grew nor played a decisive role in
connecting Austria with Czech lands in the seventeenth century. No
42
See Coreth, Pietas (English trans., 2004), pp. 75–76; Goloubeva, The
Glorification, pp. 31–32; Kovács,“Der heilige Leopold und die Staatsmystik,” pp. 68–83.
Antonín Sorm’s older work, Úcta svatého Leopolda v Čechách a na Moravě (St.
Leopold’s Worship in Bohemia and Moravia) (Prague, [1936]), is not very informative
and is somewhat misleading.
43
Marie Kastl, Das Schriftwort in Leopoldspredigten des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts.
Untersuchungen zur Heiligenpredigt als lobender und beratschlagender Rede
(Vienna, 1988), pp. 10–11.
44
Kovács,“Der heilige Leopold–Rex perpetuus,” p. 200;“Leopoldus in coelis sanctus
& pius & in terris Leopoldus semper augustus, & pius, amen.” Cor austriacum. Das ist
das Leib, und Lebhafte Oesterrreichische Stammen . . . (Vienna, s.d.).
45
Positiones 11634 (1638), Archivio della Congregazione delle cause die Santi,
Vatican City.

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289

canticles or literature of Bohemian provenance dedicated to Leopold
of Babenberg have surfaced, except for some Jesuit plays.46 Statues and
pillars of the saint are occasionally found, but most often in subordination to St. Wenceslas, especially in Moravia.47 An exception is in
Bohemian and Moravian Augustinian monasteries, which maintained
ties to St. Leopold’s foundation in Klosterneuburg and celebrated his
memory until the reign of Joseph II (1780–90). There is only one
example of rhetorical juxtaposition of Leopold to Wenceslas, which
came from an Augustinian canonry and will be discussed later. Despite
Leopold I’s attempt to make the devotion to St. Leopold a symbolic
connection, tying his core lands to the greater German Empire,
Samerski’s findings corroborate the local impact of the veneration of
St. Leopold, long concentrated in Klosterneuburg and Lower Austria.48
Samerski convincingly demonstrates as well the primarily dynastic
character of this cult, which was mostly supported by court aristocracy and clergy of high rank.49 Goloubeva’s commentary about St.
Leopold adds a detail of significance:
As a rule, the dynasty tended to worship the saints that were directly connected to the Austrian crownlands, and among these, St Leopold was particularly prominent. Having married an emperor’s daughter, Leopold, a
twelfth-century margrave of Lower Austria from the house of Babenberg,
was considered to have brought the imperial charisma to his lands. Himself
a candidate to the imperial throne in 1125, Leopold later withdrew from
the competition. His son, however, became the first duke of Austria. . . . Since
[Leopold] became a dynastic Saint.50

In the legend recounted here, St. Leopold’s extraordinary humility
was presented as a direct cause for the elevation of his House to rule
the whole of Austria and analogically as a distant reason for the
Austrian (and Habsburg) mission to rule the empire. This competes
with a fundamental feature of Rudolph I’s baroque dynastic legend,
46

Metodě j Zemek, “Die Verehrung des heiligen Leopold in den böhmischen
Ländern,” Jahrbuch des Stiftes Klosterneuburg, Neue Folge, 13 (1985), 143–58, here
146–47.
47
Zemek, “Die Verehrung,” pp. 147–48; Ivana Maxová, Vratislav Nejedlý, and Pavel
Zahradník, Marianské, trojíční a další světecké pilíře v kraji Vysočině (Okres
Havlíčkův Brod, Jihlava, Pelhřimov) (Marian,Trinity and Other Holy Columns in the
Vysočina Region) (Prague, 2006), pp. 79–80. Other volumes of this recent encyclopedic
series corroborate the rare occurrence of St. Leopold’s pillars in Czech lands.
48
For Leopold’s I attempts, see Kovács, “Der heilige Leopold–Rex perpetuus,” pp.
198–200.
49
Samerski,“Hausheilige statt Staatspatrone,” p. 260.
50
Goloubeva, The Glorification, p. 31.

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EMPERORS, KINGDOMS, TERRITORIES

which repeatedly attributes his election to the empire because of his
Eucharistic or, as in the case of the Atlas Marianus, of his Marian worship.51 As previously noted, Rudolph I, as glorified as he was in
Habsburg dynastic tradition, was never a saint, as was Leopold of
Babenberg; consequently, he could not fit the role of a sacred ruler,
patron, and protector. The coexistence of these two traditions that
were equally embodied in ancestors’ merits—the one more local but
linked with approved sanctification and actual holiness, the other
embodying political skills and symbolic holiness—worked to enhance
the Habsburgs’ call for rights to the empire.
Occasionally, St. Leopold appears to enhance praise of the
Bohemian patron saint Wenceslas. On St. Leopold’s Day, November 15,
1657, the Augustinian friars of Zderaz in Prague gave an emblem book
as a birthday gift to Leopold I, who at that time sojourned in the
Bohemian capital city. This “Wenceslas, Holy Duke and Martyr of the
Bohemian Crown of Virtues and Eulogies” depicted lengthy episodes
of Wenceslas’s life and highlighted Bohemian royal virtues.52
However, a short epilogue introduced St. Leopold as the emperor’s
patron saint, echoing Wenceslas’s exaltation and connecting him to
the Czech holy duke and state patron. In this example, the two saints
mirrored each other as a double model of heavenly virtuous rulers
and prompted the young emperor and King Leopold I to try to emulate them on earth.
St. Ladislas as the Source of Hungarian and Habsburg Virtue
and Strength
If in Hungary, baroque devotion to St. Stephen presenting the
country as a “Marian kingdom” is well known, the worship of St.
51

Goloubeva, The Glorification, p. 31.
“Divine Wenceslaus, Duke of Bohemia, and Leopoldus, Margrave of Austria’s
Parallel Eulogy,” in Corona Virtutum et Laudum S. Ducis et Martyris Boëmorum
inclyti Wenceslai quam inter Panegyricas et genethliacas Aggratulationes sub notis
symbolicis expressam Serenissimo ac Potentissimo Principi Domino Domino
Leopoldo, huius nomine primo, Hung.[ariae] et Bohem.[iae] Regi, Archiduci Austriae
In eiusdem serenitatis serenissime Natali XV.ta Novemb.[ris] Anno 1657. Divo
Leopoldo festa …, s. l. s. d. (Wenceslas, Holy Duke and Martyr of the Bohemian Crown
of Virtues and Eulogies, expressed through encomiastic and celestial congratulatories,
with symbolical marks, which His humble clients and religious servants, the discalced
Augustinian Friars . . . offer to the Most Serene and Mighty Lord Leopold, King of
Hungary and of Bohemia and Archduke of Austria, on the occasion of his birthday,
November 15th, 1657 . . .). Prague, Strahov Library, shelf mark CQ VII/2 35, fols. 35–36.
52

BY MARIE-ELIZABETH DUCREUX

291

Ladislas has not been sufficiently noted in relation to the Habsburg
sovereigns.53 Leopold I began his reign as king of Hungary under
Ladislas’s auspices, after he was crowned in Presburg on the saint’s
day, June 27, 1655, a timing that was certainly quite deliberate. The
vast eulogistic literature in Latin from the Viennese university that was
devoted annually to St. Ladislas as the Hungarian academic nation’s
patron saint represents a particular facet of this neglected topic. It has
only rarely attracted scholars’ interest.54 Such eulogies always
involved young, noble Hungarian orators, students at the Viennese university or at the Pazmaneum, the Hungarian seminary in Vienna. In
the seventeenth century and through the eighteenth century, panegyrics were printed and at times gathered into a larger book. Thirtynine of these festive panegyrics, composed and declaimed between
1655 and 1693, were collected and reprinted in 1693 in a single
volume, Saint Ladislas I, King of Hungary’s Crowned Virtue.55
Ignatius Franciscus Xaverius Cetto, the editor of this series, dedicated
it to Cardinal Leopold Kollonich, archbishop of Kalocsa, administrator
of the Viennese Court Chamber, and former president of the
Hungarian Court Chamber, who was entrusted with restoring order in
recently reconquered regions of Hungary and Transylvania.56 Once
assembled, these numerous short encomia became a single lengthy
panegyric, displaying and maximizing particular Hungarian virtues
and history as well as glorifying Emperor Leopold I and his father,
Ferdinand III. Count Miklós Zrínyi (1620–64), the future Croatian ban
(or governor) and prominent Hungarian politician, wrote and

53

For a basic account and bibliography of Hungary as Regnum Marianum, see
Evans, Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, pp. 255–57; László Szörényi, Hunok és jezsuiták. Fejezetek a magyarországi latin hősepika történeből (The Hun and the
Jesuits. Chapters on History of Latin Epics in Hungary) (Budapest, 1993), p. 44; Tüskés
and Knapp, Az egyházi irodalom műfajai a 17–18 században. Tanulmányok
(Essays on Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Religious Literature) (Budapest,
2002), pp. 11–54.
54
István Fazekas, in A Bécsi Pázmáneum (The Viennese Pazmaneum), ed. István
Zombori (Budapest, 2002), pp. 110–11, mentions this custom but does not indicate
when it began. On the Hungarian Nation at Vienna University and the custom of
declaiming panegyric, see Evans, Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, p. 256; Andreas
Pöschek, “Disputationen und Ungarische Studenten an der Wiener Universität”
(Doctoral thesis, Universities of Vienna and Debrecen, 2007), pp. 5–10, available online
at http://www.poeschek.at/files/publications/disputation-ungarische_studenten_
universitaet_wien-andreas_poeschek.pdf.
55
Ignatius Franciscus Xaverius Cetto, Virtus coronata divi Ladislai I. Hungariae
regis, Inclytae Nationis Hungaricae Tutelaris . . . (Vienna, 1693).
56
On Kollonich, see Evans, Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, pp. 251–52.

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EMPERORS, KINGDOMS, TERRITORIES

declaimed St. Ladislas’s panegyric at Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral
in 1634, as Hungarian literary historian István Bitskey has remarked.57
On that occasion, this future commander-in-chief of the army in the
1664 campaign against the Ottomans, who became entangled in a
plot (the so-called Wesselényi Conspiracy) against Leopold I near the
end of his life, emphasized St. Ladislas’s and Ferdinand III’s similitude.
So did János Kéri—younger baron of Ipoly-Kér, son of a high-ranking
Hungarian state officer, the “Crown Custodian” (koronaőr), and future
bishop of Vác—on June 27, 1654. That oration was printed with a dedication to Ferdinand IV, Ferdinand III’s eldest son and Leopold I’s older
brother, who died prematurely the following year and never ruled.58
The inscription designated St. Ladislas as the celestial patron of this
young king of Hungary.59 The text then poses questions about
Ladislas’s heir, implicitly referring to Ferdinand IV. Spinning out intricate metaphors, it meshes the miracles accomplished during
Ladislas’s life while defeating the pagan Cumans—here “Barbarians” as
an echo of the modern Ottomans—with the benefits his sacred body
had provided after his death. All of these feats resulted from Ladislas’s
Marian piety, as well as from his election by the Blessed Virgin.60
Austria’s place as “the heart of Germania” and Leopold I’s glory are
directly derived from St. Ladislas’s qualities in the 1665 encomium,
which was pronounced by Count Ladislas Csáky.61 In 1670, János
Pátky, declaiming on “Saint Ladislas’s piety and fortitude as the two
columns supporting Hungary,” placed Ladislas above St. Stephen, the
state’s founder, in importance. After listing five valiant princes and
kings of Hungary from St. Emerich, St. Stephen’s son (c. 1007–31)—
who in fact never reigned—to Sigismond of Luxemburg (1387–1437),
he then concentrated their qualities in St. Ladislas as “the single
Guarantor of Christian Piety and absolute Compendium of all the

57
Oratio Sancto inter coelites nunc Ladislao Ungariae sacra inter mortales Anno
a Christianorum aera supra millesimum quinto & nonagesimo, maximi dein caesarum Ferdinandi divo filio nominis ejusdem Ungarorum regi (Vienna, 1634), István
Bitskey, Konfessionen und literarische Gattungen der frühen Neuzeit in Ungarn.
Beträge zur mitteleuropäischen vergleichenden Kulturgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main,
1999), p. 115.
58
Rex thaumaturgus, sive s. Ladislaus rex Ungariae, inclytae nationis ungaricae
in antiquissima & celeberrima universitate viennensi divus tutelaris. . . , a spectabile
ac magnifico domino Joanne Keri de Ipoly-Ker, libero barone . . . (Vienna, 1655).
Prague, Strahov Library, BC VI 102/4.
59
Rex thaumaturgus,, fol. A 2v.
60
Rex thaumaturgus,,A 3v–B 2r.
61
Cetto, Virtus Coronata, pp. 128–29.

BY MARIE-ELIZABETH DUCREUX

293

others heroes’ virtues.”62 It was due to St. Ladislas that Hungary could
see in St. Stephen its proper “morning star”: “[T]he former has shaped,
the latter managed; the former has built, the latter consolidated; the
former has sown, the latter cultivated; the former has lighted a spark,
the latter gave birth and lived.”63 Going further, Pátky lamented the
sacrilegious drowning that the Turks had recently inflicted on St.
Ladislas’s reliquary statue. But, he wrote, Ladislas, who “has been
removed from us,” is still alive; and Hungary, which was “established in
Ladislas’s fortitude and piety,” is now firmly standing on Leopold I’s
“advice and industry,” alluding here to the emperor’s motto
“Consilium et Industria.” St. Ladislas “has not been entombed” and “is
living in King and Emperor Leopold,” who, in turn, embodies Ladislas’s
renewed piety and courage.64
St.Wenceslas and the Czech Roots of the Habsburgs’ Marian Piety
The Habsburgs’ imperial right and divine call notwithstanding,
another competitor thus surfaced in Bohemia. A local approach of
greater extent and audacity than the Czech adaptation of
Lamormaini’s founding eulogy is in St. Wenceslas’s story, as narrated
by a Czech Jesuit, Jan (Johannes) Tanner, an author of special importance to this issue.65 Tanner (1623–95) is not to be confused with his
more famous brother, Mathias (1630–92)—rector of Prague University; superior of the Jesuit Bohemian province; and author of two
richly illustrated, well-known folios praising the heroism and missionary zeal of the Society of Jesus all over the world.66 Several of Jan
Tanner’s books contain scenes that were not part of St. Wenceslas’s
62
“Anno 1670. … Oratore R.D. Joanne Patky Hung. [ariae] Theologo è Coll. [egio]
Pazman. [eo] Duae Hungariae Columnae Pietas & Fortitudo S. Ladislai ” in Cetto,
Virtus coronata, p. 199.
63
“Plantavit ille, rigavit iste; construxit ille, firmavit iste; seminavit ille, coluit iste;
accendit ille, animavit iste.” “Anno 1670. … Oratore R.D. Joanne Patky,” p. 200.
64
“Ablatus est nobis sic Ladislaus, ut videatur relictus. Stas etiamnum in Ladislajana
pietatis & fortitudinis fundata columnis Ungaria, ubi in Consilia & Industra Leopoldi
potentissimi regis partier & augustissimi caesaris es collocate. Audacter dico, tumulatus
non est Ladislaus, qui . . . vivit in Leopoldo . . .Vivat ergo in Leopoldo caesare renovate
pax, virtus, gloria, regnorum quies, pietas & fortitude divi Ladislai.” “Anno 1670. . . .
Oratore R. D. Joanne Patky,” p. 218.
65
On Jan Tanner, see De Backer-Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de
Jésus (Brussels-Paris, 1896),VII:cols. 1855–58.
66
Mathias Tanner, S.J., Societas Jesu usque ad sanguinis (Prague, 1675), in De
Backer-Sommervogel, Bibliothèque, VII:col. 1860, item 9; Mathias Tanner, S.J., Societas
Jesu apostolarum imitratrix. . . , Prague, 1694, in De Backer-Sommervogel,
Bibliothèque, VII:col. 1861, item 11.

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EMPERORS, KINGDOMS, TERRITORIES

legend before the seventeenth century and, according to Czech historian Zdeněk Kalista, who analyzed Tanner’s substratum, do not
appear in his sources such as the fourteenth-century legend Ut
annuncietur or works by Renaissance chroniclers Hájek and
Dubravius.67 One of the most significant tales disseminated by Tanner
is that of the vision of margrave Vratislav Henry of Moravia, a brother
of the medieval Bohemian king Př emysl Otakar I (c. 1230–78). Tanner
sets the story in 1284, although it first appeared in 1661 in his Trophy
of Saint Venceslas, king and martyre of Bohemia and great forefather of the most august House of Austria, and then in Czech translation by another Jesuit, Felix Kadlinský.68 The margrave’s vision occurs
in another of Tanner’s books and, four years before Trophy was issued,
also in the first edition of Gumppenberg’s Atlas Marianus—thanks to
Tanner, who was one of the Bavarian Jesuit’s advisers.69 From
Gumppenberg’s book, the story was introduced into Hungarianspeaking areas by Palatine Paul Esterházy, the highest-ranking officer
of the kingdom of Hungary. He inserted it into his vernacular edition
of the Marian Atlas, printed in 1690 in Trnava (Nagyszombat).70
Tanner repeated it in the Holy Way, a guide to Stará Boleslav, where
Wenceslas was murdered in 935 and which became a major Marian
pilgrimage destination in Bohemia starting in the seventeenth century.71 Holy Way included forty-four engravings reproducing paintings
67

Jan Tanner, Život a sláva svatého Václava mučedlníka, knížete, krále a patrona
českém. . . (Saint Wenceslas, Martyr, Prince, King and Bohemian Holy Patron’s Life and
Glory), trans. Felix Kadlinský, ed. Zdeněk Kalista (Prague, 1941), pp. 28–31.
68
Jan Tanner, Trophaea sancti Wenceslai Bohemiae Regis ac Martyris (Saint
Wenceslas, King of Bohemia and Martyr’s Trophy) (Prague, 1661), fol. Rv–R2r (“S.
Wenceslaus Styriacus”); Jan Tanner, Život a sláva svatého Václava, mučedlníka,
kní žete, krále, a patrona česhého . . . (Saint Wenceslas, Martyr, Prince, King and
Bohemian Holy Patron’s Life and Glory), trans. Felix Kadlinský (Prague, 1669), chap. 32,
pp. 135–40.
69
See the entry concerning the Mariazell Blessed Virgin in Wilhelm Gumppenberg,
Atlas Marianus, sive de imaginibus Dieparae per Orbem Christianum miraculosis
(Ingolstadt, 1657), pp. 174–77; and Atlas Marianus (Munich, 1672), 1:61–62.
70
Pál Esterházy, As egesz vilagon levő csudálatos boldogságos szűz kepeinek rövideden föltett eredeti (A Brief Description of Pictures of the Blessed Virgin Collected
from All over the World) (Nagyszombat, 1690; rpt. Budapest, 1994), p. 121.
71
Jan Tanner, Svatá cesta z Prahy do Staré Boleslavě k nejdůstojně jší rodičce Boží
Panně Marii . . . (The Holy Way from Prague to Stará Boleslav to the Most Dignified
God’s Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary) (Prague, 1st Czech ed. 1679, 2nd ed. 1692;
German ed. 1680; Latin ed. 1690). For a more thorough analysis of this book and others
referring to the associated Marian and Wenceslas worship in Bohemia, see MarieElizabeth Ducreux, “L’ordre symbolique d’un pèlerinage tchèque dans l’espace habsbourgeois au XVIIe siècle: Stará Boleslav,” in Rendre ses vœux. Les identités pèlerines

BY MARIE-ELIZABETH DUCREUX

295

adorning the same number of chapels, each constructed between
1674 and 1679, which marked the road to this place of pilgrimage.
First printed in Czech in 1679, most probably on the occasion of
Leopold I’s stay in Prague, it was then successively issued in several
Latin and German editions. Plate number 40 contained Wenceslas’s
apparition to the margrave Henry, who was ill and confined to bed.
The holy duke and celestial owner of Czech lands ordered Henry to
honor the Virgin at her Mariazell shrine in the Austrian duchy Styria
and is depicted as pointing at her image, which can be seen in the
heavens. From the late-sixteenth century, Mariazell became the most
important Marian Habsburg pilgrimage and a place of extraordinary
symbolic importance in Habsburg piety: It was to the Mariazell image
of the Blessed Virgin that Ferdinand II and his successors repeatedly
dedicated their lands. According to Tanner, the Moravian margrave
miraculously recovered and accomplished this pilgrimage. “It has
been since this time,” specifies the associated prayer to Wenceslas and
the Latin commentary,“that this image shines by its miracles.”72 In this
example, Wenceslas is God’s messenger, the heavenly mediator who
reveals and spreads divine power on earth, through whom the
Blessed Virgin will become manifest henceforth in Mariazell, in much
earlier times than the apparitions of Habsburg veneration.Wenceslas,
since the thirteenth century held as the eternal sovereign and guarantor of the kingdom of Bohemia, emerges here as the originator of
the seventeenth century’s most important dynastic pilgrimage. This
version of the story sets up Wenceslas to precede Ferdinand II in worship of the Mariazell image of Mary, to whom the latter consecrated,
on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War, his family, people, and
land.Wenceslas’s mediation placed Bohemia at the origin of the major
Marian worship by the rulers, so a Bohemian sovereign replaces the
Habsburgs in the Marian axis of the Pietas Austriaca.
Between 1660 and 1690, Wenceslas occupied a major place in
attempts to redefine the theological political legitimacy of the
Habsburgs in Bohemia. Certainly, these efforts did not question the
dynasty’s presence on the Bohemian throne and, in fact, often confirmed it. However, they offered the public an itemized reasoning of
the Habsburgs’ hereditary right to the Bohemian crown, a perception
deeply rooted in territorial traditions, giving the jus sanguinis a very
dans l’Europe moderne (XVIe–XVIIIe siècle), ed. Philippe Boutry, Pierre-Antoine Fabre,
and Dominique Julia (Paris, 2000), pp. 87–122.
72
Tanner, Svatá cesta, engraving 40.

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EMPERORS, KINGDOMS, TERRITORIES

distinctive sense without ties to Habsburg myths of origin. Actually,
these alternative discourses, even if they underscore the blood ties
binding Leopold I to Wenceslas, resurrected the old medieval theory
of the eternal sovereign and heavenly possessor of Czech lands.
Wenceslas as Legitimization Source for the Habsburg Kings of
Bohemia Deserves Worldly Honor and Worship
Perhaps the most impressive version of the story of Wenceslas as
the true founder of the Habsburg virtues—piety and imperial domination—can be found in Tanner’s previously mentioned book, Trophy
of Saint Wenceslas.73 Defended as a thesis in 1661 at Prague
University by the young Baron Johann Kaldschmidt of Eisenberg, this
publication has been sometimes ascribed to Jan Václav Bílek.74 The
Trophy of Saint Wenceslas is of interest for several reasons. It seems
to have been the first edition in the seventeenth century to interpret
the traditional narrative of St.Wenceslas in a new way, counter to the
classic Czech Chronicle (1541) by Václav Hájek of Liboč any.75 More
remarkably, it seems as if Tanner had at his disposal a previously
unknown manuscript, the monk Christian’s legend, one of the earliest
St.Wenceslas Vitae from the tenth century, which his friend Bohuslav
Balbín had rediscovered in the library of the Discalced Augustinians in
Tř eboň and published in 1677 in his Historical Epitome of the Affairs
of Bohemia.76 In 1669,Tanner’s book also appeared in a Czech translation by the Jesuit Felix Kadlinský, under a slightly different title.77 A
German translation does not seem to have been published.
In both the Latin and Czech editions, Wenceslas, who historically
never competed for the imperial dignity, is several times designated as
God’s elect to the empire and the throne of Bohemia, as a devotee of
73

Tanner, Trophaea, fol. Rv–R2r;Tanner, Život a sláva (1669), pp. 135–40.
The authorship of the “Trophy of Saint Wenceslas” has long been unclear, given the
anonymity of this print and the dedication signed by Jan Václav Bílek. In his still unpublished correspondence, the Jesuit Balbín refers to Tanner as Wenceslas’s biographer
(letter to Jan Tanner dated October 3, 1661, Prague, National Library, MS XXIII C 116,
79r–79v). Kadlinsky’s Czech translation of the Trophy points to Tanner as the author.
Some libraries record the book as one written by Bílek, but the Czech and Slovak
National Bibliography of Prints from 1501 to 1800 (Knihopis n° 16061) ascribes the
work to Tanner.
75
Václav Hájek z Libočan, Kronika česká (Czech Chronicle) (Prague, 1541).
76
Bohuslav Balbín, Epitome historica Rerum Bohemicarum seu Historia
Boleslaviensis (Prague, 1677), pp. 41–66.
77
Tanner, Život a sláva (1669).
74

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the Eucharist; the Holy Cross; and God’s mother, the Blessed Mary.
Deliberately, Tanner calls him king of Bohemia, although Wenceslas
was only a duke. This refers to a theme of the medieval legend Ut
annuncietur, which asserts that the emperor gave the royal title to
Wenceslas, whose modesty, however, prevented him from using it.
Here, the symbolic dimension of politics substitutes for and prevails
over historical facts. But this approach was quite conscious and selfwilled, not a clumsy piece of fantasy. Indeed, Tanner’s purpose was
much more ambitious: to give the Habsburg virtues a Bohemian
origin. Moreover, Tanner represented St. Wenceslas as the source of
the House of Habsburg’s accession to the imperial title. Relating an
episode present in some medieval lives and legends of Wenceslas, the
so-called “transfer of the Empire” (Translatio Imperii) to Bohemia,
which was supposed to occur when Henri I the Fowler, king of
Germany (919–36), transferred St. Vitus’s arm relic to the Bohemian
duke, Tanner underscored that “rulers of a land, where Saint Vitus’s
holy corpse is to be found and treasured, are always remaining emperors.”78 This suggests that a king could become emperor only because
of his reign in Bohemia. Its content was thus more far-reaching than
similar, less-developed arguments, such as Balbín’s remark in his
Bohemia Sancta that Vitus’s arm was the prophetical sign of imperial
domination.79 Furthermore, Tanner introduced another baroque
Habsburg competitor in Bohemia, Emperor Charles IV of Luxemburg
(king of Bohemia 1346, emperor 1355–78), who, he wrote, renewed
St. Wenceslas’s power by displaying Vitus’s corpse—and not only
arm—in the Prague cathedral and since then provided the Holy
Roman Empire with eleven emperor-kings of Bohemia.80
Another interesting argument is in the Latin version (1661) of
Tanner’s Trophy and, for the Czech version translated by Jesuit
Kadlinsky, surprisingly only in the second edition (Prague 1702), at
78
“Svatému Vítu dána jest od Boha milost, od mnohých historikův, ano i od samého
Baronia vyš etř ena, že v které koliv krajině jeho svaté Tělo se nachází a chová, pání té
země Císáři římskými zůstávají.” Tanner, Život a sláva (1669), chap. 8 (“King Saint
Wenceslas”), p. 34.
79
“Imperator . . . S.Viti brachium fatale Imperii pignus . . . donavit” (The emperor
gave him St. Vitus’s arm, this prophetic sign of Empire). Bohuslav Balbín, Miscellanea
historica regni Bohemiae, Decadis I. Liber IV hagiographicus seu Bohemia Sancta
(Prague, 1682), p. 14. The idea of St. Vitus’s arm giving its owner the right to imperial
domination (the translatio imperii) is more often cited in the transfer of this relic from
Saint-Denis near Paris to Corvey in Saxony.
80
Tanner, Trophaea, fol. F 2v; Balbín, Miscellanea historica, p. 35.

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EMPERORS, KINGDOMS, TERRITORIES

chapter 34, with the heading:“Saint Wenceslas, great forefather of the
glorious House of Austria.”81 After recounting Wenceslas’s abundant
imperial, royal and princely posterity, the author highlights as his “special glory” the fact that the House of Habsburg is of his descent.82
Tanner recycled this theme once more in the forty-second and last
image of his Holy Way to Stará Boleslav. This plate illustrates the
genealogical link between Leopold I and Wenceslas. The latter,
depicted at the center of the engraving as venerating both the
Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin (here of Boleslav), appears as predecessor and cause of the Habsburg devotion to the Holy Sacrament83
(see figure 1).
The result of Tanner’s updating of Wenceslas’s tradition, with perhaps another Latin opuscule written by Balbín, was to provide
Leopold I and his political and clerical entourage with arguments that
moved the Roman Curia in 1669 and 1670 to expand the celebration
of the saint’s day to the whole Catholic Christendom.84 A long-term
effort, it started with Cardinal Harrach’s archiepiscopate (1623–67)
and was fully achieved only in 1729, when St. Wenceslas’s Day was
prescribed as an obligatory feast to be celebrated in the whole
Christendom.85 Due to intercessions by Leopold I and Cardinal
Friedrich von Hessen-Darmstadt, the protector of the Habsburg
hereditary lands and Germany at the Curia, Harrach’s successor
(Mathias Sobek of Bilenberg or z Bílenberku) obtained a brief on July
26, 1670, from Pope Clement X prescribing the enrollment of St.
81
“S. Wenceslaus augustissimae domus austriacae magnus tritavus.” Tanner,
Trophaea, fol. R 4v. “Svátý Václav slavného domu rakouského veliký prapraděd.”
Tanner, Život a sláva (1941), p. 157.
82
“Praecipua . . . gloria,” in Tanner, Trophaea, fol. Sr.“Za zvláštní slávu,” in Tanner,
Život a sláva (1941), p. 157.
83
For the development of the Eucharistic dimension of St. Wenceslas’s cult, see
Ducreux, “Několik úvah o barokní zbožnosti a o rekatolizaci Čech” (Remarks on
Baroque Piety and the Recatholization of Bohemia), Folia Historica Bohemica, 22
(2006), 167–71.
84
Balbín is referring to this document (“Ego nuper scripsit Titulos Gloriae S.
Wenceslai, quem libellum idem Archiepiscopus Praefatione addita … dedicavit SS. D.
N. Clementi IX. pepitque ut S. Wenceslai festum in officium divinum inseratur”) in a
letter to Papebroch in Antwerp dated October 14, 1669. Brussels, Royal Library, shelf
mark MS 3444 (7773), fol. 28r–29v. The author is grateful to Martin Svatoš for this
information.
85
Pope Benedict XIII’s brief, March 14, 1729. Prague, National Archives (hereafter
NA), Archbishopric Records, shelf mark APA I, D 93 6–72426.

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299

FIGURE 1. Image from Jan Tanner, Holy Way. 2nd Czech ed., Academic Printing
House, Prague, 1692. Plate no. 43, Shelf Mark 38 D 31, Library of the National
Museum, Prague. Reproduced by permission.

Wenceslas’s day in the Roman breviary and the Book of Hours as a
semi-double feast for the entire Catholic Church.86
A parallel but much more developed reasoning is found in manuscript letters in Latin (with some Czech words) sent by Archbishop
Sobek to Leopold I on June 5, 1669.87 First reminiscing about
Ferdinand III’s special fondness for the eternal duke of Bohemia as
86
Pope Clement X’s brief, July 26, 1670. Prague, NA, Archbishopric Records, shelf
mark APA I, D 93 6–72426.
87
Copy of Archbishop Sobek’s letter to Leopold I. Prague, NA, shelf mark APA I, D 93
6–72426.

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EMPERORS, KINGDOMS, TERRITORIES

well as for the Virgin of Stará Boleslav, Sobek recalled that the first
patriotic Czech saint:
. . . is the one from whom all kings of Bohemia and also the Austrians
(Austriaci) up to Your Majesty have come forth. . . . From his holy sword
Your Majesty acceded to power during the royal coronation. . . . He is not
simply our patron (“patronus”), but our “dědíč,” that means the true and
hereditary king of Bohemia, called from antique times heir and possessor,
reigning in fact from Heaven with Your Majesty: Caesar shares his ruling
power with the Duke (that is to say Wenceslas). . . . The new glory of Saint
Wenceslas all over the world would enhance the glory of his kingdoms
and people.88

This renewed glory “increases the memory of the ancestral Pietas
Austriaca,” Sobek wrote again, and then “the whole House of Austria
and Your Majesty are glorified and will be glorified by this glorious
Saint. . . .”89 Leopold’s answer contains a different tone (although it
repeated a pattern already present but not central in Sobek’s letter).
The emperor agreed with the necessity of promoting Wenceslas at the
Roman Curia and argued that the conversion of Bohemia from heresy
to the true faith is due to the piety devoted to Wenceslas.90
The frontispiece of Tanner’s Trophy contains a less explicit echo of
Sobek’s argument making Wenceslas responsible for Leopold I’s kingship in Bohemia, because of genealogy and Wenceslas’s representation as perpetual sovereign only temporally transmitting the royal
position from heaven to his successors. Placed under the title, the
engraving shows Baron Kaldschmidt as an allegory of honor offering
a mirror to another allegoric figure of virtue crowned by laurels and
ascending the stairs to a throne. Instead of seeing itself in the mirror,
virtue has reflected back the portrait of St. Wenceslas with all his
attributes of sovereignty. Above them, the Bohemian eternal protector
88
“Hic est sanctissimus ille dux, cujus ense Majestas vestra in coronatione sese
accincta; Hic ille est, ex cujus Stemate Omnes Bohemiae Duces ac Reges, atque ex illis
Austriaci ad V. Majestatem usque, descendent. . . ; hic ille est gloriosissimus Martyr, qui
non modo simpliciter Patronus, sed dědicz, id est verus, et haereditarius Bohemiae Rex
et vere Regni haeres et possessor appellatur ab Antiquis, qui quodammodo cum
Majestate vestra ex coelo gubernat et regnat in Bohemia: divisum imperium cum duce
(Wenceslaus scilicet) Caesar habet.” Copy of Archbishop Sobek’s letter to Leopold I.
Prague, NA, shelf mark APA I, D 93 6–72426.
89
“Et ex nova S.Wenceslao in orbe toto . . . gloria, aeternam avitae Pietatis Austriacae
memoriam. . . , et Regni ac Populi devotionem augeat.”Archbishop Sobek’s second draft
of letter to Emperor Leopold I. Prague, NA, shelf mark APA I, D 93 6–72426.
90
Leopold I’s letter to Archbishop Sobek, June 15, 1669. Prague, NA, shelf mark APA
I, D 93 6–72426.

BY MARIE-ELIZABETH DUCREUX

301

looks at this emblematic personification of his Austrian heir, Leopold I.
And the dedicatory epistle under the illustration leaves no doubt
about this identification: Wenceslas’s virtue is the only path to glory
and the throne in Bohemia (see figure 2).
Conclusion
Expanding the examination to the kingdoms of Bohemia and
Hungary in the seventeenth century offers a fresh perspective on the
Pietas Austriaca. Neither the person of the monarch nor the dynasty
was challenged by Tanner’s book; such findings are also true for other
literary specimens dealing with Wenceslas’s or Ladislas’s virtues. Here,
the legitimate king remains glorified, as in the classical scheme of
Coreth or Goloubeva. However, placed in a specific relationship to
space and time, which is appropriate to a territory in connection with
its political and sacred history, he is made the heir to a preexisting
Bohemian or Hungarian patrimony. Certainly, these discursive constructions could be seen as pure variations of a more general propaganda, adapted here to Hungarian or Bohemian contexts. But it is difficult to leave it at this single level of interpretation. Examples from
Tanner and Sobek show that there were at times competitive discourses. Reconstructing the contexts of production and reception of
these alternative visions will always be necessary, although it often
proves to be difficult. Further research in archives and record offices
may unveil still hidden links between the Church and public high dignitaries’ politics and publications aiming to diffuse new or renewed
interpretations about local forms of piety, as was the case in Sobek
and Tanner. In any case, the author’s strategies, the receiving public,
and the circles of potential readers must be taken into account. From
this point of view, the panegyrics offered to St. Ladislas might be considered as tainted with some ambiguity, because they originated at the
Vienna university. All the same, they were read and pronounced in the
circle of the public present at the Vienna Cathedral, often in the
emperor’s presence, usually by noble Hungarian scions. Thus, beyond
these first circles of reception, they provided the Catholic Hungarian
aristocracy with a kind of self-representation. They also put in the
foreground the history of the kingdom, as did the theses from
Bohemian, Hungarian, and Viennese universities, as well as many texts
produced in Bohemia. Then they were printed in Vienna and disseminated in Hungary and other lands and provinces of the monarchy, as
were some texts of Bohemian provenance. Taking into account the
more or less forgotten voices of these and other similar texts, it

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EMPERORS, KINGDOMS, TERRITORIES

FIGURE 2. Image from Jan Tanner’s Trophaea sancti Wenceslai Bohemiae regis
ac martyris.... (Prague: Universitas in Collegio Societatis Jesu ad S. Clementem,
1661). Frontispiece, Shelf Mark 43 B 13 Priv. 1, Library of the National Museum,
Prague. Reproduced by permission.

becomes necessary to recognize the existence of competitive discourses on the origins of the Habsburgs’ virtues and ruling power, and
thus broaden our model of the Pietas Austriaca.
The veneration of a patron saint common to all the lands governed
by the Habsburgs in the seventeenth century would certainly have
contributed to their stronger integration in the dynastic ensemble.
Nonetheless, during the same period, the duality explained above
between holiness and royalty prevents the construction of a single
sovereign incarnating or symbolically representing the political identity of the whole monarchy.
In early-modern times, such global celebrity emerged only in a few
special cases in the Habsburg monarchy, such as the so-called “Jesuit

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303

saints” (Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xaverius, Aloysius Gonzaga) and, more
than any other, St. Joseph.91 None of them ever ruled lands and kingdoms on earth. The cult of the Blessed Mary also expanded over the
whole monarchy. Neither St. Leopold nor St. Wenceslas, or even less
Ss. Stephen or Ladislas, could have reached this position, despite the
efforts of Leopold I’s advisers and thurifers, who aimed to elevate St.
Leopold to the head of Austrian State mystic at the end of the seventeenth century.92 This was true even after Ss. Wenceslas’s and
Stephen’s worship had been prescribed to the entire Catholicity by
popes, the former in 1670 and 1729, the latter in 1686. All have
remained territorial patron saints.
Yet things began to change with Emperor Charles VI (1711–40). As
a political act aimed at uniting his lands, he promoted the cult of a
new saint of Czech descent, John Nepomucene, who was not a king
but a vicar-general of the Prague archdiocese in medieval times. The
canonization of Nepomucene made him into a martyr who had not
betrayed the secret of the queen of Bohemia’s confession. Charles VI
dedicated the newly recovered Banat territory to him, even before his
beatification (1722) and canonization (1729).93 It is significant that it
happened just after this emperor and king of Hungary and Bohemia
had issued the so-called Pragmatic Sanction (1713), which postulated
as “inseparable and indivisible” (indivisibiliter et inseparabiliter) all
the lands ruled by Austrian Habsburgs. Nepomucene’s worship then
culminated as the only Habsburg monarchy state patron born inside
this set of kingdoms, duchies, and other territories.94 Thus, the only
common protector of the whole Habsburg monarchy was a priest, not
a king or a duke: He could adhere to the dividing line drawn between
earthly sovereignty, reserved for the actual monarch, and heavenly
sovereignty achieved through holiness. In Bohemia, Nepomucene was
perceived rather as a local patron saint. Seventeenth-century Czech
91
See Thomas Winkelbauer, Ständefreiheit und Fürstenmacht. Länder und
Untertanen des Hauses Habsburg im konfessionellen Zeitalter (Vienna, 2003),
2:194–223. Samerski,“Hausheilige statt Staatspatrone,” pp. 262–71.
92
Kovács,“Der heilige Leopold–Rex Perpetuus,” p. 198.
93
See the excellent passages that Louthan dedicates to Nepomucene in Converting
Bohemia, pp. 279–300.
94
See Helmut J. Mezler-Andelberg, “Bemerkungen zur Verehrung des heiligen
Johannes von Nepomuk,” in Beiträge zur allgemeine Geschichte. Alexander Novotny
zur Vollendung seines 70. Lebensjahres gewidmet (Graz, 1975), pp. 31–41; Vít Vlnas,
Jan Nepomucký, Česká legenda (John Nepomucene, a Czech Tale) (Prague, 1993);
Louthan, Converting Bohemia, p. 298.

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Jesuits and clerics initially promoted his veneration in his country.
First among them was Bohuslav Balbín, who wrote a biography published in 1680 in the Acta Sanctorum, linking Nepomucene’s glory
and merits to those of Wenceslas.95 Hence the two lines of patron
saints, that of clerics as common protectors of Habsburg lands and
that of the holy sovereigns, never split. Up to the present, Wenceslas
and Stephen have served as cultural touchstones and played major
roles in constructing Czech and Hungarian national identities.

95

Ducreux,“Několik úvah,” p. 157.

THE NINETY-FIRST ANNUAL MEETING OF
THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC
HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
Report of the Committee on Program
The ninety-first annual meeting of the American Catholic Historical
Association was held in conjunction with the annual meetings of the
American Historical Association and other affiliated societies at the Marriott
Boston Copley Place Hotel from Thursday, January 6, to Sunday, January 9,
2011.
The program opened on Thursday afternoon with a session jointly sponsored with the AHA, “Women of Independent Means? The Construction of
Spiritual Life Stories in Late Medieval and Early Modern European Society.”
Sarah Ross (Boston College) chaired the session, and the papers included
“Joan of Arc: Neither Prophet nor Puppet” by Larissa Juliet Taylor (Colby
College and 2011 ACHA president); “The Devil and the Saint: The Case of
Teresa of Jesus” by Elizabeth Rhodes (Boston College); and “‘In the End, God
Helped Me Defeat Myself’: The Spiritual Life of Camilla Battista da Varano” by
William V. Hudon (Bloomsburg University). Jodi Bilinkoff (University of North
Carolina at Greensboro) provided commentary.The Executive Council of the
Association also met on Thursday afternoon.
A full day of sessions began on Friday morning. The first was “Roman
Catholic Modernism and the Role of Leonce de Grandmaison,” chaired by
Janice Farnham (Boston College). Papers by Peter J. Bernardi, S.J. (Loyola
University Chicago) on “A Courageous Manifesto: The French Jesuit Response
to Integrisme” and by I. Michael Bellafiore, S.J. (University of Scranton) on
“Reading the Signs of the Times: Leonce de Grandmaison’s Anticipation of the
Modernist Crisis” were complemented by a comment from Harvey Hill (Berry
College, GA). Also that morning was a session presenting recent research on
the history of Catholic missionaries and native peoples in China: “The
Changing Tides of Twentieth-Century Shanghai Catholicism.” Chaired by
Angelyn Dries, O.S.F. (Saint Louis University), and with commentary by the
audience, the papers were “French Jesuit Priests and Chinese Jesuit Brothers:
Painting a Picture of Ministry at the Shanghai Tushanwan Orphanage” by
Jeremy Clarke, S.J. (Boston College); “Culture Shock or Comfort from the
Voyage: The First Glimpse of American Catholic Missionaries to Shanghai in
the 1920s” by Robert E. Carbonneau, C.P. (Passionist Historical Archives); and
“An Army Set in Battle Array: The 1951 Attack on the Shanghai Legion of
Mary” by Paul Mariani, S.J. (Santa Clara University).
305

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THE 91ST ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

In the first session on Friday afternoon, “American Catholic History: The
State of the Conversation,” Steven M. Avella (Marquette University and 2010
ACHA president) introduced Leslie Woodcock Tentler (The Catholic
University of America). Tentler reviewed trends in the historiography of
American Catholicism over the last two decades, followed by a lively discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of recent scholarship as well as needs
and opportunities for future study. At the same time, Beth Griech-Polelle
(Bowling Green State University) presided at the session “German Catholics
Negotiate National Socialism: Three Case Studies.” Kevin Spicer, C.S.C.
(Stonehill College, MA), delivered a paper, “Catholic Clergy and Jews under
National Socialism,” followed by a paper from Ulrike Ehret (University of
Erlangen),“Negotiating ‘Volksgemeinshaft’: Roman Catholics and the National
Socialist State,” and a paper from Mark Edward Ruff (Saint Louis University),
“Walter Adolph and the Commemoration of Catholic Martyrs of National
Socialism.” James Bernauer, S.J. (Boston College), provided commentary. The
afternoon concluded with the annual business meeting of the Association, at
which various reports were presented and discussed.
Two sessions were held on Saturday morning, the first of them a joint
session with the American Historical Association. Carol Coburn (Avila
University) presided at “Words and Deeds: New Perspectives on Catholic
Laywomen in Twentieth-Century America.” Monica Mercado (University of
Chicago) began with “‘What a Blessing It Is to Be Fond of Reading Good
Books’: Reading Circles and Catholic Women in Turn-of-the-Century
America.” Next, Jeanne Pettit (Hope College, MI) read her paper,“‘Up against
a Stone Wall’: Gender, Power, and the National Catholic Community Houses,”
followed by Mary J. Henold (Roanoke College, VA) and her paper, “The
Ladies in Hats Have Their Say: The National Council of Catholic Women,
Vatican II, and the Women’s Movement, 1962–1975.” The commentary by
Mel Piehl (Valparaiso University) was followed by an animated discussion.
The second session of the morning was “Cultural Conflicts, Cultural
Change: Catholic Higher Education in Twentieth-Century America,” for
which David O’Brien (University of Dayton) served as both chair and commentator. The papers included “Surviving a Hostile Time: Catholic Higher
Education and the Second Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s” by William Trollinger
(University of Dayton); “Advancing Christian Culture: Catholic Higher
Education and the Engendering of Theology” by Sandra Yocum (University
of Dayton); and “‘A General Cultural Education Prior to Marriage’:The LittleKnown History of Catholic Junior Colleges” by Fernanda Perrone (Rutgers
University).
The Presidential Luncheon convened at 11:30, with Taylor presiding.
Approximately sixty-five members and guests attended. Cardinal Seán
O’Malley, O.F.M. Cap., the archbishop of Boston, welcomed the members of
the Association to Boston and offered the blessing. Several awards were presented (see the reports elsewhere in this issue on the recipients). Following

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307

the luncheon, Avella delivered his presidential address, “American Catholicism in the Twentieth-Century American West:The Next Frontier.”
The program continued with three sessions on Saturday afternoon. The
first, jointly sponsored with the AHA, was titled “French Catholicism and the
Crises of the Twentieth Century” and chaired by Brenna Moore (Fordham
University). The papers were presented by Anita May (University of
Oklahoma) on “Patriotism and Religion: French Priests in World War I,” Sheila
Nowinski (University of Notre Dame) on “The Catholic Family in Postwar
Rural France: L’Exposition de la Maison Rurale, 1947–1950,”and Arthur Plaza
(New York University) on “Christian Democrats and Their Critics in the
Catholic Public Sphere: The Politics of Faith and French Decolonization in the
1950s”;Andrew Orr (Sam Houston State University) provided commentary.A
second session featured a roundtable panel chaired by Jeffrey Burns that considered the topic “The Franciscan Movement in the United States since 1840.”
The panelists included Margaret E. Guider (Boston College);Timothy Kulbicki,
O.F.M. Conv. (Saint Mary’s Seminary and University); Patrick McSherry, O.F.M.
Cap. (Saint Joseph Province of the Capuchins Archives); Jack Clark Robinson,
O.F.M. (Our Lady of Guadalupe Province); and William Wicks (past national
president, S.F.O.). Joseph M. Chinnici, O.F.M. (Franciscan School of Theology),
provided commentary. The final session,“Graduate Student Networking,” was
convened by James M. O’Toole (Boston College). A dozen graduate students
working in Catholic history met for an informal discussion of their work and
the issues involved in the study of Catholic history in different historical
times and places; email addresses were exchanged to provide continuing contact after the meeting.
In a change from previous years, the annual Mass for the living and
deceased members of the Association was held at 5 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, and attendance was higher than it had ever been. Cyprian Davis, O.S.B.
(Saint Meinrad Archabbey, IN), served as the principal celebrant, assisted by
Avella; Paul G. Robichaud, C.S.P. (Paulist History Office and ACHA executive
secretary and treasurer); and Casey Beaumier, S.J. (Boston College). Following
the Mass, a social hour was held for members of the Association.
Sunday sessions this year were particularly well attended and marked by
lively discussion. In the first time slot, four sessions were held. First came a session sponsored jointly with the AHA, “Locating the Origins of the Second
Vatican Council: Global Transformations, Spatial Shifts, and Refashioning the
Sacred in Twentieth-Century Catholicism.” Terence Fay, S.J. (University of St.
Michael’s College at the University of Toronto), chaired the session and presented a paper, “Decolonization of the Filipino Church.” Other papers were
presented by Timothy Kelly (Saint Vincent College, PA) on “The Dynamic
1950s: The American Laity before Vatican II,” Trevor Kilgore (University of
Michigan) on “In the Shadow of the Vatican: Producing and Defining the Spirit
of Vatican II in a Florentine Parish, 1954–1969”), and Robert Proctor

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THE 91ST ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

(Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art) on “Repositioning
the Sacred: Roman Catholic Architecture in Britain and the Second Vatican
Council.” A second session considered “Twentieth-Century American
Catholicism and the Social Question: Three Vignettes,” chaired by Jeffrey
Burns. Papers included the following: “Father Nelson Baker’s Fight with the
State of New York,” by Richard Gribble, C.S.C. (Stonehill College);“‘Get[ting] a
Clean Victory’? The Nonviolent Spirituality of Dorothy Day and Cesar Chavez,”
by Anne Klejment (University of St.Thomas); and “In the Matter of Karen Ann
Quinlan: Catholicism and the Ethics of Life and Death in the 1970s,” by James
P. McCartin (Seton Hall University).The third session,“Reimagining Christianity
in the Early Middle Ages: Communities and Contexts,” was chaired by Mary
Frances Giandrea (American University). Sally Shockro (Boston College) gave
her paper, “Afterlife and Underworld in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History”; Austin
Mason (Boston College) gave his paper,“Grave Goods, the Cult of the Saints,
and Making Christian Burial Communities in Early Medieval England”; and
William L. North (Carleton College) concluded with “Real Christians Can Wear
Pants! Manners, Motivations, and the Loci of Christianization in the Ninth
Century.” The first morning session concluded with “Getting Published: An
Introduction,” a panel discussion designed principally for graduate students
and younger scholars in the early stages of their careers. Chaired by Timothy
Meagher (The Catholic University of America), the panel consisted of
Christopher M. Bellitto (Kean University), Nelson H. Minnich (The Catholic
University of America and editor of The Catholic Historical Review), and
Elaine Maisner (editor, University of North Carolina Press).
Two sessions concluded the meeting in the second time slot of Sunday
morning.The first was the session, sponsored jointly with the AHA,“Therese
Neumann: Modern Stigmatic, International Cult-Figure, and Anti-Nazi Symbol,”
chaired by Spicer. Papers were presented by Paula Kane (University of
Pittsburgh) on “Konnersreuth USA: American Catholics and the Cult of
Therese Neumann,” Ulrike Wiethaus (Wake Forest University) on “The Issue
of Resistenz: Therese Neumann and Her Circle during the Era of National
Socialism”), and Michael E. O’Sullivan (Marist College) on “Sacred, Secular, or
Fraudulent: Competing Representations of the Therese Neumann Phenomenon in Germany”; Thomas Kselman (University of Notre Dame) provided
commentary. Beaumier replaced Carrie Schultz (Boston College) as chair of
the final session,“American Catholicism and Print Culture”; he also presented
his paper,“The Making of ‘Ours’: Religious Life as Described in Jesuit Custom
Books.” The other papers were “Januarius de Concilio and the American
Catechism: New Evidence Questioning the Authorship of the Baltimore
Catechism” by Biff Rocha (Benedictine College, KS) and “Indiana’s Catholic
Print Culture and the Anti-Catholic Movements in the 1920s” by Joseph M.
White (The Catholic University of America).
In sum, the annual meeting program was well attended and well received.
Threats of snow did not materialize, allowing easy travel to and from the

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meeting site. The spring meeting of the Association will be held jointly with
the Canadian Catholic Historical Association in Toronto on April 15–16, 2011,
and the next annual meeting of the Association will be held jointly with the
American Historical Association in Chicago on January 5–8, 2012.
JAMES M. O’TOOLE, Chair
Boston College
Report of the Committee on Nominations
In this election, 228 ballots were cast as of October 22, 2010.
For Vice-President (and President the following year):
THOMAS F. X. NOBLE, University of Notre Dame
FRANCIS CHRISTOPHER OAKLEY,Williams College

132 votes
93 votes

For the Executive Council (two positions with a three-year term for each:
2011, 2012, 2013):
ANNE M. KLEJMENT, University of St. Thomas
R. BENTLEY ANDERSON, S.J., Fordham University
UNA MARY CADEGAN, University of Dayton
JAMES P. MCCARTIN, Seton Hall University

125 votes
109 votes
106 votes
84 votes

For the Committee on Nominations (one position, three-year term, 2011,
2012, 2013):
MARK EDWARD RUFF, Saint Louis University
RICHARD FRANCIS CRANE, Greensboro College

148 votes
70 votes

KEVIN SPICER, C.S.C., Chair
Stonehill College
EMILY O’BRIEN
Simon Fraser University
KATHLEEN SPROWS CUMMINGS
University of Notre Dame
Report of the Committee on the John Gilmary Shea Prize
The John Gilmary Shea Prize, which is presented to an author of a book on
the history of the Catholic Church broadly considered, has been awarded to
Neal Pease (professor and chair, Department of History, University of
Wisconsin–Milwaukee) for Rome’s Most Faithful Daughter: The Catholic
Church and Independent Poland, 1914–1939 (Athens: Ohio University
Press, 2009). In addition, the committee bestowed honorable mention on
Howard Louthan (associate professor, Department of History, University of

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Florida) for his book, Converting Bohemia: Force and Persuasion in the
Catholic Reformation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
The prize is named in memory of John Gilmary Shea (1824–92), the famous
historian of American Catholic history.
In Rome’s Most Faithful Daughter, Pease has written an important
study of the Catholic Church and independent Poland in the period
between 1914 and 1939. From its renaissance at the end of World War I,
Poland appeared to be a Catholic monolith, a state united around its central religious institution. Pease demonstrates that this was far from the
truth and that the new Polish state frequently worked at cross-purposes to
the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, just as that hierarchy was often working in opposition to policies being formulated by the Vatican.Achille Ratti,
before he was elected pope in 1922 as Pius XI, served as papal nuncio in
Warsaw, and was profoundly affected by his experiences there, such that,
after he became pope, he was often a direct participant in resolving Polish
conflicts. Pease convincingly demonstrates that Ratti’s continuing influence in Poland was due in no small part to his friendship with the Polish
strongman, Marshal Pilsudski, which had developed during his nunciature
in Poland.
Pease makes an extensive and impressive use of available sources. Not only
has he consulted the archives of state and church in Poland for the interwar
years, but he has also made use of recently opened materials in the Vatican
Archives dealing with the pontificate of Pius XI.This is one of the first studies to incorporate these new Vatican materials with other archival sources.
The book is engagingly written, and the author’s judgments are almost invariably balanced, subtle, and convincing.
The importance of this study is that it provides a context and a basis for
understanding the subsequent role of the Polish Church in the history of the
twentieth century, from its resurrection after World War II and its ability to
withstand the controls of a communist regime to its role in the downfall of
communism under the leadership of John Paul II, the first Polish pope.
Louthan’s Converting Bohemia takes on an important but little-studied
aspect of the Catholic Reformation—the recatholicization of Bohemia under
the Habsburgs in the seventeenth century. Louthan demonstrates persuasively that the Catholic revival in Bohemia was not due solely to the coercive
tactics of the Habsburg Emperors but also to an effective process of evangelization initiated by the Catholic Church. Thus persuasion through pilgrimage, devotions such as the Infant of Prague, preaching campaigns, visual culture, and the establishment of saints’ cults won the day securing Catholic
confessional identity in territory where it seemed it had been ineluctably lost
to Protestantism. Engagingly written and thoroughly versed in archival
sources and Czech scholarship, Louthan uses material culture skillfully along

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with traditional textual sources to make an important argument about the
Catholic Reformation in early-modern Bohemia.
PETER C. KENT, Chair
University of New Brunswick
KATHERINE L. JANSEN
The Catholic University of America
THOMAS J. SHELLEY
Fordham University
Report of the Committee on the Howard R. Marraro Prize
The Association’s 2009 Howard R. Marraro Prize for a work on Italian history or Italo-American history has been awarded to Sharon T. Strocchia (professor of history, Emory University) for Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance
Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).This elegant and
deeply learned book offers the first comprehensive analysis of Florentine convents in the period when they were growing rapidly in number, population,
and social and religious impact. Drawing from a wide range of archival
sources, Strocchia shows how the influx of many well-educated patrician
women in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries turned convents into significant cultural patrons, critical engines of economic development, and major
players in the period’s turbulent politics.
PAULA FINDLEN, Chair
Stanford University
MARLA STONE
Occidental College
NICHOLAS TERPSTRA
University of Toronto
Report of the Committee on the
John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award
The committee is delighted to present the John Tracy Ellis Dissertation
Award to Kate E. Bush (graduate student, Department of History,The Catholic
University of America) for “Sorelle mie: The Sermons of Caterina Vigri and
Franciscan Observant Reform.” Caterina Vigri (St. Catherine of Bologna,
1413–63) was a Clarissan nun and abbess who founded the reformed
Clarissan Observant convent of Corpus Domini in Bologna in 1456. The
Observants’ call for strict adherence to Franciscan ideals is best known
through the public careers of preachers such as Bernardino of Siena or John
of Capistrano, but scholars have begun recently to examine figures such as

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Vigri to understand what the reform meant for the cloistered women of the
Second Order. In assessing the institutional and pastoral cares revealed in the
sermons and the convent’s documentary record, Bush argues that Vigri “combined her extensive knowledge of theology with her vibrant storytelling abilities . . . to give her sisters the spiritual discipline needed to participate in
institutional renewal.”The project is original and well situated in a burgeoning field, shedding light on the interactions of religious women within the
cloister and their participation in the reforms of the later medieval period.
RICHARD F. GYUG, Chair
Fordham University
ANNE KLEJMENT
University of St. Thomas
LEZLIE KNOX
Marquette University
The Peter Guilday Prize
The Peter Guilday Prize has been awarded to Seth Meehan (graduate student, History Department, Boston College) for his article,“From Patriotism to
Pluralism: How Catholics Initiated the Repeal of the Birth Control Restrictions
in Massachusetts,” that appeared in the July 2010 issue of The Catholic
Historical Review (vol. 96, no. 3). This well-written study compares the
stances taken by Cardinal Richard Cushing in the 1948 Massachusetts state referendum debate, during which he advocated restrictions on birth control, and
the 1965 state legislative hearings, during which he supported the repeal of
these restrictions. By extensive research in the archives of Planned Parenthood
and the Archdiocese of Boston, in the pages of the Boston Globe and Boston
Pilot, and through interviews with leading participants, Meehan identified the
key protagonists in the shift. Chief among them were two practicing Catholic
doctors: John Rock, who developed the birth control pill that he considered
morally acceptable to the Church; and Joseph Dorsey, whose October 1964
article in the New England Journal of Medicine reached across ideological
lines and proposed a way to repeal the legislation. The latter carried the
endorsement of Monsignor Francis Lally, chancellor of the archdiocese. Of
equal importance was the Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray, who functioned as a private adviser to Cardinal Cushing, helped to draft the cardinal’s
1965 testimony before the Massachusetts House legislative panel, and influenced the cardinal’s 1965 pastoral letter. On the basis of the upcoming
Declaration on Religious Freedom of the Second Vatican Council, the cardinal argued against legislating private morality in a pluralistic society. Meehan
has produced an extensively researched, carefully crafted, and elegantly written study that is sensitive to the theological concerns of its protagonists.
NELSON H. MINNICH, Editor
The Catholic Historical Review

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2010 ACHA Excellence in Teaching Award
This award is presented to a college or university professor who has
demonstrated high commitment to teaching beyond the expected requirements of his or her position and through his or her influence and skill has
promoted Catholic studies from one generation of scholars to another.
Through this award, the ACHA affirms the work of creative and effective
teaching in promoting Catholic history as an attractive career field for
younger scholars.
The 2010 award has been presented to Kenneth Pennington (Kelly-Quinn
Professor of Ecclesiastical History and professor of law, The Catholic
University of America). Pennington’s vitality in the classroom has been the
inspiration of numerous students, who discover to their great joy that church
history can be interesting. At the same time, he is a prolific scholar—an
author or editor of books and more than seventy articles. His teaching scores
and student evaluations are, in the words of one colleague, “off the charts.”
Pennington’s positive influence on a generation of students will no doubt
attract many to the field of Catholic history.
2010 ACHA Lifetime Distinguished Scholarship Award
The recipient of the 2010 ACHA Lifetime Distinguished Scholarship Award
is Frank J. Coppa (St. John’s University). The recently retired Coppa has
emerged as a highly respected historian of the modern papacy. His biographies of Blessed Pius IX and Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli were the first to take
advantage of the then recently opened papers of Pio Nono’s long pontificate.
He has also written extensively on some of the more controversial aspects of
the modern papacy, including The Papacy, The Jews and The Holocaust
(Washington, DC, 2006). He is at work on a history of the diplomacy of Pope
Pius XII, which will be a major contribution to a very lively public debate over
the Pacelli years in Rome.
2010 ACHA Service to Catholic Studies Award
The Service to Catholic Studies award acknowledges the exceptional contributions of those who promote the study and research of the history of
Catholicism apart from teaching and publication.The Leadership Conference
of Women Religious received the ACHA’s first Service to Catholic Studies
Award for its sponsorship of the “Women and Spirit” exhibition currently
traveling around the United States.The exhibition describes how Catholic sisters helped shape the history and culture of the United States.
“Women and Spirit,” in the words of Sister Karen Kennelly,“celebrates the
contributions of women religious to American life.” In so doing, the LCWR has
substantially advanced the hopes of U.S. Catholic historians who have

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attempted to fold the American Catholic story into the larger narrative of
American history. Relying on advice from scholars such as Carol Coburn and
Sister Kennelly, as well as the many gifts of the LCWR committee that planned
and advanced this project, this significant display has skillfully intersected the
work of women religious with some of the major developments and figures
of American life. Eighty-five religious and secular entities helped to underwrite this project, which has been displayed in Cincinnati and at the
Smithsonian; it is currently on display at Ellis Island.The exhibition is scheduled to visit every region of the United States and will conclude its tour at the
California Museum of History in Sacramento.
2010 ACHA Presidential Graduate Fellowships
In 2010 the Executive Council approved the creation of a fund to assist
graduate students who wish to travel to ACHA annual or spring meetings to
present papers. Eligible graduate students must be members of the
Association, have papers accepted at the conference they wish to attend, and
provide documentary evidence of their background and a letter of recommendation from a faculty member—preferably their dissertation director.
Two grants of $500 each will be provided each year. Generous donations from
several former presidents and a $2000 grant from the Association have provided initial funding for the fellowships.The first honorees were:
• Monica Mercado (University of Chicago), who presented the paper “‘What
a Blessing to Be Fond of Reading Good Books’: Reading Circles and
Catholic Women in Turn-of-the Century America” at the 2011 ACHA meeting in Boston.This paper was drawn from the final chapters of her dissertation, “Women and the Word: Gender, Print, and Catholic Identity in
Nineteenth-Century America.”
• Sheila Nowinski (University of Notre Dame), who presented the paper
“The Catholic Family in Postwar Rural France: L’exposition de la Maison
Rurale, 1947–1950” at the 2011 ACHA meeting in Boston. Nowinski is currently working on her dissertation,“Religion and Social Change in Postwar
France: The Jeunesse agricole catholique, 1944–1968,” under the direction
of Thomas Kselman.
Report of the President
It has been an honor to serve as president for this year. The position has
been traditionally regarded as an honorary post, with the president appointing members to committee posts and delivering the presidential address at
the annual meeting. However, revisions to the ACHA Bylaws have created a
wider scope of activity for the president.
President/Vice President “team.” I was privileged to work with 2009 ACHA
President William Chester Jordan (Princeton University) during my term as

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vice president.We communicated regularly and with the executive secretary
and met in Washington, DC, in late October 2009 for important financial discussions and planning for the annual meeting. I brought this same spirit of
cooperation and decision making to my relationship with Larissa Juliet Taylor,
the 2011 ACHA president.We communicated regularly by email and phone as
well as had a two-day meeting in Milwaukee. She is a remarkable scholar and
teacher as well as deeply committed to creating a strong future for the
Association.
New membership. I worked hard to invite and welcome young scholars to
the ACHA. With the help of the Membership Committee (Charles Strauss,
University of Notre Dame; Angelyn Dries, O.S.F., Saint Louis University; and
Leigh Ann Craig, Virginia Commonwealth University), a list of approximately
300 potential new members was compiled. I wrote to every name on the list
(usually via email), and about forty new members applied as a result.
Both the ACHA’s fiscal condition and scholarly health require that the
ACHA seek new members. The payment of dues will help the ACHA financially, but even more important, an infusion of new scholarly insights, together
with structured opportunities for younger scholars to meet and interact with
experts in the field, will ensure a continuation of the intellectual vitality that
has characterized the ACHA over the years. New presidents should devote
considerable effort to attracting new members through personal invitation
and efforts to plan solid (and affordable) meetings where younger scholars
can see Association members at their best. Likewise, the excellent CHR continues to provide a print and online venue for significant contributions to
Catholic history.The Association has a strong reputation for scholarship and
excellence that should make it attractive to new members.
The Presidential Graduate Fellowships. I proposed the Presidential
Graduate Fellowships last year, which the Executive Council accepted. The
ACHA now presents two $500 grants to two graduate students who have
papers accepted for the ACHA annual and spring meetings (see the reports
elsewhere in this issue on the first recipients). I have asked the organizers of
the 2012 Toronto spring meeting and the Chicago annual meeting to publicize this scholarship to eligible participants. Application details are available
under “Awards” on the ACHA Web site (http://www.achahistory.org).
The Honorary Awards. Awards for Lifetime Scholarship as well as
Excellence in Teaching and Service to Catholic Studies were conferred for the
first time by the ACHA at the Boston meeting (see the reports elsewhere in
this issue for the first recipients). A citation is read at the Presidential
Luncheon, and each recipient is presented with a plaque. The winners and
their guests are provided with a complimentary meal at the luncheon.
Fund-Raising. To help launch the Presidential Graduate Fellowships I
solicited more than $4000 from former ACHA presidents.The Association has

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promised to contribute $2000 each year for three years to maintain this fund,
and future presidents may wish to solicit for this fund. In view of the serious
financial difficulties of the ACHA, I also undertook a fund-raising campaign
among select members of the American Catholic hierarchy. This campaign
was modestly successful, raising about $6000. Two of the gifts were of
$1000—one from a Midwestern diocese and another from a retired cardinal.
These funds are to be allocated in the following manner: one-third devoted to
the support of The Catholic Historical Review (CHR), one-third to the
Presidential Graduate Fellowship Fund, and one-third to the honorary awards.
Annual Meeting. James O’Toole (Boston College) prepared and arranged
our Boston meeting; see the Report of the Committee on Program for details.
I am grateful to O’Toole; Casey Beaumier, S.J.; Cyprian Davis, O.S.B.; and the
graduate students of Boston College for their contributions to the meeting.
Ellen Skerrett (Chicago, IL) and Malachy R. McCarthy (Claretian Missionaries
Archives, Chicago) have agreed to plan the 2012 Chicago meeting (see Notes
and Comments in this issue for the Call for Papers for the meeting).
Spring Meetings. The ACHA annual spring meetings have become a mainstay for the intellectual vitality of the Association. When arrangements fell
through with the original host institution for the spring 2010 meeting, 2009
ACHA President Jordan stepped in. His efforts resulted in a meeting at
Princeton University’s marvelous conference center, generous underwriting
of the event, and a profit of $1200. Despite torrential rains and even floods,
the spring meeting hosted approximately sixty participants, including young
scholars, who presented interesting papers (some of this scholarship has
been placed on the ACHA Web site). Networking sessions that provide opportunities for outreach to young scholars—the result of efforts by Angelyn
Dries, Joseph Chinnici, and Charles Strauss—have become a regular part of
these ACHA meetings.
The next ACHA spring meeting will be in Toronto, held jointly with the
Canadian Catholic Historical Association. The tentative program for “Catholics
across Boundaries: Local or International Church, Missions,Wars, Immigration
Issues, Fighting Communism” is posted on the ACHA Web site.The Executive
Council has formally accepted proposals from Tulane University and Stonehill
College, MA, for the 2012 meeting and the 2013 meeting respectively.
To ensure a satisfactory planning process, the incoming ACHA president
and vice president should work diligently to secure venues for the ACHA
spring meetings in 2014 and 2015.The formal process of institutional request
should be followed—that is, a formal request from the potential host institution with a response by the Executive Council. The executive secretary
should maintain regular contact with the host institution to ensure a successful meeting. As a tool for current and prospective host institutions for
ACHA meetings, the various steps necessary to plan and execute a successful

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spring meeting should be posted on the ACHA Web site, and the current planners should be provided with the contact information of previous organizers
who can offer valuable advice. The financial responsibilities of hosting the
meeting must be made clear to potential host institutions as well as the obligation to publicize the ACHA Presidential Graduate Fellowship and the necessity to serve as a resource for future meeting planners.
The ACHA Web site. The ACHA’s new, interactive Web site went online in
early March 2010. I hope all can agree that it is a visually beautiful and relatively easy site to navigate.The Web site eventually will be the ACHA’s primary
medium for communication, providing easy registration for ACHA meetings
and offering an opportunity for members to share their scholarly projects and
ideas as well as links to other sites of interest to Catholic historians. Andy
Metzger (Symmetrical Designs) serves as the site’s webmaster.Web site traffic
has been healthy. As the Association has poured considerable resources into
building and maintaining the Web site, it requires more guidance and structure to provide essential services to members and advance the work of the
Association. If the site is left unattended, people will simply never visit it.
Vice-President Taylor and I spent much time this year recruiting articles,
synopses of papers, and other such materials for the Web site. Richard
Gribble, C.S.C. (Stonehill College, MA), gathered syllabi, which are now available on the site. But more material is needed: links to other sites of interest to
Catholic historians, notices of conferences and similar events, awards given to
members, and so forth.Although the Bylaws call for the creation of a permanent Electronic Media Committee, this has not been done.Thus, the executive
secretary needs to seek out and appoint members to this committee. This
committee needs to take practical control of the Web site’s content, refreshing it at least monthly and removing older material.The committee, working
in conjunction with the webmaster, will suggest improvements for the site
and actively seek articles and information that will be of interest to those in
Catholic studies.
The Ad Hoc Committee for the Structure of the ACHA Office. For years,
Monsignor Robert Trisco ably served the Association.The ACHA paid no salary
to Trisco, only supporting a small office staff that also worked for the CHR.
With Paul Robichaud, C.S.P., replacing Trisco as executive secretary/treasurer,
the situation changed.The ACHA must pay Robichaud a stipend, which means
a new expense for the Association. While he retains a niche and mailing
address at the ACHA offices in CUA’s Mullen Library, he has effectively moved
his working space to Office of Paulist History at St. Paul College, also his personal residence. In addition, The Catholic University of America no longer
hosts the ACHA Web site, which means that the ACHA must pay for maintaining the site.The current financing of the office staff has created some financial stresses as well.The time allotted for the position, some 8 hours per week
and additional time during certain periods such as meetings and elections of

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officers, proved to be inadequate for the tasks required. To help the ACHA
address this matter, I asked Margaret McGuinness (La Salle University) and
Christine Athans, B.V.M. (emerita, St. Paul University) to form an ad hoc committee to report on the current organizational set-up.They have asked Rodger
van Allen (Villanova University) and Karen Kennelly, C.S.J. (St. Paul, MN) to
assist. The committee’s recommendations will be presented for discussion
and action. Robichaud’s three-year commitment to his ACHA position expires
in January 2012. Clear, contractual language is needed to formalize the relationship between the ACHA and the staff.
Finances. The mandated Finance Committee of the Association has been
established, chaired by Adam Dawkins (Development Office of the Paulist
Fathers). Members include Robichaud (ex officio) and two CUA faculty members, Reza Saidi and Jamshed Uppal. The committee met during 2010 to discuss the ACHA’s financial condition. I strongly urged the committee members
to develop practical suggestions for improving the ACHA’s financial picture,
particularly about the amount paid to operate the office, and provided the
policies of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on financial
transparency. This committee should meet more regularly and provide
monthly financial reports to the president and vice-president.A handbook of
policies is needed to ensure the complete transparency of the ACHA’s financial procedures.To reflect recognized practices for sound fiscal management
of nonprofit associations, two signatures should be required for every ACHA
check or financial transfer as well as explicit written approval from the president and vice president for expenditures exceeding $500.
Ongoing financial challenges have confronted the Association due to the
downturn of the economy. Thanks to the generosity of The Catholic
University of America and Trisco, the true costs of running the Association
(that is, accounting for the indirect subsidies of the university) have not been
evident for many years. But unless the ACHA can arrange a similar cost-sharing arrangement with CUA or another academic institution, the Association
will need additional revenue to operate. Raising dues is one option. But
during these times of economic duress, salary freezes, and reductions in academic budgets, such a step is not always advisable, given that the ACHA
might lose more than it gained. The treasurer should investigate the potential impact of raising dues on membership. Additional revenue also can be
garnered from a better investment strategy—something that knowledgeable
individuals who have studied the ACHA investments have often suggested.
Fund appeals can and should take place, and a more aggressive pursuit of
funds for the Association should be coordinated between the treasurer and
the president.
The ACHA has run deficits for many years, which may have been partially
absorbed by returns on investments. But without these returns, the ACHA has
been forced to liquidate some stock—an undesirable solution for the long-

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term health of the Association. The ACHA faces rising expenses for the CHR
and the maintenance of the Web site, a just compensation for the ACHA
administrative offices, and some rethinking about expenditures for office
services. Some belt-tightening needs to be done.The expenses for office staff
seem to be an area where some pruning can be done without hindering the
office’s efficiency. The increasing costs of producing the CHR should be
negotiated with the new director of The Catholic University of America Press.
However, it should be noted that, as the CUA Press owns CHR, the Association
only has limited input into its decisions.
The Culture of the ACHA. The Association has been a strong and vibrant
professional society for more than ninety years. The ACHA’s reputation for
scholarly excellence, the superb CHR, and the cavalcade of magnificent scholars that have served as ACHA officers have garnered for the ACHA a secure
niche for the scholarly study of the Catholic Church. As historians, ACHA
members do not need to be reminded of the debt of gratitude owed for what
has preceded them.Yet members are subject to the same forces of change as
those described in their books, articles, and conference papers. The
Association has made significant strides in the past few years and needs to
move forward.The ACHA has significantly revised its Bylaws, and new awards,
graduate student fellowships, and Web site represent efforts to maintain the
momentum.There does exist, however, what the political commentators call
an “enthusiasm gap” and a misperception as to what ACHA provides to members and the wider community of Catholic scholars and teachers. Many of
these misperceptions can be overcome with better and more frequent communication. But we need to do more—and to project an image of vitality and
awareness of the world around us. I offer these suggestions for the future:
• The ACHA president should be someone who will be an active leader as
well as a respected senior scholar. Serving as a catalyst for membership
growth and fund-raising, as a representative of the Association to a wider
audience, and as a recruiter of capable individuals for Association-related
tasks are vital roles for this individual. Organizational details can usually be
left to the executive secretary/treasurer, but it falls to the president to set
the tone and pace of the ACHA’s activities.
• Further efforts must be made to help graduate students and younger scholars attend ACHA meetings and feel a part of the Association. Fund-raising
is needed to make more money available so they can attend professional
events. A graduate student representative should be added to the
Executive Council.
• ACHA members should try to be of greater service to the Catholic Church.
The skills and expertise of ACHA members as historians can be effectively
deployed in the service of the USCCB as it is on the Pontifical Committee
of Historical Sciences. ACHA meetings also can provide sessions that deal
with the historical background of key church issues of the day. Likewise, a
number of ACHA members can be of help to the news media in sorting out

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issues that travel on the roller coaster of the 24-hour news cycle. Some historians rightly balk at this role, but members of the Association have provided helpful perspectives on contemporary events.
• The CHR is still the primary venue for the scholarly talents of ACHA members and others who have contributed to Catholic studies.The Association
does not own the CHR, but it has an active stake in its success. I commend
the work of editor Nelson H. Minnich and the staff for the high quality of
the articles and book reviews. I also commend the editor’s efforts to help
underwrite the considerable expense of the CHR. A channel should be
opened to the incoming director of The Catholic University of America
Press (the publisher of the CHR) to discuss its progress and ways the ACHA
and the press can work together to strengthen and improve the journal.
The CHR leadership should begin to make provisions for the next generation of editors (general and book review) that will take over in the next
few years. CUA Press and the CHR editor should find associates who can
observe the functioning of the CHR and eventually assume responsibility
for its production.
I am grateful for the privilege of serving the Association this year.
STEVEN M.AVELLA
Marquette University
Report of the Secretary and Treasurer
At present the Association has 802 active members, of whom 556 are ordinary members, 115 are retired members, 84 are student members, and 47 are
lifetime members.These figures represent a substantial increase over the past
few months, especially in the number of student members, which increased
from fifty-nine to eighty-four.This is no doubt due to the outreach efforts of
2010 ACHA President Avella and the Membership Committee. There are seventy-six lapsed members, who may be tardy in paying their dues.
The following members of the association have died:
• Canon Roger Aubert, Catholic University of Louvain, member since 1985
• George T. Dennis, S.J., The Catholic University of America, member since
1960
• Grace Donovan, S.U.S.C., member since 1981
• Robert McCune Kingdon, University of Wisconsin–Madison, member since
1984
• John W. Witek, S.J., Georgetown University, member of the American
Catholic Historical Association since 1974 and ACHA second vice-president in 2001
May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed members of the
Association through the mercy of God rest in peace.

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Web Site. The new, interactive Web site for ACHA (http://www.achahistory.org) was launched in March 2010. The site provides a number of new
possibilities, including the establishment of an online network of scholars,
researchers, teachers, and mentors; the ability to register online for ACHA
meetings; and the possibility for increased flexibility in posting news items as
well as gathering and maintaining membership data. Members can now
receive renewal notices via email, largely replacing the more lengthy and
costly process of sending renewal notices via postal mail.
The ACHA has retained the site’s Web designer, Andy Metzger, to provide
service and host support for $750 per month, especially in establishing an
online payment system. Members now can pay dues and meeting registration
fees as well as make a donation to the Association through the Web site. Of
the $32,000 received as income this past year, one-quarter came from the
online payment system. This number should only increase. The transition
from the former Web site hosted by CUA to an interactive site with tech support has made a tremendous difference. The Association has just begun to discover the possibilities for using the site to connect members and provide
member services, from sending an annual meeting program via email to
requesting financial support from members that can translate into cost savings to the ACHA. The Association pays about $1000 each time a substantial
mailing is prepared that is sent out via postal mail to the entire membership.
The Web site continues to develop. Two sections of the Web site have
drawn little usage: the blogs and the discussion forums. Thus, both of these
features have been disabled but could be reactivated should interest develop.
The Web site should continue to evolve on the basis of usage after the
Electronic Media Committee is established, which will occur shortly.The new
budget for 2011 also provides for new software to establish an online directory of members and to design a system for holding officer elections on the
Web site.
Fund-Raising.Three separate 2010 campaigns raised $14,000. 2010 ACHA
President Avella established the Presidential Graduate Fellowship of $500
each for two graduate students participating in an ACHA meeting. About
$4000 was donated by former presidents of the Association for the fellowship.The ACHA Executive Council has committed to providing from its general budget an additional $2000 a year for three years to this fellowship. In
addition, a second campaign from members of the church hierarchy raised
about $6000. In November/December 2010 an additional $5000 was raised
via an “end-of-year gift” campaign.
This year, the ACHA Finance Committee discussed the question of attempting a major capital campaign with committee chair Adam Dawkins, who is a
professional development director. After some evaluation of the ACHA membership, Dawkins was uncertain whether such a campaign would be feasible.

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THE 91ST ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

This discussion will be continued during 2011, which also will examine the
question of soliciting bequests from members—the principal source of much
of the ACHA’s present endowment.
The Present Endowment. The present endowment of the Association
stands at $977,278. The assets are divided as follows:
Deutsche Bank portfolio
Vanguard portfolio (2)
T. Rowe Price portfolio
Total:

814,108.00
106,739.06
56,430.99
977,278.05

Last year at this time ACHA assets totaled $940,907.52, so some recovery
has occurred from the recession. The investment returns, together with the
modest fund-raising, have resulted in a better financial picture for the
Association than the one of one year ago. Some of these mutual funds are
restricted, which amounts to about $124,000 primarily within the Vanguard
and T. Rowe Price accounts as well as the PIMCO account at Deutsche Bank
and a new PNC money market account that holds some of the money garnered through fund-raising.
Restricted Funds. The following are details on restricted funds as of
December 31, 2010:
Howard R. Marraro Prize (T Rowe Price GNMA):
Balance 12/31/2010:

18,124.00

Anne Wolf Fund (T Rowe Price GNMA):
Balance 12/31/2010:

5,832.00

The Catholic Historical Review Fund:
Balance 12/31/2010:

2,000.00

Endowment Fund (Vanguard GNMA):
Balance 12/31/2010:

4,642.00

John Tracy Ellis Fund (Vanguard GNMA):
Balance 12/31/2010:

23,783.00

Harry C. Koenig Fund (PIMCO GNMA):
Balance 12/31/2010:

60,575.00

John Whitney Evans Fund for the John Gilmary Shea Prize
(PIMCO GNMA):
Balance 12/31/20010:

9,250.00

Total Restricted Net Assets:

124,206.00

THE 91ST ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

323

Financial Statement
The ACHA budget breaks down into multiple categories: stipends
(salaries), office expenses, meeting expenses, The Catholic Historical
Review, awards,Web site updates, accounting, and miscellaneous items.
Income: 2010 (YTD as of December 15)
Membership Fees
31,517.00
Fund-Raising
14,000.00
Endowment Income
15,000.00
Awards Endowment
3,200.00
Meetings:
Annual Meeting
1,870.00
Spring Meeting
1,236.00
Total Income
Expenses:
Salaries
Secretary/Treasurer
Sec/Treasurer Travel
Admin Asst Half Salary
Webmaster
Total Salaries

12,000.00
2,150.00
19,500.00
7,500.00
41,150.00

Meeting Expenses:
January ACHA/AHA
Spring ACHA

5,288.98
0

Awards:
John Gilmary Shea Prize
Peter Guilday Prize
John Tracy Ellis Prize
Howard R. Marraro Prize
Total Awards

750.00
100.00
1,200.00
750.00
2,800.00

Web Site Construction:

8,939.84

The Catholic Historical Review:
Jan/April/July/October (9,500 ea.)

38,000.00

Office Expenses:
Office Repair
Printing
Postage
Supplies

1,200.001
2,872.48
1,200.00
300.00

66,823.00

1
Office repair was a one-time payment of $1200 to preserve the photo collection of
ACHA presidents that was badly damaged by water leakage in the ACHA office in CUA’s
Mullen Library. This amount was not in the 2010 ACHA Budget.

324

THE 91ST ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

Other:
Certified Public Acct
C.I.H.E.C.
Total Expenses

2,373.00
40.00
104,165.07

Totals
2010 Total Expenses:
2010 Total Income:
Deficit:

104,165.07
66,823.00
37,342.07

Deficit. Some ACHA members may not realize that for more than a decade,
the Association has run an annual deficit. In 1998 the deficit reached $21,000
and in 2004, $23,000. In years past the growth of the endowment more than
covered the deficit. Today, this is no longer the case, and the deficit has grown
to more than $30,000.The ACHA’s greatest single expense is its payments to
CUA Press, which owns The Catholic Historical Review (the journal is provided as a benefit of ACHA membership). The ACHA’s principal source of
income is membership dues, which brings in more than $30,000 per year.
Sadly, little is left to run the Association, as membership dues often come
close to matching the cost of the journal.With each deficit, a small amount of
ACHA stock holdings must be liquidated. The Association’s long-term goal is
to increase its endowment so that dividends meet its operational expenses
and the principal remains intact. The endowment needs to be increased,
which can only be done with member assistance. Although the deficit should
decrease in 2011 as the costs for building the new ACHA Web site have been
paid, the proposed budget still contains an operational deficit of more than
$20,000.
PAUL ROBICHAUD, C.S.P.
Secretary and Treasurer
Editor’s Report
Volume XCVI (2010) of The Catholic Historical Review came to 960
pages. It included twelve articles, one review article, two miscellanies, and
313 book reviews, of which nine were brief notices.The editor is grateful to
those who generously contributed to the fund for adding extra pages.
The twelve articles were distributed as follows: zero ancient, two medieval,
three early-modern, one late-modern, three American, one American/Canadian,
one Near Eastern, and one African. Of the authors of the twelve articles, three
came from outside the United States (Canada, France, and Israel). Subsidies
allowed the authors in four cases to exceed the page limit.
The book reviews were distributed among the following areas: general
and miscellaneous (twenty-seven), ancient (twenty), medieval (seventy-four),

THE 91ST ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

325

early-modern (ninety-three), late-modern (fifty-two), American (thirty), Latin
American (thirteen), Canadian (one), Far Eastern/Australian (two), and African
(one).The authors of book reviews came from various countries: the United
States of America (203 or 65 percent), the United Kingdom (forty-nine or 16
percent), and Canada (eighteen or 6 percent), with the remaining 13 percent
from Germany and Italy (nine each); France and the Netherlands (four);
Australia and Austria (three); Belgium and Ireland (two); and one each from
Chile, China, the Czech Republic, Israel, Malta, Peru, and Spain. The review
essay was by an author from a Canadian institution.
As the tables below reveal, the editor dealt with seventy-three articles. Of
the forty-three on hand from the previous years, eleven were published in
2010, twelve were accepted for publication, none was conditionally
accepted, three await a response from the authors, twelve were treated as
abandoned, four were rejected, and one was withdrawn. Of the thirty-one articles received in 2010, one was published, four were accepted, one was conditionally accepted, eleven are pending evaluations or responses, twelve were
rejected, and two were withdrawn.
The editorial staff of The Catholic Historical Review continues to function smoothly due to the devoted services of its staff. Monsignor Robert Trisco
graciously and wisely handles the book reviews and associated correspondence as well as takes responsibility for the Periodical Literature and Other
Books Received sections, advises the editor on manuscript evaluations, and
helps in countless other ways. Elizabeth Foxwell serves as the dedicated staff
editor and has capably assumed many of the copyediting tasks and the indexing of the volume.With her expert assistance the journal has been published
on time. Daniel Frascella serves as the industrious book review assistant and
provided an elegant translation of the essay by Jean Delumeau. Rita Bogley
cheerfully assists the editor in many tasks. For all of this expert assistance the
editor is deeply grateful.
The editor also is grateful to advisory editors Liam M. Brockey (Michigan
State University), Simon Ditchfield (University of York), Thomas Kselman
(University of Notre Dame), Maureen C. Miller (University of California,
Berkeley), and Joseph M.White (The Catholic University of America) for their
sage advice, helpful suggestions, and willingness to contribute in various ways
to the smooth functioning of the journal.
With the July issue the journal inaugurated the series Journeys in Church
History. For many years, I often have been saddened after reading the journal’s obituary notices, realizing that the historian memorialized did not have
a chance to share his or her perspective on his or her life and career. In 2007
I jumped at the chance to publish “My Life of Learning,” an essay by John W.
O’Malley, S.J. (Georgetown University), and found that it was well received by
readers. With the help of the associate and advisory editors, a set of criteria

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THE 91ST ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

and a list of authors for potential future essays were developed. Jean Delumeau
(Collège de France) graciously agreed to provide the inaugural essay, and
another has been commissioned.
In September David McGonagle retired as director of The Catholic
University of America Press.The journal owes a great debt of gratitude to him
for his steady support of the journal over many years and for his wise counsel. Last year he increased the number of pages allotted to each issue.
Previously that number was set at 160 pages, with the possibility of adding
pages if there were sufficient contributions given toward the support of the
journal and author subsidies.To eliminate the uncertainty of determining the
amount of money available to expand each issue, McGonagle set the new
page limit at 224 with the possibility of exceeding that number should an
author provide a subsidy for exceeding the page limit for articles.
Henceforth, contributions will be allocated to covering the cost of the
Association’s Web site.
NELSON H. MINNICH
Editor

TABLE 1. Manuscripts Submitted before 2010

Area

Rejected or Awaiting
Withdrawn Author Published
Accepted Abandoned (W)
Response in 2010 TOTAL

Ancient
Medieval
Early Modern
Late Modern
American
Latin American
Canadian
Near Eastern
African
TOTAL

3
4
3
2

1
3
2
4
1
1

2
1
1

1
1

1
3
1
3

1
3

1
1
1
11

1-W

12

12

4 R; 1 W

1
9
10
10
7
1
2
1
2
43

THE 91ST ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

327

TABLE 2. Manuscripts Submitted in 2010.

Area
Ancient
Medieval
Early Modern
Late Modern

Condi- Rejected or
Published
tionally Withdrawn
in
Accepted Accepted
(W)
Pending 2010 TOTAL
1
1

American

1

Latin American

1

TOTAL

4

1

1

2
1
1
2
1-W
5
1-W
1

4
1
3

1

3

2
7
2
7
11
2

12 R; 2 W

11

1

31

TABLE 3. Book Reviews Published in 2010.
Area

January

April

July

October

TOTAL

General
Ancient
Medieval
Early Modern
Late Modern
American
Latin American
Canadian
Far Eastern/Australian
African
TOTAL

3
5
18
21
14
10
4
0
0
0
75

7
4
16
14
12
10
5
0
1
1
70

6
6
13
41
8
6
2
1
0
0
83

11
5
27
17
18
4
2
0
1
0
85

27
20
74
93
52
30
13
1
2
1
313

Brief Notices

(3)

(4)

(2)

(9)

BOOK REVIEWS
________
General and Miscellaneous
A Very Brief History of Eternity. By Carlos Eire. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press. 2010. Pp. xviii, 268. $24.95. ISBN 978-0-691-13357-7.)
A history of the concept of eternity in Western thought is a brilliantly original idea, and Carlos Eire makes complex ideas easily accessible. Eire is deeply
learned in history, philosophy, theology, literature, language, and popular culture. His underlying assertion, against the fad of current academic materialism, is that ideas have consequences: Beliefs and social conditions affect one
another. His thesis is that ideas of eternity have had an enormous effect on
people’s behavior and on culture. His focus is on “eternity as it pertains to
human existence, not eternity as abstractly conceived” (p. 17): on what he
calls “lived religion” (p. 21). He discusses concepts of time, infinity, immortality, eternal life, afterlife, transcendence, eternal return, eschatology, heaven
and hell, and the entropic fate of the material universe.
The author divides the book into four chronological sections, preceded by
an important introduction and followed by an appendix with an analysis of
important ideas.The four sections are the Jewish and Greek origins of the idea
and their synthesis in early Christianity; the Middle Ages; the Reformation and
rise of science; and the Enlightenment, modernism, and postmodernism.The
organization works well, although it might have been better to divide the last
section into modernism and postmodernism.
The first section shows how the Jewish eternal creating God and the
Greek eternal first principle were melded in New Testament and patristic
thought.A quibble is that Eire misunderstands the Gospel of John as being primarily influenced by stoicism (p. 41). The second section is a masterful discussion of both the scholastic and the mystical aspects of medieval religion.
The third section is the most interesting, treating Protestant views of eternity on society, which created “a wholesale . . . segregating . . . of the dead and
the living” (pp. 108, 150). The Protestant critique moved from indulgences to
rejection of purgatory and prayers for the dead. The Communion of Saints
was postponed to vague eschatology, erasing the Catholic sense that the
saints are eternally present in Christ and thus present to us at all times.
Protestantism rejected the idea that we can do something for the dead “here
and now” (p. 110) and replaced it with the idea that the deceased are dead
and gone, at least until the end of time. Protestants have only two alternatives
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BOOK REVIEWS

329

at death,“only two small doors on the horizon . . . one leading to heaven and
the other to hell” (p. 153). Since nothing could be done for the dead, the focus
shifted to an emphasis on life in this temporal world; combined with
Protestant individualism, this produced a world attuned to modernization and
capitalism. A sharp shift in society and property characterized the Protestant
Reformation. Earlier, much wealth had been given to churches and monasteries in return for services for the deceased and their families. Once such services were deemed nugatory, the churches’ property was seized by the secular
authorities (the most notorious being King Henry VIII), allowing the state to
hugely enhance its military, economic, and social power.“The Reformation of
eternity was a significant first step toward the elevation of this world as the
ultimate reality” (p. 153).
The final section contains thoughtful criticisms of modernism and materialism on the one hand, and postmodernism and deconstruction on the other.
Unfortunately, while criticizing the postmodern view of the relativity of truth,
the author does not escape it. He bemoans the current rule of two false orthodoxies—individualism and collectivism—without offering the alternative of
Christian communion in love freed from both selfishness and tyranny. This
weakens the strength of his voice, so strong in the previous sections.
Nonetheless, this is a book that deserves a lot of attention by historians,
philosophers, and theologians, and it is written so clearly that it will also interest the literate public.
University of California at Santa Barbara

JEFFREY BURTON RUSSELL

The Mystery of the Rosary: Marian Devotions and the Reinvention of
Catholicism. By Nathan D. Mitchell. (New York: New York University Press.
2009. Pp. ix, 324. $37.00. ISBN 978-0-814-79591-0.)
Numerous authors have conducted devotional and scholarly studies on
the rosary, but in The Mystery of the Rosary: Marian Devotions and the
Reinvention of Catholicism, Nathan D. Mitchell, professor of theology in the
University of Notre Dame, has produced an innovative and significant addition to the literature. In this exhaustively researched and detailed analysis of
this popular devotion, Mitchell has successfully argued that despite the variance of time, culture, and devotional popularity, not only has the rosary continually been used but also, beginning from its medieval roots, has served as
the thread to capture the imagination of Catholics. Mitchell successfully
argues that the rosary has not only survived but flourished, because it was
able to absorb the reform, religious identity, and devotionalism that characterized early-modern Catholicism.
In six chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion, Mitchell shows that,
contrary to popular belief, Catholicism after Trent was not monolithic, but
rather adapted to changing times and needs. As time and situation change, he

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BOOK REVIEWS

shows how the rosary was reframed to allow it to become in many ways a
badge of identification for Catholics.The rosary was found to be adaptable to
individuals or to groups and thus ideal as a vehicle to maintain the faith
through dangerous and at times perilous periods of Catholic history.
The heart of Mitchell’s work describes how the rosary was reframed in
varied ways, allowing it not only to be relevant but, more important, highly
useful to Catholics in their daily practice of the faith. Artistically, Mitchell uses
the work of Caravaggio, especially his master work Madonna del Rosario
(1607), to show how the rosary became a symbol for the poor through the
artist’s depiction of Mary as an advocate for those on the margins of society.
In describing the reframing of ritual and religious identity, Mitchell effectively
argues that the rosary in some ways became “the Mass” for those for whom
religious practice was proscribed. He uses the Church in England as an example of how Catholics, forced to be a church without a church building and a
sacramental community without sacraments, used the rosary as a badge of
distinctive religious identity and a method to foster the social structure of
their faith community. For some Catholics in seventeenth-century England,
the rosary, Mitchell suggests, became a “Eucharistic site” (p. 165). Even in the
late-twentieth century the rosary continued to have an uncanny ability to
bring together the sublime and prosaic. In short, it was the rosary’s adaptability, to be prayed individually or in common, to be constructed of materials such as precious stones or simply knots of cord, that allowed it to continue
to serve as a powerful witness of Catholic identity.
Mitchell’s monograph is an innovative and highly engaging study that convincingly argues how the rosary, especially its ability to adapt, was in many
ways the binding thread or common denominator to which Catholics turned
to achieve continuity in their practice of the faith. This book, through its
exhaustive research and detailed analysis, is for the scholarly community; it is
not a monograph aimed toward those who simply desire more information
concerning the history or devotion associated with the rosary. Mitchell has
certainly given scholars a text that adds significantly to the literature by blazing a new, intricate, and highly enlightening path that sees the value of the
rosary is a completely new way.
Stonehill College, MA

RICHARD GRIBBLE, C.S.C.

Lineages of European Political Thought: Explorations along the Medieval/
Modern Divide from John of Salisbury to Hegel. By Cary J. Nederman.
(Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press. 2009. Pp xxiv,
375. $39.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-813-21581-5.)
Over the past quarter-century and more, Cary Nederman, one of the few
specialists in medieval political thinking to find an enduring home in a political science department, has contributed to his chosen field a steady stream

BOOK REVIEWS

331

of articles, book chapters, and monographs addressing an unusually broad
array of topics ranging from John of Salisbury to Jean Gerson, from Marsiglio
of Padua to Hegel, and from Henry de Bracton to Machiavelli. Though his
impressive work in twelfth- and early-thirteenth-century political thought is
not represented here, his other shorter pieces, revised in differential degree,
are gathered together here in the twenty chapters of this useful and instructive book, and he is to be congratulated on having made this substantial body
of work more readily available to his fellow scholars.The pieces in question
he clusters loosely into five groups:“Historiographies of the Early European
Tradition, Continuity and Change”; “Dissenting Voices and the Limits of
Power”;“Republican Self-Governance and Universal Empires”;“The Virtues of
Necessity: Economic Principles of Politics”; and “Modern Receptions of
Medieval Ideas.” These headings themselves attest to the challengingly disparate nature of these essays.There is in fact no obvious center of gravity to
this whole body of work, and, within the compass of a short review, it is
accordingly difficult to do justice to it. Most instructive is what he has to say
on political representation, on Marsiglio of Padua, and on the continuing relevance of the much-criticized work of Walter Ullmann and the comparatively
overlooked work of A. P. d’Entrèves. Least instructive, on the other hand, are
his comments (versus A. J. Black) on republicanism and the tiresome polemic
he directs against those historians whom he lumps together as “neoFiggisites”— though here, I must identify myself as one of those so lumped.
The disparate nature of the pieces gathered together here appears also to
have confronted the author himself with (self-confessed) difficulties when he
set out to conceptualize the overall contents of the book with clarity and in
appropriately synthetic fashion (p. xi). In the event, the introduction does
little to integrate the book’s five parts into any even quasi-unified enterprise;
what it does do, rather, is to serve as an introduction to part I and as yet
another vehicle forwarding his very single-minded enterprise of criticizing
those historians (and inevitably his “neo-Figgisites”) whom he portrays as
having ignored or underestimated what others have called “this unsurmountable divide” between “medieval and modern” (p. xix). Scholarly disagreement,
it is true, is often the engine that serves to move historians toward deeper historical understanding. But one cannot help being puzzled here by the species
of aggrieved condescension that informs the tone of Nederman’s critique of
Brian Tierney’s oeuvre and, though in lesser degree, the efforts of those
Nederman fingers as historiographic fellow travelers. By dint of selective,
inexact, and sometimes reductive readings, historians of subtlety and nuance
like Tierney himself or Constantin Fasolt are shoe-horned into competing
“schools” preoccupied, respectively, with “continuity” or with “rupture”—a
tactic akin to Pope Benedict XVI’s comparably tendentious portrayal of commentators on the Second Vatican Council. Nor can we overlook the essentialist way in which he deploys the terms medieval and modern. Nor, again,
though it is no more than a Renaissance humanist contrivance, his lack of any
qualms about simply taking for granted the very periodization of European

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BOOK REVIEWS

history into ancient, medieval, and modern. And yet at the heart of the disagreement to which he devotes so much attention is the growing realization
among historians that that particular schema has become as much a hindrance as a help when it comes to understanding the course of European
intellectual history. Firmly institutionalized though it still is, it has in effect
taken on the appearance of a cumbersomely Ptolemaic system calling for an
ever-increasing number of enabling epicycles in order to keep it functioning
at all. The attempt, as here, to add to the whole groaning apparatus yet
another such epicycle is hardly to be celebrated.
Williams College

FRANCIS OAKLEY

The Eve of Spain: Myths of Origins in the History of Christian, Muslim, and
Jewish Conflict. By Patricia E. Grieve. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press. 2009. Pp. xvi, 312. $60.00. ISBN 978-0-801-89036-9.)
In this monograph, Patricia Grieve studies one of Spain’s central myths of
origin: the story of the last Visigothic king, Rodrigo, and his seduction (or
rape) of his vassal’s daughter, alternatively called La Cava or Florinda.This act
purportedly led to the king’s betrayal by La Cava’s father, Julian, who allowed
the invading Islamic forces of 711 into the peninsula.Tracing the evolution of
this story through more than a millennium of Spanish history, Grieve argues
that it plays a fundamental role in the development of Spanish national identity, providing an ideological framework for Spain long before the nation-state
existed. She emphasizes one key feature of the Rodrigo-La Cava legend: that it
permitted the construction of a national community through the vilification
of “others”—specifically, women, Muslims, and Jews.
The book is divided into three sections (called “acts”) treating successive
eras of Spanish history: the Middle Ages, the early-modern period, and the
modern era. In each section, Grieve traces the Rodrigo and La Cava story in
historical and literary sources to see how it was shaped and reshaped into a
seminal moment of the Spanish past. In the high Middle Ages, the story provided a fall-and-redemption narrative in which Rodrigo’s sinfulness led to
Spain’s fall, later redeemed by the heroism of King Pelayo; in this form, the
story provided ideological motivation for reconquest battles against Islamic
forces. By the fifteenth century, however, the tale developed into a closer parallel with Adam and Eve, as the sexual act transformed from rape to seduction
by La Cava, and Spain’s fall was attributed to the treachery of women. The
middle act, which covers the period 1492–1700, follows the legend during
the era following the end of reconquest and the union of Castile and Aragon,
which led to the development of a more coherent nationalist sentiment. In
addition, early-modern Spaniards expressed increased concern—even hysteria—over lineage and “purity” of blood (that is, blood free from Jewish or
Moorish ancestors). In this context, the Visigoths took pride of place as the
ultimate purebloods, and the Rodrigo-La Cava legend proliferated in history,

BOOK REVIEWS

333

theater, and literature.The third act connects the medieval and early-modern
stories to the modern period, in which the Spanish nation-state came into
being. It reads as a bit of an afterthought, although it does provide an intriguing discussion of the legend as interpreted by modern historians.
The exclusive focus on the story of Rodrigo-La Cava and its relationship to
the legend of Pelayo permits Grieve to maintain focus while covering a vast
period of time. Yet at the same time, it poses the danger of creating a teleological understanding of the development of the Spanish nation from the
Middle Ages through the twenty-first century. Grieve adroitly demonstrates
that La Cava and her legend shift meaning in the discourse about the Spanish
nation, but she glides over the existence of competing discourses that do not
necessarily fit into the model posited here. In addition, the vast scope of the
work sometimes militates against deeper historical contextualization.
In spite of these relatively small concerns, Grieve presents a meticulously
researched and thought-provoking study of the evolution of national identity
over the longue-durée. She persuasively demonstrates that stories from the
distant past inform and shape identity for centuries—even millennia—even as
the stories and their meanings evolve.The work also illustrates the enduring
significance of historical inquiry for understanding the present.
University of Virginia

ERIN KATHLEEN ROWE

Reliques modernes: Cultes et usages chrétiens des corps saints des Réformes
aux révolutions. Edited by Philippe Boutry, Pierre Antoine Fabre, and
Dominique Julia. 2 vols. [Collection “En temps & lieux,” 7.] (Paris: Éditions
de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales. 2009.Vol. 1: Pp. 429,Vol.
2: 431–903.Vol. 1: €28,50 paperback, vol. 2: €29,50 paperback.Vol. 1: ISBN
978-2-713-22174-3, vol. 2: ISBN 978-2-713-22188-0.)
As the title suggests, this book engages with two, normally quite discrete
areas of inquiry. It is a brilliant engagement with the question of “modernity”
and the abiding close association between it and “secularization,” as Max
Weber most influentially defined it. It engages obliquely with that thesis
through an extraordinary collection of articles, taking up relics; offering a
close, richly documented study; and suggesting the complexity—devotional,
cultural, political, ecclesiastical, and colonial—of the bones of holy persons.
Piece by piece, these articles reveal a multilayered relationship between
matter and spirit, bones and devotional identity.The two volumes are divided
into six parts: I.“Lieux et corps saints: le temps des polémiques,” II.“Le pouvoir et le sacré,” III.“Le sacré dans la guerre,” IV.“Inventaires et inventions de
lieux,” V. “Un espace en expansion,” and VI. “Reliques et reliquaires: une
archéologie du sacré.” Some interrogate a single text, as in the case of the first
article, “Le Traité des reliques de Jean Calvin (1543): Texte et contextes”
(Pierre Antoine Fabre and Mickaël Wilmart). A number offer a layered study

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of a single site, such as Fabre’s “Le grande reliquaire de la chapelle du Crucifix:
Recherches sur le culte des reliques dans l’eglise San Ignazio, XVIe–XIXe siècles.”Most situate specific relics within communities that the articles carefully
delineate.
The titles of the six parts suggest something of the conceptual and geographic breadth of the volume.The first section takes up both critiques and
apologies—Calvin’s Treatise on Relics, the Council of Trent’s decrees on
relics (Dominique Julia), the restoration of relics in nineteenth-century France
(Philippe Boutry), documentation of a relic (Alain Cantillon), and Collin de
Plancy’s Dictionnaire critique des reliques (Nicole Courtine)—placing them
within complexly conceptualized “contexts.”These contexts include the textual tradition of inventories that framed relics in certain terms and provoked
polemics by those who abhorred the reification, not the relic itself; or the
individual histories of authors and the dialectic between text and experience,
devotion and polemic.The second section takes up “power” in precisely articulated specific instantiations: the girdle of the Virgin in Prato (Mario Rosa); the
translation of relics from Roman catacombs to sites in France in the seventeenth century (Françoise le Hénand); King Philip II’s complex relationship to
relics he gathered in the Escorial (Guy Lazure); and the hand of St. Stephen,
king of Hungary, and its life within Hungarian national history (András
Zempléni). The third section takes up relics in three discrete historical
instances of violence: the “temps des troubles de Religion” (Denis Crouzet),
the French Revolution (Stéphane Baciocchi and Dominique Julia), and the
Soviet Revolution (Bernard Marchadier). These articles document not the
wholesale exhumation and expulsion of relics, but far more complex pictures
of absences and remains. The next two sections take up the issue of space.
The fourth part focuses on the places of relics—in addition to Fabre’s study
of San Ignazio, Pierre Cordoba’s situating of relics and Catherine Maire’s
excellent explication (with graphs and maps) of Adrien Baillet’s Topographie
des saints. The fifth part focuses on vignettes of relics in worlds new to
Europe, including Ines G. Županov’s history of São Tomé de Meliapor, as relic,
site, and locus of encounter; Leandro Karnal’s complex consideration of relics
and their multiple roles in the efforts to translate Christianity to Portuguese
America; and Charlotte de Castelnau-L’Estoile’s delineation of the dialectic
between Jesuits and the Tupinamba in “Le partage des reliques.” The final section, again through close studies of individual objects, explores the relationships between relics and their worship in New France (Muriel Clair); among
a small number of fragments of St. Geneviève that survived the French
Revolution, their new siting in Paris, and their meaning to the person who
relocated them (Yves Gagneux); and among relics, photographs, and other
forms of “copy” (Muriel Pic).
This is a book to linger over because of its rich array of methods, its density
of sources and analysis, and its sheer conceptual power. In rendering specificity of multiple kinds, the articles singly and together render something of

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the fragmentation of the body that relics symbolize, even as they also suggest
how fragments both carry the body to many places and become defined by
practices, beliefs, and resonances specific to their own locus. As a whole, the
volume brings home the clumsiness of “secularization” as a thesis, which in its
broad sweep cannot comprehend the many ways that matter locates sanctity.
In its consciously structured and narratively embedded interplay of specificity,
materiality, devotional practice, and sanctity, this book is exemplary.
University of Wisconsin–Madison

LEE PALMER WANDEL

Reformation and the German Territorial State: Upper Franconia,
1300–1630. By William Bradford Smith. [Changing Perspectives on Early
Modern Europe, 8.] (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. 2008.
Pp. xviii, 280. $85.00. ISBN 978-1-580-46274-7.)
The confessionalization paradigm has been a mainstay of Reformation
studies for decades, which still enjoys wide acceptance as an explanatory
model, especially in the historiography of early-modern Germany. William
Bradford Smith contributes to our understanding of religious reform and the
rise of the territorial state by adding another piece to the puzzle. His piece is
the patchwork of Franconian territories, perhaps the most complex puzzle of
all, consisting as it did of a multiplicity of geographically interwoven princebishoprics, imperial cities, imperial knights, and lands of the Margraviate of
Brandenburg-Ansbach/Kulmbach. In the main, the book concentrates on the
territories of Upper Franconia, particularly the Brandenburg lands and those
of the prince-bishop of Bamberg.
The Reformation further fragmented the region by introducing religious
competition between Catholic and Protestant territories.Theoretically, Smith
seeks to demonstrate that the novel religious differentiations were superimposed on preexisting structures and therefore evinced continuities in the
political arena. However, Smith goes one step further, grafting Heiko
Oberman’s hypotheses on the pre-1517 origins of religious reform onto the
confessionalization model. He puts forward events in Bohemia—the fifteenthcentury Hussite revolt and the seventeenth-century defenestration—as
chronological termini for the confessional age. Again, his goal is to demonstrate long-term continuities. Smith is also keen to integrate Blicklian communalism into his model so he can assess charges of “etatismus” inherent in
the Weberian aspects of confessionalization and social disciplining.
Smith employs administrative sources (e.g., Protokollenbücher) in combination with the work of local historians and folklorists (e.g., Friedrich
Merzbacher and Karl-S. Kramer) against the backdrop of contemporary local
chroniclers.As he works at the regional level, he also analyzes the function of
religion at the local level. This enables him to assess the complex interplay
between the authorities and their subjects in the realm of religious reform and

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identify aspects of lay piety that shaped territorial policy. One excellent example of this is his quantification of the shifting sources of ecclesiastical endowments (p. 19); between 1300 and 1529, noble endowments dropped by 50 percent while the influence of burghers and confraternities more than doubled.
The book consists of ten chapters plus an introduction and conclusion. Its
strong point is in its detailed explication of social structures in small territories of the Empire. In this regard, Smith’s approach is very traditional, and he
provides a non–German-speaking audience with an immense amount of local
detail. He also succeeds in demonstrating how the various social strata instrumentalized the message of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in their
negotiations over Herrschaft. His comparative assessment leads to the suggestion that Protestantism catered to organic development, while the
Counter-Reformation in Bamberg attempted a more fundamental restructuring of society from the top down and met, not surprisingly, with more fundamental resistance from the bottom up.The final three chapters focus on the
latter areas, especially marriage reform and (alluding to Smith’s current
research) the massive witchcraft persecutions in Franconia that were among
the most traumatic in early-modern Germany. In doing so, he has built on the
research of numerous local historians, re-examining and integrating their
material into broader and more current issues. Smith has thus succeeded in
producing a valuable contribution to regional history on the Empire.
National University of Ireland, Maynooth

DAVID LEDERER

Historical Archaeology of the Irish Diaspora: A Transnational Approach. By
Stephen A. Brighton. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. 2009. Pp.
xxvii, 226. $49.95. ISBN 978-1-572-33667-4.)
The epic immodesty of an insufficiently revised dissertation can almost be
awe-inspiring. Stephen A. Brighton has analyzed the contents of four toilet pits
in the late-nineteenth-century United States (two from tenements in the Five
Points, New York City, and the others from two single-dwellings in Patterson,
New Jersey). He has compared the material culture in those sites with baseline
data: two pre–Potato Famine cabin sites in County Roscommon. Now, whether
the rather small rural data base in midland Ireland and the rather small urban
data base in the northeastern United States are miscible is not a matter about
which he worries, since apparently everybody concerned was Irish Catholic
and therefore socioeconomically comparable. In any case, to interpret his data
he developed a theoretical frame that he broadcasts as having
far-reaching applications for historical archaeologists and historians.
Broadly speaking, its purpose is to serve as a multidisciplinary model of
how material culture can be used to interpret continuities and changes in
social identity within a critical and analytical discourse of the term diaspora. (p. xxvii)

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Along with this hyperinflation of the importance of his own work comes
the usual self-vaunting review of the literature that is standard PhD fare.
Brighton’s reading of Irish historical writing is notably eccentric. For example
(p. 270), he sees the 1966 work of Raymond Crotty as being one of the influential levers of the “new history” of Ireland, of which Brighton seems to disapprove. In fact, if there ever was a forgotten and noninfluential historian of
mid-nineteenth-century Ireland, Crotty fills that description. And one wonders how he could believe that “it was not until the 1990s that the Great
Famine was considered an issue for serious academic study” (p. 29). Understudied it certainly was, but not for frivolous reasons, but because it was taken
so very seriously. A modest respect for a massive subject is not something
Brighton seems to understand. Indeed, he airily explains the problems with
all views of historical diasporas, save his own. He introduces two overarching
constructs—“proletarian diasporas” and “mobilized diasporas” (p. 25)—an exercise in false dichotomization that would not survive a first-year logic class.
Yet, wonderfully, surprisingly, when the half (or more) that is vapor is
allowed to drift away, the actual analysis of the items in the various privy pits
turns out to be clear, rigorous, and often deftly suggestive. Brighton makes a
compelling case that in the Irish-Catholic cultures of the mid-nineteenth century, the commonalities between Ireland and America diminished as the later
nineteenth century progressed.
This is a valuable, small start toward a comparative archaeology of aspects
of Irish and U.S. culture. In future, one would like to see three sorts of studies. First, a comparison of rural material culture in Ireland with rural material
culture among the Irish ethnic group in the United States.The work of John
Mannion on eastern Canada would be a useful model. Second, scholars need
to deal specifically with Irish-derived Protestant cultures, particularly as material transfer to the American South occurred. And, third, the material culture
of religious observance, both in homes and churches, needs study, for religion
undeniably was a central matter in the Irish diaspora.
Queen’s University, Canada

DONALD HARMAN AKENSON

Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way
for Contemporary Ecumenism. Edited by Paul D. Murray, with the assistance of Luca Badini-Confalonieri. (New York: Oxford University Press.
2008. Pp. xxxv, 534. $99.00 cloth; $45.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-19921645-1 cloth; ISBN 978-0-199-58798-8 paperback).
The origin of the modern ecumenical movement is conventionally dated
to the International Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910. During the
twentieth century, ecumenism waxed and waned, reaching a zenith in midcentury with the establishment of the World Council of Churches (1948) and
the Consultation on Church Union (1962), along with the convening of the

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Second Vatican Council (1962–65).These events produced such an ecumenical euphoria that many Christians anticipated a prompt resolution of centuries-old church separations; accordingly, many mainline church leaders and
theologians entered into ecumenical conversations aimed at the achievement
of church union in the foreseeable future.
To date, the results of these interchurch conversations have been decidedly mixed. On the one hand, ecumenical dialogues have produced a surprising and substantial number of consensus statements that collectively
show that some traditional church-dividing issues are not necessarily as divisive as had long been thought; nonetheless, some issues seem more
entrenched than ever. On the other hand, a notable number of churches have
entered into an assortment of agreements, covenants, and even unions with
due diligence and sometimes with considerable enthusiasm; however, many
churches, although ecumenically courteous, have been essentially cautious
about formalizing ecumenical partnerships. Some disappointed ecumenists
speak of an “ecumenical winter” in which concrete ecumenical progress
seems frozen in its tracks.
What should churches in general and the Roman Catholic Church in particular learn from decades of ecumenical conversations? This was the guiding
question at a symposium at Ushaw College, Durham, on January 12–17, 2006.
Thirty-two papers from this symposium, along with five bible studies, are presented in this large volume with a somewhat puzzling title. First,“reception”
refers to the process whereby ecclesiastical decisions and theological findings become part of the faith life of churches; such a process can take years,
if not centuries; for example, governments in the past often blocked the
“receiving” of papal and conciliar pronouncements through the imprimatur
and exequatur.
The formidable challenge of “ecumenical reception” is then to translate
ecumenical agreements from the theological or notional level to the practical
or pastoral level. A major obstacle in this process is that the people who are
asked to receive such ecumenical agreements have not shared in the “learning process” of the people who drafted these statements; without a parallel
type of experience, such agreements tend to be theoretical at best, misunderstood at worst, and most often simply ignored.This volume addresses the
urgent task of a collateral process of “receptive learning” at the levels of theological understanding and practical implementation.
The chapters of the volume are grouped somewhat elastically under five
headings:“vision and principles”;“learning through Catholic dialogue”;“receptive ecumenism and Catholic church order”—“order” in the sense of ecclesiastical structures;“the pragmatics of receptive ecumenical learning”; and “retrospect and prospect.” Collectively considered, the chapters provide a rich
and varied buffet of ecumenical “learnings”—theological insights, practical
suggestions, programmatic possibilities, and prophetic proposals. In contrast

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to the unevenness of many collections, the chapters are, with a few exceptions, of notably fine quality; in addition, the papers are often helpfully crossreferenced with dialogue evident between the participants.There is an extensive bibliography (pp. 469–513), along with an index of names and another of
subjects.
In sum, this volume provides an insightful panorama of the current ecumenical scene and so is quite useful both to ecumenists and to anyone interested in ecumenism.This book, although not a textbook, would make an ideal
companion piece for university-level courses on ecumenism.
The Catholic University of America

JOHN T. FORD

A History of Catholic Moral Theology in the Twentieth Century: From
Confessing Sins to Liberating Consciences. By James F. Keenan, S.J. (New
York: Continuum. 2010. Pp. viii, 248. $29.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-82642929-2.)
James F. Keenan has crafted an insightful narrative reflecting the contributions of multiple theologians associated with moral theology during the past
century.The classical manuals of moral theology from the first half of the century, represented by the writings of Thomas Slater, Henry Davis, and Heribert
Jone, serve as the base point against which the contributions of subsequent
moral theologians are assessed. The early reformers of the tradition (Dom
Odon Lottin, Fritz Tillman, Gerard Gilleman, and Bernard Häring) turned to
systematic theology and the scriptures to provide a more theological and/or
scriptural foundation to moral theology. After a brief commentary on the
manner in which Humanae Vitae and Veritatis Splendor impacted the new
directions in which moral theology was headed, Keenan turns to a series of
moral theologians (Joseph Fuchs, Richard McCormick, Bruno Schuller, and
others) whose writings affected the ethical theory underpinning the tradition
(intrinsic moral evil, the principle of double effect).The most significant revisions of the last twenty years of the twentieth century, Keenan proposes,
were new understandings of the natural law and discussions regarding the
distinction between the “good” and the “right.”The final chapter is dedicated
to issues associated with applied or special moral theology. Slater, Davis, and
Jone may well have been able to engage in discussions of the issues discussed
by Keenan until the final chapter. A special moral theology focused on issues
of liberation associated with indigenous cultures beset with the outcomes of
colonialism and the sexual exploitation of women would have been difficult
for them to comprehend.
Bernard Lonergan has written:
The historian wants to grasp what was going forward in particular groups
at particular places and times. By “going forward” I mean to exclude the

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mere repetition of a routine. I mean the change that originated the routine
and its dissemination. I mean process and development, but, no less,
decline and collapse.1
Keenan seems to have written this book with such an understanding of
the task of the historian of theology. He notes:
. . . we need now to recognize that the innovators claimed that moral truth
was not realized as much in solitary, external actions as in overarching
internal personal dispositions. Integral to this claim was the belief that
moral truth was not found primarily in negative principles —about what
actions were to be avoided—but rather in the person who pursued the
good. (p. 69)
He concludes by proposing that virtue ethics has emerged as a new foundation for moral theology:“Virtue ethics is rooted in the priority of being over
action and argues that the cultivation of normative dispositions and attendant
practices is the stuff of ethics” (p. 217).
Keenan has a plausible thesis of what was “going forward”under the rubric
of moral theology over the past century. However, it is likely that alternative
readings exist of this history.The received tradition of moral theology at the
beginning of the twentieth century had more affinity to what had occurred
within that discipline in the previous 400 years than to what was to occur
within it in the last fifty years of the century. Might not the recent history of
moral theology simply be an example of a classic text, a classic tradition confronting modernity? Is there a current viable foundation for Catholic theological ethics in the contemporary American intellectual environment?
Keenan offers us a theory of virtue. Perhaps he is correct. Perhaps a future historian of this period will offer an alternative interpretation of what was “going
forward.”
Catholic Health Partners, Cincinnati

JOHN A. GALLAGHER

Ancient
Catholicity and Heresy in the Early Church. By Mark Edwards. (Burlington,
VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2009. Pp. vi, 201. $114.95 cloth, ISBN 978-0-75466291-4; $29.95 paperback, ISBN 978-0-754-66297-6.)
In this typically combative and stimulating book Mark Edwards argues
for the constructive and not merely catalytic role of so-called heresy in the
formation of early Christian orthodoxy.Taking issue with the contemporary
consensus that would speak of various competing Christianities, Edwards in
1

Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (Toronto, 1971), pp. 178–79.

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his introduction argues for the existence of a right-versus-wrong interpretation from the beginning, defining orthodoxy in terms of what in any
epoch was taught by the majority of bishops, and Catholic not simply as
worldwide, representative, and tolerant but as willing to incorporate ideas
once deemed heretical. Thus in chapter 1, “The Gnostic Beginnings of
Orthodoxy,” he notes the pioneering views of Gnostics (always self-designated in the evidence, he insists) on the image of God; Basilides on sonship,
divine and human; Valentinus on the mythical fall and redemption of
wisdom; and Marcion on the end of the law. In chapter 2,“The Catholicity
of Irenaeus,” he argues that the system of the Gnostics’ principal critic not
only derives its shape but also some of its ideas from their views, such as his
understanding of the Trinity and man in the image of God, while some of
their views that he rejected became orthodox later. In chapter 3, “The
Foundation of Catholic Teaching in the Third Century,” he argues both that
the great Alexandrians, Clement and Origen, derived a good deal from their
Valentinian opponents and that the trinitarian assault on the Monarchian
heresy led by their Western counterparts, Hippolytus and Tertullian, may
have been occasioned by a terminological misunderstanding. In chapter 4,
“Origen and Orthodoxy,” Edwards seeks to defend Origen against later
charges of heresy and show how his views on God, Christ, and the
Resurrection, once condemned, became the basis of later orthodoxy. In
chapter 5,“The Nicene Council and Its Aftermath,” he argues for Eusebius as
one of the architects of the homoousian victory, suggests the contributions
of Origen to the ultimate definition, and represents the key role of the
homoiousians as an augmentation of the Nicene teaching on the divinity of
Jesus rather than a compromise. In the final chapter, “Apollinarius and the
Chalcedonian Definition,” Edwards argues that the definition was not, as
usually presented, a compromise between the so-called Alexandrian and
Antiochene schools of Christology, but rather was a vindication of Cyril’s
position, utilizing terms and ideas supposedly Antiochene but actually pioneered by Apollinarius of Laodicea. In the epilogue Edwards argues for the
early Church as a single phenomenon in which disputes occurred more
often between individuals than between the movements largely invented by
modern scholarship (Origenists, and so forth), and which developed its doctrines by the absorption of ideas it had once found indigestible.
Edwards’s argument is dense, allusive, and sometimes rendered incomprehensible by uncorrected errors, but often makes a plausible and illuminating
case, as, for example, in discussing the contributions of Gnostics and
Valentinians of Origen, Eusebius, and Apollinarius. Indeed, his overall thesis
about the creative role of heresy and of how what once seemed heretical
later became orthodox through assimilation by Catholic bishops is generally
convincing and convincingly demonstrated. But at times, his argument is less
clear and persuasive, as in chapter 3’s discussion of Hippolytus,Tertullian, and
the Monarchians. However, the main problem with the book is the very poor
standard of editing. The text is riddled with misprints (for example, “there”

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instead of “three” in trinitarian discussions), misspellings, and omissions; several works are cited that are missing from the bibliography. Overall, the author
has been very poorly served by his publisher.
University of Exeter

ALASTAIR H. B. LOGAN

428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire. By Giusto
Traina. Translated by Alan Cameron. (Princeton: Princeton University
Press. 2009. Pp. xxii, 203. $24.95. ISBN 978-0-691-13669-1.)
This deceptively slim volume represents a pioneering effort to illuminate
the entire political and cultural zone of the Roman Empire and its immediate
neighbors at a given moment in time.The geographical starting point where
the author—an Italian Armenologist, now a professor at the University of
Rouen (France)—begins his panoramic tour of the Mediterranean is the end
of the Kingdom of Armenia after the deposition of its last king by the Sasanian
Empire of Persia, an event that would not have been possible without the collusion of the Roman Empire. From there, a total of twelve chapters take the
reader on a journey along the eastern, northern, western, and southern shores
of the later Roman Empire. The chronological anchor is well chosen: a century after Emperor Constantine introduced Christianity onto the political
scene, twenty-one years before the Council of Chalcedon resulted in the first
lasting schism within Christendom, two generations before the year 476
spelled the end of imperial rule in Rome, at a time when “barbarians” were
actively seeking the benefits of an association with the Roman Empire while
Visigoths, Vandals, and Huns were threatening the territorial unity of the
Roman Empire. In the course of this journey, we encounter emperors, generals, and influential women at the court, pagan philosophers and Christian
monks, anxious aristocrats and feisty bishops, as well as enterprising and
ambitious “barbarians” of all stripes.
Traina wears his erudition lightly. It is only documented in the endnotes
(an excellent resource in themselves), the maps that precede each chapter,
and the index. The value of the book for classroom use would have been
greatly enhanced by the inclusion of a bibliography, a list of abbreviations, and
perhaps a glossary of terms.
The unique format requires a level of attention to detail that would otherwise be encountered only in historical novels, and Traina draws on recent
archaeological findings to set the stage for his regional episodes. In contrast
to a novelist, however, the historian cannot invent a plot to hold the narrative
together or conjure up a protagonist to propel the action.Yet,Traina succeeds
admirably in bringing out connections of people (imperial official Flavius
Dionysius, Bishop Nestorius, and General Aetius make repeated appearances)
or of ideas (the construction of the barbarian “other,” the definition of
“heresy”).

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It is here that he also shows his true colors as a historian. As the title suggests, Traina’s interest is in the “end of the Roman Empire,” a notion that
cannot be pinned down to a single event and hence requires explanation
rather than mere description. Traina’s measure for the persistence of the
Roman Empire is its territorial unity and integrity, combined with a strong and
universally acknowledged imperial center. His tour around the Mediterranean
is thus a well-chosen method to highlight the different fate of each region in
terms of internal and external political challenges, economic prosperity, building and literary activity, and the slow progression of Christianization. Past
events and future developments are conjured up to give historical depth into
the narrative. Even with his spotlight on one specific year, the historian
cannot escape the demand for a teleological narrative.
Written in an accessible style, Traina’s book will be read with profit by
anyone interested in the transition from classical antiquity to the Middle
Ages, whether from a political, cultural, or religious perspective. His nuanced
treatment of the interaction between an increasingly beleaguered paganism
and an increasingly assertive Christianity in the urban centers and rural backwaters around the Mediterranean should be especially welcome to anyone
interested in the history of the Church.
University of California at Los Angeles

CLAUDIA RAPP

The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy. By A. Edward Siecienski.
[Oxford Studies in Historical Theology.] (New York: Oxford University
Press. 2010. Pp. xii, 355. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-195-37204-5.)
A. Edward Siecienski dutifully reminds us that his account is by no means
“a complete history” of the filioque (pp. 15, 215). If one thing is clear, the doctrinal debate generated by this famous addendum to the Nicene Creed still
awaits final resolution. This is a relatively slim volume; if endnotes are
excluded, the text’s ten chapters total some 200 pages, whereas the history of
the controversy stretches back nearly two millennia. It is certainly an ambitious, well-told story.That it manages to weave together in a timely manner a
highly accessible tapestry that is also credible and even ecumenically valuable
is no small achievement.
The origin of this controversy stems from the portentous resolve of the
Western Church to add the phrase “and the Son” (filioque) to the creed.
Eastern Christendom, it is fair to say, found the clause unsettling and promptly
challenged it. If anything, it implicitly questioned the Spirit’s eternal dependence on the Father. Not only was tampering with an ecumenical text inadmissible but also the idea of a “double procession” of the Spirit—from the
Father and the Son—was an egregious error. Fittingly, the author begins his
historical reconstruction with an analysis of the New Testament evidence. He
then moves briskly to assess the patristic material, particularly the contribu-

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tions of Ss. Maximus the Confessor and Augustine. Several chapters follow that
describe the battles and debates of the Carolingian era and the high Middle
Ages. The latter period especially was a turning point in terms of developments. The final chapters leapfrog to the dawn of the twenty-first century
with a valuable critical survey of contemporary trends.
Although this is a straightforward historical guide, it also often reads as a
detailed who’s who of the subject.The approach in a way is a deft solution to
the following difficult question: How does one chronicle a centuries-long
controversy, with its myriad polarized participants and often-complex commentaries? On the other hand, the author never treats the wider historical and
political context of the subject as secondary. Siecienski is also on secure
ground when arguing that his topic was never some trivial tussle among theologians. The facts are indeed otherwise. To top it off, the author is suitably
short on confessional bias and sustained angry polemic; clearing the air of old
prejudices is undeniably useful.These strengths bring a level of balance, even
freshness, to his account.
The author gives pride of place to Maximus the Confessor (†662), who is
viewed as providing a powerful piece of promising Latin apologetic.
Maximus was convinced the filioque did not ascribe causality to the Son; if
anything, the Latins believed that the Spirit receives its hypostatic derivation
solely from the Father, the one cause (mia aitia) of its primordial cominginto-being. Maximus, as an irreproachable Eastern witness, is hugely important.Yet whether his piece suffices tout court to resolve the problem or alter
the discussion radically is debatable. The later Western contributions to the
debate stand in the way. By the thirteenth century the dogmatization of the
filioque by the Council of Lyons (1274) was an accomplished fact.
Theologians (armed with the appropriate Augustinian-Thomist scaffolding)
were already ascribing causality to the Son. Increasingly, too, canonists were
alleging (contra the view of the wider Orthodox world), that the bishop of
Rome, by virtue solely of his office, had the power to alter the creed. More
dizzying still was the occasional Western assertion that the clause was originally part of the primitive text of the creed. Small wonder the Byzantine
Orthodox Church became the subject of a formal anathema for refusing to
endorse the Latin doctrine.
Without first considering these contentious developments, Maximus’ viewpoint cannot have any significant bearing on the problem. There also is the
ecclesiological problem of the interpolation that those following the
Orthodox rite doggedly oppose. The gifted Dominican Yves Congar put it
well when he memorably proclaimed that the West was responsible for introducing the emendation (in a clearly canonically irregular manner) and should
suppress it. All told, the Siecienski thesis is vulnerable. Even the author
implies as much and cautiously concludes that Maximus would not have
endorsed the previously mentioned changes.

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Although the bibliography of this study is comprehensive, it has omissions.
The author’s sketch of Nicephoros Blemmydes is misleading: Missing are the
authoritative textual studies done in France by Michel Stavrou.This is equally
true of the Greek scholarship published since the 1950s.Absent are the contributions by G. P.Theodoroudis, S. S. Mpilalis, N. Xexakis, Ch. N. Sabbatou, and
N. Ioannidis. The editing is careless. Innumerable names are routinely given
different spellings (startlingly, often in the same sentence), and phrases in sentences are repeated. Furthermore, there are odd errors in transliteration
(homoousias, eisogesis, and so forth). Emperor John Cantacuzenos (1347) is
correctly identified in one page and then several pages later is said to be present (as “Cantacuzene”) at Florence (1439).
The above omissions are important, yet they pale in comparison to the
book’s many virtues.This is a hugely accessible, up-to-date survey of the field,
free of the fog of polemic and bias.
University of Maryland–Baltimore County

ARISTEIDES PAPADAKIS

Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, Vol. II, Pt. 2: Economic,
Social, and Cultural History. By Irfan Shahîd. (Washington, DC:
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Distrib. by Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, MA. 2009. Pp. xxiiv, 391. $50.00. ISBN 978-0884-02347-0.)
Volume II, part 1 of Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century cov–ered federate activities, lands, religious buildings, and writers of the Ghassa
nids, Byzantium’s “Monophysite” Arab Christian allies. Part 2 deals with the
Ghassa–nids’ role in peninsular and Mediterranean economic history; their
group social life including gender attitudes and daily-life customs; and their
cultural productions in architecture, visual art, and literature. Every remaining
piece of evidence—often unfamiliar to Western-centered scholarship—is
unpacked for maximum information and effect, to disclose, in the author’s
words, “an entire Arab Christian culture that flourished in the shadow of
Byzantium” (p. xxiii).
Section I (“Economic History”) summarizes the Ghassa–nids’ role in guarding the international trade routes that ran through Mesopotamia, western
Arabia, and the eastern approaches to the Holy Land, as well as through the
Red Sea—routes vital to both Byzantium and Persia.They protected fairs and
markets, collected taxes, and even kept an eye on metal resources. Section II
– nid iden(“Social History”) rests on the three interbraided strands of Ghassa
tity—namely, Arab ethnicity, Byzantine culture, and Christian religion.
Extrapolation from varied sources yields information on private-life aspects
such as families and education. Poetry especially mentions numerous ruling
women who practiced hospitality, went on pilgrimage, and even waged war.
– nid life is gleaned from Arabic-language sources that
The flavor of Ghassa

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describe food and wine, clothing and medicine, music, dance and festivals,
and equestrian events, along with the characteristic enjoyment of the countryside (charmingly styled villeggiatura).This material will be a revelation to
Western readers.
Section III (“Cultural History”) amplifies earlier work on the settled
– nids’ achievements both in building tangible structures and in conGhassa
structing mentalités embodied in them. Although written sources mention
churches and monasteries (along with tombs, gardens, and civil edifices), only
– nid church, dedicated to St. Sergius, been excarecently has an actual Ghassa
vated (at Nitil in Jordan). Possible monastic remains have, sadly, been pillaged
(see the depressing firsthand account on p. 288). It was the monasteries that
served as prime cultural centers, combining art traditions from across the lateantique world and providing space for learning and literacy. Even the creation
of what is romantically seen as the cultural ideal of “chivalry” (from the word
–nid equestrianism. Poetry and oratory complete
for horse) is traced to Ghassa
the picture of this heavily oral society that interacted with its neighbors in
many cultural spheres.
The closing section (“The Ghassa–nid Identity”) again interweaves Roman,
Christian, and Hellenic traditions with Arab foundations to promote the multicultural nature of Oriens as it would continue through the seventh century
and beyond. Once more, this lifework tells its audience that many speakers of
Arabic were, and are, Christians.
Society for Coptic Archaeology (North America)

LESLIE S. B. MACCOULL

Medieval
Medieval Christianity in Practice. Edited by Miri Rubin. [Princeton Readings
in Religions.] (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2009. Pp. xviii, 346.
$80.00. ISBN 978-0-691-09058-0.)
A more correct title for this volume might be Medieval Latin Christianity
in Practice. Miri Rubin mentions the lack of treatment of Eastern Christianity
in her introduction. Unfortunately, this means that important topics, such as
the iconoclastic question, have been largely passed over. Given the fact that
during much of this period ties between East and West were close, we must
recognize the problem in dealing with subjects such as eremitism that cannot
be fully understood save in a context that reflects this continuing relationship. Although there is much of value in this volume, it is not the comprehensive collection its editors seem to promise.
Since it will undoubtedly find its way into many classrooms, in consideration of the fine group of contributors, it deserves serious consideration.The
arrangement of the work is topical rather than chronological.Within each sec-

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tion, the individual topics consist of a primary source and a discussion of that
source.The source material is drawn chiefly from manuscripts and may range
from lists to narratives. The discussions vary in length from short commentaries to extended essays. Several are notable and can provide the basis for
interesting discussions, but most often there is not enough context to put the
source into a background that adds to our understanding of the title given to
the section.Those planning to use this volume in class should be prepared to
provide additional background. Still, it may be especially useful in graduate
seminars or as an aid to graduate training, where the emphasis on manuscript
sources may enrich the experience of students.
Given the manner in which the volume was planned, it is not surprising
that major changes in devotions such as the rosary or the development of
new feasts such as Corpus Christi did not find a place.The impact of the mendicants on the devotional life of the Church does not emerge as an important
feature.The religious life of the great majority of the population appears only
in glimpses. Of course, this is understandable given the kinds of sources used,
but greater use of sermons might have filled out the picture. The approach
taken, although useful for interesting snapshots, does not provide an adequate
picture of the changes that occurred in this long period.Yet it was during this
period that the life of ordinary Christians moved from broad loyalties based
on the promise of the afterlife to the meaning of the parish and the priesthood in concrete terms.
A sample of topics may open the way to a more positive evaluation of the
book. Frederick Paxton opens the door on the final hours of Abbess
Hathumoda in a way that reveals multiple dimensions of her life. William
Chester Jordan shows how religious belief and practical knowledge coexisted in the effort to ward off sheep and pig murrain. Daniel Bornstein lets
us experience the issues faced by a young candidate for the priesthood.
Sharon Farmer deals with the miraculous cure of a deaf mute by sharing his
experiences.Thomas Head studies ecclesiastical rivalries in the translation of
the body of St. Junianus. John Van Engen provides a sympathetic portrait of
the “Devotio Moderna.” In one of the more complex studies, Gabor Klaniczay
raises numerous points for a discussion of the stigmatization of women, focusing first on the controversy over the stigmata of St. Margaret of Hungary. Janet
Nelson provides a contextual discussion of the early development of the consecration of Anglo-Saxon queens.
In sum, this is a difficult book.The editor was, without a doubt, constrained
by the format of the series; moreover, working with forty-three contributions
presented a major challenge.The resultant volume has limitations, but it also
has some very interesting offerings. Professors should read it carefully before
deciding about its use.
Syracuse University (Emeritus)

JAMES M. POWELL

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Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World. By Valerie L.
Garver. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2009. Pp. xxi, 310. $49.95.
ISBN 978-0-801-44771-6.)
Carolingian elite women have received much scholarly attention in the last
generation, ever since the publication of Suzanne Fonay Wemple’s Women in
Frankish Society (Philadelphia, 1981). Here Valerie L. Garver expands and
builds on earlier work, with the purpose of demonstrating that aristocratic
women in the eighth and ninth centuries, far from being relegated merely to
the domestic sphere (although they certainly played a key role there), helped
shape and disseminate much of Carolingian culture.
Garver begins by quoting Jonas of Orléans, who said that men desire
women for their “family, prudence, wealth, and beauty” (p. 1). These four
female characteristics, derived from Isidore of Seville and ultimately from
Roman ideals of womanhood, become the outline of the present book, as the
first four chapters address each in turn.A fifth chapter addresses textile work,
which, although not directly referenced by Jonas or Isidore, was still taken for
granted as appropriate for women and, Garver argues, brings together the
four aspects of women’s supposed characteristics.
This book, far more sophisticated (unsurprisingly) than Wemple’s early
path-breaking study, takes much of its strength from a wide-ranging selection
of sources, including poetry, hagiography, and visual images as well as the
more commonly used law codes, capitularies, charters, and chronicles.
Throughout, Garver seeks to combine an analysis of how clerical intellectuals
thought women ought ideally to behave, as seen in “mirrors” for laypeople
and prescriptive ordinances, with a discussion of what aristocratic women’s
lives might actually have been like.
Thirty years ago it could have been assumed from the scholarship that
medieval women barely existed. More recent scholars routinely characterized
these women as marginalized, subservient, and unlearned, forced into convents by a misogynistic church and given little role to play even in their own
families. In the last decade, however, scholars have recognized that elite
women, far from being invisible, were often well educated and exercised
power and authority. Garver’s book should settle the question definitively for
Carolingian-era women, as it was settled for twelfth-century women in
Aristocratic Women in Medieval France, ed. Theodore Evergates (Philadelphia, 1999).
Some of the material covered here is already well known. Dhuoda comes
in for much attention for her “Handbook for William,” as she has for many previous scholars. But overall, Garver manages to provide new insights into a
period about which, it was once thought, we already knew everything important. For example, her discussion of female beauty in chapter 1 includes an
analysis of Carolingian aesthetics and brings in the iconoclast controversy.

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Here she notes that religiosity need not preclude physical beauty; virtuous
women were said to have their virtue reflected in their appearance. Although
memorial books have long been used as a source for the ways in which families remembered their kin, Garver is the first to analyze the implications of
nunneries as the place where a third of the surviving Carolingian-era memorial books were composed.
The chapter on textiles is the most original. Elite women did more than
spin and weave cloth for daily use, although they certainly supervised such
production; they also created opulent fabrics, both for high secular and liturgical occasions. Elaborate embroidered cloth, some of which still survives,
indicates the great technical skill of the women who made it.
In all, this is a fine, clearly written book.The only major quibble is that the
change in women’s perceived status from the eighth century to the ninth,
evoked at the beginning (p. 9), never really is conveyed.
University of Akron

CONSTANCE B. BOUCHARD

Codex Carolinus: Päpstliche Epistolographie im 8. Jahrhundert. By Achim
Thomas Hack. [Päpste und Papsttum, Band 35/I und 35/II.] (Stuttgart:
Anton Hiersemann. 2006, 2007. Pp. xx, 1290.Vol. 1: ISBN 978-3-777-206219;Vol 2: ISBN 978-3-777-20701-8.)
The detailed examination in two volumes of the ninety-nine papal letters
addressed to the Carolingian rulers between the years 739 and 791 and collected by royal command in the Codex Carolinus is primarily designed by the
author as a study of the elements of early-medieval epistolography. Formulary
elements are the focus here: those that may or may not differentiate letters
from other types of texts such as general documents, privileges, and historical narratives—a science that has been much neglected.The direct discussion
of the Codex Carolinus itself (used in the MGH edition of W. Grundlach with
occasional references to its facsimile edition by F. Unterkircher and its possible continuation in MS HAB Helmstadensis 254 at Wolfenbüttel with ten letters of Pope Leo III addressed to Charlemagne [p.133]) seems to make up a
relatively minor part of the book (pp. 59–96; 869–928). But this impression is
deceptive, for these letters form a constant background to Achim Thomas
Hack’s vast investigation of the history of the letter and its role in the network
of communication stretching from antiquity to the end of the ninth century.
Communication is understood in the widest imaginable sense, encompassing
classical diplomatics, rhetoric and literature, history, philology, liturgy, anthropology, sociology, diplomacy with rituals and its agents, and economics. It is
expressed in a most spectacular manner through the exchanges of gifts as
reflected in the papal correspondence with the Carolingian rulers, including
a letter to Queen Bertrada on behalf of her son.The author considers it desirable to compare the letters of the Codex Carolinus—compiled, as its preface

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indicates, at the request of Charlemagne—to all extant parallel sources for the
eighth century (pp. 56–57), but restricts himself for exclusively pragmatic reasons to the analysis of the Codex in comparison to the register of Pope
Gregory the Great and the collected correspondence of St. Boniface (then
bishop of Mainz) and his eventual successor, St. Lul. Another important primary source is the Liber Pontificalis. The results are fascinating. As Hack
eventually explains—specifically with regard to gifts—early-medieval and
late-antique traditions have usually left only thin traces and can be understood and evaluated only through a comparative approach (p. 822).
It is a difficult task to convey the rich contents of the volumes with an
extensive historiography for each topic in a short review. An impression of
their wealth can be conveyed by a list of appendices (pp. 930–1058): protocol and eschatocol of papal letters from the time of Gregory the Great to Leo
III; letters by Carolingians from Charles Martell to Louis the Pious; summaries
(Regesten) of lost papal, royal, or third-party letters that can be deduced from
the text of letters that survived; summaries of the letters of Charles the Great
in the Wolfenbüttel manuscript; prosopography of the Frankish and papal
emissaries; and gifts mentioned in the register of Gregory the Great, the letter
collection of Boniface and Lul, and the Codex Carolinus.Three valuable tables
follow the appendices: a concordance of the manuscript with all its editions,
a discussion of the date of the letters of the Codex, and a list of the references
to its letters in the Jahrbücher des Fränkischen Reiches (pp. 1059–89).This
is followed by a list of abbreviations and the bibliography organized by primary sources (pp. 1095–1107); secondary sources (pp. 1108–1235); and subdivided registers, including a list of all letters cited.
This impressive work is a significant addition to the scholarship of the
Carolingian age and provides new insights regarding perennially debated
issues such as the relationship between the papacy and the Frankish empire.
The volumes are not entirely free from spelling errors, but this does not affect
the general care and attention to detail that make them essential reading for
scholars of the period.
The Catholic University of America (Emerita)

UTA-RENATE BLUMENTHAL

Odon de Cluny. Vita sancti Geraldi Aureliacensis. Édition critique, traduction
française, introduction et commentaires. Edited by Anne-Marie BultotVerleysen. [Subsidia hagiographica, 89.] (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes.
2009. Pp. xviii, 327. €75,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-873-65023-0.)
A critical edition of the Vita sancti Geraldi Aureliacensis (Life of St.
Gerald of Aurillac) has long been required: It is a seminal text surviving from
the central Middle Ages. Gerald provides a unique example of a male saint
who was a lay nobleman in a period when virtually all others were clerics or
kings.This account of his life offers a rare glimpse into the era, revealing the

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ubiquity of violence and the harsh lives of peasants, among other fascinating
details. Anne-Marie Bultot-Verleysen’s critical edition, then, with a French
translation, a full introduction, and lengthy commentaries, is truly welcome.
Before it appeared, scholars had either to rely on the imprecise version
included in the nineteenth-century Patrologia latina (PL), itself taken from
the seventeenth-century Biblioteca cluniacensis, or consult the medieval
manuscripts themselves. Bultot-Verleysen rightly concludes that there is not
much real difference between the PL text and these manuscripts (she relies
especially on five that she considers closest to the original text)—except for
some slight changes in word order or minor words, number and tense of
verbs, spellings of proper names, and the like, as well as some obvious typographical errors—and she dutifully records these variants in the critical apparatus to her text. (She has perhaps oddly chosen to use the late-medieval e˛
throughout to represent what in the classical spelling most familiar to
modern scholars is ae but what in the central Middle Ages was likelier to have
been spelled simply as e.) Bultot-Verlysen’s real accomplishment is not only
in correcting all of these errors but also in restoring the few more serious
errors and in publishing two episodes from the Vita that had been expurgated.Thus she restores the prologue to book 4 of the Vita (Gerald’s posthumous miracles) that the PL had printed as the last section in book 3 (Gerald’s
death). She also prints for the first time two posthumous miracles that,
although attested in early manuscripts, had been dropped from the PL: the
first, in which Gerald caused the death of a man who raped one of his female
pilgrims, and the second, in which Gerald prevented soldiers from blinding a
man accused of spying (they were able to poke out one eye but not the
other). Her other contributions include her discussions of Odo of Cluny, biblical and other literary influences on the Vita, its historical value, as well as
extended descriptions of the manuscripts and their relationships. Her commentaries show her familiarity with modern scholarship on a wide range of
issues touching the Vita.
However, where Bultot-Verleysen fails is in her too-easy acceptance of the
traditional attribution of authorship of the Vita. She admits that there are two
versions of the Vita sancti Geraldi, both attributed to Odo of Cluny and both
present in multiple medieval manuscripts—and, indeed, the other version,
called the Vita brevior, is found in two manuscripts older than this version,
called the Vita prolixior. Since these versions differ in content as well as
style, they cannot both be Odo’s authentic writing. It is plausible that the version that Bultot-Verleysen has now edited is the forgery, made a century later,
and that the other is the genuine article. In ignoring this possibility, she does
a disservice to what is otherwise a most valuable contribution to scholarship.
San Diego State University

MATHEW KUEFLER

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Die Papsturkunden des Hauptstaatsarchivs Dresden, Erster Band: Originale
Überlieferung, Teil I: 1104–1303. Edited by Tom Graber. [Codex
Diplomaticus Saxoniae, Dritter Hauptteil: Papsturkunden, Band I.]
(Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung. 2009. Pp. lvi, 379. €88,00. ISBN 9783-775-21903-7.)
After a hiatus of more than fifty years in the series Codex diplomaticus
Saxoniae, Tom Graber published in 2006 the diplomas of the Cistercian
monastery of Altzelle (reviewed by Charles Hilkin, ante, 94 [2008], 557–58).
In quick succession a further volume of the Codex is now available, also
edited by Graber. It is the first of a new subseries of the Codex diplomaticus
Saxoniae that will be devoted to the edition of the originals of all papal
records extant in the archives of Saxony and elsewhere (except for the
Vatican) if they relate to Saxony. Most of these records are found at Dresden.
Eventually the new subseries will comprise nine volumes, including—in
addition to papal records (six volumes)—the edition of primary sources
found in the Archivio Segreto Vaticano regarding the history of Saxony (vol.
7) as well as general ecclesiastical records pertaining to Saxony (vol. 8) and,
finally as vol. 9, calendars in chronological sequence for the entire subseries
(p. viii).The present volume edits in an exemplary manner 157 papal diplomas and letters preserved in the Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden (Bestand
“Originalurkunden”) from 1104 to 1303. It includes three forgeries, relies in
two instances (nos. 154 and 155) on early-modern copies, and reconstitutes
on the basis of formularies nine items that were destroyed during World War
II. Strictly speaking, these final items cannot be considered originals, but the
author is careful to single them out, and the historian is grateful for the additional insights they provide not only concerning the history of Saxon dioceses in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries but especially for what they
reveal regarding the diplomatic usages at the papal curia that evolved with
dizzying rapidity in this period. The detailed knowledge of these usages is
absolutely essential for determining whether records—all of them derived
from Empfäengerüeberlieferung—are authentic or not. The extremely careful analysis and illustration of the evolution of papal diplomatics stretching
over two centuries is perhaps one of the most remarkable achievements of
this publication.
The large variation in the number of papal letters and privileges preserved by the recipients and now deposited in the Hauptstaatsarchiv
Dresden is noteworthy.The reign of Pope Innocent IV (1243–54) stands out
in this respect. The earliest item, a supposed privilege for the monastery of
Pegau dating from the pontificate of Paschal II (1099–1118), is unfortunately
a forgery, with a manipulated lead bull naming Paschal III, but otherwise
remarkably accurate for the time of Paschal II (+1).The first authentic document among the editions is one of the rare letters (littera cum filo serico)
still extant from the pontificate of Pope Honorius II (1124–30), addressed to
Margrave Konrad of Meissen dating to 1128 (no. 2). The margrave had

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entrusted the collegiate church of Lauterberg to the protection of St. Peter
and the Roman See, a donation confirmed by the pope, who stipulated that
the canons should follow the rule of St. Augustine in perpetuity with the
right to elect their own abbot. Honorius’s brief missive also set an annual fee
that was recorded in the Liber Censuum.The text of the letter itself (p. 10)
covers not even half of a page, but the editor’s comments, bibliography, and
preceding calendar compose another six pages. Not all letters and privileges
require an equally demanding set-up as this early, rare record that differs
greatly from similar pieces issued a century later (p. 5), but Graber’s methodology is the same for each one of the 157 originals presented.The calendar
(Regest or summary) briefly indicates the content of an item and is followed
by a precise description of the document itself with a notation concerning
the presence or absence of curial annotations. A subsequent list of earlier
editions is then followed by references to earlier calendars such as Philip
Jaffé’s Regesta pontificum Romanorum. All of this information precedes
the editions. Comments in the footnotes are extremely detailed, covering
paleography and diplomatics in general as well as bibliography. The editor
notes in the preface that Paul F. Kehr’s “Gottinger Papsturkundenwerk” or
Regesta pontificum Romanorum (for the period up to 1198) provided the
basic pattern for his methodology as did the Censimento Bartoloni, an interEuropean endeavor that intends to edit all papal original records for the centuries from 1198 to 1417.
The volume is a most valuable contribution to the Censimento as well as
to the Codex Diplomaticus Saxoniae. It includes significant appendices (listing scribes, taxation and distributors, five types of annotations on the front of
the document, names of procurators from the period after Innocent III and
names of their employers, and four types of annotations on the back of the
documents), detailed indices, and an excellent bibliography.
The Catholic University of America (Emerita)

UTA-RENATE BLUMENTHAL

Galbert of Bruges and the Historiography of Medieval Flanders. Edited by
Jeff Rider and Alan V. Murray. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University
of America Press. 2009. Pp. xiv, 297. $37.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-81321719-2.)
With J. B. Ross’s 1959 English translation, Galbert’s seemingly eyewitness
account of the murder of Count Charles of Flanders in 1127 and its aftermath
has long been a staple in medieval history courses. Charles intended to
reduce the Erembald family to serfdom and was subsequently murdered by
members of the family, setting off a contest to determine his successor that
involved most segments of Flemish society. This book by Galbert experts
brings their earlier works conveniently together, with full footnotes and an
extensive, up-to-date bibliography. Coeditor Jeff Rider has also produced a
critical edition of Galbert’s work.

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The introduction sets the tone with a discussion of how to read medieval
sources.The editors contrast the older “scientific” readings with the rhetorical, discursive, and intellectual aspects discussed here (pp. 9, 241). This is
then a book about some of the mentalities lurking under Galbert’s narrative.
Thus, for example, Galbert is seen as a theorist of medieval bourgeoisie (p.
10) and his work as an autobiography (p. 35). In neither case, however, is the
claim nailed down.
Perhaps the most striking new material here concerns gender relationships. We learn from Nancy Partner and Martina Häcker that Galbert found
women to be subpolitical (p. 117). Bert Demyttenaere conjectures that
Charles may have had a homoerotic relationship with Fromuold the Younger,
but concludes that Charles’s sexual behavior is a mystery (p. 168). At the
same time there are problems with Demyttenaere’s argument, since Bertulf
married either his niece or his grand-niece to the same man (p. 147), and the
canons of “the castral church” (p. 152) are not identified with the secular
canons of St. Donatian (p. 159). These areas probably can be explained, but
here they are not.
Galbert’s account is widely seen as trustworthy and “journalistic,” but
throughout the book we are warned not to take Galbert’s use of “facts” at face
value and urged to see how he embellished his interpretation. Partner warns
of the “artificiality of history through its emplotment” and the “fictionality of
non-fiction” (p. 112). Specifically, we should be suspicious of Galbert’s judgment of the Erembalds (p. 199). Galbert was living in a world where his
assumptions were turned upside down, hence the struggle within himself to
explain the meaning of events. (Ross already alluded to this.) It is thus no surprise that he turns to an eschatological view of sin and revenge as receiving
divine punishment (pp. 252, 259).
Given its plan, there is much repetition between the articles, as if the
authors are talking past each other and giving slightly different emphases to
the same passages. Thus God’s countermove (p. 147) is the same as God’s
stratagem (p. 134). A heavier editorial hand would have helped.
There is no need to choose between “scientific” and “artistic” readings of
Galbert, as a fuller understanding requires both. Missing here is any discussion of consensus politics, as well as sufficient coverage of Galbert’s rhetoric
of persuasion. R. C. Van Caenegem’s “scientific” reading is represented here,
but his 1990 claim that Ivan of Aalst advocated popular sovereignty receives
little mention.
Clearly, Galbert can be read on many levels, but there is little here that
lends itself to an undergraduate audience. An overview of the main outlines
of the story would have helped, as would a more thorough discussion of the
main sources for our knowledge of Flanders in 1127. Something has been
gained—an appreciation of Galbert’s historical craft—but the earlier empha-

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sis on the legal aspects has been slighted. However, it cogently points out new
ways to study Galbert’s work and pushes the discussion in new directions. No
longer should Galbert’s work be studied just as history.
Rutgers University, Newark

FREDERICK H. RUSSELL

Angelo Clareno Francescano: Atti del XXXIV Convengo internazionale
Assisi, 5–7 ottobre 2006. Edited by Enrico Menestò. [Atti dei Convengi
della Società internazionale di studi francescani e del Centro interuniversitario di studi francescani. Nuova Serie, Vol. 17.] (Spoleto: Fondazione
Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo. 2007. Pp. x, 430. €48,00 paperback. ISBN 978-8-879-88053-4.)
The annual Franciscan Studies Conference in Assisi reliably produces highquality conference proceedings on important subjects. No exception is the
volume dedicated to Angelo Clareno (†1343) whose Liber Chronicarum (c.
1320s) of Franciscan history, with its poverty controversies and persecution
of “Spiritual” Franciscans, set a template for subsequent accounts.
The collection starts in earnest with Paolo Vian’s “parallel lives” treatment
of Angelo Clareno and Ubertino da Casale. Vian shows how two Spirituals
could have opposing reactions to Popes Boniface VIII, Clement V, and John
XXII; the difference is explained by a general fight-or-flight approach to the
world:The eremitical Angelo wanted to observe literally the Franciscan Rule
outside the order, the mendicant Ubertino struggled to do so within it. David
Burr scrutinizes Angelo’s commentary on the Rule with regard to the notion
of obedience. Burr notes the irony that Angelo spent a “number of years . . .
dodging his Franciscan superiors and at times the pope as well” (p. 30), but
nevertheless emphasized obedience in his commentary. In fact, Angelo considered the Rule a divine revelation and thought that one must obey God
rather than men. Felice Accrocca concentrates on the History of the Seven
Tribulations of the Franciscan Order or Liber Chronicarum and skeptically
considers G. L. Potestà’s thesis about its redaction. Potestà hypothesized a twostep composition: The first redaction contained only six tribulations (cf. Job
5:19:“In six tribulations he shall deliver you, and in the seventh, evil shall not
touch you”) and ended with Clement V in 1314. Angelo then revised his work
during the turbulent pontificate of John XXII, adding a seventh tribulation
with a touch of evil. Accrocca finds this explanation too tidy and cautions
against discarding the old single redaction theory. Marco Bartoli’s piece,“The
Eschatological Dimension of the Dispute between the Spirituals and
Conventuals,” notes that it was not a feature of the Council of Vienne debates
and only appeared in the 1320s after a papal commission condemned statements from Olivi’s Apocalypse Commentary (1297) that implied an identification of the Roman Church with the Whore of Babylon, and a supersession
of previous ages of the Church by the last one. Bartoli’s explanation for this
absence is that much of the order, until then, subscribed to a historical vision

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not much different from that of the Spirituals—and he looks at some
Franciscan apocalypse commentaries (as Burr had done in the uncited Olivi’s
Peaceable Kingdom [Philadelphia, 1993]) to fortify this point. Roberto
Lambertini, with typical insightfulness, investigates the wide semantic range
of the term Fraticelli in the aftermath of John XXII’s Sancta Romana that
condemned Angelo Clareno’s group with this label. Jürgen Miethke’s “Pope
John XXII and the Poverty Controversy” is a bibliographically updated version
of the narrative in his Ockhams Weg zur Sozialphilosophie (Berlin, 1969).
Miethke is old-school in seeing two discrete Franciscan controversies: a practical one over the observance of poverty with Spirituals like Angelo and a
theoretical one with Michaelists like Ockham over Christ’s poverty. Miethke’s
piece is on the whole stimulating, but its second part is stronger than the first,
where no mention is made of the bull Quorundam Exigit (whose enforcement links the two controversies). For the theological debate, Miethke vehemently reasserts the primacy and reliability of Michaelist sources against
recent revisionists who can only be grateful for his hard questions. The
volume is brought to conclusion by Potestà—the world expert on Clareno—
who gives an elegant and intellectually generous summing up of the papers.
This Assisi conference must have been a memorable occasion; the commemorative volume is certainly a “must-have.”
University at Albany, SUNY

PATRICK NOLD

The Letters of Pierre de Cros, Chamberlain to Pope Gregory XI
(1371–1378). By Daniel Williman. [Medieval and Renaissance Texts and
Studies, Vol. 356.] (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies,Arizona State University. 2009. Pp. xvii, 118, with CDRom. $59.00. ISBN 978-0-866-98404-1.)
The Avignon papacy marks a very interesting chapter in church history,
not only because the fourteenth century itself was such a maelstrom of
activity and disasters but also because the very oddity of the popes being
exiled in southern France, away from their natural home, for seventy interminable years brought new pressures on the institutions and the men who
staffed them.
Daniel Williman, an accomplished and always interesting student of the
period, brings us a brief look at Pierre de Cros, cousin and chamberlain to Pope
Gregory XI, and later a cardinal in the Curia of the antipope Clement VII.This
small book is divided into four parts: a look at de Cros and his extensive family
relations, his function as head of the Camera Apostolica, his role in the Curia,
and the sources plumbed.There are two appendices: the Itinerarium of Pierre
Ameilh, recounting Gregory XI’s voyage back to Rome; and a family tree.
As with all of medieval society, the papacy was a beehive of clan members
buzzing around their leader. During the Avignon period, no clan was more

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prolific than the Rogers, which saw two of its members made pope, while a
third refused election; twenty-three were created cardinal. Williman extends
the research in this remarkable family.
Williman then presents a masterful overview of the Camera Apostolica,
detailing its staffing and tax streams; the latter ranges from common services
to spoils.Whereas others often assume the reader knows the intricacies of the
papal Camera,Williman spells it all out clearly.
The third section, “The Ministerial Policies of Pierre de Cros,” is less successful, but that is a function of the evidence available. Gregory XI was a
strong leader, who kept his eye on much that was going on in his administration.This, of course, leaves less room for a subordinate’s initiative, even someone as important as de Cros. In addition to the constant depredations,
seizures, and bloodshed of the ongoing Hundred Years’War, the pope also had
to deal with brigands in his own neighborhood and the bigger ones of the
Italian peninsula. The Visconti brothers drew the wrath of Gregory, who, as
always, threw himself into the fray. Calling on every ally and resource available, the pope launched armed forces against Bernabo and Galeazzo Visconti
and had some signal, but temporary, success.Williman accepts an account by
Pietro Gazata, who claimed that Galeazzo Visconti pounced unexpectedly on
a shipment of 100,000 ducats intended for papal forces and thus turned the
tide of war. That may have happened, but the pope does not refer to such a
theft, and the condottiere John Hawkwood, in the pay of Avignon, explained
that he retired his forces from battle because of high casualties—and the
burden of profitable captives.
This is a book that helps us to gain a fuller picture of the papal court,
especially in the 1370s. It is a fuller picture not only because Williman has
shed more light on another important member of the Avignonese Curia but
also because, in his meticulous descriptions of the activities of the likes of
de Cros, we sense all the more strongly the worldliness that was steadily
infiltrating the attitudes of the people surrounding the pope, the worldliness that would wreak such havoc on the papacy and Europe on the death
of Gregory XI.
Lancaster, PA

PAUL R.THIBAULT

Basilio Bessarione: Lo spirito greco e l’occidente. By Giuseppe L. Coluccia.
[Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, Monografie 15.] (Florence: Casa Editrice
Leo S. Olschki. 2009. Pp. xxx, 444. €50,00 paperback. ISBN 978-8-82225925-7.)
Perhaps because of his eccentricity, the Hellenizing, likely pagan Platonist
Gemistus Pletho (c. 1355–1452) has received plenty of attention from scholars, including works by François Masai, Christopher Montague Woodhouse,

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and Brigitte Tambrun-Krasker. But it is a different situation for Gemistus’s
most celebrated and influential disciple: Cardinal Basilio Bessarion (c. 1402–
72), who, although a strong defender of the Greek tradition and Platonic philosophy, maintained his loyalty to the Catholic Church. For many years, the
only real monograph about Bessarion was the classic study Kardinal
Bessarion als Theologe, Humanist und Staatsmann by Ludwig Mohler
(Paderborn, 1927); Mohler also issued an edition of the cardinal’s masterpiece, In calumniatorem Platonis, and a volume of other texts by Bessarion
and his familiares. Lotte Labowski, Concetta Bianca, James Hankins, John
Monfasani, and Brunello Lotti later wrote other important articles, followed
by recent monographs by Marian Cizewski and Héctor Delbosco.
Giuseppe L. Coluccia’s book is not only the first Italian monograph
devoted to a key protagonist in Renaissance cultural history but also offers a
remarkably complete and updated bibliography (pp. 375–424) on the life,
works, and intellectual circle of the cardinal—an important instrument for
future work. Coluccia—who has written a biography of Nicholas V—is not
involved in the academic milieu, so his monograph is aimed at introducing
Bessarion to a wider public. Written chronologically, the book describes the
life of the cardinal as a sort of Bildungsroman.This romantic tone is probably responsible for the principal flaw of Coluccia’s work: He admires
Bessarion too much to recognize the ambiguities of the cardinal’s life and
ideas. The political meaning of In calumniatorem Platonis, composed not
only to defend Plato’s reputation but also to protect Bessarion’s position
within the Roman Curia, is largely neglected. The conspiracy against Pope
Paul II by the Accademia Romana, which involved many of Bessarion’s familiares, is summarized in just a few pages. In one of a series of factual errors,
Coluccia mistakenly describes Callimaco Esperiente and Filippo Buonaccorsi
as two different individuals (p. 231). Although he largely relies on secondary
literature, almost exclusively in Italian, Coluccia nevertheless unearths some
unusual aspects of Bessarion’s life: developing some observations by Giovanni
Pugliese Caratelli, he offers an interesting chapter on the cardinal’s pastoral
activity in southern Italy. Coluccia is perhaps too optimistic when he states
that modern translations of Bessarion’s works might bring about peace in the
Middle East (p. 277).
As a whole, the book is not always precise, and there are some sections
that read more like notes rather than refined paragraphs. Yet, despite the
ingenuousness of style and content, Coluccia’s book contains a wealth of
references that is useful for those who wish to learn about Bessarion and
his world.
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa

EVA DEL SOLDATO

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359

Early Modern European
Offices et papauté (XIVe–XVIIe siècle). Charges, hommes, destins. Edited by
Armand Jamme and Olivier Poncet. [Collection de l’École Française de
Rome, 334.] (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2005. Pp. 1049. €118,00.
ISBN 978-2-728-30694-7; ISSN 0223-5099.)
This large volume is the product of two conferences, at the Archivio
Segreto Vaticano in 2001 and at the École Française de Rome in 2002. The
topic is the offices and officers of the papal administration, especially those
councils and officials that oversaw the papal state and, to a lesser extent, the
diplomatic corps. Many of the papers discuss the structure of the administrative offices of the papacy and their development; other papers are prosopographical, that is, they offer lists of those who served in a particular office,
along with information on their origins, preparation, and administrative
careers. This is detailed, informative history of the administration of the papal
state, a field much cultivated by Italian, French, and German scholars in the
past thirty-five years, but generally ignored by English-language historians.The
volume presents thirty-four papers: seventeen in Italian, twelve in French, and
five in German. Many studies include useful appendices and tables. The
volume offers short summaries of the articles, written in the same language
as the articles, but lacks information about the contributors.
The editors open the volume with an introduction that reviews briefly
previous scholarship on the development of the Renaissance state, a term
proposed by Federico Chabod fifty years ago, although not used by the editors. Instead, they argue that the administration of the papal monarchy is an
interesting case study of the development of the state from the Middle Ages
into modern times. Andreas Rehberg writes about the relations between the
curia and the city government of Rome, noting that they differed over taxes,
and that beginning with the two Medici popes (Leo X, 1513–21, and Clement
VII, 1523–34), the papacy gained greater control over the city while Roman
nobles harvested more curial offices. This article is an exception to the pattern of the volume, because it discusses the political consequences of administrative actions to a limited degree. Christoph Weber writes about the
Segnatura di Grazia and the Segnatura di Giustizia, which were growing in
importance and becoming incubators for future bishops and cardinals. Maria
Antonietta Visceglia discusses the familiari of the pope and the increasing
number and growing importance of the offices they filled.
Silvano Giordano offers biographical information on the governors of the
papal state during the pontificate of Paul V (1605–21). Massimo Carlo
Giannini provides information on the treasurers-general of the papal treasury
and their careers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Andrea Petrini
lists the offices under Paul II (1464–71) on the basis of a newly discovered
document. Irene Fosi discusses the distribution of justice in the papal state.

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In a short article Antonio Menniti Ippolito comments on the mobility and
immobility in curial offices in the seventeenth century. Knut Schulz demonstrates that Italians increasingly replaced non-Italians in the curia in the sixteenth century, whereas Alexander Koller lists the nuncios to the Holy Roman
Emperor from 1560 to 1648. Andrea Gardi offers a survey of the changing
administrative role of papal legates governing parts of the papal state from
the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Nicole Reinhardt discusses
Bolognese men filling offices in Rome and Romans doing the same in
Bologna.
Ralf Lützelschwab, Armand Jamme, Olivier Poncet, Étienne Anheim,
Bernard Barbiche, Brigide Schwarz, Pierre Jugie, Germain Butaud, and
Philippe Genequand focus on the Avignonese papacy. Some contributors
offer studies of individual office-holders; see the articles of François-Charles
Uginet, Germano Gualdo, Angela Quattrochi, and Francesca Boris. There are
additional, sometimes short, articles by Bruno Laurioux, Birgit Emich and
Wolfgang Reinhard, Birgit Emich alone, Manuel Vaquero Piñeiro, Giampiero
Brunelli, Simona Feci, Stefano Tabacchi, and Stefan Brüdermann.
All of the articles are documented with an abundance of archival, manuscript, and secondary references. A neophyte scholar in this field will probably find every important study that has been done in the past thirty-five years
listed in the bibliographies of the articles plus a great deal of new information.The volume is a fine achievement, and the editors and contributors are
to be congratulated. On the other hand, the history of the institutions and officers of the papal state, while very valuable, is only part of a larger history. Men
and councils administered, governed, and collected taxes for the papacy, and
rose to higher offices, in a time of war, sack, the cultural and political changes
of the Renaissance, and the upheavals of the Protestant and Catholic or
Counter Reformation.These excellent studies provide material for the larger
history of the papacy in these centuries.
University of Toronto (Emeritus) and Chapel Hill, NC

PAUL F. GRENDLER

Reforming Saints: Saints’ Lives and Their Authors in Germany, 1470–1530.
By David J. Collins. [Oxford Studies in Historical Theology.] (New York:
Oxford University Press. 2008. Pp. xvi, 227. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-19532953-7.)
The title and subtitle of this book conceal the specificity of its important
principal subject matter—namely, the substantial body of hagiographical writings produced by dozens of German humanist authors in the late-fifteenth
and early-sixteenth centuries. Despite oversights by generations of modern
scholars who apparently “want the humanists to be something other than
they were,” Collins demonstrates that “[w]hen we allow the humanist authors
to speak in their own voice, what we find is that they were exuberant writ-

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361

ers about the saints” (pp. 14, 18). The book thus undermines simplistic and
mistaken associations of Renaissance humanism with disdain for the
“medieval” cult of the saints. Overlapping with some of the concerns in Alison
Knowles Frazier’s study of hagiographical writing of Quattrocento Italian
humanists, it sheds revealing light on a neglected chapter in the history of
Catholic hagiography between the Golden Legend and the Acta Sanctorum,
a chapter long overshadowed by the traditional association of humanism with
the Reformation and the latter’s rejection of the cult of the saints.
Collins’s deeply researched book is based on a meticulous analysis of more
than forty free-standing Latin lives of saints that deal with men and women
who were active in the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire, accounts
that were either written or revised between 1470 and 1530. Many of them
were published, whereas others remained in manuscript; some were revised
in telling ways, others translated also into the vernacular. Collins finds no
single, simple pattern among his authors—some of whom were more deeply
marked by humanist training than others—but rather a variety of complex
relationships to the sources with which they worked, the princely or civic
patrons with whom they collaborated, and the audiences and devotional practices toward which they directed their vitae.What emerges clearly in the four
chapters of his study is the extent to which hagiographical writers such as
Jerome Emser, Sigismund Meisterlin, Albert von Bonstetten, Joannes
Cincinnius, and Henry Gundelfingen were not erudite elites standing outside
“popular religion,” but rather were embedded within contemporary socioreligious contexts that presupposed the veneration of the saints “through a literature that was conceived not as ‘conservative’ so much as ordinary”(p. 127).
At the same time, the German humanist authors revised and reworked
medieval vitae in accord with their diverse aims, including a widespread
desire to reform church and society—hence the predominance of exemplary
bishops among their saintly types and of eremitic recluses who modeled radical holiness. In addition to their Latin usage and classical literary allusions,
their use of poetry and poetic epigrams, the humanists’ hagiographical writings are marked by that hybrid combination of descriptive geography, historical chronicle, and storytelling known as chorography, which also characterized humanist historical writing more generally. In the case of Nicholas of
Flue (1417–87),“the fifteenth-century’s saintly superstar” (p. 99) and the subject of the book’s fourth chapter, the humanists seized on an extreme ascetic
and holy hermit who functioned as a sort of patron saint not merely for his
home territory of Unterwalden, but for the Swiss Confederation as a whole.
Admiration for “Brother Claus” survived the confessional divisions of the
Reformation era in Switzerland.
Although Collins’s particular focus is humanist hagiography in Germanic
lands from 1470 to 1530, the analytical reach of this important book is much
broader. He incorporates a wide knowledge of the previous history of
medieval hagiography of which his humanist authors made such extensive

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use, and in his conclusion he compares their writings to early-modern hagiographical successors such as Georg Witzel, Laurentius Surius, and the early
Bollandists.
University of Notre Dame

BRAD S. GREGORY

Luther: Out of the Storm. By Derek Wilson. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2010.
Pp. xvi, 399. $24.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-800-69718-1.)
This book, in the weaving together of Martin Luther’s story with its context, is told in fresh, appealing form. It announces its goal: replacing Roland
Bainton’s widely readable account, Here I Stand (New York, 1950), with one
designed for a post-Christian audience.The author, Derek Wilson, even follows
Bainton’s example in reproducing sixteenth-century woodcuts, effectively
selected to offer glimpses into Luther’s age.
The opening, which Wilson labels “a fanciful reconstruction” (p. 1), is not
typical of his modus operandi, which relates the story in lively fashion but with
fairly consistent faithfulness to the original sources. It is just that such occasional “reconstructions” do not enable strangers to his subject to sort out reliably when he is using this kind of alternative narrative. Indeed, the footnotes
are very sparse and indicate little engagement with the two generations of
scholarship since Bainton’s book appeared.Wilson’s sense of historical context
arouses interest throughout and is thick with the detailed flavor of the societal and religious context at points, but is superficial in this regard at others.
Wilson largely sticks to his biographical focus, but with a figure like Luther,
some attention to his thought belongs to the story of his life.The author often
shows sensitivity to Luther’s way of thinking, as, for instance, in his interpretation of the reformer’s doctrine of justification that is imparted not as a legal
fiction but as a re-creative Word of God.Wilson would have enhanced this section by unfolding Luther’s anthropology of the two kinds or dimensions of
human righteousness, active and passive; failure to do so passes over an
important piece of Luther’s view of both God and the human creature. It
would have been preferable to read an exploration of the fundamental
hermeneutical statement of Luther’s “theology of the cross” at the Heidelberg
meeting of his Augustinian order in 1518, where he laid down the underlying
foundation of his new way of practicing theology, rather than encounter an
altogether too facile and simplistic comparison of his Dominican opponents
with the KGB (p. 103). But such silliness should not discourage those who
know the landscape from reading the book, for, in general, those who know
the story can experience this retelling as a fresh vista, which deserves and
rewards a critical reading.
It is not clear why Luther’s biography must be enlisted in the author’s
wrestling with the twentieth-century “German problem” when tracing it to

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several strands of the Enlightenment would have been more helpful. But this
is a common instinct among Westerners. Much more justified is Wilson’s placing of Luther’s thought within the context of the twenty-first-century religious scene, which he largely accomplishes with sympathy and sensitivity.
This is not the book that should be assigned to students new to Luther, but
it can serve as a review or expansion of view for those who know something
of his life or thought and is a delightful encounter with Luther’s person.
Concordia Seminary, St. Louis

ROBERT KOLB

The Correspondence of Wolfgang Capito, Vol. 2: 1524–1531. Edited and translated by Erika Rummel with the assistance of Milton Kooistra. (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press. 2009. Pp. xxx, 538. $165.00. ISBN 978-0-80209955-6.)
The second part of this excellent project takes us to the heart of Wolfgang
Capito’s work as a reformer in Strasbourg.The years before 1524 had forced
Capito to choose between the two lodestars of his career: his commitment to
Erasmian humanism and his enthusiasm for church reform. It was not immediately apparent to Capito as he built his reputation that this parting of the
ways would be necessary. As late as 1522 he was a trusted adviser to Albrecht
of Mainz; in that year he visited Martin Luther in Wittenberg, a visit that seems
to have been decisive in persuading him to abandon his previous support for
Desiderius Erasmus on the key issue of free will. In 1523 Capito moved to
Strasbourg as provost of the collegiate church of St.Thomas. His breach with
Catholicism became manifest the following February when he was appointed
parish priest of St. Peter’s. By taking a wife, Capito made a further irrevocable
statement of his new allegiance.
Once these steps were taken, Capito became a key member of the powerful group of reformers committed to the establishment of a fully evangelized church in Strasbourg.This was a complex and protracted process, involving three interlocking issues: the public proclamation of reformed allegiance
and the building of an institutional church in conformity with the new order,
the creation of a Christian people educated in their new faith, and the resolution of the jurisdictional and financial issues resulting from the transfer of
church property. Capito gave himself willingly to these tasks, lending his support to collective appeals to the city magistrates. He also wrote fluently in
defense of evangelical positions: here his close connections to the Strasbourg
printing industry, through his relative Wolfgang Köpfel, were a further asset.
But Capito also contributed his share to the problems that beset the
Strasbourg reformers.
In many respects Capito, a renowned Hebrew scholar and intellectual,
was ill-fitted for the hurly-burly of a turbulent urban Reformation. His polit-

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ical antennae were often seriously deficient. Shortly after his arrival in
Strasbourg his credulous support for the allegations of Hans Jakob Schütz,
who claimed to have uncovered a plot against the reformers, damaged his
credibility severely. His reluctance to join the condemnation of Anabaptists
was a source of anxiety at a time when the growth of radicalism threatened
the stability of the fledgling church. His encouragement of heterodox figures such as Caspar Schwenckfeld further strained the patience of his colleagues and may be the reason for his exclusion from the Strasbourg delegation to the Colloquy of Marburg in 1529. By 1530 his reputation was
sufficiently tarnished that both Philipp Melanchthon and his old patron
Albrecht of Mainz refused to meet him at the Diet of Augsburg. One cannot
think these would have been happy times, even before plague claimed the
life of his wife in 1531.
This second volume follows the sensible editorial practice of the first.
Where correspondence is already published, the letter in question is generally
presented here in summary form. Also included are all communications
where Capito is involved in collective representations as one of the
Strasbourg ministers. Alongside the pieces familiar from Olivier Millet’s finding list of Capito’s correspondence, this volume also includes a significant
number of previous unknown letters, many of them discovered by Milton
Kooistra in his investigation of the Strasbourg archives.This is, of course, one
of the few projects of this nature that presents the letters only in English
translation. These translations, by Erika Rummel, have an easy elegance that
greatly increase the accessibility of the volume. Any student of the
Reformation, or indeed of the sixteenth century, will find much of interest
here. The contrast between the lofty high-mindedness of the ministerial
exhortations and the hard-nosed financial negotiations for the surrender of
Capito’s canonry is particularly enjoyable (Letter 248a). A fine index and
exemplary explanatory notes complete this splendid volume, the second of
three that will carry this project through to the end of Capito’s life.
University of St. Andrews

ANDREW PETTEGREE

Religionskonflikt und Öffentlichkeit: Eine Mediengeschichte des Kölner
Kriegs (1582–1590). By Eva-Maria Schnurr. (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2009.
Pp. 625. €69,90. ISBN 978-3-412-20395-5.)
In 1582 Gebhard Truchsess, the prince-elector and archbishop of
Cologne, joined the Protestant confession, intending to marry and keep his
title with the associated incomes. The decision delegitimized the Cologne
government and instantly created a Protestant majority among the Imperial
electors, raising the specter of a non-Catholic emperor at some future time.
The ensuing War of Cologne, which eventually became mixed up in the hostilities between Spain and Holland, was not only a struggle of guns and
pikes; it was also a war of words and a challenge to the communications

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media of the late-sixteenth century. Eva-Maria Schnurr’s careful and exhaustive doctoral dissertation analyzes 182 texts in German connected with the
war, in the light of scholarship pioneered by Bob Scribner on early-modern
publicity with special reference to Germany. The pamphlets, poetry, tradefair reports, and news sheets discuss Truchsess’s confessional switch, the
petition by the Cologne Protestants to the emperor, and the events of the
war. They also debate such basic principles as religious freedom; “German
liberty;” and duty to God, Church, and state. Schnurr combines a qualitative
with a quantitative content analysis; thus the account of differences in
emphasis between the many Protestant and the fewer Catholic examples,
and the careful tracing of intertextualities across various media that shows
meanings and expressions shared between one work and another, is accompanied by tabulation of the relative importance of discussions of legitimacy
over simple information (drawing here on Uwe Jochum), of emotional
appeals over appeals to reason (referring to Miriam Chrisman), of the relative importance of oral versus written borrowings, and of geographical and
chronological distribution. She uses the term propaganda guardedly, as is
appropriate in this time period, while identifying such attitude-building elements as demonization of the enemy (p. 388), charges of “tyranny” (p. 392),
and references to the Spanish “black legend” (p. 391). She finds that the
more analytical writings, tending to reach into the political decision-making
process and the cabinets of princes, are more prominent where the object
of attack is weaker—in this case, the Protestant side (p. 403). Nor does she
neglect the wider context in which this publication activity occurred, in the
presence of efforts at persuasion in the realms of the visual, the theatrical,
and the religious.
How effective was it all, considering contemporary rates of literacy and
the limited print runs? That, of course, is the key question of this type of
research, and there are no easy solutions. As is often the case, the best information we have regarding circulation and contexts of reading, including the
crossover between oral and written accounts, comes from the dataset itself.
At least the authors were apparently reading each other’s works. No doubt, in
principle,“through one communicative act, namely, the publication of a text,
uncountable recipients were reachable, unknown to the author” (p. 428), as
texts became objects of discussion and debate.Whether the publishing activity actually affected the conduct of the war in any way is almost impossible
to assess; in spite of the overwhelming number of Protestant productions and
their supposed morale-building function, the Catholic side won and Ernest of
Bavaria took over definitively as prince-archbishop.The one potential reader
who has left a trace of his impressions about events as they occurred, a certain Hermann Weinsberg, apparently, like many others living in cities, obtained
his local news mostly by word of mouth and relied on the printed word only
for faraway events. Was there a public sphere in late-sixteenth-century
Germany? Because of the emancipatory implications of the concept of Jürgen
Habermas, Schnurr, in the conclusion to this fine work, joins Wolfgang

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Behringer in opting for a notion closer to Manuel Castells’s “Space of Flows,”
where critical discussion was first made possible.
University College Cork

BRENDAN DOOLEY

The Pilgrims’ Complaint: A Study of Popular Thought in the Early Tudor
North. By Michael Bush. (Burlington,VT:Ashgate Publishing. 2009. Pp. xiv,
307. $124.95. ISBN 978-0-754-66785-8.)
This is Michael Bush’s third major book on the Pilgrimage of Grace, a rebellion that saw as many as 60,000 people in northern England rise in protest
late in 1536. One of Bush’s earlier books studied the formation of the rebel
armies; the other, coauthored with David Bownes, examined the set of smaller
revolts that followed the December settlement that brought the main rebellion to an end. This book focuses on the Pilgrims’ grievances and how they
reflected popular political and religious thought in the north more generally.
Bush argues that these people cannot simply be characterized as “traditionalists” nor their beliefs as “conservative.” Rather, they sometimes used the language of custom to demand innovation. They sought to defend a “society of
orders” by demanding changes both reversionary and new.
Bush devotes individual chapters to complaints about taxation, constitutional issues, and agrarian conflict. Another examines the degree to which a
sense of “northern-ness” shaped the rebellion, concluding that the sense
existed but played relatively little part in the origin or outcome of the rising.
Distinctions between the Yorkshire Pilgrims and those further to the northwest are clearly mapped, with the latter’s efforts marked by stronger expressions of agrarian grievance. Readers might well find the chapter on the
Pilgrims’ religious complaints of greatest interest. Here Bush makes the reasonable point that the Ten Articles and other such documents must be interpreted in the light of contemporary attitudes, as “from a historical perspective
the meaning of the articles depends not upon what scholars now think but
on how they were perceived at the time” (p. 82). Bush argues that underlying
the Pilgrims’ religious complaints were attachments to papal supremacy and
the system of saintly intercessors. Part of his evidence for the depth of popular opposition to the royal supremacy—or at least to claims for the king’s cure
of souls—comes from the angry reactions of some to the December pardon,
which required recipients to recognize the king’s supremacy over body and
soul. Given that so many Pilgrims accepted the pardon and oath, however,
even while in a position of strength, further discussion of this point seems
necessary. More generally, Bush argues that the Pilgrims’ religious complaints
can be characterized neither as proxies for underlying agrarian or economic
concerns, nor as sentimental traditionalism. Rather, they were rooted in faith
and a fear of heresy.
Although the bibliography is largely up to date, the book rarely engages
directly with current discussions of popular politics and political culture,

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nor with the sorts of theoretical approaches adopted by Andy Wood, for
example, in his recent study of the 1549 rebellions. On the specific matter of
the Pilgrimage, however, the book clearly stakes its position in the relevant
debates. No elite conspiracy, the Pilgrimage was essentially a rising of the
commons in defense of a society of orders. It was neither primarily religious
nor predominantly economic in motivation, but both in tandem. Nor does
Bush think that one category of complaint can be subsumed in the other,
although he does frequently identify the overlapping elements. “A person
and an event” linked both the religious and commonwealth complaints, for
example, with Thomas Cromwell “detested as both a heretic and an expropriator of the realm’s wealth” and the recent dissolution of the lesser monasteries seen “as both a major blow against the old religion and a cause of
social impoverishment” (p. 4). Bush recognizes the problem of provenance
in evaluating the Pilgrims’ petitions, oaths, songs, and other such documents
for evidence of grievances held by the commonalty as opposed to the gentry
or clergy, weighing words against actions. The discussion is often speculative, but always careful.The book will not convince all readers on all points,
but it does offer a lucid and often enlightening discussion of popular sentiment in the early Tudor north.
Dalhousie University

KRISTA KESSELRING

Humanism and Protestantism in Early Modern English Education. By Ian
Green. [St. Andrew’s Studies in Reformation History.] (Burlington, VT:
Ashgate Publishing. 2009. Pp. xviii, 373. $114.95. ISBN 978-0-754-66368-3.)
This substantial study represents the author’s revision of his Waynflete
Lectures, delivered at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 2006. Like Ian Green’s other
books, The Christian’s ABC (Oxford, 1996) and Print and Protestantism in
Early Modern England (Oxford, 2000), it is an encyclopedic survey of almost
an entire genre of English books—a staple of the publishing trade, textbooks
printed to supply the rapidly growing numbers of grammar schools.The chief
aim of the book is to explore the curious juxtaposition, perhaps tension,
between the elements of Protestantism and humanism in English education.
The labors on show here are prodigious and, as far as they go, definitive.
Hundreds of books are examined, many in some depth, and Green provides a
detailed account of the content of an English classical education—and of the
varying levels at which that education was offered—in the two centuries
from Henry VIII to George II (chapters 3 and 4).Among the most interesting
of his findings is the increasing role of English translations of classical works
in education from the middle of the seventeenth century. Only in chapter 5 is
the relationship between Protestantism and humanism addressed directly, and
Green does discern tension here, although not any kind of radical dysfunction. But the case he makes there and in the summative chapter 6,“Assessing
the Impact,” perhaps could have been developed a little further.After detect-

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ing a tension between an emphasis on practical virtue characteristic of the
Erasmian and classical traditions and the “Protestant stress on divine grace”(p.
307), Green ultimately concludes that there was an “alliance of state religion
and grammar school education” (p. 364) that prevailed until the nineteenthcentury age of reform.
Yet what this precisely calls into question is the Protestantism (that is, the
theology) of English Protestantism. Even Philipp Melanchthon’s enormously
influential reconciliation of Renaissance humanism with Reformation theology, to which the whole European Protestant tradition was massively
indebted, was ultimately something of an intellectual sleight of hand. It was
more shotgun marriage than love match.What Green’s analysis of English educational textbooks suggests is that authentically Protestant soteriology made
little impact in the mainstream channels of English education and therefore
probably equally little among relatively broad swathes of the English elite and
middling sort.A goodly, or godly, section of the clergy was always deeply committed to this theology, along with a rather narrower section of the laity. But,
as Puritan ministers in the early-seventeenth century were wont to lament, all
the preaching of the “Gospel” had made little difference to the majority of the
population. This is not to say, of course, that the English people as a whole
were not Protestant.They most emphatically were, and God help anyone who
seemed to threaten their Protestantism—witness Archbishop William Laud,
King Charles I, and King James II. But that Protestantism was more a matter
of identity than of theology, and that identity was all about being English and
not being Catholic or “popish” (that is, from an English point of view, superstitious, idolatrous, antichristian, foreign, traitorous, Jesuitical, casuistical, or
equivocal).The cohesion, such as it was, of English Protestantism was entirely
negative: a proposition abundantly illustrated by the unholy alliances that
brought about the Glorious Revolution, and annually enacted in the
November rituals of “Gunpowder Treason.” But this Protestantism was hardly
something that required formal schooling or even formal catechesis for its
transmission, anymore than late-medieval Catholicism had done. It was by
1700 the DNA of English culture. Nor was this Protestantism even theoretically incompatible with a classical or humanist education. It may be that
Green will have more to say about that in the promised final volume of his
trilogy on early-modern English Protestantism. In the meantime, he has produced a work of solid scholarship that will have something for almost any student of early-modern English educational or religious history.
Queens’ College, Cambridge

RICHARD REX

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Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland: Clerical Resistance and
Political Conflict in the Diocese of Dublin, 1534–1590. By James Murray.
[Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History.] (New York:
Cambridge University Press. 2009. Pp. xvi, 353. $108.00. ISBN 978-0-52177038-5.)
This is a new, profoundly researched, highly disciplined, and thoughtful
study on efforts to both implant and repudiate the Protestant Reformation in
sixteenth-century Ireland. It emerges from the wave wash of new approaches,
activated in the 1970s, to what was a sterile topic not helped by failed, monocausal explanations of failure. Originating as a doctoral thesis, the book has
evolved over about fifteen years. Hence its depth and finesse—yielding a
research outcome that will be hard to match in current circumstances of
increasingly tight completion plans.Another benefit of the study is its “deliberately old-fashioned narrative form” (p. 18). Happily, this means departure
from the virtual norm in historiography in recent generations—the sacrifice
of form to content. Here, one has not only history proper and analysis but also
a lively narrative—episodic, full of human interest and suspense, but earthed
in factual evidence.The sources are chiefly church and government records,
as most of the parochial sources crucial to regional micro-studies are not
extant in Ireland.
The focus is on the keyword enforcing and the English enforcers, be they
viceroys, lord-deputies, archbishops, or deans of Dublin. The task was
Sisyphean. James Murray zooms in on responsible clergy and administrators
down the chain of command. They were “English Irish,” the old colonial
English residing in the gated community of the “Pale”—Ireland’s Cape Colony,
as it were, that was antipathetic to the conquered but unpacified Gaelic Irish
majority outside it.The narrative delineates the zigzags of different strategies
born of frustration and exasperation. In the Pale, the new ecclesio-political
problems were acute following various responses to government policies.
There was formal conformity, grudging compliance, and semi-acceptance of a
new bottle that retained the old wine, so that Catholic piety survived. There
was also nonconformity, dissidence, recusancy, and increasing Catholic reaffirmation and confession. Catholic revivalism seems to have been nourished partly
by the Elizabethan Protestant drive to command more obedience and partly by
the impetus of Tridentine reform, usefully aided by some martyrs’ blood.
In this book, Ireland refers to part of it: the Pale. Further restriction is to
the county, city, and Archdiocese of Dublin. Clerical resistance pertains to
that of the senior clergy (“clerical elite”) below the archbishop forming the
chapter of the secular one of Dublin’s two cathedrals, St. Patrick’s, which was
of totemic significance to the colonials. Cathedral corporate identity, solidarity, and obstructionism are a central component of this book.The Reformation
on the agenda is not related to any (known or recorded) local demand in any
sector of society or ethnic group, but rather to the Tudor, constitutional, topdown one—Ireland being part of the English Crown’s domains.

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The introduction provides a magisterial survey of recent studies.The first
two chapters illuminate the distinctive, confident, but rigid culture of Dublin
Christianity.The double nature of its historic mission is clarified—an English
Irish Church embodying not only a superior, more conscientious Catholicism
but also a superior civil culture and legal system. The remaining chapters
follow a chronological continuum, reporting and analyzing conservative neutralizing of progressivist pressures.
If Murray abides by the ineluctable conclusion of Reformation failure, his
analysis is distinctive. He proposes that Protestant Reformation was rejected
by most of the Old English community not just because it was un-Catholic but
also because it was un-English. Its self-perception was as a bearer of traditional (medieval), indivisible,Anglo-Roman Catholic culture. Its founding charter was understood to be a papal bull, Laudabiliter, granted in 1155 by an
English pope to an Anglo-Norman king authorizing invasion of Ireland to
reform undisciplined Irish religion and life according to the “faith of Christ,”
canonical moral laws, Gregorian reform, and the Ecclesia anglicana. This
vocation conditioned the English Irish mind indelibly—yet that mission, too,
had failed woefully. The prospect of an all-Ireland, Protestant mission was
unthinkable. It would endanger the English language, superiority, hegemony,
essential apartness, and Catholic truth. The Christian elect (as it were) of
Ireland were “the [resident] faithful Catholics of the English nation” (p. 48).
The resolute approach in this work to unappreciated aspects of the
Reformation imbroglio in Ireland will help readjust the lenses of overall
appraisal.
University of Glasgow

IAN HAZLETT

Monumenta Borgia, Vol. VII: (1550–1566).Sanctus Franciscus Borgia Quartus
Gandiae Dux et Societatis Iesu Praepositus Generalis Tertius (1510–
1572). Edited by Enrique García Hernán. [Monumenta Historica Societatis
Iesu, Vol. 157.] (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu; Valencia:
Generalitat Valenciana. 2009. Pp. 858. €35,00. ISBN 978-8-448-25185-7.)
Volume VII of the Monumenta Borgia follows 2003’s volume VI, also
edited by Enrique García Hernán. These volumes are the most significant
scholarly contributions among several works celebrating the quincentennial
of the birth in 1510 of St. Francis Borgia, duke of Gandía in the province of
Valencia and superior general of the Society of Jesus. It is not hyperbole to say
that García Hernán’s work will transform our understanding of the early
Jesuits and the order’s interaction with early-modern politics and society.
Volume VI of the Monumenta Borgia, with its 1060 documents spanning
the years 1478 to 1551, places the saint and the Society of Jesus in a larger
Iberian and European context. Volume VII continues the work of volume VI,

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with 1792 documents from 1550 to 1566 (the one exception is a previously
unknown 1539 document from Emperor Charles V naming Borgia as a
caballero de Santiago).As García Hernán did in volume VI, he includes important and relevant documents from archives both inside and outside of the
order’s own.Among the archives represented in the reviewed volume are the
Biblioteca Francisco de Zabálburu de Madrid, Spain’s Archivo Histórico
Nacional, the Archivo de la Compañía de Jesús in Alcalá de Henares, the
Archivo General de Simanca, and the Roman Archives of the Society of Jesus.
The documents are arranged chronologically, with placeholders of related
correspondence from other volumes of the MHSI.
Volume VII begins with an excellent introduction of almost forty pages
that includes the most recent literature on Borgia and his age.Throughout the
rest of the volume, García Hernán clarifies the text in editorial notes, but balances the critical apparatus with making room in the volume for as many documents as possible. His success with this can be seen in the extraordinary
range of the subjects covered by these letters: the Jesuit education ministry,
court life under King Philip II, the Inquisition, the papal war with Spain,
Rome’s conflicts with France and the Ottoman Empire, missionary activity
around the world, and the roles of both Europe’s elite and conversos in the
Society of Jesus.
The letters of volume VII cover Europe and missionary activities, but priority was clearly given to Borgia’s Spain. Either directly or indirectly, documents refer to Borgia’s entrance into the Society of Jesus (1547), his trip to
Rome (1550), his service as a Jesuit in the province of Guipúzcoa (1551–53),
his role as commissary to Spain (1554), his influence as confessor to Juana of
Austria, his troubles with the Spanish Inquisition (1559), his arrival in Rome
(1561), his ongoing contact with his family and the affairs of the Duchy of
Gandía, and his election as superior general in June 1565 after the death of
Diego Laínez in January of that year. Borgia’s service spans an important
period of transition for the Society of Jesus, one in which the identity of the
order was formed during a process of expansion and consolidation.The documents in this volume speak more to Borgia’s administrative, political, and
social contributions to the Society than they do to issues of spirituality, but
these documents are fundamental to an understanding of how he and the
other early members of the Society centralized a worldwide order, with
Jesuits in Brazil, South Asia, the Far East, and across Europe.
García Hernán has provided an important collection of archival sources
that is useful for a broad range of fields and issues. Scholars of Jesuit studies,
organizational studies, and sixteenth-century Spain and Europe will find
much of value here. The documents reveal emerging state identities as well
as the self-consciousness and self-editing of this first generation of Jesuits.This
volume demonstrates that Borgia was uniquely suited for the culture and challenges faced by himself and the Jesuits; García Hernán has balanced earlier

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works of hagiography with a nuanced and fascinating understanding of the
saint and his age.
United States Military Academy

MARÍA DEL PILAR RYAN

Protestantism, Poetry and Protest: The Vernacular Writings of Antoine de
Chandieu (c. 1534–1591). By S. K. Barker. [St.Andrews Studies in Reformation History.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2009. Pp. xiv, 336.
$114.95. ISBN 978-0-754-66491-8.)
Antoine de Chandieu’s career as Protestant minister and writer spanned
the whole period of the French civil wars: He became one pastor of the Paris
Church in 1556 or 1557; was closely involved in the first National Synod of
the Reformed Church (Paris, 1559); and played a role in the adoption of the
founding documents of the new structure, the Confession de foi and the
Discipline. He was also suspected of involvement in the Conspiration
d’Amboise (March 1560). During the early days of the civil war he wrote
some of the most eloquent rebuttals of Pierre de Ronsard’s Discours des misères de ce temps (1562) and most likely a Tragi-comedie (published in 1561)
on the theme of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace.
During the civil wars in the 1560s he composed a martyrology of the Paris
Church to encourage the faithful and was closely concerned with the controversy concerning Church organization provoked by Jean Morély’s Traicté
de la discipline et police Chrestienne (1562), which threatened the cohesion
of the nascent Reformed Church at a moment when it most needed unity and
single-mindedness. After years of an itinerant ministry in France, Chandieu
moved to Lausanne, then to Geneva, in 1568. Thereafter he divided his time
among various missions in France and posts in Lausanne and Geneva. He composed his beautifully devotional “masterpiece,” Octonaires sur la vanité et
inconstance du monde (1583). He also became involved in theological
polemics against Catholic, notably Jesuit, writers as exemplified by his widely
successful Response à la Profession de foy publiée contre ceux de l’Eglise
Reformée (1586).
Thus Chandieu was an active participant throughout a particularly fraught
period in the life of the Reformed Churches in France. The author makes a
solid case for perceiving Chandieu as symbolizing the experiences of the
French Protestant movement as a whole in this period.The author brings out
clearly the evolving situation in which Chandieu operated—from the heady
optimism of the 1550s, when it seemed that Reformed Christianity was about
to carry all before it; through the persecutions and suffering of the 1560s,
reaching a nadir in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572; and to the
disillusioned vanitas-theme of the Octonaires (but never losing sight of the
hope of better things to come). Finally, in the period of Konfessionalisierung,
the theological confrontations on the questions of pastoral vocation and
authority drew from him “his most complete defence of protestant belief” (p.

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259) in the Response à la Profession de foy, as he confronted the rise of the
Catholic League and the threat of a takeover in France by ultramontane and
extremist intolerance.
The scope of the book is thus vast; the main lines are clearly drawn, and S.
K. Barker well justifies this integrated study of Chandieu and his period.This
is a book that needed to be written. On such a vast canvas, however, there are
some points that need further clarification. For example, the author writes of
the Harmony of Confessions (p. 260) that it was written in Germany by
“Salvard.”Actually, Jean-François Salvard was the mainstay of a group of writers working in Geneva and seeking to counter the German Formula of
Concord, which counted Chandieu as a member. That involvement, overlooked here, sheds an important light on Chandieu’s thought in the 1580s.
More important, in the chapter on “Establishing a Church (1555–1560),” the
author properly emphasizes the central role of the Consistory in the
Reformed Church structure; but nowhere is there a definition of the consistory and its membership. Yet it would be important to explain the fundamental difference between the Genevan situation, where members of the
government were integrated into the structure of the consistory; and the
French situation, where that was impossible. One could take issue on other
points such as the authorship of the preface to the 1559 Confession de foi,
for which “Chandieu is one of the strongest contenders” (p. 75), whereas most
authorities recognize John Calvin’s inimitable style; or the political motivations behind the Amboise Conspiracy, which here remain unclear. The book
would have benefited from closer attention to proofreading—for example,
there are thirteen misprints in three footnotes on pp. 260–62.
Nonetheless, Barker has provided excellent insights into the career of
Chandieu and the historical context in which he played so vibrant a part.
Institut d’Histoire de la Réformation, Geneva

FRANCIS HIGMAN

Alain de Solminihac (1593–1659). Prélat réformateur de l’Abbaye de
Chancelade à l’éveché de Cahors. By Patrick Petot. 2 vols. [Bibliotheca
Victorina,Vol. XXI.] (Turnhout: Brepols. 2009. Pp. 507; 509–1091. €140,00.
ISBN 978-2-503-53277-6.)
Although scholars of seventeenth-century France are familiar with the
name Alain de Solminihac, they have waited almost a century for a successor
to the standard biography published by Eugène Sol, the diocesan archivist of
Cahors (Aurillac, 1927). This was not due to a paucity of sources, for the
archives of the Cahors Diocese are among the best preserved of the French
Church, as this latest study of Solminihac demonstrates. Patrick Petot’s twovolume study of the Venerable Solminihac (who was beatified in 1981) makes
ample use of the 10,000 documents stored in the Fonds Solminihac to analyze
his lengthy career and includes a useful annex of 143 of the more important
and illuminating.

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Petot’s access to such documents has enabled him to track the dualism
within his subject’s career, and this forms the basic thematic structure of the
biography. One of only a handful of religious who ascended to episcopal
status during the heyday of Catholic reform in France, Solminihac found his
vocation within the walls of the abbey of the Augustinian canons of
Chancelade in Dordogne and carried its influence into his subsequent career
as bishop. It is Petot’s contention that it was the spirit of St. Augustine of
Hippo that linked Solminihac’s devotion to his religious and episcopal status,
although it is obvious that the bishop was inspired by other model bishops
such as Ss. Martin of Tours, Charles Borromeo, and Francis de Sales (he met
the latter around 1619 when St. Francis visited Paris). His career cannot be
broken into two neat segments of Augustinian canonry and Augustinian episcopacy, however, for Solminihac’s progress from the abbey of Chancelade to
the diocesan palace of Cahors in 1636–37 was the subject of private procrastination and anguish until he resolved to reconcile both in a form of religious prelacy and of public ecclesiastical dispute. In describing both aspects,
Petot draws attention to the internal fissures within French Catholic Reform,
which often placed varieties of reform at loggerheads.
Dedicated to his companion canons at Chancelade and to the rule of
Augustine that they followed, Solminihac had little desire to abandon the
monastery in favor of a public pastorate and a more secular rule of life. He
finally determined to retain his abbatial office and to adopt as many of the
customs of religious life as possible within his episcopal household, including
the appointment of his fellow canons as diocesan officials. Coupled with symbolic gestures such as the combining of religious regalia with episcopal, this
contributed to the turbulent nature of Solminihac’s relations with the secular
clergy of his diocese, often attributed simply to their reluctance to accept the
reforming initiatives of a Tridentine bishop. Petot is quite correct to emphasize that Solminihac’s intractable rigor, sometimes criticized by episcopal
associates who knew him personally, was a further source of discontent; and
he offers a detailed examination of the climax to these tensions in 1651, when
a set of malcontents temporarily seized control of the bishop’s synod.
Solminihac’s devotion to his religious vocation was a source for a further
conflict and related to the drive amongst reformers within religious congregations to restore pure and uniform discipline to associated monasteries
throughout France. In Solminihac’s case, Cardinal François de La
Rochefoucauld interpreted his appointment as bishop of Cahors as a de
facto resignation of the abbacy of Chancelade and the signal for his attempt
to absorb Chancelade into the Congrégation de France. There followed an
extended dispute that reached to the level of the royal council, as Solminihac
strove to maintain reforms in Chancelade and to ensure that the abbey was
not simply swallowed by Messieurs de Sainte-Geneviève. Whereas Joseph
Bergin and Isabelle Brian have examined attempts at reform from the standpoints of La Rochefoucauld and the Benedictines of the Congrégation de

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France, Petot’s concentration on Solminihac provides an unusual and
broader perspective on the competition between the forces of centralization
and uniformity in the Tridentine Church across the hierarchical ranks of the
upper Church.
Petot’s study of Solminihac’s interior life is less illuminating than his examination of his public acts as abbot and bishop, largely because Solminihac did
not record his personal reflections at length in writing. His contacts with
fellow reformers such as St. Vincent de Paul are documented in detail,
although there is little in this discussion to enlighten as their relationship has
been examined elsewhere. His associations with fellow bishops repay Petot’s
attention, however, for it is evident that Solminihac acted as a mentor to a
number of younger and less experienced bishops in the southwest during the
1640s and 1650s, and an important conduit for the communication of contemporary concepts of episcopal piety and government. It is in evidence such
as this that a biographical study such as Petot’s makes its greatest contribution to the scholarship of the French Catholic Reformation, which still tends
to rely on generalized commentaries in the absence of specific and comprehensive evidence.
National University of Ireland, Galway

ALISON FORRESTAL

Journey of Five Capuchin Nuns. By Madre María Rosa. Edited and translated
by Sarah E. Owens. [The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe:The Toronto
Series.] (Toronto: Iter and Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies.
2009. Pp. viii, 212. $17.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-772-72050-4.)
Sarah E. Owens’s edited translation of the Journey of Five Capuchin Nuns
provides an enlightening glimpse into the experiences of early-modern religious women.This lively narrative gives voice to a group of adventurous nuns
who were far from passive and cloistered. From the pen of María Rosa, a
Capuchin nun of the early-eighteenth century, comes a candid and fascinating
account of her and her sisters’ efforts to found a Capuchin convent in Peru.
Among other adventures, the women traveled from Madrid to southern Spain,
were captured by the Dutch (one of Spain’s enemies at the time), and made
a harrowing journey across the Andes. Battling sickness and the elements, and
supported by a network of ecclesiastical patronage, the nuns succeeded in
transporting their model of female monasticism to the far reaches of Spain’s
empire. Owens has provided an engaging translation and helpful introductory
notes.This translation will be of interest to a broad range of scholars including those interested in early-modern nuns and the participation of women in
the Atlantic world of trade and travel.
Several features make this text distinctive.The first, as Owens notes, is that
it was not written at the urging of a male ecclesiastic. Rather, María Rosa
wrote for her fellow nuns in Madrid, who desired an account of their sisters’

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efforts.Although composed, then, as a travel narrative, the text is nonetheless
infused with María Rosa’s particular objectives: to defend her monastic
endeavor and the superiority of Spanish Catholicism and empire. She consistently upholds the Capuchin model of devout austerity. She is critical, for
example, of convents in which they lodged where the nuns wore elaborate
habits and lived in luxurious buildings. In recounting their capture at the
hands of the Dutch, she highlights the religious barbarity of their captors
(they profaned an image of St. Joseph), while suggesting that they were
impressed by the nuns’ vow of poverty.
The account is also significant because it provides a distinct perspective
on the world of Spain’s imperial expansion. Writing both as a woman and a
professed religious, María Rosa has added an important voice to our understanding of the Atlantic world. In the introduction, for example, Owens makes
a compelling argument for her familiarity with other accounts of the “new”
world, especially José de Acosta’s Natural and Moral History of the Indies
(1590).Yet as a nun, she also saw this world through a distinctive lens.Along
the route in South America to their final destination in Lima, Peru, for example, the nuns encountered curious crowds wanting to meet them. Far from
typical circumstances where visiting parlors with partitions would separate
the nuns from secular society, the women instead had to cover their faces
when engaging in conversation.
The translation would be an excellent text to use with undergraduates.The
nuns who emerge from these pages—devout, brave, and willing to enjoy a
good laugh—will defy stereotypes and prompt a reconsideration of the role
of religious women beyond the cloister.
Cleveland State University

ELIZABETH A. LEHFELDT

L’inquisizione in età moderna e il caso milanese. Atti delle giornate di
studio 27–29 novembre 2008. Edited by Claudia di Filippo Bareggi and
Gianvittorio Signorotto. [Studia Borromaica, 23.] (Milan: Biblioteca
Ambrosiana; Rome: Bulzoni Editore. 2009. Pp. 552. €28,00 paperback. ISBN
978-8-878-70443-5.)
This volume is the product of a conference sponsored by the Accademia
Ambrosiana and held at the Ambrosian Library in Milan in November 2008.
The volume offers two kinds of articles. The first kind focuses on the
Inquisition in Milan and Lombardy. Although the Milanese Inquisition’s
records were destroyed in the late-eighteenth century, scholars have made
good use of the Inquisition records in the archive of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith opened to scholars in the late 1990s.
Alain Tallon discusses a north Italian count and soldier who served the
French king and was arrested for heresy in 1570, then was freed as a result

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of French diplomatic pressure. Massimo Carlo Giannini studies two
Milanese Inquisition trials of Ascanio Marso, secretary to a high Milanese
council; he concludes that politics more than heresy led to his arrest.Wietse
de Boer studies the cases of four Swiss Protestant soldiers in the service of
Venice who were arrested in Milan in 1619. He finds that a soldierly sense
of honor made them steadfast in their faith; they were probably expelled
rather than punished. Miguel Gotor discusses the Milanese cult of Elisabetta
Peragalli, which came under the Inquisition’s suspicion in 1657. Angelo
Turchini discusses the jurisdictional powers and limits of the Inquisition in
various parts of Lombardy and provides a useful list of Inquisition officials.
Cinzia Cremonini studies the confraternity of the Sign of the Cross, the
organization of the familiars of the Inquisition in Lombardy, and provides a
membership list. Flavio Rurale studies the relations between the religious
orders and the Inquisition in Lombardy in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Gianvittorio Signorotto sees a crisis of the Milanese Inquisition in
the seventeenth century in the face of the growing authority of the state.
Claudia di Filippo Bareggi discusses issues concerning confession and the
Inquisition.
The other group of articles addresses broader Inquisition topics. In the
longest article Andrea Errera analyzes the rules and duties of the fiscal procurator of the Inquisition by studying Inquisition manuals. Ugo Baldini asks if
there was change in ecclesiastical censorship of scientific books between the
sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, and answers with a qualified and
cautious “yes.” Franco Buzzi asks if there was a theological justification for the
Inquisition and pursues the answer from ancient Christian sources to
Francisco Suárez. The Inquisition was justified as necessary for the public
good of Christian society. Mario Infelise compares Venetian and Milanese
press censorship and adds comments on Paolo Sarpi and John Milton, who
visited Italy. Elena Brambilla analyzes the Inquisition criteria for judging miracles and holiness in the period 1680 to 1710 and sees Cartesianism influencing Inquisition thinking. John Tedeschi comments on the diaspora of Italian
Protestant intellectuals, while Adriano Prosperi briefly assesses the
Inquisition in terms of the history of justice. Gigliola Fragnito notes that the
Congregation of the Index failed to implement a coordinated policy for the
seizure and destruction of books at the time of the Clementine Index of 1596;
it then lost the initiative to the Inquisition. Finally, José Martínez Millán surveys the statutes on the purity of the blood and the consequent disputes in
the Spanish Inquisition.
Although a few authors reprise material that they have discussed in more
detail elsewhere, there is much original scholarship in the volume.The overall quality is high.Almost all of the articles provide rich bibliography for scholars seeking to learn more.
University of Toronto (Emeritus) and Chapel Hill, NC

PAUL F. GRENDLER

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Late Modern European
Recent Catholic Philosophy: The Nineteenth Century. By Alan Vincelette.
[Marquette Studies in Philosophy, No. 58.] (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. 2009. Pp. 413. $42.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-874-62756-5.)
As Alan Vincelette observes in this book, it is a regrettable feature of standard histories of nineteenth-century philosophy that they tend to ignore or
overlook the burgeoning of a distinctly Catholic philosophical tradition
during this time. For Vincelette, it is all the more regrettable that Catholic historians of philosophy have done little to draw attention to this fact. As he puts
it, “many Catholic historians of [nineteenth-century] philosophy either omit
some important Catholic philosophers or fail to mention that a given philosopher was Catholic” (p. 8).The aim of this book, accordingly, is to “remedy this
situation and so make known the central figures in Nineteenth-Century
Catholic philosophy”; moreover, to show how “it is really in the NineteenthCentury that Catholic Philosophy comes into its own” (p. 8).
Based on a lecture course, the book is clearly laid out, treating various
nineteenth-century philosophical movements (and select representatives of
these movements) with chapters on romanticism (François-René de
Chateaubriand and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel), fideism and traditionalism (Louis Eugène Marie Bautain and Louis de Bonald), semi-rationalism
(Anton Günther and Georg Hermes), spiritualism (Jean-Gaspard Félix Lacher
Ravaisson-Mollien), ontologism (Antonio Rosmini-Serbati and Orestes
Brownson), Thomism (Joseph Kleutgen and Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier),
Augustinianism (Auguste Joseph Alphonse Gratry and Maurice Blondel), and
integralism (Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman and Leon Ollé-Laprune).
As these pairings would suggest, and given the inevitable constraints of any
survey work, Vincelette is selective in the figures and topics he treats (p. 9).
Still, he succeeds in giving a rich impression of the diversity of Catholic
philosophers during this time, including neglected figures such as the
American Catholic philosopher Brownson (1803–76).
On the whole, however, the book is stronger in its treatment of the French
philosophical scene than the contemporary German scene. To be sure, the
inclusion of Schlegel, Günther, Hermes, and Kleutgen must be appreciated.
But, perhaps due to the absence of a clear category for classification, missing
is any treatment of the Tübingen school that includes its founder Johann
Sebastian Drey (1777–1853), Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838), Franz Anton
Staudenmaier (1800–56), and Johannes Kuhn (1806–87). This is not an
insignificant omission, given the prominence of German idealism in the nineteenth century, its challenges to Catholic theology in Germany, and the brilliance of the Tübingen school’s innovative philosophical response to it.
Staudenmeier’s monumental critique of Hegel and of Kuhn’s masterful reception of Schelling and the whole of modern philosophy are relevant in this

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regard. Admittedly, the omission of such figures can be justified on the
grounds that they are theologians and together do not constitute a particular
“ism”; but this only raises again the questions of selection and who exactly
counts as a Catholic philosopher.
Another question implicitly raised by the book, which it does not answer,
is whether the diversity of Catholic thinkers and movements, as represented
here, militates against any notion of a unified tradition of Catholic philosophy
in the nineteenth century. Moreover, the book does not address the larger theoretical question, which bears directly on the thesis of the book and demands
serious consideration, whether there can be such a thing as “Catholic philosophy.” (The differing views of Heidegger and Gilson are notable in this regard.)
A final, minor critical observation is that this book reads like a compendium, a volume of an encyclopedia, or an extensive bibliography of nineteenth-century Catholic philosophy. On nearly every page there are masses
of dates, abbreviations, and citations, which can impede reading. But the textual apparatus is also impressive, laden with details, and testifies to the
author’s extensive historical erudition. Indeed, what makes this a difficult
read is also what makes it a helpful and important single-volume reference
work on the topic.
University of Notre Dame

JOHN BETZ

Captain Rock: The Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821–1824. By James S.
Donnelly Jr. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 2009. Pp. xiv, 508.
$35.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-299-23314-3.)
James S. Donnelly Jr. has made such an extraordinary contribution over
forty years to our understanding of central aspects of the Irish experience,
revolving mainly around land and religion, that it is impossible to fully understand modern Irish history without immersion in his work. Captain Rock
enhances his stature even further by providing an indispensable interpretation of the interrelationship between these two factors in exploring the Irish
Agrarian Rebellion of 1821–24 in unprecedented detail and depth.
The Rockite agrarian movement in southwest Ireland, about a quarter of
the country, is particularly interesting for the issues it raises about the blend of
the material, religious, and political impulses underlying relationships between
and within victors and vanquished in a colonial environment, broadly represented at this time in Ireland by the Protestant and English minority landlords
in ascendancy over the Catholic Irish majority farmers/peasants.
Donnelly is so much the supreme master of his subject that queries have
to be less about his work in particular than about the general challenge of the
use of sources in the historiography of Irish protest movements. The source

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material derives disproportionally from the world of the conqueror, looking
in or looking down on the conquered.The issue is not so much that the “official mind” or even the conquest mind more broadly was hostile, as that it was
so often uncomprehending. The material, evocative use though Donnelly
makes of threatening Rockite notices, emanates disproportionately from the
ascendancy side, despite some Catholic newspaper reporting. However rich
in detail, this can often be more valuable for illuminating the mentalities of
the rulers than of the ruled.
Although it is unlikely that the nuances of problematical sources in these
situations can be captured entirely, Donnelly penetrates them to a depth that
ensures an original interpretation of the composition and chronology of
agrarian protest movements, which significantly adds to our understanding of
the functioning of rural society.
Donnelly’s delineation allows the relationship between material and cultural factors to be addressed in a more structured manner than ever before.
Nevertheless, a conundrum remains. Donnelly argues that the Rockite movement owed much of its momentum and intensity to the widespread dissemination of the millenarian prophecies of Pastorini (aka Charles Walmesley,
O.S.B.) predicting the overthrow of Protestantism in 1825. But if Pastorini’s
prophecies “gained a firm hold at the popular level” not only “in the affected
region” but also “far beyond” (p. 4), a question then arises: Why did the areas
“far beyond” remain so relatively unaffected by Rockite unrest? Donnelly
traces the outbreak to a particular local agrarian dispute in west Limerick,
which then spread far beyond the original source. But why did it stop spreading where it did? Insofar as the sources permit, intensive study of areas just
beyond the restless counties or quieter areas within them, for counties were
more administrative than socioeconomic units, might further illuminate the
issue. However likely that the answer may lie in circumstances that would
reinforce Donnelly’s interpretation, that remains to be demonstrated.
It is churlish to hunger for more in the face of so rich a repast. No short
review can do full justice to the assiduity and ingenuity of so probing an
inquiry, which can have few equals in the study of agrarian protest movements anywhere.The entire work wonderfully illuminates an important field
of research with implications extending far beyond the Irish experience.
New York University

J. JOSEPH LEE

Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers: Shaping Doctrine in NineteenthCentury England. By Benjamin John King. [Changing Paradigms in
Historical and Systematic Theology.] (New York: Oxford University Press.
2009. Pp. xvii, 289. $100.00. ISBN 978-0-199-54813-2.)
Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman’s enthusiasm for the Fathers of the
Alexandrian Church is well known, but in-depth study has been lacking in this

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area. Benjamin John King now has rectified this omission, examining
Newman’s relationship with the Alexandrian Fathers in painstaking detail.
He presents Newman’s understanding of these Fathers as passing through
various phases. He explores first Newman’s composition of Arians of the
Fourth Century in the early 1830s, then examines the patristic background to
Newman’s sermons on Christ during the rest of that decade. He moves to
expounding Newman’s views on the Trinity between 1840 and 1858. He concludes by considering what Newman had to say when he returned to these
matters in later life, from 1864 to 1881. King not only pays close attention to
Newman’s approach and use of his patristic sources but also weaves in the
way the work of other writers can be detected in what he says, especially the
Anglican scholarship of George Bull,William Cave, and Ralph Cudworth. It is
evident from the stages in Newman’s writings that he has identified that he
has moved far beyond any simple consideration of an Anglican Newman and
a Catholic Newman.
He illustrates Newman’s movement from a static to a more dynamic view
of the formulation of doctrines and indicates shifts in his sympathies, notably
with regard to Origen. He also argues that, when Newman was in Rome to
prepare for Catholic priesthood, his Latin treatises written there reflect a
position more in tune with Roman Scholasticism. King claims that after
Newman had become a cardinal and was reworking his Select Treatises of
Saint Athanasius (1842) into a free translation, he was now reading his great
Alexandrian hero through the neo-Thomistic lens that the new pope, Leo
XIII, was encouraging.
King has done this area of Newman scholarship a real service. His book
will be indispensable for future students who want to investigate these matters. His attention to detail is formidable. However, its very density of detail
raises the question of the wood versus the trees. For example, did Newman
really move into the Scholastic camp or seek to embrace neo-Thomism? Or
was he just attempting to express himself in ways that his readers could
understand? Do his writings present evidence of change in him or his pastoral instinct?
Newman is famous for the rarity of his footnotes, yet he read extensively.
Perhaps it was less a matter of his failure to acknowledge his sources and
influences than a consequence of the originality of his approach. What he
read nurtured his understanding. He described portions of Alexandrian
teaching as “like music to my inward ear.”1 He was recognizing what he
already knew more than he was learning something fresh. What was truly
novel—his new learning or his shifts of emphasis that King highlights so
well? Were these rather further elements that were being integrated into
1

John Henry Newman, Apologia pro vita sua (London, 1890), p. 26.

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Newman’s overarching vision? These are the fundamental questions that this
fine book prompts.
The Pontifical Beda College, Rome

RODERICK STRANGE

Conscience & Conversion in Newman. A Developmental Study of Self in
John Henry Newman. By Walter E. Conn. [Marquette Studies in Theology,
No. 71.] (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. 2010. Pp. 158. $17.00
paperback. ISBN 978-0-874-62777-0.)
Walter Conn’s concise, interdisciplinary case study of Blessed Cardinal
John Henry Newman’s psychological self-development and conversions
mines not only the English churchman’s relevant major works but also his private letters, diaries, and journals, which, to paraphrase Newman, reveal the
true character of a man. Conn succeeds in his hope that “some readers will
find it a useful review of Newman’s life” (p. 9), since it offers a specialized
perspective, with well-chosen source references, surveying well-traveled
ground.Tracking Newman’s various conversions chronologically, each of the
four chapters opens with a discussion of the events and Newman literature
of the period, followed by Conn’s use of psychological development theories
from Erickson, Piaget, Kohlberg, Fowler, and Kegan to support his analyses of
Newman’s various conversions, although to those unfamiliar with this literature, the brevity of the psychological analysis can be challenging reading at
times. However, a helpful chart on the final page of the appendix compares
the stages of each developmental theorist with the four conversion stages
drawn from Conn’s prior research. Readers may profit by reading the very
helpful appendix first, which provides a succinct overview of Conn’s previous research on conversion.
Conn’s thesis for interpreting Newman’s conversion experiences is
grounded in the dynamic relationship of conscience,“the radical drive of the
personal subject for self-transcendence” (p. 132), and basic conversion, “an
‘about-face’ which moves one into a new world” (p. 22).These occur within
the subject’s fundamental dynamism for self-transcendence. Conn identifies
Newman’s multiconversions as they unfolded chronologically in three stages.
First was a “basic Christian moral conversion” with evangelical overtones at
age fifteen, accompanied by “important affective, cognitive, and religious
dimensions” (p. 8).This led to a “structural cognitive conversion” (p. 8) during
his twenties, with changes in both what and how religious knowledge was
acquired. Finally, Conn suggests a “new interpretation” of Newman’s “ecclesial
conversion” as a “negative deconversion” from Anglicanism and a “positive
conversion” to Rome at age forty-four,“best understood as a moral (religious)
decision responding to a judgment of personal conscience . . . . after six
painful years of reflection, discernment, and deliberation” (p. 8).The review of
Newman’s Roman Catholic period (chap. 4) concludes with Conn’s elaboration of Newman’s nonsystematic development of his insights on conscience,

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which Conn summarizes as the threefold process of Augustinian desire,
Aristotelian discernment, and Thomistic demand for the decision to act.
The brevity that affects the psychological analysis, however, appears to
influence other notable aspects of the study, three of which deserve mention.
First, theoretically, the aesthetic dimension of mind, which is the seat of the
imagination, requires attention. For example, the works of Hans Urs von
Balthasar and Viktor Frankl, in theology and psychology respectively, speak to
the importance of this dimension of human experience. Although “imagination” is mentioned here, it is but the function of the aesthetic dimension of
mind, an investigation of which would add to the study of conversion.
Second, the Newman literature indicates that his lionhearted English self-will
was the primary obstruction to his final conversion to Rome and deserves
fuller examination.This is a prominent revelation, along with Newman’s aesthetic experience, in his very important diary notes during his participation
in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola in 1843—a critical year in
Newman’s conversion process. The Exercises are mentioned here, but their
effects on Newman are not explored. Third, Newman’s interpersonal relationships were so influential as to be virtually determinative of his various
conversions. For example, Newman writes in the Apologia Pro Vita Sua that
the Irish priest Charles Russell “had more to do with my conversion, perhaps,
than anyone else.”1 Yet Russell is mentioned only in passing.
A broader exploration of these major aspects would have further
enhanced what is, nevertheless, an engrossing and well-documented addition
to Newman conversion literature.
DeVry University

ROBERT C. CHRISTIE

Maria Katharina Kasper (1820–1898), Gründerin der Genossenschaft
“Arme Dienstmägde Jesu Christi”: Ein Beitrag zur Pastoralgeschichte des
19. Jahrhunderts. By Renate Maier. [Europäische Hochschulschriften,
Reihe XXIII,Theologie, Bd. 894.] (Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang. 2009. Pp.
482. $111.95 paperback. ISBN 978-3-631-59395-0.)
It seems at times as though the biographies of nineteenth-century religious figures are as fixed as those of early-medieval saints. St. Maria Katharina
Kasper came from a poor family in a small village. She suffered from ill health
all her life, which was nevertheless of a respectable length. She underwent a
number of trials, but was encouraged by several visions promising success. In
the end, she was honored and successful in her spiritual endeavors.
This work is a dissertation for the faculty of the PhilosophischTheologische Hochschule Sankt Georgen in Frankfurt-am-Main, where it was
directed by Michael Sievernich, S.J. The work consists of an introduction,
1

John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (London, 1908), p. 194.

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three main sections, a conclusion, and extensive appendices. The first major
section (pp. 23–136) consists of three chapters on the life of Kasper.The narrative is chapter 1; chapter 2 is an extensive collection of source materials;
and chapter 3 covers the canonization process. Section 2 (pp. 127–230) discusses Kasper’s order, the religious foundation known as the Poor Servants of
Jesus Christ, again in three chapters—origins, establishments, and visitations.
Section 3 (pp. 231–358) considers the relationships and spirituality of Kasper,
with chapters on her connections to persons and movements, her spirituality
as documented in her writings, and her relationship to the traditions of the
Church. Finally, there is the interesting conclusion (pp. 359–62) “Die
Bedeutung Kathartina Kaspers für die Gegenwart.” Extensive appendices
follow of the correspondence of the founder; constitutions of the foundation;
unedited letters; official documents; and lists of sources, persons, members of
the order, locations of houses, and places mentioned.
Kasper was born in the small village of Dernbach, part of the Archdiocese
of Trier until it was included in the new Diocese of Limburg (the diocese covered the territory of the Duchy of Nassau, which was absorbed into the
Kingdom of Prussia in 1866). She lived the greater part of her life in
Dernbach. Her father died when she was twenty-one, leaving her to care for
her mother. Stories are told that can be found in hagiographies from nearly
every age—Kasper sharing food with the poor, showing little promise as a
scholar but paying close attention in religion classes. Beginning in 1845,
Kasper had several visions that pointed the way to her later work. After helping those in need, she came to the notice of church authorities and gained the
support of an initially skeptical Peter Joseph Blum, bishop of Limburg. Blum
assisted in the founding of an order of sisters devoted to elementary education and charitable work such as caring for orphans and looking after the sick,
including wounded soldiers from the 1866 Austro-Prussian conflict.
The Poor Servants of Jesus Christ took its first vows as a religious community on August 15, 1851, with six members. Kasper took the name Maria.
The order rapidly spread in the German-speaking lands and elsewhere, establishing a foundation in the United States at Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1868.
During the time of the Kulturkampf in Prussia, the worldly wisdom of the
foundress is reflected in a letter of 1881 to her bishop in exile, in which she
describes her response to the prohibition of admitting new members. She
simply put novices and postulants through formation, then sent them out of
Prussian territory to take their vows at a daughter house. In this way, sixtyfour novices and forty-two postulants were at that time working in daughter
houses. This is an example of what Maier calls Kasper’s seizure of the hour,
the kairos, as enjoined in scripture. Kasper died in 1898 and was canonized
by Pope Paul VI on April 16, 1978.
For the scholar, the most significant portions of this work are the extensive reproductions of documents by and about Kasper. They shed a com-

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pelling light on social and religious conditions in the nineteenth century and
beg for a comparative study with similar founders and foundations.
Tennessee Technological University (Emeritus)

WILLIAM C. SCHRADER

Christianizing Crimea: Shaping Sacred Space in the Russian Empire and
Beyond. By Mara Kozelsky. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.
2010. Pp. xiv, 270. $42.00. ISBN 978-0-875-80412-5.)
This fine monograph examines the “Christianizing” of the Crimea—from
the annexation in the late-eighteenth century to the Crimean War and its
aftermath.After first mapping the myriad ethnic and confessional groups that
populated the area, Mara Kozelsky examines how the Russian state and
church came to grips with this complex, rapidly developing region. She
shows that state and church authorities did not always agree (especially on
the matter of converting Muslims), but that praxis varied considerably (with
local officials subverting the general-governor’s opposition, for example).
This study also shows how public opinion, steeped in images of a glorious
Greek and Christian past, helped shape attitudes even before the region was
predominantly Russian and Orthodox. The turning point came under
Archbishop Innokentii (Borisov) at mid-century, a zealot for buttressing the
Christian identity of the region, most dramatically through the establishment
of new monasteries based on the model of Mount Athos. The Crimean War
completed this process, linking the Crimea with a national identity that was
at once Russian and Orthodox.The author has mined an impressive array of
sources, not only printed materials neglected by previous historians but also
central and local archival materials, and places her findings within the larger
context of current scholarship.
A short review can hardly do justice to the scale of research and close
analysis.The author draws extensively on Innokentii’s manuscript collections
in the Russian National Library and the Russian State Historical Archive, and
to a lesser extent on the provincial archives in Odessa and Simferopol. The
review of secondary works is impressive, with little missing from the bibliography; a rare omission is L.V.Vel’nikova’s 2007 article.1
Even so thoughtful, meticulously researched a work leaves some questions
unanswered.The author seeks to argue that the discourse (whether sermons,
archaeological reports, or magazine articles) “craft[ed] Russian identity” (book
jacket) and played a major role in shaping public, even popular, opinion.
Given the miniscule size of the press (ecclesiastical and secular), the abysmal,
single-digit literacy rates, and the infrequency of preaching by parish priests
1
L.V. Vel’nikova,“Patrioticheskaia deiatel’nost’ arkhiepiskopa Innokentiia (Borisova)
v gody Krymskoi voiny (1853–1856 gg.),” Vestnik tserkovnoi istorii, 4, no. 8 (2007),
73–88.

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before the mid-nineteenth century (as is evident in the klirovye vedomosti),
it is precarious to assume that Innokentii’s sermons had a broad impact.
Indeed, the author examines only the discourse (“tropes”), not the reception—even in high circles, let alone the mass of unlettered Russian peasantry.
Second, “Christianizing” here really pertains only to discourse; the reader
learns little about parish life—about the miracles, conversions, apostasy, adultery, religious indifference, and parish-clergy conflict that fill the diocesan
archive (including a collection in the State Archive of Odessa Oblast—the
Odessa consistory, fond 173). Although the author has a coherent narrative,
there is insufficient attention paid to priests and parishioners, who remain
anonymous and inaccessible, despite the lengthy exegesis of sermons and references to “sacred landscapes.” Finally, there are minor peccadilloes;
Innokentii, for example, was previously appointed bishop in Vologda (not
Vologod) and in 1841, not 1838 (p. 18).
Aside from such reservations, this study provides a valuable analysis of
elite perception and writing about the Crimea on the part of the ranking
clergy as well as state officials. It also helps to shed light on what the author
calls “the pan-Orthodox sentiment and religious patriotism” that developed
“throughout the empire and found expression in New Russia” (p. 67).
Brandeis University

GREGORY L. FREEZE

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 12: Berlin: 1932–1933. English Edition, edited
by Larry L. Rasmussen and translated by Isabel Best and David Higgins;
supplementary material translated by Douglas W. Stott. (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press. 2009. Pp. xxii, 680. $55.00. ISBN 978-0-800-68312-2.)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer occupies a rare place in history. For example, he was
one of the few Christians in Germany never charmed by any portion of what
Hitler offered to the beleaguered German people. He, along with the rest of
his family, recognized from the start what is acknowleged today—that this
regime did not protect but violated moral values. He also occupies a rare
place in history as a martyr, executed in April 1945 and now remembered, for
example, at Westminster Abbey, where his statue is one of ten in a row of
modern martyrs newly placed over the west entrance.
Bonhoeffer also occupies a relatively rare place in publishing, with sixteen thick volumes of his complete works offered to readers of English, thirteen of them now complete. This represents a project of the International
Bonhoeffer Society, undertaken to make available in English the sixteen
volumes completed in German by 1998. Bonhoeffer is well worth the trouble, on two counts. His life story is one of Christian courage and ethical
acumen in response to Hitler and the Holocaust. Nazi horrors were perpetrated by a Christian nation with an extraordinary list of cultural accom-

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plishments. Bonhoeffer’s rare voice in opposition—including, finally, participation in the failed plot to assassinate Hitler—has an important place in the
history of that period. Additionally, Bonhoeffer’s writings increasingly
became available and grew in stature during the postwar period, so that he
now ranks among the most influential Protestant theologians of the twentieth century.
Volume 12 is of special interest, since it represents a crucial year, starting
three months before the rise of Hitler. Born in 1906, Bonhoeffer was only in
his mid-twenties at the time, but he had packed many accomplishments into
his tender years. He completed his doctorate by age twenty-one and his
second dissertation, the German Habilitation, at age twenty-four. He then
spent 1930–31 at Union Theological Seminary in New York, befriending
Reinhold Niebuhr and learning to know and respect the African American
experience of worship at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in neighboring
Harlem. Bonhoeffer began lecturing at the University of Berlin in 1931 at age
twenty-five; this volume tells us much about his ideas, his students, and his
unique approach to the trade of the German professor. He stood out for his
students in his accessibility, the breadth of his knowledge, the sharpness of
his theological insight, and the intensity of his political concerns. Larry
Rasmussen, in his very useful introduction to this volume, argues that
Bonhoeffer’s lectures on Christology in summer 1933—available only
through his students’ notes—establish a foundation for both his theology and
politics as they matured over the next twelve years.
During this period, Bonhoeffer also played a part in some of the most
important decisions taken by the German Protestant Church, as can be seen
in the letters and papers published in this volume. He helped the “Young
Reformers” in their unsuccessful effort to thwart the pro-Nazi “German
Christians” in the church elections of July 1933. He then worked with Martin
Niemöller in developing the Pastor’s Emergency League, a group opposed to
“German Christian” attempts to impose the “Aryan Paragraph” in the church.
Then he coauthored the Bethel Confession, which became a foundational
document for Karl Barth’s Barmen Declaration and the establishment of the
Confessing Church. These writings and activities place Bonhoeffer at the
heart of questions that remain important to our understanding of Protestants
in Nazi Germany. Finally, this volume contains Bonhoeffer’s “The Church and
the Jewish Question,” a document not without some controversy, but still a
most prescient knife cutting through the anti-Jewish policies of the Nazi program. Published in June 1933, this document challenged the church to question the state “as to the legitimate state character of its actions” and to remember the church’s “unconditional obligation toward the victims of any societal
order, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.”Then, if a formal
church council found it necessary, the church was obliged “not just to bind
up the wounds of the [Jewish] victims beneath the wheel but to seize the
wheel itself” (p. 365), a foreshadowing of resistance that Bonhoeffer eventu-

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ally undertook himself, with a small coterie of fellow conspirators but without benefit of a church body behind him.
Pacific Lutheran University
Tacoma, WA

ROBERT P. ERICKSEN

Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity. The Kulturkampf Newsletters,
1936–1939. Edited and translated by Richard Bonney. [Studies in the
History of Religious and Political Pluralism,Vol. 4.] (Bern: Peter Lang. 2009.
Pp. x, 578. $86.95 paperback. ISBN 978-3-039-11904-2.)
Some of the most incisive and forceful descriptions and analyses of the
Nazi campaign against the German churches and indeed against Christianity
were contained in 135 Kulturkampf Newsletters written between January
1936 and the end of August 1939, which appeared at almost weekly intervals.
Published first in Paris, they also appeared in a German edition, a British edition in 1937, and a U.S. edition in 1939.They have now been republished in
an almost complete edition translated by Richard Bonney.As a contemporary
source, these newsletters were extremely well informed and provided a valuable chronology of the Nazi persecution of the churches.They served as one
of the first decided commentaries outlining the essential opposition and
incompatibility between the Nazi Weltanschauung and Christian faith.
This repeated theme is supplemented by detailed documentation of the
Nazis’ overt harassment of dissident priests and pastors, the suppression of
the churches’ publications, and the closure of schools and organizations. In
addition, extracts are given from the speeches and writings of prominent
Nazis, outlining their deliberate hostility, which were all seen as part of a
wider campaign not merely to control but eventually to eradicate Christianity
from Germany. Fittingly, the final issue condemned the Nazi ideology, with its
“divinization” of Hitler and its appeal to racial consciousness as the basis for
a new state religion.
These newsletters also provide evidence of the attempts made by the
churches to combat this ideological campaign. The sermons of Bishop
Clement von Galen of Münster were quoted with approval, as was the Papal
Encyclical of March 1937. Increasingly attention was paid in 1937 and 1938
to the campaign against the Protestant churches and to the valiant responses
of the Confessing Church. In April 1938 a whole issue was devoted to the
show trial of Pastor Martin Niemöller. His sentencing to a concentration
camp, despite his legal acquittal, was seen as another example of Nazi plans
for repression of all church opposition.
Further, another recurrent theme of these newsletters is the folly of those
gullible churchmen who believed they could be good Catholics or
Protestants and good Nazis at the same time. Here, these illusions were res-

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olutely attacked. In April 1938, for example, the sad case of Cardinal Theodor
Innitzer of Vienna and his craven submission to Hitler after the Anschluss was
rightly castigated as an unforgivable betrayal of true Catholic interests, which
foolishly ignored what had happened in Germany over the previous few years.
There are, however, problems with Bonney’s edition. Curiously, he does
not provide answers in his introduction to such important questions as the
identity of the author or authors, the sources and provenance of the detailed
and often local information provided, the intended audience, the size of the
imprint, or the origins of the funding needed for this multilingual enterprise.
Nor does he try to assess the impact these newsletters had at the time or
explain why they ended so abruptly. He makes no attempt to place them in
the wider context of exile German resistance efforts or literature.
Surprisingly enough, no one came forward during the war or afterward to
claim responsibility for these newsletters. Thus there is still an unresolved
mystery. A fuller attempt to find answers can be found in Heinz Hürten’s edition of the German version, which appeared in 1988, but even Hürten admits
puzzlement as to the authorship question. Nevertheless, the republication in
English of these intrepid letters and commentaries adds to our picture of the
German church struggle and stands as a warning against connivance with
anti-Christian ideologies, which still needs to be heard.
University of British Columbia, Vancouver (Emeritus)

JOHN S. CONWAY

Exkommunikation oder Kommunikation? Der Weg der Kirche nach dem
II. Vatikanum und die Pius–Brüder. Edited by Peter Hünermann.
[Questiones disputatae, Band 236.] (Freiburg: Verlag Herder. 2009. Pp.
208. €24,00 paperback. ISBN 978-3-451-02236-4.)
The schism created by the decision of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
to ordain four bishops for his Society of St. Pius X (SPPX) on June 30, 1988,
without papal permission is little understood in the United States.Americans
mostly assume that the split arose from a quarrel over liturgy: the insistence
of the SPPX that the unreformed Tridentine rite is the only valid form of the
Mass.The meticulous analysis of the schism by the five authors of this work
shows that this assumption is a vast oversimplification.
Far more important for the SSPX than the liturgy is the society’s rejection
of central statements of the Second Vatican Council.A 1997 catechism issued
by the SSPX identifies the issues with admirable clarity:
Q. What are the principal errors of Vatican II?
A. The two most pernicious errors of the Council are [its statements
about] religious freedom and ecumenism . . . to which we must add its
teaching about episcopal collegiality.

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Q. How does the contemporary crisis in the Church differ from other
Church crises?
A. The present crisis differs from all others in that it has been caused by
the highest authorities in the Church, who promote it and resist all
countermeasures.
Q. How must we judge the Assisi religious meeting on Oct. 27, 1986 [at
which Pope John Paul II invited representatives of the world religions
to pray for peace]?
A. The meeting was an unprecedented scandal leading souls astray, and a
violation of God’s First Commandment. (Ctd. by Hünermann, p. 208).
Behind these breathtaking statements is the belief that the source of all
evil in the modern world is the French Revolution, which overthrew right
order, based on the sovereignty of God, and substituted the humanistic trinity
of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Stoutly resisted by the Catholic Church
during the long nineteenth century, these pernicious principles were
accepted (the SSPX insists) by the Second Vatican Council through its proclamation of religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality.
Unsurprisingly, the SSPX’s appeal to tradition seldom goes beyond the
statements of nineteenth-century popes, although there are also occasional
citations from the Council of Trent—oblivious of Trent’s statement that its
dogmatic decrees were designed not to state the whole corpus of Catholic
belief, but rather “to refute the errors of our times” (ad condemnandos
errores nostri temporis; Denzinger, no. 1763). As the authors of this book
point out repeatedly, citations from scripture are rare.This rigid understanding of tradition is oblivious, too, of Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman’s
dictum “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”1
In an effort to heal the schism, Pope Benedict XVI has permitted wider use
of the Tridentine Mass and lifted the excommunication that the four SSPX
bishops incurred automatically (latae sententiae) by accepting episcopal
ordination without papal permission. The authors point out that this was
done despite the lack of any expression of regret for the schismatic ordination by any of the four. The SSPX has responded with statements interpreting
these measures not as an expression of unprecedented generosity by the
pope, but as a tacit acknowledgment that its views are correct.
Still lacking, it tells us, is a correction of the errors of the Second Vatican
Council.Without that, it insists, it must continue to go its own way, confident
that in so doing, it alone is the true representative of the Church founded by
Jesus Christ.
Archdiocese of St. Louis

JOHN JAY HUGHES

1
John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
(London, 1845), p. 39.

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391

American
American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll. By Bradley J. Birzer.
(Wilmington, DE: ISI Books. 2010. Pp. xviii, 286. $25.00. ISBN 978-1-93385989-7.)
In American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll, Bradley J. Birzer offers
a sympathetic and engaging account of the man now best known as the
only Catholic and the longest-lived among the signers of the Declaration of
Independence. Birzer’s intellectual and political biography focuses on the
years during and immediately after the Revolutionary War. It persuasively
argues that Carroll’s contributions to revolutionary sentiment in Maryland,
to the design of the Maryland and the federal Senates, and to the elevation
of Catholics’ status in the Revolutionary War era deserve admiration and
attention.
In clear, graceful prose, Birzer introduces the reader to the factors that
shaped Carroll’s influential, if at times pained, republicanism. At the age of
eleven, Carroll was sent to the College of St. Omer, a Jesuit institution in
France attended by wealthy English Catholics as well as other members of
Carroll’s prominent Maryland clan; after studying law, he returned to the
colonies in 1765. Throughout American Cicero, Birzer attends to Carroll’s
Catholicism while also exploring influences such as Enlightenment thought,
great wealth, and the frustrations of colonial life. He cogently explores the
neo-Thomist thought Carroll read at St. Omer, for example, and speculates that
it may have bolstered Carroll’s later commitment to American independence.
Yet he scrupulously notes that Carroll never cited the Jesuit authors in his critiques of British rule, turning rather to Montesquieu as he articulated a theory
of balanced government. Life as a Catholic did unmistakably shape Carroll’s
politics. He was moved by the vulnerability of his family in Maryland and of
Catholics in England to mistrust both arbitrary governmental power and mob
rule. Confiscation of property and loss of suffrage was not to him merely a
theoretical proposition, and Carroll opposed each in a way that left him—as
it did other founders—both a rebel and a conservative.
Birzer details Carroll’s debates with Daniel Dulany in the Maryland
Gazette during the colony’s fee controversy. Carroll’s writing, Birzer argues,
moved the colony closer to rebellion, and brought Carroll himself, disenfranchised as a Catholic, authority within the initially extralegal institutions of
America during the Revolutionary War era. The responses of Dulany and his
supporters revealed both the presence and the limits of antipopery. Virulent
attacks on Carroll as a “’patriotic nursling of St. Omer’s [sic]’” (p. 57) appealed
to long-held hostilities but failed to curtail Carroll’s growing influence; he
helped to draft Maryland’s Declaration of Rights, was praised by John Adams,
and after the war served in both Maryland’s Assembly and the U.S. Senate.
Throughout the book, Birzer points to the coexistence of inflammatory anti-

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Catholic rhetoric and Protestant-Catholic alliances. Antipopery outlasted
even Carroll, who still rode horseback in his ninetieth year. But criticism of
Carroll after the Revolution focused as much on his mistrust of democratization as on his membership in a suspect faith; at his death, he was feted, in
Birzer’s words, as “an Old Testament prophet, a classical demigod, and an
American republican, all wrapped in one” (p. 194).
Birzer’s work is best read as a learned, lively appreciation of Carroll’s
thought. As Birzer details Carroll’s writings and conflicts, he wholeheartedly
praises this man whom other historians—as well as contemporaries—have
often found self-interested and haughty. Carroll, Birzer writes, lived “a life seeking republican virtue and a deep Catholicism, whether one agrees with his
understanding of the world or not” (p. 196).
Arizona State University

CATHERINE O’DONNELL

Un altro francescanesimo: Francescane missionarie da Gemona a New
York tra immigrazione e servizio sociale. By Giuseppe Buffon and M.
Antonietta Pozzebon. [Biblioteca di Frate Francesco, 8.] (Rome: Centro
Culturale Aracoeli; Milan: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana. 2009. Pp. 410.
€36,00 paperback. ISBN 978-8-879-62153-3.)
Often church historical studies paint a glowing picture of the growth of
religious orders from the founding idea to institutional development, glossing
over details of challenges faced. Un altro francescanesimo is not one of those
works.
The Congregation of the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart
was canonically erected in 1861 in the Italian town of Gemona, founded by
the Servant of God, Father Gregorio Ludovico Fioravanti, and funded by Laura
Leroux, duchess of Bauffremont. Through Fioravanti’s guidance, these
Franciscan tertiary sisters took a decidedly missionary turn. At the invitation
of the Franciscan priests working among the Italian immigrants in New York
City, the first group of Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart arrived in North
America in 1865, establishing themselves in Peekskill, New York, to begin
their work among the immigrants, orphans, and impoverished.The sisters continued expanding their efforts: in 1871 they spread their apostolate to New
Jersey; in 1872 they began a mission in the Middle East, educating poor and
abandoned youth; in 1874 they entered Pennsylvania; in 1879 they began
work for abandoned and neglected children at St. Joseph’s Home in Peekskill;
in 1885, they opened a mission in Italy itself, to counter the effects of growing anticlericalism and to continue working with the poor; in 1900, they
began Ladycliff Academy in Highland Falls, New York; in the 1960s the sisters
expanded their educational labors and social work to Bolivia and Chile.
This book is a study of the order and its faithfulness to its original charism,
while it developed and adapted to the changing realities of the modern

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393

world. It is an interesting work, combining an understanding of religious life
with sociological principles and statistics, as the authors delve into the life of
the Franciscan sisters from the small town of Gemona to the big city of New
York, moving from immigrant work to social services for the poor in the name
of the Gospel.
In preparation for the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, the sad state of
Italian immigrants was tackled. Bishop Thomas Becker of Wilmington wrote
to Cardinal James Gibbons on December 17, 1884:“Ignorance of their religion
and a depth of vice little known to us yet, are their prominent characteristics.
The fault lies far higher up than the poor people.The clergy are sadly remiss
in their duty.”Although harsh, Becker’s comments were correct. But they also
posed the question of the Church’s long-term response to the needy, not just
to Italian immigrants.The Church’s initial work for immigrants was the establishment of national parishes to foster the immigrants’ faith, schools to educate, and religious orders of men and women to assist them. Of these, religious women had the greatest effect. Immigrants trusted nuns more than
priests, as Mother Cabrini observed in a letter to Archbishop Michael Corrigan
of New York; among these were the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the
Sacred Heart. Their first pastoral responses to immigrants established the
foundation for their pastoral response to all types of needy persons.
This book outlines their development from a small group of generous
women inspired by Il Poverello in a small town in Italy to their growth as an
institution in the world, looking beyond the years of mass immigration to
their responses to contemporary needs and social works, bringing the Gospel
and the Church to a changing, global society.
The Basilica of St. John the Evangelist
Stamford, CT

STEPHEN M. DIGIOVANNI

Demons, Saints, & Patriots: Catholic Visions of Native America through The
Indian Sentinel (1902–1962). By Mark Clatterbuck. [Marquette Studies in
Theology, No. 69.] (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. 2009. Pp. 288.
$29.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-874-62746-6.)
In his book Demons, Saints, & Patriots Mark Clatterbuck provides an
excellent analysis of the history and cultural conflicts of the U. S. Catholic missions to the Native Americans. He focuses his discussion of mission history on
the Indian Sentinel, a journal produced by the Bureau of Catholic Indian
Missions to promote, defend, and seek funding for the missions. By careful
interpretation of the Sentinel, Clatterbuck shows the perspectives, ideologies, and purposes of the various authors featured in the Sentinel who
recount their firsthand experiences in the missions from 1902 to 1962. In the
introduction, Clatterbuck notes that there have been many accounts of the
missions that have either portrayed the missionaries as unselfish heroes or

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have launched scathing attacks on the missionaries; Clatterbuck successfully
avoids either extreme. Rather, he shows how the missionaries viewed the
Native Americans and their culture during different periods on the missions.
Clatterbuck also is interested in explaining the mind-set of the missionaries,
many of whom were Europeans immigrants, and their adaptation to the
American political and cultural landscape.
Clatterbuck provides a concise and accurate account of the controversies surrounding the federal funding of the mission schools prior to 1900.
Here he explains the reasons for the founding of the Bureau of Catholic
Indian Missions, and he describes the hostile political climate toward the
Catholic mission schools. The anti-Catholic climate of the time fostered a
defensive attitude at the Sentinel; its writers consistently argued that the
Catholic missionaries were promoting the best ideals of American patriotism in the missions.
In succeeding chapters, Clatterbuck argues that the authors of the
Sentinel, particularly from 1900 until 1920, often portrayed certain groups of
Native Americans in the missions as devotees of demonic, superstitious religions. Yet Clatterbuck provides evidence of the opposite in which priests
describe other tribes with glowing praise as very religious, happy, charitable,
and peaceful. However, Clatterbuck does not attribute the positive or negative
reactions of the missionaries to the differences in Native American religions
or cultures; rather, he attributes these divergent descriptions to the difficulties
of the missionaries in expressing their attitudes about cultures unlike their
own. He provides examples of missionaries accepting certain Native
American practices and dances and rejecting others; however, he does not
provide a clear explanation as to why they rejected certain practices. In his
evaluation of the attitudes of the missionaries toward the Native Americans,
Clatterbuck does acknowledge the Jesuit theology before the Second Vatican
Council that emphasizes missionary adaptation and natural law: a tradition
that looks for evidence of the presence of virtue in non-Christian cultures. He
shows that this strain of thought was also at work in the writing of some of
the contributors to the Sentinel.
Clatterbuck then describes the ending of the publication of the Sentinel
in 1962 and the Church’s increasing acceptance of Native American spirituality. By this time, he notes the Sentinel no longer portrayed Native Americans
as a people with a foreign culture but rather as a group that had been converted and were patriotic American citizens. He then provides many examples
of the new openness in the Church in the aftermath of the Second Vatican
Council to inculturation and the inclusion of Native American culture and
spirituality in Catholic practice.
In his work, Clatterbuck provides a good resource for understanding the
Catholic missions and the missionaries’ viewpoints. His account is balanced,

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and he emphasizes that the missionaries, far from having a single monolithic
approach, had a variety of perspectives on the different Native cultures.
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, NY

ROSS ENOCHS

The Look of Catholics: Portrayals in Popular Culture from the Great
Depression to the Cold War. By Anthony Burke Smith. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. 2010. Pp. xi, 284. $34.95. ISBN 978-0-700-61716-6.)
In presenting his study of media images of Catholics in America over forty
tumultuous years, Anthony Burke Smith, associate professor and director of
graduate studies at the University of Dayton, has opted for a variety of
approaches. The complexity of topic demands no less. In each of the seven
discrete but related chapters, he advances the exploration one step further
through a chronological progression with perspectives borrowed from several academic disciplines. In his view, historical events in the United States
and Europe set the context, but technology, economics, sociology, art, and theology all exerted an influence that must be included in his survey.
Movies learned to talk in 1927, not long after radio began to reach a majority of American homes.Within months the nation began its downward spiral
into the depression. Photojournalism blossomed in the mid-1930s with the
founding of Life magazine and flourished through the war years, only to be
gradually supplanted by television during the cold war. American Catholics
appeared in all these media through every period, and Smith explores the
mutations and adaptations that their presence underwent, both as they were
presented by the secular media and as they presented themselves. It was a
reciprocal relationship. Catholics certainly influenced the media, while the
media helped shape the perception of Catholics by themselves and nonCatholics alike.
In the early talkies, Catholics, particularly Irish Catholics, appeared as gangsters and parish priests. Both roles represented the outsider striving for
upward mobility in a hostile environment. In a period known for Catholic
involvement in labor unions and social services, this image resonated remarkably well with the communitarian vision of the New Deal.As the nation prepared for war and valued unity over ethnic divisions, Pat O’Brien’s streetwise
Father Connolly of Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) mellowed into Bing
Crosby’s respectable but hip Father O’Malley in Going My Way (1944). In the
early years of Life magazine, Catholics with their photogenic rituals and garb
appeared as aliens to the American mainstream. In 1939, publisher Henry
Luce proclaimed a new international order in his famous essay “The American
Century,” and after it appeared, Life pictured Catholics around the world as
important collaborators in America’s seemingly inevitable entry into the war.

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During the cold war period, Catholicism embodied an identifiable alternative to communism. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen transitioned from the private spirituality he preached on the Catholic Hour on radio to personal responsibility
as the Catholic response to the collectivism proposed by Soviet Marxism.
Appearing in full ecclesiastical regalia, he made this a recurring theme in his
enormously popular television program Life Is Worth Living (1952–57). In his
last two chapters Smith traces the development of two Irish Catholic filmmakers, Leo McCarey and John Ford. As background, he provides brief biographical sketches and then shows how their films reflect the Catholic cultural
transition from New Deal communitarian progressivism to cold-war conservative individualism.
In his all-too-brief epilogue, Smith obliquely suggests that his study may
provide a model for our understanding for more recent developments in
the Church’s public presentation. He notes that Pope John Paul II paralleled Sheen in his anticommunist fervor and relied on elaborate Catholic
imagery to popularize his message. Smith ends with the observation that
once this vigorous pope declined and passed from the scene, the void in
popular religious energy has been filled most remarkably by Mel Gibson’s
The Passion of the Christ (2004). Since the film found an enormous resonance among American Evangelical Christians, Smith concludes that “the
cultural fortunes of Catholics in early twenty-first century America had
come to rest more upon the evangelical nation than solidarity with the forgotten man” (p. 225).
Boston College

RICHARD A. BLAKE, S.J.

Monk’s Tale: The Pilgrimage Begins, 1941–1975. By Edward A. Malloy, C.S.C.
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009. Pp. xi, 258. $25.00.
ISBN 978-0-268-03516-7.)
The president of the University of Notre Dame from 1987 to 2005 provides an informative and readable memoir starting from birth to completion
of graduate studies. Born May 3, 1941, at Georgetown University Hospital in
Washington, DC, Edward Aloysius Malloy, named for his father, was the first
child of Catholic parents recently relocated to the nation’s capital from their
hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania.Two sisters soon followed. In the fourth
grade Edward shortened the nickname of schoolmate “Bunky” to “Bunk.” Bunk
returned the favor by coining the nickname “Monk.” Since then Monk has consistently used his nickname, preferred over “Father,” as he is “never big on the
use of titles or other formal signs of deference” (p. 229).
The Malloys’ home was an apartment in Washington’s Brookland neighborhood or “little Rome”—location of The Catholic University of America, the
National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and an array of Catholic institutions. Monk’s parents, called Dad and Mom in the book, were high school

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graduates. Dad supported a modest lifestyle as a claims adjuster for
Washington’s transit system. Mom was a full-time homemaker during her children’s school years, then took office positions in local Catholic institutions.
Monk’s thoughtful narrative recounts a faith-filled Catholic upbringing in
Brookland’s St. Anthony parish before the Second Vatican Council.Within that
culture his parents modeled differing approaches to Catholic living. Dad was
a devotional Catholic with attachment to the National Shrine; pride in
Catholic celebrities; fervent anticommunism; and active membership in the
Knights of Columbus, Knights of St. John, and the Serra Club. Mom as “low
church” preferred “quick masses, brief homilies . . . and little folderol” (p. 14).
She was not readily impressed with titles and ranks of the higher clergy she
met as a church employee.They also had political differences: Dad an active
Republican, Mom a liberal Democrat.
At St. Anthony School, Benedictine sisters launched Monk’s life of learning;
one influential teacher for three grades instilled a love of reading.Team sports
were central to his upbringing. He flourished at John Carroll High School
where Augustinian priests reinforced the importance of faith and learning.
Enthusiasm for basketball was rewarded with his high school team’s championship triumphs during his senior year. Monk reveals no adolescent rebellion,
major personal crises, or religious doubts.
A basketball scholarship brought Monk to Notre Dame in 1959 with hopes
of more athletic success and an engineering career. He faced two setbacks:
basketball games spent mostly on the bench and discovering his talents were
not suited to engineering. Instead, English literature became his absorbing
intellectual interest. Faith and Kennedy-era idealism prompted him to volunteer in summer 1962 for Notre Dame’s Council for the International Lay
Apostolate (CILA) service program in Mexico with other students. While
there, a quiet religious experience at the Cristo Rey Shrine revealed a call to
the religious life and priesthood.
Monk describes his path to the priesthood within the Congregation of
Holy Cross with close attention to the era’s social and religious changes. From
1963, the story unfolds through a candidate year, novitiate, theological studies, and process of earning an MA in English. Volunteer adventures took him
to Mexico, Peru, Detroit, and Washington, DC. Varied experiences by ordination in 1970
all disposed me [Monk] to be an advocate for social justice and to be open
to the rethinking of complicated social issues. I did not feel comfortable
with fanatics of either the left or the right. I was a centrist by temperament
and disposition who was convinced that positive change could be effected
by good analysis, persuasive arguments, group mobilization, and hard
work. (p. 230)

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After ordination, Monk ventured beyond the familiar Catholic educational
world for graduate studies in ethics at Vanderbilt University. Studying with
Protestant faculty and students provided a broad intellectual experience
before joining Notre Dame’s theology department faculty.
Monk’s Tale follows Monk’s Travels (Kansas City, 2004), Monk’s
Reflections (Kansas City, 1999), Monk’s Notre Dame (Notre Dame, 2005), and
other books. Readers from Notre Dame’s constituency, such as this alumnus,
will find Monk’s formative experiences and perspectives on Notre Dame persons and issues especially interesting. For historians and others, Monk reveals
the early years of a major figure in higher education and a rich personal
account of a Catholic priest’s formation in an era of rapid change. Stay tuned
for the next volume.
The Catholic University of America

JOSEPH M.WHITE

The American Catholic Revolution: How the Sixties Changed the Church
Forever. By Mark S. Massa, S.J. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2010.
Pp. xviii, 191. $27.95. ISBN 978-0-199-73412-2.)
In The American Catholic Revolution Mark S. Massa, S.J., dean of the
School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College, is dismissive of the theological perspective of Pope Benedict XVI with regard to the nature of truth,
revelation, and the Church in history. It is Massa’s contention that the experience of the Catholic Church in the 1960s created a revolutionary change
in the nature of revelation and the Church itself. The key to this interpretation, according to the author, is “historical consciousness,” along the lines of
the modernism condemned by Pope Pius X. According to Massa, historical
evolution and change, especially in the decade under discussion and more
particularly that which occurred in the United States, created a new reality,
so that “what faithful Christians did and believed in the mid-twentieth century was not always a faithful replication of what the early Christians and the
medieval builders of the great cathedrals had done and believed.” (p. 162).
This book is an unabashed and vigorous defense of the so-called “hermeneutic of discontinuity.”
Massa makes his argument in very readable prose and with many historical facts, but with a largely polemical and overridingly cynical style, presuming that there is little significant or reasonable opposition to his theological
perspective. Unfortunately, he never fully engages the work of Benedict,
specifically in his doctoral habilitation on St. Bonaventure’s theology of history, or that of Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman on the development of
doctrine. Both works would have provided ample intellectual challenge to
Massa. Instead, Massa appears to delight in announcing, perhaps for a more
popular than theological audience, the theme of the “Dirty Little Secret” of
church history (pace Gary Wills; see esp. pp. 8–14)—namely, that things have

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always changed in the Church and that change is the only constant. If Massa
had seriously engaged with the theologians suggested above, a better and
much more nuanced book might have resulted.
The first chapter lays out the “historical consciousness” theory that guides
the book.Wills,“Good Pope John” XXIII, and Bernard Lonergan are the heroes.
Subsequent chapters have more heroes (for example, Monsignor Frederick
McManus, Charles Curran, and the Los Angeles Immaculate Heart of Mary
community) and an ample number of villains (for example, Pope Pius X, James
F. McIntyre, and Patrick O’Boyle).There is little new research material in the
remaining seven chapters, as the book relies primarily on secondary sources.
The second chapter explores liturgical changes, largely through the lens of
the 1960s work of McManus, especially his articles in the journal Worship.
Here, the topic of “reception” of reforms and doctrine is also broached, but
not explored deeply. The third chapter looks at the response in the United
States to Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, as well as some subsequent efforts
to explain the teaching of the encyclical by means other than the kind of natural law presupposed therein.
The “Charles Curran Affair” (1966–68) at The Catholic University of
America is the backdrop for Massa’s meta-conclusion: that in light of the
Second Vatican Council, with its embrace of “historical consciousness,” the
Church had changed from what it was, “[a]nd if the Church changes and
adapts, so does its teaching—on contraception and a host of other things as
well” (p. 74). In chapter 5, this theme of inevitable, radical change is
explored in the field of religious life, as exemplified in the demise of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary community in Los Angeles. Throughout this sad
historical chapter, there is never a suggestion that the IHM sisters and leadership could have or should have done anything differently.The sixth chapter studies the antiwar movement of the 1960s as seen in Daniel Berrigan,
Philip Berrigan, and the “Catonsville Nine”; the various movements with
which the Berrigan brothers were affiliated; and some of their most public
demonstrations. Their work is almost always characterized as “prophetic”
and is finally theologically considered in light of the writing of Johann B.
Metz.
The seventh chapter is the most oddly situated in this book. Unlike the
others, which focus on the persons and events of the 1960s, Massa chooses
to highlight the life and work of Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., with special attention to his classic Models of the Church (Garden City, NY, 1974). In contrast
to other figures in this book who defended a traditional vision of revelation
and the Church, Massa treats Dulles with great respect. He concludes that
despite the reasoned and nonpolemical theological work presented by
Dulles, it had, in sum, “unintended consequences,” and so, ultimately—and
possibly most unwillingly—Dulles and his theology are used to support
Massa’s central thesis.

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As a period piece, Massa’s book might well be instructive for students of
the 1960s and 1970s. But it would be unfortunate for anyone to embrace his
thesis without studying the rather different theological conclusions that came
from the pen of Newman, following his study of historical change. The book
under consideration leaves little substance to consider and no tools for discerning that which is faithful to Catholic tradition and that which is not.
Newman’s labors, on the other hand, effectively distilled the difference
between authentic change, which is desirable growth and necessary development, and that which constitutes deformity and infidelity.
JAMES F. GARNEAU

Mount Olive College
Mount Olive, NC

Latin American
The Power of Song: Music and Dance in the Mission Communities of
Northern New Spain, 1590–1810. By Kristen Dutcher Mann. (Stanford:
Stanford University Press; Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan
History. 2010. Pp. x, 300. $60.00 clothbound. ISBN 978-0-804-77086-6.)
This excellent book explores the place of music and dance in the development of the Spanish colonial mission system across northern New Spain, a
vast region that extended from the Californias in the west to the Gulf of
Mexico in the east. Primary data relevant to this topic are scattered through
hundreds of colonial-period sources, most created by Franciscan and Jesuit
missionaries and preserved today in repositories in Mexico, Europe, and the
United States. This study represents the first attempt to bring these data
together and interpret them in terms of the more encompassing social and
cultural processes that characterized European efforts to dominate the
Indigenous residents of the region and Indigenous responses to these efforts.
The result is an insightful overview of continuity and change in the role envisioned by the Catholic Church for music and dance in evangelization and of
the new cultural practices and social formations that emerged from the
encounter of European and Indigenous musical traditions.
Informed throughout by perspectives drawn from musicology and ethnomusicology, the book’s orientation is primarily that of social and cultural history, reflecting the author’s training as a historian. In the introduction, she
identifies the question,“How did music and dance function in mission communities?”, as defining the focus of her study. She addresses this question in
terms of three fundamental propositions about the significance of music and
dance in human societies: (1) they serve to create and reinforce collective
identities, (2) they can be utilized as instruments of social control, and (3)
they are powerful communicative tools that can effectively convey religious
concepts as well as information about ethnicity and gender.

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The main body of the book is organized into three sections.The first summarizes the musical and dance traditions of Indigenous people in New Spain
prior to European contact as these can be reconstructed from the colonial
sources, followed by an overview of their European counterparts during the
Spanish colonial period. The second section focuses on music and dance in
the mission communities and Spanish colonial society in general during three
successive time periods: the early colonial period from 1519 to 1680; the subsequent nine decades framed by the large-scale revolt of Indigenous people
in New Mexico in 1680 and the Spanish Crown’s expulsion of the Jesuits from
its domains in 1767; and the final half-century of the colonial period, during
which Franciscan missionaries assumed primary responsibility for establishing and administering the missions among the Indigenous people of northern
New Spain. The third section considers the missionaries’ reliance on music
and dance to restructure the temporal, spatial, and social organizational
frameworks within which the mission populations operated and how members of the mission communities both resisted such restructuring and
adapted it to their own ends.The book concludes with a brief review of the
principal themes developed in these three sections and a reiteration of the
central point that the power of music and dance in the colonial mission context resided in their “ability to reshape colonial cultural encounters, restructure time and space, and forge new religious identities” (p. 260).
This study is a major contribution to an understanding of the colonial mission endeavor in northern New Spain, its value enhanced by situating music
and dance at the center of this endeavor.The author accompanies her analyses of broader theoretical and topical issues with a well-chosen selection of
missionary observations and perspectives on music and dance in the missions
and compelling evidence of how Indigenous people actively participated in,
and to a notable degree controlled, the creation of new musical and dance traditions within a dynamic, evolving colonial context.Written in a clear, engaging style and exemplifying the highest standards of scholarship, The Power of
Song is an outstanding addition to the growing body of “New Mission
History” that is generating significant new perspectives on the complex
intercultural interactions engendered by the European colonial enterprise.
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, DC

WILLIAM L. MERRILL

The Arts of the Missions of Northern New Spain, 1600–1821. Edited by
Clara Bargellini and Michael Komanecky. (Mexico City:Antiguo Colegio de
San Ildefonso, in collaboration with San Antonio Museum of Art, Museo de
Historia Mexicana, Centro Cultural Tijuana, and Oakland Museum of
California. 2009. Pp. xxiv, 371. $78.00. ISBN 978-6-079-52170-7.)
Coedited by the curators of the exhibition of the same title, The Arts of
the Missions of Northern New Spain goes beyond general art history to place

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the religious artistic traditions of Catholic Spain and its objects within the
context of the geographical, social, and historical milieu of the regions that
encompass present-day Texas, New Mexico, southern Colorado, Arizona,
California, and northern Mexico.
In her introduction Clara Bargellini describes the catalog and exhibition as
not only featuring the art of the missions but also mission life.This is achieved
by including an ample number of scholarly articles by an international team
of experts from many different fields such as historian David Weber, ethno-historian William Merrill, archaeologist and art historian Marie-Areti Hers, and
architectural historian James E. Ivey.
The essays tell the stories of the mission enterprise in the north. Weber’s
essay details the uneasy relations throughout the mission-building period as
he delves into components of force, fear, and violence that shaped the lives of
both Natives and Spaniards. Hers’s article deals with the diverse cultures and
artistic expressions abundant in Northern New Spain before the arrival of the
Spanish, while Merrill’s article discusses the various indigenous societies and
how their diverse cultures affected the colonial system. Ivey’s article deals
with the diversity of not only indigenous societies but also how landscape,
geographical environs, and economy influenced and changed the set rules of
mission building. Bargellini’s article is an informative narrative of art in the
missions themselves while Michael Komanecky’s article bridges past the colonial period into an era when the image of the Spanish mission was romanticized by outside artists. A final article is authored by conservators Liliana
Gioguli Chávez, Molanda Madrid A., Mercedes Murguía Meca, Fanny Unikel
Santoncini, Jannen Contreras, and Rosa Lorena Román Torres.
The final section of the book is the exhibition catalog.This section is much
more than a simple showcase of images and accompanying labels; it includes
an in-depth description of each item from the exhibition. Interspersed are
individual essays describing a specific artistic tradition such as Marina Garone
Gravier’s article on the printed word and the use of indigenous languages.
Other detailed articles discuss painting on hide, metalwork, silver objects, and
Native American basketry in Spanish missions.
This book includes images from the various regions in Northern New
Spain depicting the landscape within which these people lived and the environs in which many cultures merged.A disappointment is that only one map
is included in the book. This map, in Merrill’s essay on indigenous societies
and the colonial system, depicts the many diverse languages spoken throughout Northern New Spain. Other maps should have been included to illustrate
the many place names mentioned in each article.
The Arts of the Missions of Northern New Spain will appeal to scholars
and the general public alike. It is a wonderful compilation of articles depict-

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403

ing the diverse cultures and artistic traditions that developed during the colonial period in New Spain.
Museum of International Folk Art
Santa Fe, NM

NICOLASA CHÁVEZ

Vida de Sor Francisca Josefa de Castillo. Preliminary study, critical edition,
and notes by Beatriz Ferrús Antón and Nuria Girona Fibla. [Biblioteca
Indiana. Publicaciones del Centro de Estudios Indianos. Universidad de
Navarra.] (Pamplona: Universidad de Navarra; Madrid: Iberoamericana;
Frankfurt am Main:Vervuert. 2009. Pp. 320. €28.00/$36.00 paperback. Iberoamericana ISBN 978-8-484-89423-0;Vervuert IBSN 978-3-865-27516-5.)
The publication of early-modern women’s spiritual writings in the IberoAtlantic world and the accompanying boom in scholarship has primed a
readership for this new edition of the Vida of Francisca Josefa de la
Concepción de Castillo (1671–1742). Out of print for much of the past forty
years, two complementary editions are now available. Angela Inés Robledo’s
edition of the autobiography of Colombia’s “national mystic” (Caracas, 2007)
caters more to a scholarly audience, whereas the work by Beatriz Ferrús
Antón and Nuria Girona Fibla reviewed here is more accessible to a general
audience.
In their introduction, Ferrús and Girona give primary attention to Castillo’s
autobiographical self as an emergent modern subject. In a hierarchical and
male-dominated colonial world, they argue, European women were relegated
to the role of procreators, erasing them from much of colonial narrative representation.The mostly unpublished genre of spiritual autobiographical writing, which was available to them, required women to write themselves into
the scripts of hagiography, making it difficult for them to express singularity
and thus modern subjectivity. Ferrús and Girona read Castillo’s Vida as staging her body as a feminine space of pain, illness, and melancholic alienation
in which the trace of a modern subjectivity can be perceived (p. 38).
Ferrús and Girona’s analysis of Castillo’s feminine subjectivity provides a
helpful approach to a genre so distant from our modern context, precluding,
however, a broader presentation of recent scholarship on convent life, its
colonial context, the writings of contemporary Ibero-Atlantic women, and
Castillo’s role in Colombia’s national literary history.Their up-to-date resource
bibliography partially makes up for this narrow focus, although it would be
enriched by the inclusion of work by scholars such as Jennifer Eich, Stephanie
Kirk, Kathleen Myers,Alexander Steffanell, and Sherry Velasco.
The editors returned to the original manuscript in the Biblioteca Luis
Angel Arango (Bogotá). They employ the editorial criteria of the Grupo de
Investigación Siglo de Oro of the University of Navarre, modernizing spelling,
punctuation, and grammar: archaic forms such as recebir, vide, and liciones

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become recibir, vi, and lecciones.They correct many meaningful transcription
errors made by Darío Achury Valenzuela in his edition (Bogotá, 1968)—for
example, replacing Achury’s “me aterro” in the Vida’s opening passage to the
correct “me alegro,” as Castillo characterizes her attitude toward writing her
life story. Unfortunately other errors remain, such as the transcription of the
opening abbreviation P.M. as “Por ser” rather than the correct “Padre mío.”
Ferrús and Girona’s most valuable contributions are the footnotes to the
text. They translate Latin phrases; note verses quoted from the Breviarium;
and identify cultural, historical, and intertextual references.They provide key
information including the identity of religious figures and spiritual directors,
biographical data, common vida and hagiographical tropes, and historical
customs; and they define the colonial vocabulary of illness that Castillo
employs.This critical apparatus is essential for novice readers of early-modern
nuns’ spiritual writings. One detail that may confuse such readers, however, is
the choice of art for the book cover: the “crowned nun” portrait of Sor María
Antonia de la Purísima Concepción, born 1755 and professed in Mexico City.
The portrait conveys an image of religious culture and agency at odds with
those central to Castillo’s Vida.
Robledo’s edition, which displays an 1813 portrait of Castillo on the cover,
caters to scholars’ desire for a more conservative treatment of the original language and includes several letters to Castillo from her confessors, as well as
the editorial documentation from the first edition (1817). Ferrús and Girona
provide a highly readable text, in which cultural and historical references are
more easily deciphered through their critical apparatus. Together, the Ferrús
and Girona edition and the Robledo edition of this key colonial author are a
welcome and long-awaited contribution to the study of early-modern
women’s writings.
KATHRYN J. MCKNIGHT

University of New Mexico
Asian

Christianity and Cultures: Japan & China in Comparison 1543–1644. By
M. Antoni J. Üçerler, S.J. [Bibliotheca Instituti Historici Societatis Jesu, Vol.
68.] (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu; published in collaboration with the University of San Francisco, the Ricci Institute, and the
Macau Ricci Institute. 2009. Pp. xlvi, 410. €60,00. ISBN 978-8-870-41368-7.)
The study of Christianity in China and Japan for institutional and other reasons has generally taken place in mutual isolation; hence the great value of
the comparative survey provided by this volume. It is appropriately based on
a conference held at the end of 2006 in Macau, the place where the two Jesuit
missions (in this period they were mostly Jesuit enterprises) interacted and
from which they were controlled.

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405

However, one conclusion that a China specialist would most likely reach
from a study of this rich and rewarding collection of papers is that the two
fields have more divergences than commonalities. Some of this no doubt
derives from language differences and translation difficulties. Worship may
mean in English extreme respect—as in the “with my body I thee worship” of
the old marriage rite—but when used to translate Chinese bai or to describe
ancestor rituals in a theological context, it begs the question.
Chinese rituals—especially Confucian rituals, when seen through Japanese
eyes, at least as presented here—are necessarily idolatrous, and the issue is
seen as whether idolatry may be tolerated.This was never the case in China,
where the issue was precisely whether they were idolatrous, and, as Matteo
Ricci concluded, the people were certainly not idolatrous and perhaps not
even superstitious, a position not reversed until in 1704 the Holy See determined otherwise. A valid question is whether the Buddho-Confucian syncretism so common in Japan is the source of this apparent confusion.
There are so many original and stimulating contributions in the collection
that it is impossible to do them justice individually. However, a few may be singled out for comment.
William Farge’s study of “translating religious experience” through
Japanese translations of Christian works in Latin points to an extremely fruitful area for further investigation, of Chinese Christian literature as well as
Japanese. However, in China at least, the aim was always adaptation rather
than translation (as shown in Li Sher-shiueh’s contribution to this volume),
and the Latin is not as intellectualist as Farge argues.
Asami Masakazu’s study of Antonio Rubino’s defense of the Jesuit position
on Chinese Rites is long overdue. However, it suffers from some misconceptions about Rubino and the theological issues.
Amongst the cultural issues covered in this collection are artistic
exchanges. Painting and sculpture are discussed but not, unfortunately, architecture and music, which are little explored. Macau is again and appropriately
the focus. Thomas Lucas, in his commentary on this section of the book,
points to the irony of a probable fourteenth-century European influence on
the Guanyin/Kannon imagery of mother and child in China and then Japan.
He might have added the further irony of a considerable export trade in
porcelain figurines of madonna and child from China to Europe, the
Philippines, and the New World.
The last substantial chapter, by Timothy Brook, is perhaps the most
thought-provoking. Brook asks whether what was called Xixue in China or
“Western learning” should rather have been labeled Europaeology, by analogy with Sinology.At stake is the basic question of universality of values and

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knowledge. Joseph Needham states that the fundamental clash was not
between East and West, but between a universalizing science, which the
Jesuits, as good Renaissance scholars, upheld, and an equally universalizing
Chinese science. This is not to deny the problem of restricted cultural horizons, but teaching Western philosophical and scientific paradigms was not
necessarily cultural imperialism. Rather, it was, in intention at least, a “fusion
of horizons” in Hans Georg Gadamer’s terms. Christianity and Cultures
advances such a fusion.
Ricci Institute, University of San Francisco
La Trobe University, Australia

PAUL A. RULE

BRIEF NOTICES
Berthelon, Pierre. Antoine Chevrier: Prêtre selon l’Évangile 1826–1879.
(Paris: Editions du Cerf. 2010. Pp. 143. €10,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-20409179-4.)
This is a fascinating, well-written, concise, and accessible biography of
Blessed Antoine Chevrier (beatified 1986). The Christo-centric conversion
experience of this newly ordained priest on Christmas Eve 1856 led to his
decision to become a un prêtre selon l’évangile. For Chevrier and the community he founded at Le Prado in Lyon, this meant living a priesthood modeled on the person and ministry of Jesus Christ as revealed in New Testament
texts: a servant-priest living with the greatest personal simplicity and in apostolic poverty so as to be free to preach the gospel in word and deed to the
masses of the urban poor created by the Industrial Revolution.
Berthelon knows his subject, the influences directing Chevrier’s spiritual
journey, and the mature spirituality of Chevrier intimately, but he also succeeds in placing Chevrier within his mid-nineteenth-century contexts—
socioeconomic, political, and religious. In doing so, the author illuminates
the underappreciated role that Lyonnais Catholicism played in the revival of
French Catholicism. In Chevrier’s case this includes the example of a fruitful engagement with modernity that, through its preferential option of identification with and service to people who were poor, linked the Church’s
traditional charitable efforts with the first glimmerings of the nontraditional
insights and pastoral experiences that would lead to the development of
the Church’s social justice teachings. It is not a coincidence that Blessed
Frederic Ozanam, cofounder of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, also had
Lyonnais roots.
The author’s critical use of Chevrier’s great spiritual work Le Véritable
Disciple is key to his presentation of the down-to-earth and approachable
priest not only as an innovative and charismatic figure in the history of

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407

French and Lyonnais Catholicism but also as a precursor for modern priestly
and lay vocations of Christ-like service to those most in need.This work leaves
the reader with a desire to learn more about Chevrier. EDWARD R. UDOVIC, C.M.
(DePaul University)

Cassity, Michael, and Danney Goble. Divided Hearts: The Presbyterian
Journey through Oklahoma History. (Norman, OK: University of
Oklahoma Press. 2009. Pp. xix, 340. $24.95. ISBN 978-0-806-13848-0.)
As the title, Divided Hearts, suggests, authors Michael Cassity and Danney
Goble see tension at the heart of the Presbyterian experience in Oklahoma—
tension between “theology and practice . . . ‘civilization’ and ‘heathenism. . .’
tradition and modernization, [and] faith and science” (pp. xv–xvi). The book
charts this tension from the early-nineteenth-century arrival of missionaries in
the southeast to minister to the Five Civilized Tribes, follows them down the
Trail of Tears, and documents the controversial debates on slavery and the
Civil War that led to the removal of the missionaries from the Indian Territory.
This began a transitory period for Presbyterians as they grew from missionaries to establishment while Oklahoma itself grew from territory to state. As
their story progresses through the twentieth century, the authors demonstrate how the Oklahoma Presbyterians dealt with the most important social
issues of the day, especially issues of race and sex.
Tension defined Oklahoma Presbyterianism on both a congregational and
personal level; it developed out of Presbyterianism’s heavy emphasis on education (often state-supported) as a means to achieve salvation and belief in
the necessity of participating in a civilized, market-based society. This twin
emphasis required serving two masters, the sacred and the secular, which
pulled Presbyterians in multiple directions and created sometimes intractable
problems. The book does not seek to resolve these tensions; rather, the
authors simply describe them and the difficulties they created.
The authors demonstrate well how the tensions that divided Presbyterians
throughout the United States manifested themselves in Oklahoma; it would
be instructive, however, to know more about how Presbyterianism fit into the
religious landscape of Oklahoma. Regardless, the book is a solid starting point
for further research dealing with Presbyterians and religion in Oklahoma, and
the maps throughout the text and the appendix are especially useful for
charting the growth of Presbyterianism in Oklahoma. SETH SMITH (The
Catholic University of America)

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Diefenbach-Popov, Natalia. Das russisch-orthodoxe Kirillo-BelozerskijKloster zwischen Macht und Spiritualität. [Theion: Studien zur
Religionskultur/Studies in Religious Culture, Vol. XXIV.] (Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang. 2009. Pp.vii, 121. $39.95 paperback. ISBN 978-3-63158355-5.)
In The Russian Orthodox Cyril-Belozersk Monastery between Power and
Spirituality Natalia Diefenbach-Popov presents a history of the famous St.
Cyril-Belozersk Monastery in northern Russia, with emphasis on its relations
with the Muscovite state.Throughout the book the author attempts to demonstrate a cause-effect relationship between the monastery’s growing economic
prosperity (especially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) and its increasing dependence on the central government in Moscow.
The introductory chapter of the book offers a thorough overview of previous studies on the topic, followed by a rendition of the Vita of the
monastery’s founder, St. Cyril (†1427), including reflections on his character
and ideology. This is followed by an exploration of the monastery’s inner
administrative structure and its initial attitude toward material wealth. The
author contextualizes the latter issue within the so-called “Non-possessor”
controversy of late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth-century Muscovy—that is, the
much-disputed question whether monasteries should have material possessions. The study goes on to elucidate in detail the multifaceted economic
activities of the monastery throughout the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries,
the monastic community’s internal life and occasional conflicts, and the
monastery’s relations with the government. Special attention is paid to the
tsars’ utilization of the monastery as a place of exile and even incarceration
for political outlaws, and as a military bastion in times of unrest. Finally, the
author briefly traces the monastery’s demise from the time of Peter the Great
(†1725) to the Soviet period.
There are many good things to say about this book. First, it offers a
detailed description of the secondary literature available on the question—
primarily in Russian—and makes this product of Russian historiography
available in a Western language. The object of the study, Russian Orthodox
monasticism vis-à-vis political authority, is also a topically felicitous choice:
The evident synergy of the modern-day Russian Orthodox Church and the
Putin-dominated government not only raises the Western eyebrow but also
raises historical questions demanding a look at Russian Orthodoxy’s churchpolitical tradition.
Despite some minor and mostly formal shortcomings, such as a lack of
proofreading, this small volume draws attention to an important problem in
the history of the Russian Orthodox Church and as such can be recommended as an impetus for further reflection on the issue. SISTER VASSA LARIN
(University of Vienna)

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409

Jetter, Christina. Die Jesuitenheiligen Stanislaus Kostka und Aloysius von
Gonzaga: Patrone der studierenden Jugend—Leitbilder der katholischen
Elite: Untersucht in der Oberdeutschen und der Rheinischen
Ordensprovinz bis zur Aufhebung des Jesuitenordens 1773. (Würzburg:
Echter Verlag. 2009. Pp. 137. €16,80 paperback. ISBN 978-3-429-03062-9.)
Christina Jetter’s Die Jesuitenheiligen is a short but valuable analysis of
how the Jesuit Order promoted Stanislaus Kostka (1550–68) and Aloysius
Gonzaga (1568–91) as role models for the elite youth who attended its
schools across the Holy Roman Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Both men came from noble families, entered the Society of Jesus,
and died before priestly ordination.They were beatified jointly in 1605, four
years before Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier.The first section of the book
offers a succinct overview of the early-modern Jesuits’ involvement in education and religious formation, their associations with humanist learning, and
the curricula vitae of the two saints. On these points the author depends
heavily on German-language secondary literature, such as Bernhard Duhr’s
magisterial, if noticeably aging, Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Ländern
deutscher Zunge (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1903). In the more stimulating
middle section of the work, Jetter turns to German-language theater pieces
about the young beati that Jesuits used in the schools. Relying on Jean-Marie
Valentin’s seminal research into Jesuit theater in German-speaking Europe,
Jetter identifies representative works and thematic highlights such as the dramatic emphasis in St. Stanislaus’s life on the veneration of Mary, his exemplary
life at school, and his protective role for Poland against the Turks. She notes
how St. Aloysius is cast with shades of difference as an ascetic peacemaker.
She points to the emphases in Aloysius’s theatrical fashionings on the virtues
of steadfastness, penitence-readiness (even in innocence), chastity, and
learned piety. Die Jesuitenheiligen is Jetter’s deservedly prize-winning
master’s thesis at the University of Tübingen and is a welcome signal of what
fruits can be harvested through careful analysis of the literary and artistic production characteristic of early-modern Catholicism. DAVID J. COLLINS, S.J.
(Georgetown University)

NOTES AND COMMENTS
________
Call for Papers, American Catholic Historical Association, Chicago,
January 2012
In keeping with the American Historical Association’s theme of
“Communities and Networks,” the American Catholic Historical Association
seeks panels that explore the various dimensions of Catholicism in its engagement with society and culture. The 2012 ACHA annual meeting in Chicago
provides scholars with the opportunity to reflect on a range of topics from
transnational to local such as Catholic progressivism, the importance of material culture, and the changing role of the laity in relation to the institutional
church. Topics regarding lay-directed reforms, the impact of religious sexual
misconduct, the downsizing of Roman Catholic churches and schools, and the
decline of religious orders have profound consequences for the direction of
Catholic life and culture. ACHA welcomes panels of historians, architects, educators, journalists, and archivists interested in exploring how Catholic communities and networks have functioned in a pluralistic society. Graduate students are particularly encouraged to submit proposals. Proposals should be
emailed to the 2012 ACHA program committee: Malachy R. McCarthy at
mccarthym@claretians.org, Ellen Skerrett at ellenskerrett@gmail.com, and
Larissa Juliet Taylor at ljtaylor@colby.edu. The deadline for ACHA individual
or session proposals is May 15, 2011.
Missionary Museum of Propaganda Fide
On December 9, 2010, a new museum opened in Rome near Piazza di
Spagna on the main floor of the palace of the Congregation for the
Evangelization of the Peoples that was begun by Gianlorenzo Bernini in 1643
and completed by his rival, Francesco Borromini, in 1664. A slideshow on
monitors projects some of the 10,000 pictures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries depicting the locations, conditions, and communities in which
missionaries have worked over the centuries.A picture gallery displays many
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century engravings, tempera-on-silk panels, and
other items. The library, which was constructed in 1637 by Cardinal Antonio
Barberini to serve the needs of the twenty-four future missionaries who
lodged and studied in the palace, features a coffered wooden ceiling and contains portraits of some of the more illustrious students of the college. On large
wooden tables in the library are displayed historic documents and books
printed in non-European languages on the polyglot press housed in the
palace.Two chapels also are part of the museum: one in which Blessed John
410

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411

Henry Newman said his first Mass and the other, the Chapel of the Magi. It
was built between 1662 and 1664 by Borromini, who had demolished the earlier elliptical chapel designed by Bernini to make room for his own creamcolored, curved-wall construction. The museum is open on Mondays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays from 2:30 to 6:00 pm; the entrance fee is €6 for students and €8 for others.

Ukrainian Research Tools
The new guidebook Arkhivna ukraïnika v Kanadi: dovoidnyk (Archival
Ucrainica in Canada: A Guide) lists Ukrainian and Ukrainian-Canadian holdings in Canadian archival repositories. Among the collections surveyed are
those of the Ukrainian Catholic Church of Canada and the Ukrainian
Orthodox Church of Canada. The book provides accession numbers, size,
dates of acquisition, and detailed descriptions of the contents of the documents listed. It is available from the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at
the University of Alberta. Also sponsored by the institute is the research program “Sanctuary: The Spiritual Documentation Project” that photographs
Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox and Russian Orthodox churches (their furnishings and images) and cemeteries (individual tombstones) in an effort to
preserve a vanishing spiritual heritage.

Lectures and Conferences
The Istituto per le scienze religiose in Bologna is sponsoring the following
events: the exhibition “Videomostra Cristiani d’Italia” (March 16 to June 2,
2001); the seminar “Un cardinale francese a Roma: Eugène Tisserant
(1884–1972)” (presenter Étienne Fouilloux, April 13, 2011); the lecture
“Elementi di sinodalità nella Vita Constantini: ricezione ed elaborazione” (presenter Davide Dainese, April 27–30, 2011, in Perugia); the conference “Pacem
in Terris” (organizer Alberto Melloni, May 29 to June 1, 2011, in Jerusalem);
the seminar “Umanesimo spirituale cristiano tra Medioevo ed età moderna”
(presenter Roberto Osculati, May 30, 2011); the seminar “Dossetti” (presenter
Giovanni Bianchi, June 3, 2011); and the conference “La diplomatica e le missioni legatizie: Nicolò da Prato ed i frati Predicatori tra Prato, Roma e
Avignone” (organizer Alberto Cadili, June 9–11, 2011, in Perugia).
At the end of September 2012, the Centro Culturale Agostiniano and the
Associazione “Roma nel Rinascimento” plan to hold in Rome and Viterbo the
conference “Convegno su Egidio da Viterbo nel V Centenario del Concilio
Lateranense V (1512–2012).” It will examine from various perspectives the
career and thought of this Augustinian friar, general of his order, preacher,
humanist, theologian, and cardinal. Those wishing to present papers should
contact Beatrice Mantovani at centroculturale@agostiniani.info.

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Causes of Saints
On December 10, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI approved miracles ascribed to
the intercession of Blessed Guido Maria Conforti (1865–1931), bishop of
Parma with the personal title of archbishop and founder of the Pious Society
of St. Francis Xavier for Foreign Missions, and of the following Servants of
God: Anna Maria Janer Anglarill (1800–65), Spanish foundress of the Institute
of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Urgell; Marie Clare of the Child Jesus
(1843–99, née Libania do Carmo Galvao Meixa de Moura Telles e
Albuquerque), Portuguese foundress of the Franciscan Hospitaller Sisters of
the Immaculate Conception; and Dulce (1914–92, née Maria Rita Lopes
Pontes), Brazilian religious of the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of
the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God.
On January 14, 2011, Benedict XVI approved the miracle ascribed to the
intercession of Venerable Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojty la). On May 1, 2011,
which is Divine Mercy Sunday, Benedict XVI will beatify John Paul II in a ceremony in the Vatican. John Paul II died on the eve of Divine Mercy Sunday on
April 2, 2005. Miracles were also approved for Antonia Maria Verna
(1773–1838), Italian foundress of the Institute of the Sisters of Charity of the
Immaculate Conception, and for Giuseppe Toniolo (1845–1918), Italian
layman and father. The pope recognized the martyrdom of the following five
Servants of God and professed religious of the Institute of the Daughters of
Divine Charity; they were killed in hatred of the faith in Bosnia-Herzegovina
between December 15 and 23, 1941: Marija Jula (née Kata Ivanisevič), Marija
Bernadeta (née Terezija Banja), Marija Krizina (née Jozefa Bojanč), Marija
Antonija (née Jozefa Fabjan), and Maria Berchmana (née Karoline Anna
Leidenix). He also recognized the heroic virtues of the following five Servants
of God: Antonio Franco (1585–1626), Italian bishop of Santa Lucia del Mela;
Franziskus Maria vom Kreuze (1848–1918, né Johann Baptist Jordan), German
priest and founder of the Society of the Divine Savior and the Congregation
of the Sisters of the Divine Savior; Brazilian laywoman Francisca de Paula de
Jesus (1810–95, also known as Nha Chica); Faustino Perez-Manglano Magro
(1946–63), Spanish postulant of the Marianist Fathers; and Monsignor Nelson
H. Baker (1841–1936), Civil War veteran, superintendent of Our Lady of
Victory Homes of Charity in Lackawanna (NY), and vicar-general of the
Diocese of Buffalo.
Publications
In October 2008, a conference was held in Rome on the theme “I Servi di
santa Maria tra intuizione carismatica e istituzionalizzazione (1245–1431).”
The papers presented on that occasion have now been published in volume
99 of Studi Storici dell’Ordine dei Servi di Maria for 2009. They are divided
into five sections: (1) Dalle origini all’approvazione (1304): Giuseppina De
Sandre Gasparini, “Le religiones novae nel Duecento. I Mendicanti” (pp.

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413

7–32); Franco Andrea Dal Pino,“I Servi di santa Maria tra origini e conferma
definitiva (1245/47–1304)” (pp. 33–56); Pier Giorgio M. Di Domenico, O.S.M.,
“Madonna santa Maria e i suoi Servi (dalle origini al 1304)” (pp. 57–72); (2) I
Servi nella Chiesa: Emanuele Boaga, O.C.,“La Chiesa e gli Ordini religiosi sotto
il papato avignonese e oltre il concilio di Costanza (1305–1431)” (pp. 73–85);
Franco Andrea Dal Pino, “Strutture, svilippi e crisi dell’Ordine dei Servi dal
1304 al 1431” (pp. 87–151); Raffaella Citeroni,“Il papato e l’Ordine dei Servi
tra l’età avignonese e il concilio di Costanza (1305–1431)” (pp. 153–212);
“Cardinali e Servi di santa Maria dalle origini allo scisma d’Occidente
(1249–1412)” (pp. 213–65); (3) I conventi nelle città: Gian Maria Varanini,
“Nelle città italiane del Due-Trecento: I conventi dei Servi di Maria di fronte ai
regimi comunali e signorili” (pp. 267–91); Roberta Monetti,“Lettere di vescovi
ai Servi di santa Maria dal 1304 al 1417” (pp. 293–313); Odir Jacques Dias,
“Espansione dell’Ordine dei Servi tra il 1304 e il 1430” (pp. 315–52); Gottfried
M. Wolff, O.S.M., “Le fondazioni dei Servi in Germania” (pp. 353–86); (4)
Dentro il chiostro, attorno al chiostro: Luigi M. De Candido, O.S.M.,
“Legislazioni: garanzia e monito” (pp. 387–416); Andrea Czortek,“Frati e laici:
dagli oblati al Terz’Ordine” (pp. 417–55); Franco Andrea Dal Pino,“Il capitolo
generale di Ferrara del 1404 e la rinascita di Monte Senario dopo i lunghi anni
di quasi abbandono” (pp. 457–92); (5) La spiritualità: Piero Giorgia M. Di
Domenico, O.S.M., “Liturgia e pietà mariana (1305–1431)” (pp. 493–517);
Aristide Serra, O.S.M.,“Il santorale e le leggendae. Appunti di riflessione” (pp.
519–35); and Sara Borsi, “Iconografia dei Servi (1245–1431)” (pp. 437–47);
finally, Marco Bartoli,“Conclusioni del Convegno” (pp. 549–57) and an index
of names of persons and places (pp. 559–993).
St.Athanasius is the topic of eight articles published in the June 2010 issue
of Church History & Religious Culture (vol. 90, nos. 2–3). Following a preface by Paul van Geest (pp. 165–69) are “Athanasius on God as Creator and
Recreator” by Eginhard Meijering (pp. 175–97);“‘. . . seeing that for monks the
life of Antony is a sufficient pattern of discipline.’Athanasius as Mystagogue in
his Vita Antonii” by Paul van Geest (pp. 199–221);“Athanasius in Syriac” by
Bas ter Haar Romeny (pp. 225–56); “Athanasius in Reformed Protestantism:
Some Aspects of Reception History (1527–1607)” by Aza Goudriaan (pp.
257–76); “The Judgement on Athanasius in the Historiography of Christian
Dogma (Mosheim—Baur—Harnack)” by Eginhard Meijering (pp. 277–86);
“The Relevance of Athanasius in Dogmatics” by Abraham van de Beek (pp.
287–309); and “The Reception of Athanasius within Contemporary Roman
Catholic Theology” by Arwin van Wilgenburg (pp. 311–37).
“Sacramental politics” is the theme of eleven articles published in the
second issue of Cristianesimo nella storia for 2010 (vol. 31): Maria Teresa
Fattori (who edited this issue), “Introduzione. Politiche sacramentali tra
Vecchio e Nuovi Mondi nei secoli XVI–XVIII” (pp. 295–325); Fabrizio
Mandreoli, “Note sulla teologia sacramentaria tra il XII e il XV secolo” (pp.
327–86); Riccardo Saccenti, “Quidam dicunt quod aqua sive ablutio, quidam

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quod character. Discussioni sulla natura del battesimo fra la metà del XII e i
primi decenni del XIII secolo” (pp. 387–417); Ângela Barreto Xavier,
“‘Conformes á terra no modo de viver’: Matrimónio e império na Goa quinhentista” (pp. 419–449); Giuseppe Marcocci, “Teologia e missioni in um
impero commerciale: casi di coscienza e sacramenti nel mondo portoghese,
ca. 1550–1600” (pp. 451–82); Bruno Boute, “The Trial of Melchisedek.
Bureaucrats of the faith in Rome and engineers of the sacred in Flanders,
1606–1610” (pp. 483–515); Boris Jeanne,“La pratique sacramentaire de la mission à l’épreuve de Rome. La dispense des sacraments dans la christianisation
de la Nouvelle-Espagne au XVIe siècle et les retours davant la cours pontificale” (pp. 517–50); Eugenio Menegon, “Deliver Us from Evil: Confession and
Salvation in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Chinese Catholicism” (pp.
551–98); Michela Catto, “’La legge de’ Portughesi è la distruzione del nostro
Regno’: le pratiche sacramentali della Chiesa cristiana come rovina del grande
Impero cinese” (pp. 599–619); Paolo Aranha, “Sacramenti o samska¯ra ¯h ?
L’illusione dell’accommodatio nella controversia dei riti malabarici” (pp.
621–46); and Sabina Pavone, “Tra Roma e il Malabar: il dibattito intorno ai
sacramenti ai paria nella carte dell’Inquisizione romana (secc. XVII–XVIII)”
(pp. 647–80).
The bicentenary of the birth of Gioacchino Vincenzo Pecci/Pope Leo XIII,
which occurred on March 2, 1810, at Carpineto Romano in the Diocese of
Anagni-Alatri, is celebrated in the second number for 2010 of Lateranum
(vol. LXXVI) with a group of articles under the title “Leone XIII: tra modernità
e tradizione” edited by Philippe Chenaux. Cardinal Paul Poupard contributed
a “Prefazione” (pp. 189–91), and the other contributors are Philippe Chenaux,
“Il pontificato di Leone XIII (1878–1903) alla luce della storiografia recente”
(pp. 193–201); Nico De Mico,“Leone XIII e la cultura classica” (pp. 202–55);
Mario Pangallo, “Il tomismo e la filosofia cristiana secondo Leone XIII” (pp.
257–66); Giovanni Manzone, “La questione sociale nella enciclica Rerum
Novarum” (pp. 267–83); Antonio Pitta, “Attualità della Providentissimus
Deus” (pp. 285–92); Giovanni Tangorra,“Il concetto di Chiesa in Leone XIII”
(pp. 293–317);Angelo Lameri,“L’enciclica Mirae caritatis sulla SS. Eucaristia”
(pp. 319–27); Lubomir Zak,“«Padre universale o abile stratega dell’universalismo cattolico-romano?» Opinioni degli ortodossi russi su Leone XIII” (pp.
329–63); Emil Kumka,“Leone XIII e la famiglia francescana” (pp. 365–79); and
Maria Rosaria Del Genio,“Maria nella vita e nel pontificato di Leone XIII” (pp.
381–403).
Two issues of volume 28 (2010) of the U.S. Catholic Historian appeared
in the autumn. The summer issue, devoted to “Catholic Higher Education,”
contains the following articles: C. J.T.Talar,“Seminary Reform and Theological
Method on the Eve of the Modernist Crisis: Transatlantic Reception of J. B.
Hogan’s Clerical Studies” (pp. 1–17); Joseph M. White, “A Seminary for the
Nation’s Pontifical University:The Founding of the Theological College of The
Catholic University of America” (pp. 19–42); Karen Kennelly, C.S.J., “An

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415

Immigrant Drama: The College of St. Catherine and Phi Beta Kappa” (pp.
43–63); Robert Emmett Curran, “‘Wave Her Colors Ever!’: Writing
Georgetown’s History” (pp. 65-78); Philip Gleason,“An Academic Conversion
Story” (pp. 79–91); David J. O’Brien,“American Catholic History and American
Catholic Higher Education: Memories and Aspirations” (pp. 93–100); and Erik
J. Chaput,“Battle over the Books in Rhode Island: The Case of Bowerman v.
O’Connor” (pp. 101–15).“Essays in Honor of Moises Sandoval” compose the
fall issue under the heading “Remembering the Past, Engaging the Present”:
Bishop Ricardo Ramirez, “Reflections on Moises Sandoval” (pp. 1–3); Juan
Romero,“Musings on Moises Sandoval” (pp. 5–7); Mario T. García,“Liberation
Correspondent: The Preachings of Moises Sandoval” (pp. 9–30); Timothy
Matovina, “Remapping American Catholicism” (pp. 31–72); Robert E. Wright,
O.M.I.,“Mexican-Descent Catholics and the U.S. Church, 1880–1910: Moving
beyond Chicano Assumptions” (pp. 73–97); Kristy Nabhan-Warren,“‘Blooming
Where We’re Planted’: Mexican-Descent Catholics Living Out Cursillo de
Cristiandad” (pp. 99–125); and Olivia T. Ruiz-Marrujo and Alberto López
Pulido,“Dismantling Borders of Violence: Migration and Deportation along the
U.S.-Mexico Border” (pp. 127–43).
Obituary
Robert M. Kingdon
(1927–2010)
Robert M. Kingdon, a longtime member of the American Catholic
Historical Association and the foremost American historian of John Calvin
and the Genevan Reformation, passed away on December 3, 2010, less than a
month before his eighty-third birthday. After receiving his BA summa cum
laude in 1949 from Oberlin College, he entered the graduate program in history at Columbia University where he took his MA (1950) and PhD (1955)
under the direction of Garrett Mattingly. His dissertation and first book,
Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion in France, 1555–1563
(Geneva, 1956), was a brilliant study of the French Reformed pastors trained
at Geneva and subsequently dispatched for the conversion of their homeland.
It was followed by Geneva and the Consolidation of the French Protestant
Movement, 1564–1571 (Madison, WI, 1967); Myths about the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacres, 1572–1576 (Cambridge, MA, 1988); and Adultery and
Divorce in Calvin’s Geneva (Cambridge, MA, 1995). Altogether, he wrote
thirteen books and more than eighty articles.
In recent years his principal project was editing and publishing the transcriptions of the Genevan consistory minutes during Calvin’s lifetime. The
project developed from his deep interest in the Reformed tradition and his
conviction that the manuscript sources housed in the State Archives of
Geneva are essential for understanding Calvin’s aspirations and achievements.
Kingdon’s goal was straightforward: The widespread availability of the pro-

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ceeding of the consistory, an ecclesiastical disciplinary body established by
Calvin, will advance the understanding of the reform of lifestyle (reformatio
vitae) that accompanied the reform of doctrine (reformatio doctrinae). To
date, five volumes of the Registres du consistoire de Genève au temps de
Calvin have appeared.
Kingdon began his teaching career at the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst in 1952. Five years later, he moved to the University of Iowa and in
1965 joined the History Department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
He was made a permanent member of the University of Wisconsin’s Institute
for Research in the Humanities in 1974 and served as its director from 1975
to 1987. Over the decades, Kingdon held fellowships from the American
Council of Learned Societies (1960–61), the Institute of Advanced Study at
Princeton (1965–66), the Guggenheim Foundation (1969–70), and the
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (1992–94). He guided thirty-eight doctoral dissertations to completion. They cover an astonishingly diverse range
of topics from Reformed France, Scotland, and Switzerland to Lutheran Germany and Catholic Italy. His interests as well as those of his students extended
well beyond religious questions to political, social, and gender history.
No less formidable was Kingdon’s commitment to the larger scholarly and
professional community. He was an active member and presiding officer of
the leading North American organizations for Reformation studies, serving as
president of the Society for Reformation Research (1970–71) and the
American Society of Church History (1980). He was one of the principal
founders of the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, the largest U.S.
scholarly association devoted to the interdisciplinary study of the earlymodern period. He helped to establish The Sixteenth Century Journal of the
society and served as editor for twenty-five years, transforming it into the foremost journal for early-modern studies.
Kingdon’s sister and three brothers, as well as many students, colleagues,
friends, and admirers, will sorely miss his discerning comments and amiable
manner.
University of Iowa

RAYMOND A. MENTZER

PERIODICAL LITERATURE
________
General and Miscellaneous
L’Église dans l’Occident médiéval: histoire religieuse ou histoire de la société?
Quelques jalons pour un panorama de la recherche en France et en Italie
au XXe siècle. Michel Lauwers. Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome,
Moyen Âge, 121 (2, 2009), 267–90.
Eucharistic Concelebration Revisited: Problems of History, Practice, and
Theology in East and West. Part I. Robert F.Taft, S.J. Orientalia Christiana
Periodica, 76 (2, 2010), 277–313.
Le “Relazioni” dei Custodi nella storiografia della Custodia di Terra Santa.
Narcyz Klimas, O.F.M. Antonianum, LXXXV (July–Sept., 2010), 431–49.
“An Inheritance with Sarah”.Women in the Church of the East (1500–1850).
Heleen Murre-Van Den Berg. Internationale Kirchliche Zeitschrift, 100
(July –Sept., 2010), 190–208.
Der Protestantismus und das linksrevolutionäre Pathos. Der Ökumenische Rat
der Kirchen in Genf im Ost-West-Konflikt in den 1960er und 1970er
Jahren. Hedwig Richter. Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 36 (3, 2010), 408–36.
Ancient
Christian Atheism, Political Disloyalty, and State Power in the Apologeticum.
Some Aspects of Tertullian’s “Political Theology”. Petr Kitzler. Vetera
Christianorum, 46 (2, 2009), 245–58.
Per un profilo dell’autore dell’Elenchos. Manlio Simonetti. Vetera
Christianorum, 46 (2, 2009), 157–72.
Sirmian martyrs in exile: Pannonian case-studies and a re-evaluation of the St.
Demetrius problem. Peter Tóth. Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 103 (1, 2010),
145–70.
Donatist self-identity and ‘The Church of the Truth’. A. Pelttari.
Augustinianum, XLIX (Dec., 2009), 359–69.
The Staff of Jesus in Early Christian Art. Lee M. Jefferson. Religion and the
Arts, 14 (3, 2010), 221–51.
Le iscrizioni cristiane della basilica urbana di Porto (scavi 1991–2007 e
indagini dell’Ottocento) e la produzione epigrafica di imitazione filocaliana. Donatella Nuzzo. Vetera Christianorum, 46 (2, 2009), 293–313.
Die Iudicia im Ganzen des pachomianischen Regelkorpus. Christoph Joest.
Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 121 (2, 2010), 145–65.
417

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PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Teodosio I, Libanio y la prohibición de los sacrificios. Juan Antonio Jiménez
Sánchez. Latomus, 69 (Déc., 2010), 1088–1104.
Victoria Crucis: l’Excursus di Ambrogio sul ritrovamento della santa Croce.
Enrico Cattaneo. Augustinianum, XLIX (Dec., 2009), 421–37.
Digging Holes and Building Pillars: Simeon Stylites and the “Geometry” of
Ascetic Practice. Charles M. Stang. Harvard Theological Review, 103
(Oct., 2010), 447–70.
Fonti e testimoni nei Dialogi di Gregorio Magno. Angela Laghezza. Vetera
Christianorum, 46 (2, 2009), 261–91.
The Latinity of St. Benedict:A Linguistic Study of the Manuscript Tradition of
the Rule (Christine Mohrmann, 1952). Guerric DeBona, O.S.B. (Trans. and
Intro.) Downside Review, 128 (July, Oct., 2010), 205–26, 235–48.
The Magi:A Rare Mosaic Floor in the Ya’amun Church (Jordan). Nizan Turshan.
Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 50 (Winter, 2010), 616–24.
Medieval
Geography is Better than Divinity: The Bible and Medieval Geographical
Thought. Richard Raiswell. Canadian Journal of History, XLV (Autumn,
2010), 207–34.
Anastasius of Sinai: Biblical Scholar. Clement Kuehn. Byzantinische
Zeitschrift, 103 (1, 2010), 55–80.
Présence et représentations de la Domnonée et de la Cornouaille de part et
d’autre de la Manche d’après les Vies de saints et les listes généalogiques
médiévales. Bernard Merdrignac. Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de
l’Ouest, 117 (4, 2010), 83–119.
«Beda a communione separatus»? Una singolare testimonianza custodita
nell’Historia Scholastica del maestro parigino Pietro Comestor. Francesca
Tasca. Revue Bénédictine, 120 (Dec., 2010), 216–42.
De l’alliance franco-lombarde à l’alliance franco-pontificale. Sur la mention de
l’appel de Grégoire III (739) dans l’historiographie carolingienne. Florence
Close. Francia, 37 (2010), 1–24.
Nochmals zur sogenannten Pippinischen Schenkung und zu ihrer Erneuerung
durch Karl den Großen. Florian Hartmann. Francia, 37 (2010), 25–47.
«Per la cruna dell’ago»: la formazione della cristianità Latina nella recente storiografia. Peter Brown. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, XLVI (1,
2010), 3–17.
The Confraternity Books of St. Gall and their Early Liturgical Context. Julian
Hendrix. Revue Bénédictine, 120 (Dec., 2010), 295–320.
Nonantola and Reichenau.A New Manuscript of Heito’s Visio Wettini and the
Foundations for a New Critical Edition. Richard Matthew Pollard. Revue
Bénédictine, 120 (Dec., 2010), 243–94.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

419

Frühe Pseudoisidor-Rezeption bei Hinkmar von Laon. Ein Fragment des verloren geglaubten ‘Unterschriftenwerks’ vom Juli 869. Klaus Zechiel-Eckes.
Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 66 (1, 2010), 19–54.
Le contexte de rédaction des Annales de Flodoard de Reims (919–966). Partie
2: présentation des résultats de la relecture critique du début des Annales.
Stéphane Lecouteux. Le Moyen Age, CXVI (2, 2010), 283–318.
Gérard de Brogne en Flandre. État de la question sue les réformes monastiques du xe siècle. Steven Vanderputten and Brigitte Meijns. Revue du
Nord, 92 (Apr.–June, 2010), 271–95.
Ideology and Corporal Punishment in Anglo-Saxon Monastic Education. Nathan
J. Ristuccia. American Benedictine Review, 61 (Dec., 2010), 373–86.
Per la storia e la datazione del Sacramentario ambrosiano di Vercelli. Francesca
Demarchi. Aevum, LXXXIV (May–Aug., 2010), 417–31.
Zum Diplom Kaiser Konrads II. für das Stift St. Laurentius bei Dieulouard
(Dko.II. 117). Alfred Gawlik. Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des
Mittelalters, 66 (1, 2010), 55–68.
Changing Perspectives on 1054. J. R. Ryder. Byzantine and Modern Greek
Studies, 35 (Mar., 2011), 20–37.
1054 Revisited: Response to J. R. Ryder.Tia Kolbaba. Byzantine and Modern
Greek Studies, 35 (Mar., 2011), 38–44.
Entre la chair et l’esprit. L’usage des images sacramentelles dans le droit
canonique du mariage au XIIe siècle. Arnould Bethery de La Brosse.
Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 53 (Oct.–Dec., 2010), 331–54.
Autour de l’édition du Registrum Petri Diaconi. Problèmes de documentation cassinésienne: chartes, rouleaux, registre. Pierre Chastang, Laurent
Feller and Jean-Marie Martin. Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome,
Moyen Âge, 121 (1, 2009), 99–135.
Peter Abelard, Heloise and Jewish Biblical Exegesis in the Twelfth Century.
Constant J. Mews and Micha J. Perry. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 62
(Jan., 2011), 3–19.
Les effigies de dignitaires ecclésiastiques et royaux dans le décor intérieur de
la cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Poitiers. Bertrand Pilot. Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 53 (Oct.–Dec., 2010), 379–406.
Die Bekehrungsschrift des Hermannus quondam Iudaeus und die Frage ihrer
Authentizität. Peter Hilsch. Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des
Mittelalters, 66 (1, 2010), 69–91.
Le palais épiscopal de Sutri. Pierre-Yves Le Pogam. Mélanges de l’École
Française de Rome, Moyen Âge, 121 (1, 2009), 189–217.
Marché matrimonial clandestin et officines de clandestinité à la fin du Moyen
Âge: l’exemple du diocèse de Rouen. Carole Avignon. Revue Historique,
134-CCCXI I (July, 2010), 515–48.

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Eine Notiz von Bruder Leo und ihre Beweiskraft für die Stigmatisierung auf La
Verna. Paul Bösch. Laurentianum, 51 (3, 2010), 259–70.
L’Apporto dei Francescani alla crescita di forme di governo rappresentativo
nell’Europa medioevale. Priamo Etzi, OFM. Antonianum, LXXXV
(Oct.–Dec., 2010), 567–85.
The archive of the official of Stow and the ‘machinery’ of church government
in the late thirteenth century. Ian Forrest. Historical Research, LXXXIV
(Feb., 2011), 1–13.
Cartes, réflexion stratégique et projets de croisade à la fin du XIIIe et au début
du XIVe siècle: une initiative franciscaine? Patrick Gautier Dalché. Francia,
37 (2010), 77–95.
“Leggere” il Memoriale di Angela da Foligno. Massimo Vedova, OFM Conv.
Antonianum, LXXXV (Oct.–Dec., 2010), 587–616.
Vie et miracles de Gabra Masqal. Gérard Colin. Orientalia Christiana
Periodica, 76 (2, 2010), 367–87.
Administrative efficiency in fourteenth-century England: the delivery of writs
based on evidence from the register of Bishop Martival. Michael Ray.
Historical Research, LXXXIV (Feb., 2011), 14–17.
Le più antiche pergamene degli Ebdomadari conservate nell’Archivio Storico
Diocesano di Napoli. Carla Vetere. Aevum, LXXXIV (May–Aug., 2010),
485–517.
Pierre de Villers (†1377) et la bibliothèque des Jacobins de Troyes. Donatella
Nebbiai. Scriptorium, LXIV (1, 2010), 127–46.
Philippe de Mézières’ Portrait of Peter Thomas as a Preacher. Nicholas
Coureas. Carmelus, 57 (1, 2010), 63–80.
Jean de Cros and the Papal Penitentiary on the Eve of the Great Schism.
Patrick Zutshi. Francia, 37 (2010), 335–51.
Der Ausbruch des Großen Abendländischen Schismas als Chance offensiver
landesherrlicher Kirchenpolitik. Motive der Parteinahme Herzog Leopolds
III. von Österreich für Clemens VII. Brigitte Hotz. Francia, 37 (2010),
353–74.
Zur Überlieferung der Konstanzer Konzilschronik Ulrich Richentals. Thomas
Martin Buck. Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 66 (1,
2010), 93–108.
„Principium professionis nostrae quemadmodum uel unde descenderit,
primum debetis agnoscere.“ Zum historischen Selbstverständnis der
Devotio moderna.Aloysia Jostes. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 121 (2,
2010), 166–88.
Fête et renouveau de la vie sociale à Orléans après 1429. Jean Thibault. Le
Moyen Age, CXVI (2, 2010), 385–406.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

421

Venerating the Virgin Martyrs: The Cult of the Virgines Capitales in Art,
Literature, and Popular Piety. Stanley E. Weed. Sixteenth Century Journal,
XLI (Winter, 2011), 1065–93.
Le financement des travaux de reconstruction après la guerre de Cent Ans:
l’exemple des commanderies des Hospitaliers de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem
en Picardie.Valérie Bessey. Francia, 37 (2010), 375–85.
The Date of Birth of Thomas More. Frank Mitjans. Moreana, 47 (Dec., 2010),
109–28.
Crusade administration in fifteenth-century England: regulations for the distribution of indulgences in 1489. R. N. Swanson. Historical Research,
LXXXIV (Feb., 2011), 183–88.
Réforme, circulation de scribes et transferts de manuscrits dans les abbayes
cisterciennes du diocese de Liège au XVe siècle. Xavier Hermand.
Scriptorium, LXIV (1, 2010), 3–79.
Sixteenth Century
Antoine de Caulaincourt (v. 1480–1536), official de l’abbaye de Corbie,
chroniqueur et possesseur de livres. Charlotte Denoël. Scriptorium, LXIV
(1, 2010), 81–94.
Official and Unofficial Diplomacy between Rome and Bologna: the de’ Grassi
Family under Pope Julius II, 1503–1513. Jennifer Mara DeSilva. Journal of
Early Modern History, 14 (6, 2010), 535–57.
Vor 500 Jahren. Das Martyrium von 1510 in der Mark Brandenburg. Felix
Escher. Judaica, 66 (Dec., 2010), 321–31.
La lettre du Patriarche Maronite Š amūn Butros de Hadet au Pape Léon X
(1515). Mariam de Ghantuz Cubbe. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 76
(2, 2010), 389–432.
La Iglesia en España durante la dinastía de Habsburgo (1516–1700). Ismael
Arevalillo García, OSA. Religión y Cultura, LVI (Apr.–Sept., 2010), 425–52.
Cartas originales de Carlos V al Papa Clemente VII. Carlos Alonso Vañes, O.S.A.
La Ciudad de Dios, CCXXIII (Sept.–Dec., 2010), 725–62.
The Patristic Revival and Theological Polemics in the 16th Century:
Controversialists’ Editions of the Fathers. Ralph Keen. Wolfenbütteler
Notizen zur Buchgeschichte, 35 (1, 2010), 51–61.
Nobody Dares: Freedom, Dissent, Self-knowing, and Other Possibilities in
Sebald Beham’s Impossible. Mitchell B. Merback. Renaissance Quarterly,
LXIII (Winter, 2010), 1037–1105.
The Antwerp Printers Christoffel and Hans (I) van Ruremund, Their Dutch
and English Bibles, and the Intervention of the Authorities in the 1520s
and 1530s. Wim François. Archive for Reformation History, 101 (2010),
7–28.

422

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Documentación inédita sobre la reforma del Monasterio de Benedictinas de
Santa María de Carbajal (1525–1528). Ernesto Zaragoza Pascual.
Salmanticensis, LVII (May–Aug., 2010), 307–63.
Menno and Muhammad: Anabaptists and Mennonites Reconsider Islam,
1525–1657. Gary K.Waite. Sixteenth Century Journal, XLI (Winter, 2011),
995–1016.
The Swedish Reformation Debates of 1527–28. Anders Kraal. Lutheran
Quarterly, XXIV (Winter, 2010), 373–93.
Thomas More and the Defense of Images in A Dialogue Concerning Heresies.
Brenda Deen Schildgen. Moreana, 47 (Dec., 2010), 235–56.
Standing Still or Running On? Reconsidering Rhetoric in the Strasbourg
Anabaptist-Spiritualist Debates, 1530–1531. Paul Brand. Journal of
Ecclesiastical History, 62 (Jan., 2011), 20–37.
Vows, Oaths, and the Propagation of a Subversive Discourse. Jonathan Michael
Gray. Sixteenth Century Journal, XLI (Fall, 2010), 731–56.
Ecclesiastical Patronage and Catholic Printing in Germany 1530–50. Ralph
Keen. Wolfenbütteler Notizen zur Buchgeschichte, 35 (1, 2010), 41–49.
Primato di Dio e della coscienza. Il processo e la morte di Tommaso Moro.
Giuseppe De Rosa, S.I. La Civiltà Cattolica, 161, vol. III (Aug. 7–21, 2010),
240–49.
Sobre la potestad y castigo del cismático. Breves comentarios de Francisco de
Vitoria desde Salamanca (1535). Ignacio Jericó Bermejo. Studium, L (2,
2010), 305–32.
L’impossible désenchantement du monde: Les protestants face au miracle
(XVIe–XVIIe siècles). Nicolas Balzamo. Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire
du Protestantisme Français, 156 (July,Aug., Sept., 2010), 393–412.
An annotated and revised copy of The Institution of a Christen Man (1537).
Dunstan C. D. Roberts. Historical Research, LXXXIV (Feb., 2011), 28–52.
Reformed Arts? Reformation and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century England
[review essay]. Kevin Sharpe. Art History, 33 (5, 2010), 915–23.
The Psalms and Confrontation in English and Scottish Protestantism. Alec
Ryrie. Archive for Reformation History, 101 (2010), 114–37.
La Contemplatio ad amorem de los ejercicios espirituales en los Directorios
del siglo XVI (1540–1599). Antonio Izquierdo, L.C. Alpha Omega, XIII
(May–Aug., 2010), 227–56.
Érasme et Calvin au prisme du Traité des reliques. Marie Barral-Baron.
Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, 156 (July,
Aug., Sept., 2010), 349–71.
Doctrina et consolatio. Zur katechetischen Funktion der Trost- und
Leichenpredigt bei Johann Mathesius (1504–1656). Stefen Michel.
Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 121 (2, 2010), 205–22.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

423

Fadrique Furío Ceriol, Giovanni di Bononia y la traducción de la Biblia en
lengua vernácula. Análisis del Bononia (1556). Els Agten. Mayéutica,
XXXVI (2010), 61–90.
Les Salmi cinquanta de Philibert Jambe de Fer (Genève, 1560) et les origines
du psautier réformé italien. Laurent Guillo. Bulletin de la Société de
l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, 156 (July, Aug., Sept., 2010),
373–91.
Religionskriegsmigration, Französischunterricht, Kulturtransfer und die
Zeitungsproduktion im Köln des 16. Jahrhunderts. Cornel Zwierlein.
Francia, 37 (2010), 97–129.
Prosecuting the French: patterns of trials against French defendants in
Valencia, 1566–1686. Gunnar W. Knutsen and Daniel Muñoz Navarro.
Continuity and Change, 25 (3, 2011), 357–76.
Double Honor: Elite Hutterite Women in the Sixteenth Century.Adam Darlage.
Church History, 79 (Dec., 2010), 753–82.
Die Stadt als Bild der Verheißung Minden auf dem Bildnis des
Superintendenten Hermann Huddäus von Ludger tom Ring dem Jüngeren
von 1568. Ruth Slenczka. Archive for Reformation History, 101 (2010),
29–54.
The Council of Trent and Print Culture: Documents in the archive of the
Congregatio Concilii. David d’Avray und Julia Walworth. Zeitschrift für
Kirchengeschichte, 121 (2, 2010), 189–203.
Does Faith Translate? Tudor Translations of Martin Luther and the Doctrine of
Justification by Faith. Carrie Euler. Archive for Reformation History, 101
(2010), 80–113.
Ecclesiology and the English State. Luther and Melanchthon on the
Independence of the Church in English Translations of the 1570s. Robert
von Friedeburg. Archive for Reformation History, 101 (2010), 138–63.
For the Defense of the Faith? The Crusading Indulgence in Early Modern
Spain. Patrick J. O’Banion. Archive for Reformation History, 101 (2010),
164–85.
Decentering the Catholic Reformation. Papacy and Peoples in the Early
Modern World. Simon Ditchfield. Archive for Reformation History, 101
(2010), 186–208.
The Study of Nature, Philosophy, and the Royal Library of San Lorenzo of the
Escorial. María M. Portuondo. Renaissance Quarterly, LXIII (Winter, 2010),
1106–50.
Un monastero savonaroliano nella Roma della Controriforma: Maddalena
Orsini e la fondazione di S. Maria Maddalena al Quirinale (1582). Silvia De
Angelis. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, XLVI (1, 2010), 19–57.

424

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Heresy at Play: Academics and the Literacy Underground in CounterReformation Siena. George McClure. Renaissance Quarterly, LXIII
(Winter, 2010), 1151–1207.
‘A witty, learned persecutor?’: The staged after-life of Thomas More. Paul
Quinn. Moreana, 47 (Dec., 2010), 129–52.
Le «Notitiae Diariae Conventus Transpontinae et Religionis» del Carmelitano
Domenico Provana. Emanuele Boaga, O.Carm. Carmelus, 57 (1, 2010),
115–30.
Confessions of the Dead. Interpreting Burial Practice in the Late Reformation.
David M. Luebke. Archive for Reformation History, 101 (2010), 55–79.
Reformationsgedenken in der Frühen Neuzeit. Bermerkungen zum 16. bis 18.
Jahrhundert.Thomas Kaufmann. Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 107
(Sept., 2010), 285–374.
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Disciplining Jews: The Papal Inquisition of Modena, 1598–1630. Katherine
Aron-Beller. Sixteenth Century Journal, XLI (Fall, 2010), 713–29.
Eternalizing a Nation: Armenian Hishatakarans in the Seventeenth Century.
Aida Gureghian. Church History, 79 (Dec., 2010), 783–99.
Contested Legitimacy and the Ambiguous Rise of Vestries in Early Modern
London. J. F. Merritt. Historical Journal, 54 (Jan., 2011), 25–45.
Confessional Identity in Early Stuart England:The “Prayer Book Puritanism” of
Elizabeth Isham. Isaac Stephens. Journal of British Studies, 50 (Jan., 2011),
24–47.
Matteo Ricci, la sabiduría universal de la amistad. Santiago Madrigal. Razón y
fe, 262 (Dec., 2010), 355–70.
Which is the Oldest University? Revisiting the Conflicting Claims of the
University of Santo Tomas, Manila and University of San Carlos, Cebu in
Light of the History of Seminario (Mayor) de San Carlos of Cebu.Aloysius
Lopez Cartagenas. Philippiniana Sacra, XLVI (Jan.–Apr., 2011), 30–59.
Father Luis Piñeiro, S.J., the Tridentine Economy of Relics, and the Defense of
the Jesuit Missionary Enterprise in Tokugawa Japan. Rady Roldan-Figueroa.
Archive for Reformation History, 101 (2010), 209–32.
Love Magic and the Inquisition:A Case from Seventeenth-Century Italy. Jeffrey
R.Watt. Sixteenth Century Journal, XLI (Fall, 2010), 675–89.
Notizie Historiche (continuazione). Giancarlo Caputi. Archivum Scholarum
Piarum, XXXII (68, 2010), 3–54.
La crítica narrativa como instrumento para conocer mejor a Calasanz. José P.
Burgués. Archivum Scholarum Piarum, XXXII (68, 2010), 55–143.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

425

Andanza y número de las Cartas de S. José de Calasanz. Valeriano Rodríguez
Saiz. Archivum Scholarum Piarum, XXXII (68, 2010), 145–68.
The Making of Abiezer Coppe. Ariel Hessayon. Journal of Ecclesiastical
History, 62 (Jan., 2011), 38–58.
Protestant interests? The 1641 rebellion and state formation in early modern
Ireland. John Gibney. Historical Research, LXXXIV (Feb., 2011), 67–86.
Milton’s Angels. Joad Raymond. History Today, 60 (Dec., 2010), 17–23.
Laurence Hyde and the Politics of Religion in Later Stuart England. Grant
Tapsell. English Historical Review, CXXV (Dec., 2010), 1414–48.
La suppression de la métropole de Caffa, au 17ème siècle. Konstantinos
Vetochnikov. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 76 (2, 2010), 433–57.
Belgian Missionaries in 17th Century Marianas:The Role of Fr. Peter Coomans
and Fr. Gerard Bouwens. Augusto V. de Viana. Philippiniana Sacra, XLVI
(Jan.–Apr., 2011), 85–109.
Pour une relecture globale du testament. L’individualisation religieuse à
Orléans au XVIIIe siècle (1667–1787). Gaël Rideau. Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 57 (Oct.–Dec., 2010), 97–123.
L’orthodoxie thomiste au péril du thomisme jansénisant. La censure de la
Faculté de thélogie de Douai du 22 août 1722 et ses suites. Sylvio Hermann
de Franceschi. Revue du Nord, 92 (Apr.–June, 2010), 297–313.
Un mistico nella Compagnia de Gesù [Bernardo Francisco de Hoyos].
Giandomenico Mucci, S.I. La Civiltà Cattolica, 161, vol. III (July 3, 2010),
53–58.
Faith in Numbers: Quantifying Gin and Sin in Eighteenth-Century England.
Jessica Warner. Journal of British Studies, 50 (Jan., 2011), 76–99.
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Vestry politics and the emergence of a reform ‘public’ in Calcutta, 1813–36.
Joseph Hardwick. Historical Research, LXXXIV (Feb., 2011), 87–108.
Partidos confesionales españoles. Siete modelos fallidos. Rafael María Sanz de
Diego. Razón y fe, 262 (Nov., 2010), 251–74.
P. Estanislao Stefanini de S. Vicente Ferrer, Vicario General de la Orden de las
Escuelas Pías (1737–1823) (continuacíon).Adolfo García-Durán. Archivum
Scholarum Piarum, XXXII (68, 2010), 169–98.
Il Venerabile Vito Michele Di Netta, Redentorista (1787–1849). Salvatore
Brugnano, C.SS.R. Spicilegium Historicum C.SS.R., LVIII (1, 2010), 3–46.
Genealogie der Säkularisierungstheorie. Zur Historisierung einer großen
Erzählung der Moderne. Manuel Borutta. Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 36
(3, 2010), 347–76.

426

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Gli inizi del pontificato di Pio IX in alcune lettere di mons. Felice Profili a don
Giuseppe Turri. Giuseppe Orlandi, C.SS.R. Spicilegium Historicum C.SS.R.,
LVIII (1, 2010), 195–223.
P. Vincenzo Farina, Redentorista, attento studioso della natura e della teologia.
Nel bicentenario della nascita (1809–1875). Giuseppe Russo, C.SS.R.
Spicilegium Historicum C.SS.R., LVIII (1, 2010), 183–94.
L’unità d’Italia e Pio IX. Giovanni Sale, S.I. La Civiltà Cattolica, 161, vol. III
(July 17, 2010), 107–18.
Pio IX, Cavour e l’unità d’Italia. Giovanni Sale, S.I. La Civiltà Cattolica, 161,
vol. IV (Oct. 16, 2010), 107–18.
La naissance de la IIIe République, entre légende dorée et légende noire.
L’exemple des Pyrénées-Orientales. Joseph Ramoneda. Bulletin de
Littérature Ecclésiastique, CXI (Apr.–June, 2010), 173–84.
La formazione a partire dall’esperienza a Valdocco (1870–1888). Mara Borsi.
Salesianum, LXXII (July–Sept., 2010), 479–511.
Reassessing the Death of Bishop John Coleridge Patterson. Thorgeir Kolshus
and Even Hordhaugen. Journal of Pacific History, 45 (3, 2010), 331–55.
The Secularisation of Sin in the Nineteenth Century. Dominic Erdozain.
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 62 (Jan., 2011), 59–88.
Newman e il liberalismo. Giandomenico Mucci, S.I. La Civiltà Cattolica, 161,
vol. IV (Nov. 6, 2010), 227–31.
Les Rédemptoristes Français dans la tourmente des années 1880–1903. Jean
Beco, C.SS.R. Spicilegium Historicum C.SS.R., LVIII (1, 2010), 47–84.
Matteo Liberatore, un cattolico intransigente. Francesco Dante. Gregorianum,
91 (4, 2010), 808–23.
Matteo Liberatore y la Rerum Novarum: La propiedad privada y el salario:
entre la economía y el magistero social de la Iglesia. Diego AlsonsoLasheras. Gregorianum, 91 (4, 2010), 824–41.
Teresa de Lisieux. La espiritualidad de una santa doctora tan manipulada
como asombrosamente gigante. Ismael Martínez Carretero, O. Carm.
Carmelus, 57 (1, 2010), 39–62.
Der Glaubenswächter van Rossum. Willem Marinus van Rossum im Heiligen
Offizium und der Indexkongregation. Otto Weiss. Spicilegium Historicum
C.SS.R., LVIII (1, 2010), 85–138.
Professor James Thompson Sr. and Lord Kelvin: Religion, Science, and Liberal
Unionism in Ulster and Scotland. Andrew R. Holmes. Journal of British
Studies, 50 (Jan., 2011), 100–24.
Quitter l’orthodoxie en Russie centrale, 1905–1914: usages d’un droit nouveau et culture juridique des apostats. Michel Tissier. Revue d’histoire
moderne et contemporaine, 57 (Oct.–Dec., 2010), 124–54.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

427

Photography and the Religious Encounter: Ambiguity and Aesthetics in
Missionary Representations of the Luba of South East Belgian Congo. David
Maxwell. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 53 (Jan., 2011),
38–74.
Les mouvements de jeunesse protestants en Alsace de 1918 à 1970. Julien
Fuchs. Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français,
156 (Oct., Nov., Dec., 2010), 569–91.
Bischof in einem fremden Land. Der Straßburger Bischof Charles Ruch zwischen Katholizismus und Nationalismus, 1919–1931. Thies Schulze.
Francia, 37 (2010), 167–94.
Vatican Involvement in the Irish Civil War: Monsignor Salvatore Luzio’s
Apostolic Delegation, March–May 1923. M. P. McCabe. Journal of
Ecclesiastical History, 62 (Jan., 2011), 89–106.
Participation et individuation. Maurice Leenhardt (1878–1954) à la croisée
des chemins de l’ethnologie et de la missiologie. Jean-François Zorn.
Etudes Théologiques et Religieuses, 85 (3, 2010), 347–58.
Mariología, espíritu misionero y sentir con la Iglesia. Caras permanentes del
legado de Erich Przywara, S.J. (1889–1972).Aníbal Edwards, S.J. Teología y
Vida, LI (3, 2010), 365–85.
Universidad y un nuevo orden espiritual: el caso de la FUCI 1933–1939. Jorge
Dagnino. Teología y Vida, LI (3, 2010), 387–411.
Les pays sauveteurs: Les calvinistes et le sauvetage des victimes des politiques
de répression et de persécution en Europe pendant la Seconde Guerre
mondiale. Michel Fabréguet. Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du
Protestantisme Français, 156 (July,Aug., Sept., 2010), 415–32.
Holy Homeland: The Discourse of Place and Displacement among Silesian
Catholics in Postwar West Germany. Robert E. Alvis. Church History, 79
(Dec., 2010), 827–59.
Humanist Pretensions: Catholics, Communists, and Sartre’s Struggle for
Existentialism in Postwar France. Edward Baring. Modern Intellectual
History, 7 (Sept., 2010), 581–609.
Il cattolicesimo politico in Francia dopo la seconda guerra mondiale. Giovanni
Sale, S.I. La Civiltà Cattolica, 161, vol. III (Aug. 7–21, 2010), 213–26.
Restauración de la Orden de San Agustín en India. Andrés González Niño.
Estudio Agustiniano, XLV(May–Aug., 2010), 279–303.
American and Canadian
The Miracles at Sainte-Anne-du-Petit-Cap and the Making of a SeventeenthCentury Colonial Community. Mary Corley Dunn. Canadian Historical
Review, 91 (Dec., 2010), 611–35.

428

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Companions in Preaching and Suffering: Itinerant Female Quakers in the
Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World. Amanda E.
Herbert. Early America Studies, 9 (Winter, 2011), 73–113.
“Written in the Style of Antiquity”: Pseudo-Biblicism and the Early American
Republic, 1770–1830. Eran Shalev. Church History, 79 (Dec., 2010),
800–26.
Falling for the Lord: Shame, Revivalism, and the Origins of the Second Great
Awakening. Neil Meyer. Early American Studies, 9 (Winter, 2011), 142–66.
“The Worst Kind of Slavery”: Slave-Owning Presbyterian Churches in Prince
Edward County, Virginia. Jennifer Oast. Journal of Southern History,
LXXVI (Nov., 2010), 867–900.
The 1854 Attack on Saint Mary’s Church, Newark: A Typical Know-Nothing
Incident. Augustine J. Curley, O.S.B. American Benedictine Review, 61
(Dec., 2010), 387–406.
The Vincentian Experience of the Civil War in Missouri. Douglas J. Slawson.
American Catholic Studies, 121 (Winter, 2010), 31–60.
Clerical Penal Procedures in the United States in the Nineteenth Century and
the Instruction of 1878. Kevin E. McKenna. Jurist, 70 (1, 2010), 186–205.
The New York Carmelites and the Irish Freedom Movement. Alfred Isacsson,
O. Carm. Carmelus, 57 (1, 2010), 131–38.
Negotiating Priorities: The National Catholic Welfare Conference and United
States Migration Policy in a Post–World War II World, 1948–1952. Todd
Scribner. American Catholic Studies, 121 (Winter, 2010), 61–86.
When Missions Became Development: Ironies of ‘NGOization’ in Mainstream
Canadian Churches in the 1960s. Ruth Compton Brouwer. Canadian
Historical Review, 91 (Dec., 2010), 661–93.
Immanence and Transcendence: John Cardinal Dearden’s Church of
Tomorrow. Samuel J. Thomas. American Catholic Studies, 121 (Winter,
2010), 1–30.
Latin American
Grammatica dell’evangelizzazione e catechesi della lingua indigena
Mesoamerica e Brasile: XVI–XVII secolo:Tradusione come conversione. Le
lingue generali, il “Greco della Terra” e l’invenzione del Tupì. Adone
Agnolin. Cristianesimo nella Storia, XXXI (2, 2010), 681–742.
Libri antichi sulle Ande. Quindici anni di catalogazione di fondi librari antichi
in Perù, Boliva ed Ecuador (1995–2009). Daniela Fugaro. Cristianesimo
nella Storia, XXXI (2, 2010), 743–53.
Cuzco’s Virgen de la Descención through a Carmelite Optic. Edward
Adelmann, O.Carm. Carmelus, 57 (1, 2010), 95–114.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

429

La Mission San Carlos (1750) ou l’utilité politique du complot jésuitique The
Mission film de Roland Joffé (1986). Bernadette Rey Mimoso-Ruiz. Bulletin
de Littérature Ecclésiastique, CXI (Apr.–June, 2010), 199–212.
La Basílica de Buga (Colombia). Cien años de historia. Noel Londoño B.,
C.SS.R. Spicilegium Historicum C.SS.R., LVIII (1, 2010), 139–81.
Ministerios Eclesiales en la Iglesia de San Cristóbal Las Casas, Chiapas. Pablo
Iribarren Pascal, O.P. Anámnesis, XX (Jan.–June, 2010), 137–62.

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED
________
Books that were sent to scholars for review but of which no review has
been received are indicated by an asterisk.
Antony, Louise M. (Ed.). Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on Atheism
and the Secular Life. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2010. Pp. xvi,
316. $17.95 paperback.)
Arenal, Electa, and Stacey Schlau (Eds.). Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in
Their Own Works. Translated by Amanda Powell. (Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press. 2010. Pp. xviii, 460. $35.00 paperback.) The first edition, published in 1989, was reviewed by Jodi Bilinkoff, ante, 76 (1990),
375–77.
Augustine of Hippo. Trilogy on Faith and Happiness. Translated by Roland J.
Teske, S.J.; Michael G. Campbell, O.S.A.; and Ray Kearney. Introduced and
annotated by Michael Fiedrowicz and Roland Teske, S.J. Edited by Boniface
Ramsey. [The Augustine Series: Selected Writings from “The Works of Saint
Augustine—A Translation for the 21st Century,” Vol. VI.] (Hyde Park, NY:
New City Press. 2010. Pp. 142.). This volume brings together three early
treatises of St. Augustine: “The Happy Life” (386), “The Advantage of
Believing” (391), and “Faith in the Unseen” (c. 399).
Baldwin, Lewis V. Never to Leave Us Alone: The Prayer Life of Martin Luther
King, Jr. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2010. Pp. xx, 160. $16.95 paperback.)
Bond, Richmond P. Queen Anne’s American Kings. (Yardley, PA: Westholme
Publishing. 2010. Pp. xii, 148. $12.95 paperback.) Originally published by
Oxford University Press in 1952.
Bressler, Richard. Frederick II: The Wonder of the World. (Yardley, PA:
Westholme Publishing. 2010. Pp. xviii, 206. $26.00.)
*Casciani, Santa (Ed.). Dante and the Franciscans. [The Medieval Franciscans,
Vol. 3.] (Leiden: Brill. 2006. Pp. 532. $159.00.)
*Dalarun, Jacques. Francis of Assisi and Power. (New York: Franciscan Institute
Publications. 2007. Pp. 237. $35.00 paperback.)
*______. Francis of Assisi and the Feminine. (New York: Franciscan Institute
Publications. 2006. Pp. 375. $35.00 paperback.)
*Dalarun, Jacques, Michael F. Cusato, and Carla Salvati. The Stigmata of
Francis of Assisi: New Studies, New Perspectives. (New York: Franciscan
Institute Publications. 2006. Pp. 112. $25.00 paperback.)
430

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

431

Ditewig,William T., with Michael J.Tkacik (Eds.). Forming Deacons: Ministers
of Soul and Leaven. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. 2010. Pp. xviii, 242. $24.95
paperback.)
Edgar, Swift (Ed.). The Vulgate Bible, Vol. I: The Pentateuch. Douay-Rheims
Translation. [Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library.] (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press. 2010. Pp. xxxvi, 1152. $29.95.) “The Dumbarton Oaks
Medieval Library presents a reconstructed Latin text of the lost Bible used
by the professors at Douay and Rheims, and [Richard] Challoner’s revision
of the English translation faces the Latin. Challoner’s text . . . sometimes
reflects the Sixto-Clementine Bible more closely than did the English
College translations of 1582, 1609, and 1610, but many of the revision’s
features are not at all related to the Sixto-Clementine Bible, and some lead
the translation even further from the Latin” (p. ix). The introduction
includes disquisitions on the Latin text and the English text of this edition
and a note on the translation. This volume is the first of five projected volumes in a complete set of the Vulgate Bible.
Gay, David, and Stephen R. Reimer (Eds.). Locating the Past/Discovering the
Present: Perspectives on Religion, Culture, and Marginality. [Religious
Studies/Cultural Studies.] (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press. 2010. Pp.
xx, 204. $39.95 paperback.)
Geis, Robert. In My Ever After: Immortality and Its Critics. (Lanham, MD:
University Press of America, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield. 2010. Pp.
xii, 228. $33.99 paperback.)
Genke, Victor, and Francis X. Gumerlock (Eds. and Trans.). Gottschalk and a
Medieval Predestination Controversy: Texts Translated from the Latin.
Introduced by Victor Genke. [Medieval Philosophical Texts in Translation,
No. 47.] (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. 2010. Pp. 248. $29.00
paperback.) Besides the “Writings of Gottschalk,” there are “Other
Writings” by Rabanus Maurus, Hincmar of Reims, Amolo of Lyons, and
Florus of Lyons.
Groeschel, Benedict J., C.F.R. Travelers along the Way: The Men and Women
who Shaped My Life. (Cincinnati: Servant Books, an imprint of St. Anthony
Messenger Press. 2010. Pp. xiv, 162. $13.99 paperback.)
Guasco, Alberto, and Raffaella Perin (Eds.). Pius XI: Keywords. International
Conference Milan 2009. [Christianity and History. Series of the John XXIII
Foundation for Religious Studies in Bologna, Vol. 7.] (Münster: Lit Verlag.
2010. Pp. 430. €34,90.) This volume contains the brief papers presented at
a conference that was organized by the Fondazione per le Scienze
Religiose Giovanni XXIII di Bologna and held at the Fondazione
Ambrosianeum di Milano on June 9–10, 2009. The papers embody the
results of research in the papers of the pontificate of Pius XI in the Vatican
Secret Archives that were made available for consultation in 2006.
Following an introduction by the editors (pp. 7–12) are two general
papers—Emma Fattorini,“La chiesa negli anni Venti e Trenta: i nuovi studi”

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(pp. 13–21), and Gianfranco Armando, “«Non osare dir nulla di falso, né
tacere nullo di vero»” (pp. 23–24)—and seven papers under the heading “Il
panorama delle ricerche”: Hubert Wolf,“Un papa in ombra? Le opportunità
di un network europeo di ricerca su Pio XI” (pp. 27–37);Vincent Viaene,“Il
KADOC di Lovanio e il quadro delle ricerche su Pio XI” (pp. 39–43); Rupert
Klieber,“Un progetto di ricerca nazionale e interdisciplinare. «Il pontificato
di Pio XI e l’Austria»” (pp. 45–48); Jorg Hörnschemeyer, Maria Pia LorenzFilograno, Barbara Schüler, and Hubert Wolf,“L’edizione critica online dei
rapporti delle Nunziature di Eugenio Pacelli (1917–1929)” (pp. 49–62);
Jean-François Chauvard and Laura Pettinaroli,“L’École française de Rome e
il progetto Pio XI” (pp. 63–65); Feliciano Montero, “La Iglesia y el catolicismo español durante el pontificado de Pio XI: la historiografia española
y la investigación actual” (pp. 67–75); and Evgenia Tokareva,“Il pontificato
di Pio XI. La storiografia contemporanea in Russia” (pp. 77–87). The
remaining papers are divided according to the sessions of the conference:
(1) Prima sessione. «Totalitarismo»: Alberto Guasco, “Un termine e le sue
declinazioni: chiesa cattolica e totalitarismi tra bibliografia e ricerca” (pp.
91–106); Alfonso Botti,“Santa Sede e influenza nazista in Spagna durante
la guerra civile nei documenti dell’Archivio Segreto Vaticano. Un ruolo
anti-totalitario della Chiesa?” (pp. 107–29); Lucia Ceci,“Santa Sede e impero
fascista: contrasti, silenzi, fiancheggiamenti” (pp. 131–46); Raffaella Perin,
“Pregiudizio antiebraico e antiprotestante: alcuni riflessi sull’atteggiamento della chiesa verso il fascismo” (pp. 147–62). (2) Seconda sessione.
«Morale»: Emmanuel Betta,“La dottrina sulla famiglia nell’età di Pio XI tra
storiografia e ricerca” (pp. 165–73); Martine Sevegrand,“Pie XI et la morale
familiale” (pp. 175–83); Lucia Pozzi, “Sulla limitazione volontaria delle
nascite. Rapporto di Agostino Gemelli” (pp. 185–205); Magali Della Sudda,
“Les défis du pontificat de Pie XI pour l’Action Catholique féminine en
France et en Italie (1922–1939)” (pp. 207–25); Maria Malatesta, “La formazione delle élites cattoliche femminili tra le due guerre” (pp. 227–44).
(3) Terza sessione. «Russia»: Sergio Apruzzese,“Pio XI e l’orizzonte russo”
(pp. 247–70); Étienne Fouilloux,“Pie XI et la «Russie» Bref état de la question” (pp. 271–77); Laura Pettinaroli,“Pio XI and Michel d’Herbigny: analisi
d’una relazione al vertice della chiesa alla luce del materiale delle udienze
pontificie (1922–1939)” (pp. 279–97); Filippo Frangioni,“L’URSS e la propaganda contro la religione. Per una definizione dell’anticomunismo nella
Santa Sede degli anni Trenta” (pp. 299–371); Manuela Barbolla, “Genesi
della Mortalium Animos” (pp. 313–22). (4) Quarta sessione. «Santa Sede,
Stati nazionali e organismi internazionali»: Marie Levant,“«Facendo nostra
la parola di nostro Signore». Pio XI di fronte alla politica della mano tesa in
Francia” (pp. 325–38); Emilia Hrabovec,“Pio XI e la Cecoslovacchia: un rapporto difficile alla luce delle nuove fonti vaticane” (pp. 339–59); Mara
Dissegna,“Il Concordato tra la Santa Sede e il Regno di Romania: un’introduzione” (pp. 361–81); Giulia D’Alessio, “Santa Sede, Stati Uniti e cattolicesimo americano negli anni di Pio XI” (pp. 383–92); Elisa Giunipero,
“L’inchiesta sul comunismo in Cina” (pp. 393–405); Liliosa Azara, “Santa

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Sede e Società delle Nazioni” (pp. 407–18). There is an index of personal
names (pp. 421–27).
Hinlicky, Paul R. Divine Complexity: The Rise of Creedal Christianity.
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2010. Pp. xii, 284. $32.00 paperback.)
*Johnson,Timothy J. (Ed.). Franciscans at Prayer. [The Medieval Franciscans,
Vol 4.] Leiden: Brill. 2007. Pp. 532. $196.00.)
Kelly, Joseph F. The Feast of Christmas. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.
2010. Pp. x, 122. $14.95 paperback.)
Lehman, Martin W. Roots & Branches: A Narrative History of the Amish and
Mennonites in Southeast United States, 1892–1992. Vol. 1: Roots, 1892–
1969. (Telford, PA: Cascadia Publishing; Scottdale, PA: Herald Press. 2010.
Pp. 308. $23.95 paperback.)
Levine, Frances, René Harris, and Josef Díaz (Eds.). The Threads of Memory:
Spain and the United States. Exhibition. Translated by Enrique Lamadrid
and Jerry Gurulé. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2010. Pp.
312. $60.00 paperback.) The third section of this folio-size, two-language,
and lavishly illustrated catalogue is “The Conquest of the Spirit: The
Missions” (pp. 76–99).
Lodi, Enzo. The Nicene-Costantinopolitan Creed as Ecumenical Norm: Lex
orandi–lex credendi. (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale. 2010. Pp. 410.
€25,00 paperback.)
Martin, James, S.J. In Good Company: The Fast Track from the Corporate
World to Poverty, Chastity and Obedience. 10th Anniversary Ed. (Lanham,
MD: Sheed & Ward, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield. 2010. Pp. xii, 206.
$16.95 paperback.)
Matthews, Shelly. Perfect Martyr: The Stoning of Stephen and the Construction of Christian Identity. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2010.
Pp. viii, 226. $65.00.)
McCarthy,Andrew T. Francis of Assisi as Artist of the Spiritual Life: An Object
Relations Theory Perspective. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America,
an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield. 2010. Pp. viii, 276. $39.99 paperback.)
Nordenbrock, William A., C.P.P.S. Beyond Accompaniment: Guiding a
Fractured Community to Wholeness. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.
2011. Pp. xv, 208. $19.95 paperback.)
Norris, Thomas J. Cardinal Newman for Today. (Hyde Park, NY: New City
Press. 2010. Pp. 230. $18.95 paperback.) Father Norris is a professor of systematic theology in St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Ireland.
_____. A Fractured Relationship: Faith and the Crisis of Culture. (Hyde Park,
NY: New City Press. 2010. Pp. 268. $19.95 paperback.) First published in
2007 by Veritas Publications, Dublin.

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Nugent, Robert. Silence Speaks: Teilhard de Chardin, Yves Congar, John
Courtney Murray, and Thomas Merton. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. 2011.
Pp. viii, 124. $14.95 paperback.) This small book contains previously published essays on four famous Catholic priests who were subjected to disciplinary actions that included a prohibition to teach or write for a period
of time, but they remained obedient to the Church and ultimately enjoyed
at least a partial vindication of their positions.
Porter, Jean. Ministers of the Law: A Natural Law Theory of Legal Authority.
[Emory University Studies in Law and Religion.] (Grand Rapids, MI:William
B. Eerdmans. 2010. Pp. xvi, 368. $30.00 paperback.)
Reimer, A. James. Christians and War: A Brief History of the Church’s
Teachings and Practices. [Facets.] (Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2010. Pp.
xvi, 192. $9.99 paperback.)
Rohr, Richard. Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent. (Cincinnati: St.
Anthony Messenger Press. 2011. Pp. 144. $8.99 paperback.)
Ruth, Lester, Carrie Steenwyk, and John D. Witvliet. Walking Where Jesus
Walked:Worship in Fourth-Century Jerusalem. (Grand Rapids, MI:William
B. Eerdmans. 2010. Pp. xii, 160. $23.00 paperback.)
Tasca, Luisa. Le vite e la storia: Autobiografie nell’Italia dell’Ottocento.
[Fondazione Bruno Kessler. Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in
Trento, Monografie, 57.] (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino. 2010. Pp. 202.
€17,00 paperback.) The only ecclesiastic included is the Jesuit Carlo Maria
Curci.
Wagner, Walter H. Opening the Qur’an: Introducing Islam’s Holy Book.
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2010. Pp. xx, 548. $45.00
cloth; $30.00 paperback.)
White, Cynthia. The Emergence of Christianity: Classical Traditions in
Contemporary Perspective. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2010. Pp. xvi, 220.
$28.00 paperback.) An introduction for students.